In this age, every conflict is traced to a religion, and religions are judged based upon it. This causes further conflict and religions are held responsible for this continuing cycle of hatred and revenge attacks. Even though all major religions in the world promote peace and tolerance, they end up being blamed for conflicts. The actions of an individual tend to become a representation of the religion they follow, which is a huge generalization. This trend is relatively new as this level of thinking hasn’t been witnessed until the last few decades. While there have been cases where religion has sanctioned conflicts; the role of religion in major conflicts around the world has grown insignificant and conflicts termed religious may in fact have been due to other factors, whereas the desire for peaceful co-existence and moral justice which religions continue to provide has increased substantially in recent centuries.
Conflict is part of the human civilization, from the biblical accounts of Cain and Abel to Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan and even to this day we have conflicts all over the world. The deadliest conflicts in the human history are the ones fought less than a century ago, namely the World Wars. But this sudden branding of conflict to a certain religion started after 9/11. According to Mahmood Mamdani, “public debate” inspired by Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis helped shape the public opinion especially in the US. Huntington mentions the coming of a “civilizational war” after the cold war, which was just a civil war within west. The incidents of 9/11 are an example where the actions of a small group of people have been taken to be a representation of a whole faction of humanity, and thus the start of the “civilizational war”. Public paranoia increased so much that now it is believed that a person’s religious beliefs will define his true nature. For example, Islam, one of the major religions
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