Written by Ottavia Costantini
Bombs, missiles, and wars are all that we hear about in the news nowadays, nothing seems easy or peaceful and arguments feel more effective than explanations clouding one’s judgement. Today’s world is dynamic, often indecipherable and almost always too complicated for us to understand what is really going on right in front of us. This confusion creates in everyone, especially among younger generations, a need to find comfort in stable and secure shelters. Since the beginning of time, immediate consolation has been found in religion, because spiritual beliefs help us make sense of what surrounds us, many times becoming the reason for some of our choices.
This way of thinking becomes much more impactful on a larger scale when politics mixes with religion, as leaders exploit the powerful influence that faith can exert on the people of a country. This is clearly visible in today’s world as we can see in the Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and Palestine, born as a dispute between Zionism and Arab nationalism when Israel declared its independence in 1948, that still continues to destroy the lives of millions of citizens. Unfortunately, this has always been the case when religion and politics start to intersect their spheres of influence, covering the real face of faith: serenity of soul, in exchange for power.
There are two main theories that explain this complex relationship between power and faith, the first one “primordialist”, which blames religious differences as the main cause of conflict, and the second one “instrumentalist”, which accepts the idea that religion cannot be the direct reason for wars, but instead that it might only be an aggravating factor. These two are worth understanding as they show how much religion affects the world’s equilibrium directly or indirectly, and they also affect the solution methods used in conflicts. Interestingly though, many scholars believe that these theories coexist, as people genuinely believe in their faith but still leaders can harness those beliefs. It is necessary to understand, however, that we cannot point fingers at certain beliefs if humans interpret their meanings incorrectly. Which is why the most important concept to delve into is why and when religion can become so dangerous.
The Latin poet Tito Lucrezio Caro, was one of the first to analyze the possible destructive force of faith. In his most important work “De Rerum Natura”, he specifically wrote “tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” which means that religion was able to persuade the Greeks to do many evil deeds. By this sentence the poet meant to explain that many times humans act in the name of religion to justify their wrongdoings, and this is understandably very dangerous for society as a whole.
This last idea is what we should always bear in mind; that religion is so powerful that if it becomes a superstition, a mechanism of fear, control and exchange of power instead of expression of faith, it can bring people to move in wrong directions, including toward wars. As uncertainty surrounds us more and more it is definitely important to find serenity in worlds like the divine one, however it should never become an excuse to act without first considering the consequences of our actions or a reason to create even more divisions among us citizens in the world. Religion gives us a sense of common culture and of belonging but this can be easily exchanged for another good reason to create differences and separation.
Politicians many times find it useful to incorporate religious sayings or references in their speeches, highlighting how much more we are influenced by the divine, an example of this could be when Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said that foreigners are “the enemies of the (Syrian) people and of God”. However, religion should be a shelter for our souls and an ethical guide not the object by which society moves and thinks, because if we leave our minds to be influenced by such a powerful tool, when used by the wrong hands it can be too easily converted into an indoctrination system. This happens when leaders promote an intense sense of guilt and shame that can only be avoided through a complete submission to dogma.
It is saddening to observe how such profound subjects like faith become mere instruments of power in the hands of greedy leaders, which is why being able to remain faithful to one’s own thinking without being clouded by the news is essential to prevent the rise of totalitarianism, forcing individuals into a shapeless mass forced to fight for values they do not even believe in. This objective can be obtained through culture; being properly educated on contemporary and historical news and reading non-biased sources is extremely useful when trying to build strong and fair opinions. Only in this way can we hope to fight the danger of ignorance and submission.
It is scary to live in a world where religion can become so radicalized, where even the strongest of our opinions vanish in front of harsh realities and catastrophic events, where it takes so little to feel the world fall on top of us. Politics should be necessary to help the “polis”, or the community, live a tranquil and democratic life instead of one tormented by deceptions and misleading speeches in the names of deities. For this reason, it is necessary that we learn how to use our critical thinking by cultivating curiosity, questioning ourselves and the world that surrounds us and evaluating diverse opinions, with the objective of avoiding being influenced by narratives that exploit faith. This is what we should fight: ideas that tear us apart and divide us, even moreso in times when what we all seek and need is cohesion and brotherhood.