From the Crusades to the Spanish Inquisition, and from the Holocaust to Northern Ireland, to the Israeliconflict and to 9/11, the world has a long history of war and atrocities based on religious extremism. Of course we understand that many of these conflicts were also about territory, but the root of all ofthese atrocities is in extremism in religion. It’s the intolerance for those who are perceived to be a danger to us because of their religion and culture.

Christians fighting Muslims, Muslims fighting Christians, Catholics fighting Protestants, Muslims fighting Jews….. it is all about extremism in religion.

This is very disturbing, especially when one looks at the teachings of all religions. Every one of them teaches tolerance, love, cooperation and acceptance of others. There’s even a lot of intolerance within individual religions. There are different groups of Muslims that cannot tolerate each other, and there are different groups of Christians that try to impose their views on other Christians.

A good example of that is, of course, the current drive here in America by extremist so called Evangelical Christians wanting to prevent others from being able to control their own bodies. Then there is of course the example of Iran where extremist Muslims try to impose things like the hijab on others and if they don’t comply there is the death penalty.

As we are writing this litany it would be easy to assume that religion is the cause of all evil. But that is of course not the case. Extremism in religion is the cause of all the evil, and currently we’re seeing a lot of that extremism all over the world and in this country.

As stated before, all religions in the world, and we do mean ALL, have one thing in common, and that is that they teach to love your fellow man.

But until we realize that it is extremism that is the root of all evil nothing will change, and we are hurtling towards a situation in the world, and indeed the USA, that obliterates democracy, common sense and human decency.

Our choice is simple. We either accept and practice religion in its intended form, or bastardize it with extremism. If we do the latter religion may actually end up to be the root of all evil.