What To Do About Religious Intolerance Leading to War
by John Lawrence
The current situation in the Middle East is a reminder that throughout history war has been religious based. Think of the wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics or the Crusades which were wars between Christians and Muslims or the persecution of Jews throughout history. If we are ever to have peace in this world, religious tolerance is paramount. So there should be religious studies in schools at all levels, but not studies about one religion. Students should be required to study all the major religions which are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Not only that, but students should be required to attend religious services in all these religions. Only by understanding the different religions can one develop a tolerance for them all. Only when we come to a time when it doesn't matter what religion a person espouses will we be able to all get along. It shouldn't matter what one's religion is. They shouldn't be perceived as "the other." All human beings need to get to the point where they are human beings first and their religion is a matter of indifference.
I think this can only be accomplished by an educational system in which a student becomes familiar with all the different religions, has friends who are members of different religions and comes to see that, regardless of one's religion, human beings are all basically the same. In other words all societies should become secularized. It would help greatly if all students were required to attend religious services of all the five great religions mentioned earlier. What is more important than peace on earth, and to accomplish this tolerance of all religions must be inculcated in students everywhere. Tolerance of other religions is more important than the beliefs of any particular religion. As long as one perceives that someone is a member of a different religion than their own and is perceived as "the other," there will be suspicion, fear, tension, hatred and war. World peace is something that needs to be worked at to be accomplished and understanding and tolerance of religion is a good place to start.
In addition to tolerance of different religious views, an uplifting of the economic circumstances of the world's poorest citizens will do more to create peace than anything else. War is often the result of the perceived superiority of living conditions of one group of people by another group. One group is the downtrodden and one group has all the advantages and is living the good life. Everyone in the world needs to be brought up to at least a decent standard of living before there will be peace in the world. So religious tolerance brought about by education regarding all the world's religions and attendance at all religious services combined with an all out effort to bring all the world's peoples up to a decent standard of living will do much to bring about world peace. These efforts have to be done at the same time that the earth itself must be protected from environmental degradation especially with regard to climate change. The old paradigm in which earth's resources were to be exploited without consequence, in which humans were told that they had "dominion" over earth's resources, must go to be replaced with an ethic not of exploitation but of respect for the planet and all its resources including its human resources.
