Yesterday I wrote about the physical cruelty related to religion that is still very spread on this planet. While that is true and obviously horrible for anybody to see, there is another form of cruelty which is even closer to your home and that is mental cruelty of religion.
The most common form of violence is physical violence. When you speak of religious violence, you think of women being flogged in Islamic for example because they are thought to be adulterous. You may think of the violence that happened during the Crusades of Christians who wanted to convert everybody to their religion. You may think of the sati tradition in Hinduism in which widows are burnt on the cremation fire of their dead husbands. You may think of terrorism, bomb blasts and suicide attacks.
This all is physical violence but there is another form, too, mental violence. Often that is even much crueler! When you are violent and cruel in your thoughts, you can sometimes hurt a person much more than with a physical attack. Once this mental violence enters a culture and stays there as a subtle but real discrimination against certain minorities, it even becomes dangerous.
If you still cannot imagine what kind of violence I am talking about, I can give you several examples. India for example still has not been able to fully abolish the caste system. Its root is religion and this is why, due to religion, there are still people who are considered untouchable by others. Isn’t it cruel to show a person that you won’t even touch his arm just because he was born into an untouchable family? How will this person feel if he realizes the moment that he touched you, you decided to take a shower to cleanse yourself again?
What about women in Islam who have to hide themselves, their heads, their hair, their faces and complete bodies? Some may say it is their own choice, they feel safe and good but what about those who don’t feel good about it but nevertheless have to follow it? Isn’t that mental torture, telling a woman that she is a lower creature, seducing men just by showing her face? When a Muslim woman gets raped, the law of Islam says she has to bring forward four adult men who can confirm that she was raped, otherwise she will be the one punished. Imagine, after the physical torture of being raped, you are being tortured mentally, too!
Christianity is not less cruel! There are lots of Christians who still believe that homosexuality is a disease or even a sin! Ask any gay man or any lesbian woman, they will tell you that they have no choice, that they cannot just decide to feel attracted to people of the other sex instead! Nevertheless people treat them as though they are bad criminals, as though they are disgusting and they teach this to their children! They show this in front of the adopted children of homosexual couples – how can you be crueler than giving such a small being the feeling his or her parents are sinners?
That is all happening just in front of your doorstep! You cannot close your eyes now anymore and say these are facts from a world far away! This is happening just in your surrounding and I want to make you aware of it! I want you to see that this is the effect of religion spreading hate, fear and violence!
You won’t find any religion that has not been violent, if not physically, then mentally. No, even Buddhism cannot exclude itself here with their obvious discrimination of women!
I don’t ask you to leave your religion. I don’t ask you to give up your faith. I just would like to ask you to consider what you would like to do – support violence and cruelty or break the cycle of tradition and spread love instead? Now it is up to you to answer this for yourself!
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Religion is the Root of Terrorism – 11 Sep 16
The corrupt System of Religion – when Money can get you closer to God! – 10 Sep 16
Ganesha on Cigarettes is fine but on Shoes? Oh no! – 8 Sep 16
Religions praise Suffering for suppressing and exploiting People further – 5 Sep 16
Why it is so funny that Mother Teresa becomes a Saint today – 4 Sep 16
Choosing in between feeding hungry Children and Monkeys – 23 Aug 16
You cannot exclude Religion when speaking about Terrorism – 26 Jul 16
Your Life, your Decisions – don’t let Religion tell you what to do! – 17 Sep 15
Thanks swami, great article. I think often violence both physical and mental in religious terms often comes from people abusing the religion for their own gains – the crusades are a great example, as you mentioned, of people abusing religion for material gains (land and wealth) or indeed people having distorted or corrupted views like the picture of god hates you at the top of the page. Real shame this kind of thing happens!
It’s images like the one at the top of this page, and the discussion in Swami’s blog that make me question whether current humanity really deserves it’s place at the top of the animal kingdom. What does Man not understand about the concept of working together to progress it’s conscious, it’s technology, it’s environment, the list goes on. Yet still, the very people who govern our globe are the very people who have the least interest in seeing it’s development. Personal gain and control is at the top of their agenda, yet there are now so many countries, societies and influencial people that recognise this problem and still not enough is being done to alter the course of the future. There is a viewpoint shared where i come from that sometimes for someone to really appreciate that urgent change is needed to pick themselves up and out of their predicament they have to hit rock bottom first.I.e, they have to experience the worst state they will likely ever find themselves to be in, before they will improve their situation. I fear that this is the situation for humanity as it stands, because although people from around the world are making improvements to better the world collective and not just themselves, there are still far too many that have no interest in needs other than their own. The real change it may seem, will come when humanity has hit rock bottom, global anarchy and chaos will ensue, before everyone will realise that the world can not be sustained, whilst dominated by selfish greedy people.