Belief

I have heard many people say that all the wars and bloodshed in the world have been fought in the name of religion. That's not at all accurate, but one thing must be admitted: that there is an element of truth in the above statement. All the wars have been fought and bloodshed done were in the name of their beliefs. Things would become clearer if we ask what we mean by 'belief'. Once upon a time when all the people in the world were tribes, one tribe attacked, plundered and destroyed another. Their justification for doing so was their belief. They believed that they were good people. All other tribes were bad. Later, more advanced cultures emerged. It was a belief that my culture was superior and others' were inferior. On account of that belief, they attacked, plundered and destroyed others. Later, kingdoms emerged. Again each thought that they were the well-meaning good people. Their culture of course was superior. They believed that they were more intelligent and therefore they had developed smarter weapons. They had to prove it by engaging in war with others. Western Christian nations believed that it was their duty to protect the sacred places. For this, they waged around twelve crusades over the span of two centuries, from 1096 to 1291, with the blessings of the Pope. It is said that seven million people lost their lives on both sides, directly in the battle, due to sickness, famine, and other causes.

It is a belief that women are a property of the clan. Battles have been fought in history because one of their women fell in love with a foreigner and was abducted by them.

When nationalism and religious fundamentalism are combined, it is a powerful mixture of beliefs. When hatred for other religions is also cocktailed, there is no need to say anything at all. Minorities become strangers and refugees in their own homeland. Turkish nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism got combined under Ottoman regime to kill 1.3 million Armenian Christians, 500,000 Greek Christians, and 250,000 Assyrian Christians, and ever since there has been no peace in West Asia.

Their ideology is the right one; only on the basis of it can a new world be built up. Believers in God and non-believers in the principle of class struggle are hindrances to building up of a new world. These were communist beliefs. For these beliefs, they massacred 42 million mostly Orthodox Christians in the USSR; 40 million mostly Shintoists in China; 500,000 mostly Catholics in Spain; 200,000 Catholics and Cao Dai believers in Cambodia. We don't have easily available numbers they killed elsewhere in the world.

It was a German belief that they were the intellectually capable and physically strong people. It was their duty to prove it to establish their monopoly by destroying other nations. Thus, Hitler alone killed eight million people.

The pluralism of humanity is an abomination; no democratic system is ever going to be effective; only totalitarianism based on military power is right and practical. These were all fascist beliefs. For this, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperialist Japan joined hands together. Thus, 75 million people died in the Second World War, the greatest human slaughter in world history.

It was the belief of the right-wing authoritarian regimes in South American countries that dissenting voices should be eliminated. For this, the right-wing regimes killed Catholics and leftists.

Looking at it this way, although it can be generally said that all human slaughter ever in the world was in the name of beliefs, we can see that nationalism, political ideologies, and imperialist and expansionist desires were the ones that caused the vast majority of wars and violence.

And still these are what we humans still keep manuring today!