LET US NOT HONOUR TERRORISTS WITH RELIGIOUS DESIGNATION

It is a fact that true and mainstream Muslims never allow terrorists to be designated as Islamic. It is the same with Christians, we must not allow intentional killing of other persons in the name of Christian faith. Therefore, we must not honour murderers with adjectives like “Muslim” terrorists. We don’t call Ku Klux Klan neither Nazis “Christian” though admittedly they were called by that designation in the beginning with official blessing of some mainline churches. Terrorists are sadistic murderers often using religion as an excuse. Religions do not kill. If they do, they are serious apostasy. Let us all be clear about that.

However, I must admit that history is full of officially sanctioned killings with executions and wars. Likewise terrorism was sanctified by the religious authorities. Burning at the stake of heretics and witches; Crusaders killed Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians alike; Hundred Years War between Catholics and Protestants; the bloody partition of India into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The list goes on and on. Ku Klux Klan began not only as anti-African American, but also as ant-Catholic and Anti-Semitic movement allowing extra-judicial executions by lynching. Even supposedly the most tolerant religion, Buddhism, had legendary professional warrior monks, just like the Templars in Catholic Church.

The problem of religions causing such a deadly apostasy is absolutism and certitude. God is absolute but humanity isn’t. No human knows God. However, in order to assert the superiority of their religion, believers often claim monopoly of absolute truth. We must know we can never be certain that we know God completely. It is like waiving a flashlight in the dark sky. You can not claim all the mosquitoes you see with the flashlight are all mosquitoes that can bite you. That would be ridiculous. What you see is not all, but you can see mosquitoes are there. This is why all religions are called faith: you see only partially and the rest is a mere hypothesis.

Faith is an admission what you know is not total. With such an incomplete knowledge, nobody has the right to judge other to be untrue and destroy them as heresy. Faith by definition has no right to condemn others. This is why no religion can claim the only rights to exist and to exclude others. But religions often do. That’s the problem.