Religions frequently speak about the vanity of earthly life and the necessity of preparing for the world to come, exalting righteousness over wickedness and morality over indulgence.
Yet, some of the most grievous experiences in human history have stemmed from these very platforms. They have fostered a siege mentality that successfully turns adherents against one another, fueling conflict throughout their lives on Earth.
Their battles have spanned the spectrum from ideological disputes, silent hatred, and ridicule of different faiths to extreme violence, war, and genocide.
Families have ostracized one another, friends have severed ties, and economic benefits as well as political advantages have been granted on the basis of religious loyalty and solidarity.
Poverty has deepened across nations despite immense collective wealth, largely driven by faith-based division. Even though we blame politicians, the larger part of poverty in our society has been passively nurtured by faith.
While we routinely blame political leaders, many of these rulers were placed in power and sustained by religious structures in the first place. The fight for political control across nations is continually driven by religious groups competing against one another and negotiating or voting their own into political control.
While these groups historically turned their hostility outward toward those they deemed "unbelievers," they have increasingly turned inward against each other: brother against brother, fighting over the very worldly vanities their traditions have warned against for centuries.
On an individual level, many of those who stand at the pulpit delivering the sternest warnings against materialism and the vanity of life have become its greatest hoarders. They extract wealth from the impoverished to build extravagant abodes for a God who does not dwell in physical structures, defying the core teachings of their original founders.
They preach hatred and sow political hostility to maintain their grip on power. Indeed, they heavily influence global and national politics, yet they have brought no peace. Instead, they have disrupted the fleeting tranquility the world once enjoyed, and throw humanity into perpetual conflict across centuries.
On a national level, we have constructed a new form of prison: nationalism, an exclusionary state identity. Its goal is to aggregate unwilling masses of diverse cultures under forced governance to fight, defend, and grow as one. We have allowed this system to be driven by religious allegiance. Elites manipulate religious and tribal loyalty, which often share deep historical religious roots, to consolidate power among co-religionists while those opposed are isolated, targeted, incarcerated, or subjected to extermination though systematic violence and targeted killings.
This dynamic now extends far beyond geographic borders into pure ideological tribalism.
A conflict, injustice, or genocide in the West is either hailed or condemned by the East not on the basis of justice, truth, or fairness, but solely on religious allegiance.
Our side is always as right, anywhere in the world. Where our co-religionists commit wrong, our silence is deafening as we play deaf, dumb, and blind, refusing to hold our own accountable. Where they are wronged, our outrage is overwhelming.
In matters of justice, we preach that everyone will ultimately face divine accounting on judgment day. Yet, we are too impatient to wait for the Creator to render that judgment. We have appointed ourselves as judge, jury, and divine enforcers on Earth, eagerly exacting vengeance on behalf of a Deity who never asked us to fight His battles.
What have we done to our planet, living as if we will remain here forever when our time is swiftly passing by?
None of us truly knows what lies ahead, or whether the promised afterlife exists for specific groups or is merely an illusion.
Despite these profound lessons, we fail to live by the standards our faith profess. We do not seem to truly trust the Creator we spend a lifetime fighting for, and opted instead to exact vengeance ourselves and seek the destruction of our rivals rather than awaiting divine judgment.
I remember the words of the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov in his play Uncle Vanya:
"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wildlife's become extinct, the climate's ruined, and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."
Your friend,
Isqil Najim
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