Sunday Gazette-Mail [West Virginia], June 13, 2004
Tragic
Needless slaughter
THE CURRENT issue of Liberty, a Seventh-day Adventist magazine, contains a
somber report on Muslim-Christian massacres in the Malaku region of Indonesia. The
editor visited the islands and described "violence that has left thousands of homes,
mosques, churches and public buildings burned and gutted, caused hundreds of
thousands to flee the province, and killed at least 5,000 people."
An altercation between a Christian taxi driver and Muslims sparked the outbreak, he
says. Throngs of opposite faiths squared off in the capital city, Ambon - one side
shouting "Allahu akbar" and the other singing about Jesus - "before both took to
slashing the other side with machetes and shooting their opponents with
high-powered firearms," the editor says. Fighting spread throughout the province, with
cruel atrocities by both sides. Prestigious Pattimura University was burned and
abandoned.
Sadly, no valid reason - except prejudice - triggered this nightmare. A once-thriving
region has been wrecked, needlessly. All this loss of life, property and prosperity was
senseless.
In one way or another, the same tragedy is being replayed in many corners of the
world.
In Nigeria, about 10,000 have died in Muslim-Christian fighting in the past five years -
including 500 killed in raids on Islamic villages last month. Several massacres
occurred after a German evangelist roused crowds in revival meetings. One riot
happened because Muslims objected to a Miss World pageant.
In Sudan, warfare between Muslims in the north and Christian and animist tribes in
the south broke out in 1956 when the country gained independence. It subsided in the
1970s, then flared again for two decades, partly because the north sought to subject
the whole nation to the holy sharia law that requires stoning, beheading, amputation
and the like. Two million have died, mostly from famines caused by combat. Finally, a
peace plan seems to be taking hold.
Muslim-Christian strife also wracks the Philippines, Armenia, Cyprus and elsewhere -
just as Hindu-Buddhist conflict ravages Sri Lanka - and Hindu-Muslim fighting ruins life
in Kashmir - and Pakistan is damaged by clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims
- and even the endless Mideast trauma can be seen partly as a fault line between
Jews and Arabs of different faiths.
Religious tribalism is a label often applied to these conflicts. To varying degree, it's a
factor in a wide variety of suffering, and in the Muslim terror that has become a driving
force of world events. Of course, many other grievances based in politics, economics,
culture and so forth enter each situation.
Anything that separates people - whether it's skin color, language, ethnic group,
economic class, nationality, etc. - can lead to hostility and killing. It's a shame that
religion, which is supposed to foster compassion, can be one of the dividing elements.
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