Rate: 5/5
As published in goodreads
I don't know how else would I feel about finishing this book, but a sense of desperation that throughout history, our humanity has built up distrust and hatred towards each other by manipulating religion for their own needs, and although all religion inherently teaches kindness towards each other (to make it simple), our greed and our economic expansion, has deliberately stained religion, and in return, stained our perspective of religions and people who adheres it. In our current understanding of the world, of course it's easy to blame religion for many violence which happened throughout history and even more currently things we are enduring at our own time. And I'm tired to argue, or sustained prejudiced looks against me being a muslim. Really tired. Karen Armstrong brilliantly explained in details the history of religion vs violence, and you can really tell, more than religion itself, violence is so inherent to human being, greed pushes us to justified expansion and murder of native people, nationalism nurtures a sense of being above other people who are different in race or background, and basically, there's no real connection that religion = violence.
Take an example, and this is something I'm surprised as well, the people who hijacked and conducted the terrorist act during September 11. They had secular education, weren't particularly practicing muslims, practically superficial understanding of the religion, and they seem to mainly did what they do to fill a sense of old time heroism, of a certain level of ecstasy this act offer, which they probably never experienced in their life. Or, how during the dark ages, there was no clear Protestant vs Catholic fights! It was more like a fight between one landlord against another, who apparently maybe a Protestant, and took up Catholic allies, to fight against another Protestant. Or how during 1980s, America supported Afghanistan fighters, which after the fall got confused getting back to their community which are clearly so less radical with what they are, and ended up fighting America back, and then the government at that time decided that it's okay to devilized these people which in the end make it easier for them to invade Iraq, and look, now we have ISIS problem! Geez! The conflict 'between religions' is so far complex than what we thought they are, and if we're to be honest, our problem lies in the way governing people drive peoples' opinion for us to take whatever narrative they're giving!
I wish people can be more tolerant, and open hearted to bridge differences by communication, and stop spreading fire by promoting violence and hatred. And more than fearing Trump candidency for example, what fears me most is the amount of people backing him up. Their hidden bigotry and racism can now just be out there in the open because they have a presidential candidate as their ally. Not to mention the rising right wing in Europe! This is scary! When it's our time to choose, would we be able to do what's right and not feed ourselves to hatred and prejudice? I hope not, but if I learn anything, as people being pressured, and had to endure horrible poverty, war, torture, or violence crime, we can be easily pushed towards becoming someone we hate the most.
If I can, I truly hope that more and more people would read this book and spread the awareness. That there's no single person or religion to point out for blame. But, who would have time for it? All of us prefer things which are instantly made, and it is SO MUCH EASIER to assume that the other people are bad and devilish, and it is so much easier to send a short video or hoaxed pictures to bring more wood to the fire, and there we have it. Hatred towards each other. Bigotry. Racism. Being uninformed. Ignorance. I'm glad that I've read this book, but in the same way I'm sad that this means we're so far from being able to live together in tolerance and peace :(
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