Preventing interreligious hatred from threatening international security
“No society can exist without religion” (Michel Houellebecq)
Modern world is a multireligious world. To start with, religion is one of forms of social consciousness, conditioned by belief in the existence of supernatural forces or persons. Belonging to different religions causes divergence in culture, comprehension of world, customs, traditions, acceptance or unacceptance of particular events. And this divergence may lead to interreligional hatred and even extremism.
The problem of religious hatred has a very long history. We can say that it started with the appearance of different religions and has been increasing during hundreds of years. Remember numerous Crusades: they are also examples of manifestations of interreligious hatred. Extremist religious groups exist in many religions, some of them have historically used fear-mongering tactics and intentional obfuscation; committed acts of terrorism. Many religious conflicts broke in the past few years. Unfortunately, the number of conflicts has raised dramatically, though international organizations and governments of countries try to take the situation under their control.
Governments and society have to resist any kind of extremism. Religious beliefs are private for every person, but they stop being private, when religious organizations, threatening security of society, are established. UN is deeply concerned about the problem of interreligious hatred and is trying to find solutions for this issue. Search:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ga10633.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/ga10784.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/apps/press/searchsg-terrorAr.asp
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ga10630.doc.htm
http://www.un.org/ga/president/61/follow-up/interreligiousintercultural/ARES61221.pdf
http://www.un.org/terrorism/pdfs/radicalization.pdf
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
http://www.un.org/ga/president/62/issues/interreligiousintercultural/ares61221.pdf
The problem of interreligious hatred may be solved in different ways. Nowadays UN Organization is trying to maintain an interreligious dialogue. The main problem is that representatives of different religions don’t listen to each other and don’t try to learn more about other religion and culture.