religious conflict

I heard an interesting excerpt from a radio interview a week or two ago. A Muslim scholar was speaking about the religious differences between Sunni and Shiite theology, and how the two branches of Islam were really about 98% or 99% compatible. Despite their similarities, however, we all know that thousands if not millions have perished due to that 1%.

Or have they?

As I thought about the violent conflict within Islam and its similarity with the conflicts that have marked Christian church history (Protestant vs. Catholic, Anabaptist vs. Protestant, etc.), some light was shed for me. Sunnis and Shiites disagree mainly over two things: whether the "Mahdi" has come or not, and whether the first three heirs of Mohammed are legitimate or not. The different Christian denominations tend to disagree over things like whether infants should be baptized, whether baptism should be whole-body immersion or just a sprinkling of water on the head, and whether communion was purely symbolic, Jesus' actual body and blood, or something in-between.

In both cases, hardly things to kill each other for, right? And yet the violence within Islam and Christianity rivals the violence that is between them. I think what this should tell us is that religious conflict isn't really due to differences in theology, it's due to human nature.

This past summer we took a Saturday and organized some games for the children of our church and surrounding community. We divided them up into four teams, and gave each team different colored arm bands. You wouldn't believe how quickly the children took to their new identities. All of sudden brothers became enemies, just because one wore a blue armband and the other green.

Humans like to fight, we like to find differences between one another, and religion, like nationality or ethnicity, is often just one tool for doing that. Whether you're a young child playing tug or war, or you're an adult yelling at someone for wearing the wrong baseball cap, it's not the fault of the team that you're feeling animosity towards a complete stranger. Likewise, Sunnis and Shiites don't kill each other primarily because they disagree over theology, but because they, like Protestants and Catholics, are human, and humans like to fight. The theological differences just give us an excuse to.

Now I'm not saying that religious leaders don't play a role in making this happen. In fact, they are often the ones at fault for fanning these flames. But we need to start calling a spade a spade: religion doesn't kill people, people do.