If the function of religion in society has conventionally been to offer a basis for thoughts and actions, allowing people to relate, bond and abide by a common principal and goal, it is indeed a matter to contemplate how, the same binding force might be instrumental in generating so much hate and destruction. Historically hate or violence has not been foreign to the realm of religion and its propagation and practice. Unjustified or immoral as some of those actions might have been, it was not difficult to trace the motivation behind those acts. Be it witch burning in Europe in 1480 – 1700s or communal riots of Ayodhya, India, the underlying factors stemmed from the need to enforce power over differences that threatened prevailing ideology. The need to enforce power in general, be it for religious reasons or political, has been to implement a rule that served a set of people. Differences over faith, color, territory and money, however myopic, offered a cause to stand by and fight for.
The news of Mumbai bombing of 26.11 came to me on Spanish news television in a quaint cottage overlooking the grand Alhambra in Granada. Wounded bodies were being carried away on stretchers, grieving and wailing victims in the backdrop of the famous Mumbai Taj Hotel, designed quite ironically with the elements of Islamic architecture to reflect the famous Taj Mahal, built by Muslim ruler Shah Jahan. It was difficult for the Indian military to differentiate the attackers as their skin color and features were so alike the throng of crowds on the streets that it provided the perfect camouflage!
As it turned out over the years that followed, that such massacre occurred many times over worldwide, in the name of jihad, costing damages in social economic and human assets. The mad man is confined to the asylum thus reprieving society of his destructive actions. When it is the collective thought process bonded by religion with a perverted hunger for power in the absence of a cause, how does one contain it
