Are religions violent?: A short comment

Are religions violent?: A short comment

Last Friday, November 13th, the world suffered two terrorist attacks, one in Paris another in Beirut. Those attacks cost at least 129 lives and 352 victims, whereas in Beirut cost 40 lives. ISIS has claimed responsibility for both attacks. Amid to the fact that ISIS is a Muslim organization, many are blaming Islamism for being a religion that provokes violence, therefore many think muslims are violent too. I consider that it is wrong to link islamism and muslims with violence.

If few people do something wrong, we can not take for granted that all people are the same. Even when we talk about muslims, according to Pew Research Center there are 1.6 billion muslim people in the world that represent 23% of global population. People who judge Muslim for be a violent religion (due to the acts of few people) they also have to judge Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, and Judaism for the same reason. In the south of Myanmar buddhist monks beat women and childrenst, also muslim are beatten by Buddhist believers, does it means that Buddhism is violent religion? The system cast was created by Hinduism, even though that does not mean that all hindus are racist, for example the state of Katala, in India, guarantees basic services to everyboby no matter the background. Many catholic priests have been accused of sexual abuse, nevertheless, that does not mean that catholics are rapist. In many places jews are considered right-wing and neoliberal, however, the biggest liberal and left-wing thinkers are and have been jews. For example, Karl Marx, Noam Chosky, Carlos Nino, Michael Walzer, Hant Arent, and so on.

By and large, the worst mistake people can do, is to think that all people who belong to a group are the same. None religions take faith to violence or peace, it depends on how intense we live and if we want others to treat us like we treat them. In contrast, I think that horrible actions do not come from faith, they come from lack education of principles like: liberty, equality, or not to harm others. Those principles should be the statement of every community.