alternet | Studies demonstrate the world is becoming less violent, and
that human warfare is on the decline. There is one aspect of the human
existence, however, that continues to ignite humans to commit violence
and atrocities against fellow humans. A major new study published by the
Pew Research Center [3] shows that religious hostilities reached a 6-year high in 2012.
Dr.
Steven Pinker, Pulitzer prize-winning author and Harvard psychology
professor, writes, “Today we may be living in the most peaceful era in
our species’ existence.” He acknowledges: “In a century that began with
9/11, Iraq, and Darfur, the claim that we are living in an unusually
peaceful time may strike you as somewhere between hallucinatory and
obscene.” Pinker points out, wars make headlines, but there are fewer
conflicts today, and wars don’t kill as many people as they did in the
Middle Ages, for instance. Also, global rates of violent crime have
plummeted in the last few decades. Pinker notes that the reason for
these advances are complex but certainly the rise of education, and a
growing willingness to put ourselves in the shoes of others has played
its part.
Religiosity, however,
continues to play its part in promoting in-group out-group thinking,
which casts the difference between people in terms of eternal rewards
and punishments. Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation,
observes, “Faith inspires violence in two ways. First, people often kill
other human beings because they believe the creator of the universe
wants them to do it…Second, far greater numbers of people fall into
conflict with one another because they define their moral community on
the basis of their religious affiliation: Muslims side with Muslims,
Protestants with Protestants, Catholics with Catholics.”
According
to the Pew Research Center, a third (33%) of the 198 countries and
territories included in the study had high religious hostilities in
2012, up from 29% in 2011 and 20% as of mid-2007. Notably, religious
hostilities increased in every major region of the world except the
Americas, with the most dramatic increases felt in areas still reeling
from the effects of the 2010-11 political uprisings known as the Arab
Spring.
The study demonstrates there
has been a sizable increase in the share of countries with high or very
high levels of social hostilities involving religion. “Incidents of
abuse targeting religious minorities were reported in 47% of countries
in 2012, up from 38% in 2011, and 24% in the baseline year of the study
(2007).” Pew cites several illustrations of religious minorities being
attacked by the perpetrators of the majority faith. In Buddhist-majority
Sri Lanka, for example, monks attacked Muslim and Christian places of
worship in April 2012. Several worshippers were killed in an attack on a
Coptic Orthodox Church in Libya, which according to the U.S. State
Department was the first attack on a church in Libya since the 2011
revolution.
“One of the common things
we see in that group of countries is sectarian conflict,” said Brian J.
Grim, senior researcher at Pew Research. “In Pakistan, even though
minority religious groups like Christians face hostility, there’s also
inter-Muslim conflict between Sunnis, Shias and Ahmadi Muslims.”
