War And Religon
...is that despite all the good it has done, religion has caused enormous evil in our world. Here are six examples with representative perpetrators and victims:
Nigerian Muslims killed over 200 Christians when an article in a Lagos newspaper said that the Prophet Mohammed would have approved of the Miss World contest being held there and might have chosen to marry one of the contestants (December 2002).
Aztecs sacrificed 20,000 people in four days at the consecration of a temple in Mexico in 1487.1
Baruch Goldstein, an American doctor, entered a mosque in Israel and opened fire with an automatic weapon. He killed 29 Muslims who were at prayer (February 25, 1994). Today some extremists consider him a hero and over 10,000 people have visited his grave which they consider a shrine. A marble plaque above his grave reads, "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah, and the nation of Israel."2
Asahara Shoko and the Aum Shinrikyo, a fringe Buddhist sect, killed 12 people and injured 5,000 in the Tokyo subway sarin attack (March 20, 1995).
Christians killed thousands in the Crusades and Inquisitions, defended slavery, were at least complicit in the Holocaust that killed six million Jews, and have murdered abortion doctors and gays.
In a jungle in Guyana, 914 followers of Jim Jones's People's Temple committed mass suicide (November 18, 1978).
As we can see, whether ancient or modern, violence in the name of religion knows no boundaries and plays no favorites. Widow burning, caste systems, female genital mutilation, witch hunts, ritual abuse, ethnic cleansing, suicide bombers, apartheid the list is depressingly long.3
It is important to make at least four distinctions. First, we should judge religions by their most authentic examples rather than by their worst corruptions. Islam, for example, flourished from Spain to...
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