"MY GOD'S BIGGER THAN YOUR GOD"

 I'm reading a series of novels at present where the main themes are terrorism and sectarian violence.

The protagonist is Israeli so a lot of the stories deal with Jewish vs Moslem conflict, particularly in dealing with ISIS fanatics and their campaign against Israel and Western countries.  Covered also is the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Iran vs Arab nations, Sunni vs Shiite Islam and other inter-Arab wars along with, of course the Irish sectarian 'troubles'.

The writer, Daniel Silva has an in-depth understanding of these having worked for many years as a journalist in USA and the Middle East. For Robert's interest he is, or was, a Catholic. He goes into detail about the characters and the conflicts while maintaining very readable thriller plots. It's not thin sketching like Dan Brown's rubbish. There are many social, cultural and political reasons and centuries of history to explain the Irish 'troubles', the rise of the Moslem Brotherhood, al Qaeda and ISIS but I can't help feeling that if the silly religious nonsense could be removed then the social and political issues between the opposition parties could be resolved from sensible debate and negotiation. Yes, yes I know that this isn't happening in the Russia/Ukraine war but that is definitely economic based with Russia feeling the squeeze as a result of Ukraine's oil discoveries and  restriction of gas pipeline access to the West. The political, cultural and social issues are used as a smokescreen for the basic fact that Russia wants to bully and rob Ukraine.

The silliness of the religious conflicts is what I want to discuss here.There can be no resolution to the Irish situation, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Moslem extremism vs Western democracy and Christianity until fatuous religious tenets are put aside. Unfortunately these are endemic in a too great a percentage of populations and cultures and, even at the lowest level can be dangerous.

Christians, especially Catholics, bang on about loving their neighbour but are quick to denounce, and even hate people of other religions. Not satisfied with that  they even create conflicts within their Christianity religion denouncing and even hating others of different denominations. 'Our' own Catholic Robert is just as guilty of this as the rest. You've read in this and other blogs in the blogging community how Robert loves people all the time. "I love you Richard" or "I love you Peter" is a common refrain in his comments especially if he can't think of a clever riposte. OK, I'm OK with that, I mean, what's not to love? I do react to the about face that he does though when talking about non-Catholic disciplines. It's hard to find examples of this in his blog, not that they don't exist but because he regularly purges the post and occasionally the entire blog (so as to not leave a trail I guess). I did find a couple of recent things that he's written though.

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OK, these are quite mild but there is an undercurrent of disdain and denunciation. It's not as bad as the murderous divisions between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Moslems but still, Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians and the other Christian sects and denominations all hold to the same silly belief that a Christian god created and rules the world. Why can't they all just be happy in their delusion?