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Lucas DeLorenzo
ENG102
11/25/07

Religion and Culture, and the Crises They Have Caused


When your race, religion, culture, and identity are all combined, it’s a recipe for disaster.  This has been proven time and time again throughout the history of man.  Things dating as far back as the enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians and Jesus being murdered by the people with power in religion were caused by religion and culture.  The ones clearly in the wrong, the Egyptians and the religious leaders in these cases, used religion and culture to justify their actions.  The sad fact is that everyone bought it and followed them.  This caused the Crusades.  Terrorism was bred from this.  Islamic extremism is currently the number one reason for the problems in the Middle East today. 

Salman Rushdie told the six billionth world citizen to-be to imagine there’s no Heaven when he or she is born in order to not limit their self (Rushdie, 519).  He had many reason for saying this.  All of the stories of creation have been proven completely wrong by modern science.  That is the only thing all religions have in common.  They all were wrong.  However, this hasn’t stopped the religious from believing, and it seems to only strengthen their resolve and make them insist even more on blind faith.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize how totally wrong that is.  Religion is very anti-sex, meaning they disapprove of birth control and sex education, leading to excess populations and the continuing spread of sexually transmitted diseases.  Religion is used to justify wars and atrocities of human rights.  The Taliban used it to justify their oppression of the Afghan people.  The Hindus in Bombay have been using it to threaten and persecute the Muslims of the area. (Rushdie, 518)  It’s quite possible that religion has caused more pain, suffering, and death than any good it has brought to us. 

The Crusades were expeditions undertaken, in fulfillment of a solemn vow, to deliver the Holy Places from Mohammedan tyranny (Bréhier, par. 1).  The Muslims were conquering parts of Europe and spreading their faith, which was viewed as a threat (obviously) to the Christian world.  The clergymen, most specifically the Pope, were the only things that unified the divided city-states in Europe at all.  The Popes of the centuries during the Crusades had holy warriors blessed and then sent on journeys to retake holy lands or save Christians from Muslim rule.  Does this sound familiar?  It should.  This is exactly what some Muslim leaders are doing in today’s world.  They are recruiting young and impressionable people to undertake holy crusades against those they view as enemies of their world, which would be the modern West, most specifically America, and her allies.  Were the Popes right?  Of course they were not.  They were just as wrong as the Muslim extremists are today.  Thousands upon thousands of lives were lost in the Crusades, and atrocities on both sides were justified by religion.  The holy warriors, with God at their side supposedly, marched into battle and killed and pillaged for their faith.  Somehow, despite this being deemed wrong by both Allah and Jesus, religion justified the killing and the wars for both sides.  Hopefully the holy warriors are spared if there’s some sort of eternal life after death or a Heaven.  They believed they were working for God and the religious leaders condoned their actions. 

The Crusades were the past.  What matters most now are the problems in the Middle East that are caused by religious and cultural differences.  To understand the current problems that culture and religion are causing, one must understand the history of Islam to some extent.  The prophet Muhammad founded Islam in the seventh century (Voll).  It started as a small community in Arabia and was originally a counter-faith to the polytheistic faith at the time (Voll, par. 1).  By the time Muhammad died in 632, the Muslim community was well established (Voll, par. 8).  Muhammad’s death caused the first real problems in the Muslim world.  They had to name a successor as their leader.  This is when the chaos still going on today started.  Several civil wars amongst the Muslims occurred, and various figures fought for power and supporters joined sides.  The Shi’i (or Shi’ah, or various other spellings) believed that a man named Ali was supposed to be Muhammad’s successor since he was related to him and they thought Muhammad declared him his heir (Voll, par. 11).  “Sunni tradition reflects a combination of an emphasis on the consensus and piety of the community of the Prophet's companions and it always reflects the tension between the needs of state stability and the aspirations of a more egalitarian and pietistic religious vision” (Voll, par. 13).  This is where the differences began.  Currently, it’s really just simple things, such as how they pray and how strict they are on certain traditions.  For various reasons they believe worthy, they are fighting and killing each other over these things.  There are also other groups, like the Kurds, that are mixed up in this.  Osama bin Laden, the leader of the terrorist group Al Qaida, justifies his actions by using his faith.  He gets followers by using Islam.  He says they’ll be granted salvation and become heroes.  He says that they should kill the “infidels” in the name of Islam.  Now, infidels are usually people with no religion or nonbelievers, but they twist it by saying that all people that aren’t Islamic are infidels.  Islamic extremists have been abusing their influence and twisting the religion of Islam in order to cause the chaos of today.  Islamic extremists have said that the Jews should die, and that Israel should be wiped off the map, and that has caused more problems in the Middle East.  The current leader of Iran has stated such things about Israel, and has even made claims that the Holocaust never occurred.  The Iraqi insurgency is largely caused by conflicts between Sunni and Shi’ah factions.  Because they can’t get along, a stable government cannot be formed, and American troops will have to stay there to keep the peace.

