Mr. Speaker, I am deeply concerned that many regions of this world are suffering from the effects of armed conflicts with religious aspects. I believe that the differences of faith are not the real reason for these conflicts.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Religious wars are not caused by the fact that there is more than one religion, but by the spirit of intolerance... the spread of which can only be regarded as the total eclipse of human reason.
Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics.
We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.
The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.
Some of the worst violence in the world today between estranged religious and ethnic groups happens not on the battlefields. It happens smack in the middle of living rooms and between people who share a lot, who have a lot in common.
Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.
Faith and reason overpower each other throughout one's life, which results in contradiction, but the conflict never ceases in any sphere.
These are strange times. Reason, which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it, now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution.
Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics.