Religion is a weapon and tool, not the truth
I was brought up in a Muslim family and can recite many of the suras, but I attended a Methodist and Anglican secondary school in Nigeria. Again I know most of the hymns on “Songs of Praise”, though the tunes have changed. Biblical expressions, references and influences emerge in the fiction I write.
Most of us have been reflecting on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the attacks on London, Brussels, Paris and elsewhere around the world including even more defenseless Burkina Faso and Nigeria (although from what we hear the money allocated to military defence equipment allegedly ended up in the minister’s ample pockets).
Religious persecution, killings, inquisitions and other forms of inhumanity are not new. The two major religions of our time spread by word of mouth and by force. Religion of course does not stand alone in the dock and many perpetrators have gone punished. In part it was Milosevic’s bluster at the Hague that inspired me to write a novel about war crimes.
So when I heard that a Muslim man had been murdered by another Muslim for sending Easter greetings to his Christian friends I wondered what to do: sit here and eat hot cross buns with my family, life is too short why bother getting into bother. But in the end I had to write something.
In the West religion provides us with holidays, exalting literature to read, to inspire us and perhaps guide us in our daily life. But hundreds of years ago Christians used force, swords to get what they wanted. So Islam is not unique, it just happens to use bombs. If you read of some depravity, please remember it has happened before. That is the way we humans are.
The Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka wrote in his book “Of Africa” that perhaps the rest of the world can learn from the peaceful, non-expansionist indigenous religions of Yorubaland.
In Africa, the big religions have an even more painful effect. In many countries religion reinforces racial and tribal divides. We kill each other over ideologies created in Mesopotamia, yet we have shocking towns without electricity, taps without running water, mortuaries brimming with neonates and infants. Do those suffering not count as humans to the worshipped?
Yet the big religions inspired great cathedrals, music, literature, universities. So I see religion as a tool, like science and philosophy, but to some it is a weapon. Let us teach the children to use the artefacts of religion as tools not as weapons for mass destruction.
Finally, you cannot go on shouting at the radio forever. I have been meaning to say something about the pronouncements of religious “leaders”. They are learned and, like the heads of most man-made institutions, invariably male. And they know what they are doing, or saying, perhaps they don’t think that the rest of us matter or are listening or understand them, but we do. So when the Archbishop of Canterbury recently asked that those who opposed immigration not be labelled as racist my big ears pricked up. Of course they are not all racists. Many are making a passionate contribution to an important argument about our national life but I do not think he should be allowed to get away with his statement. Is it not reasonable to assume that we will find racists amongst those most vociferous about foreigners and cohesion and pressure on schools and NHS etc)? So why did he say it? He is better than that.
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