The Crusades, the Holocaust, the fighting the Middle East, terrorism…  There are many other things as well.  All of them were caused either directly or indirectly by religion.  Religion has also done many good things.  It has united people.  European countries basically came into existence because of religious institutions and religious leaders.  There was no unity before they all had a common faith.  At one time, Islam helped stabilize and unite groups in the Middle East.  There are charities run by religious institutions.  The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization my father used to be a part of, ran a lot of fundraisers to help the poor and help charities.  People like Mother Theresa have made a real difference in the world when it comes to ending poverty and starvation.  However, is it all worth it?  Has religion caused more good than bad?  If not, did it at least break even?  There’s probably no real way to prove it.  A lot of information is simply lost.  There’s no exact death toll for the Crusades, the fighting after Muhammad’s death, the deaths caused by overpopulation and lack of protection from sexually transmitted diseases, the suffering of those persecuted for their faiths… Well, why bother looking for an exact toll?  Logically, all of those things, as well as a plethora of things I left out, added together couldn’t possibly have less impact than the good things that religion has done.  It would appear that religion has been the cause of hundreds of millions of deaths and the suffering of millions as well.  An instance of suffering is the religious strictures in India preventing people from using contraceptives and being educated about human sexuality leading to a huge population and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, which causes poverty and starvation (Rushdie, 518).  Another one is how female circumcision is justified based on cultural grounds, and somehow the concept of cultural relativism protects it (Rushdie, 519). 

Religion has caused so many terrible things, and yet so many remain faithful.  Most of the world is religious.  Why is this so?  Well, there are probably many reasons that humanity clings onto religion, and why the religious leaders want to spread their faiths.  We’re arrogant.  We’re so much more intelligent than other living beings that we have to believe that we were specially created by an omnipotent being in His image.  In my opinion, religion was created by human weakness.  Believing in the afterlife gives us comfort and makes us fear death less.  Without this belief, people would be less apt to do well in their life and aim for the supposed salvation that awaits us.  Since we’ve been granted this supposed vast intelligence, we contemplate things such as death, the afterlife, and creation; things that normal living things do not ever give any thought.  Promised with salvation, going to Heaven, and having a wonderful afterlife, the soldiers of the Crusades didn’t fear death and were willing to risk their lives for their Church.  The terrorists of the modern world, promised with the same thing by the extremist religious leaders of al Qaida, also don’t fear death and are willing to give their lives for the cause of their leaders.  This brings me to my next point, which is really just an assumption.  Religion was turned into something used for power and control.  If people believe that someone is speaking the word of God, or represents God, then they will listen to them more readily and believe anything they say.  The Popes of old Europe had a lot of power due to this, and managed to control kings and queens.  Who’s to say that they didn’t influence their decisions when it came to wars and exploration, all in an effort to expand their own power and influence by spreading the Christian faith?  The same could also be true of the Muslim leaders during the Crusades.  If a faith expands and spreads to more nations, naturally, the leaders of that faith gain more power over more people.  Is religion thus responsible for many of the wars of the past, as well as much of the chaos today in the Middle East, and even terrorism?  There’s no denying that it had roles in all of it.  Just how much of a role religion had is only known by those that were behind the scenes, as that kind of information tends to evade the history books.

