Imagine

On the evening of 13 November 2015 a tragic event had occurred in Paris, France. There are shooting and bombing in this France’s capital. At least 130 people killed and 368 people injured. And there is no other accomplices other than religious radicals who bring along Islam, the religion of peace, as their cause on this attack. Nowadays it is not rare that a terrorism always bring a religion to its act. And people who do this claimed or is claimed that they are very religious. Because of this then come up a statement, and that statement is the more religious someone is, the more radical a person can become, thus become a blind faith.

Through history and time to time, religion has been made as a base for many, if not all, human activities, such as in social, economy, and politic. These activities show us that religion has become one of important things in human life. Not only have those, religion also become one of causes of some campaigns, political or military.

In Middle Ages occurred one of the largest military campaign, the Crusades, span from the end of 11^th century to 15^th century. This campaign sanctioned by the Papacy to repel the growing Turkish threat at that time, that bring religion of Islam with its. This become one of causes the tension of Christians and Muslims, who mainly are Turkish, at that time. Even if there are political, economy and territorial motifs, the religion is used to urge the people who believe it to do this campaign, whether by the Turkish, with its Islamic belief, or the Papacy, that thus created the Crusader, people who do the Crusades and they were told that the Crusades was God’s will. In this case people who believe to their own faith was leaded that that war was holy. Their own faith made this war happened.

Also happened in Middle Ages, people who did thing that contradict with orthodox Christianity doctrine was judged as an act of heresy, if founded, and one of the punishments was death penalty. Like in case of Giordano Bruno, in 1600 he was burned at the stake by Roman Catholic Church because of his view that contradict the Church and his modern view of the universe. And almost at same time the Galileo Galilei affair that happened because of his support to heliocentric theory that at that time is contradict with what the Church believed, and because of that he was kept under house arrest until his death in 1642. These show us that too much faith at something make someone narrow-minded and not want to accept that different from what has been there, the doctrine, and halt scientific progress. That was the dark ages of Christianity.

Move to modern era, where not the Christianity in general that do negative things, it is Islam era that is looked negatively. Since Cold War, there are many group of terrorism appear and form into a big organization, such as the notorious big, al-Qaeda, who have span around the world, Boko Haram, a terrorist organization at west side of Africa, Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, Abu Sayyaf in one part of Philippines, and, but not least, the one that just appeared out of nowhere, The IS, Islamic State.

The act of terrorism seems occurred everyday whether it is in area of conflicts or in first world country, where this act should have not happened. The recent even is what have been stated in the first paragraph which is the Paris Attack in 13 November 2015 that lead to another attack in another area of Paris. And the Islamic State claimed that it was its doing, another reason for France’s people, and all people, to hate Islam beside the Charlie Hebdo shooting that happened on 7 January 2015, also in Paris. There are countless act of terrorism have happened, like the well-known for its conspiracy, the 9/11 attacks that brought down the World Trade Center and attack the Pentagon by hijacking commercial planes and crashing them to those building, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, where nearly simultaneous, coordinated bombing occurred in Madrid commuter rail network, the Bali bombings, the 2009 Jakarta bombings, and many, many small-scale suicide bombing in at-conflict countries. There are many.

All of these terrorism group claimed themselves as the truest Islam, and they do things that many Muslims claim that they are not act as a Muslim should act, they terrorizing people, do act of killing people, do suicide bombing, enforce Islam teaching and many more, but they call themselves as Muslims. The member of these group are promised go to heaven when they dead, because those acts are Jihad, the act of striving in the way of God. In other side many intellectual Muslim said that those are not Jihad, and it is true because those are not what Islam teach. But they are still doing it and many people come to join them. And those people are looked as the religious ones. Those people faith have leaded them to radicalism and blind them, without knowing what the true Islam is and how to be a good Muslim.

And the other, but not least, Abrahamic religion, Judaism, is mentioned in this writing, because many people, mainly Muslim, blame the people who are the follower of this religion, the Jews, for every bad things happened, literally everything. There is economic crisis, let’s blame the Jews, there are many terrorist group, the Jews are funding it, my religion looks bad, blame the Jews. The writer have seen many of these example in many social media and in different websites. Leave aside conspiracy theories, this seems ridiculous to blame everything to a single religion that the followers is not too significant in world population than Islam or Christianity. The writer know well this paragraph have not correlation to this whole writing.

It seems that Abrahamic religion is very problematic, but there are other religions who have radicals people, such as Buddhism in Myanmar, with its very nationalist people, Hinduism in India, that has a caste system and discrimination to women.

Many and many problem arise from religion, and many bad things happened because of religion. Many, many people who are follower of one of those religions always claim that those bad things were happened because of the radicals of its religion doing since every religion teaches peace and always do good things, and there are always hidden motives that hiding behind religion in every acts of those radicals. However, those radicals are a leader who lead people who follow what their leader say. So it is not problem of one person, but problem in a huge thing because there are so many people follow those radical leader. Many people claim that what radicals have learned about religion are wrong and trough a wrong way, but there are also religious intellectuals who support those act of terrorism. Is their understanding about their religion are high enough that they become have less faith so they betrayed their own religion? Sure is that every act of radicalisms is from religious persons, they won’t shout their God’s name in every act of theirs if they are not religious.

It looks like that the writer attacks religions blindly and promotes atheism or life without religion, be sure those are not the writer’s intentions. It is because those radicals use religion as their motifs in every act of theirs and many religious people follow those radicals’ movements. There are many and many reasons and motifs that people will act radicals and religion is the most used, or at least on the face, and they have many religious follower. If it is true, sure there are some wrongs in religions or in their ways of teaching that many radicalisms and bad things happened in the past or will happen in the future. Religion teaches peace and good things, this was what they said, but what guarantee people have that there are no more radicalism in the name of religion, at least there are no more followers to the radicals movements. If religion teaches peace and good things, acts as what religion teaches. Humans have had many reasons to hate each other, don’t make religion as one of those reasons. Human will live in harmony if they have less and less reasons to hate each other. This is what many people have dreamed about, live in harmony. As lyrics in John Lennon’s song titled ‘Imagine’:

“You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one”

Believe what you believe, be sure it is a good one, and don’t spread hate.