“Imagine there’s no Heaven, and at once the sky’s the limit.”  That’s what Rushdie said to close his letter to the six billionth world citizen to-be.  He was both right and wrong, perhaps.  The people that imagined there was a Heaven waiting for them after they died sure did manage to do some amazing and reckless things, such as crashing a plane into a building or going off on a death-mission to fight hordes of enemies.  Those not hindered by religion are free to pursue stem cell research, stop barbaric practices like female circumcision, educate people about sexuality to control populations and stop the spread of diseases, and various other things.  Going extreme in either direction can be terrible.  The extremely faithful can become extremist, like the terrorists of the Middle East.  They can become bigoted, like the KKK in the South.  Those that fear no God may lack morals.  When it comes down to it, religion can be both good and bad, but I think the world would be a better place if we, as Rushdie says, “put childish things aside” and don’t take the “ancient wisdoms that are modern nonsenses” seriously.

In my opinion, religion is more negative than positive.  It has caused many wars, is a leading cause of terrorism, and has caused poverty in places like India due to populations surging out of control.  Religious leaders have used it for control and used it to gain power.  My final conclusion after looking into this and ranting about it for five pages is that religion itself isn’t bad, but human nature twists it into something bad, and many religious leaders make it bad.  Using religion to gain power, cause wars, and do evil things is the problem.  If one believes in God, they should follow him, not his followers.  I have no problems with Jesus, but his fan club can be very annoying.  Anyone can get the point by now.  What religion teaches us is good most of the time, and following it isn’t much of a problem, but being extreme about it and using it for personal gain is wrong.                                           


Works Cited

“Crusades.”  New Advent.  2007.  Louis Bréhier.  25 November 2007. 
< http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04543c.htm>

“Islam.”  CQ Press: Current Events in Context.  2007.  John O. Voll.  25 November 2007. 
< http://www.cqpress.com/context/articles/epr_islam.html>

Rushdie, Salman.  “Imagine There’s No Heaven: A Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen.”
Literature: The Human Experience.  Richard Abcarian and Marvin Klotz.  9th ed.  Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.  517-519.

Yzarc Drowsnam

Jan 8 2008, 11:25 PM

Though I'm pretty sure this isn't here for critique, you used quite a lot of first person in an essay, which isn't allowed unless it's agreed upon by the community that you are an expert on the subject, which I assume you're not.

Inui

Jan 8 2008, 10:35 PM

Yzarc Drowsnam

Jan 8 2008, 11:25 PM

Though I'm pretty sure this isn't here for critique, you used quite a lot of first person in an essay, which isn't allowed unless it's agreed upon by the community that you are an expert on the subject, which I assume you're not.

We were allowed to use first person for our research papers in this class.

It's not here for critique. It's here to be debated. I know I'm not that good at papers since I despise doing them.

I think religion is a negative in the world, and something that should be discarded. I'm not saying belief in a superpower that made stuff should be discarded, or that we shouldn't think Jesus pwns, but I'm saying organized religion is bad for mankind.

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Things dating as far back as the enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians and Jesus being murdered by the people with power in religion were caused by religion and culture.  The ones clearly in the wrong, the Egyptians and the religious leaders in these cases, used religion and culture to justify their actions.

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This caused the Crusades.  Terrorism was bred from this.  Islamic extremism is currently the number one reason for the problems in the Middle East today.

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Things dating as far back as the (1)enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians and Jesus being (2)murdered by the people with power in religion were caused by religion and culture.

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The ones clearly in the wrong, (1)the Egyptians and the (2)religious leaders in these cases, used religion and culture to justify their actions.