Holy Wars

“In a short space of time all the people in the Delhi fort were put to the sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels, and all the goods and effects, the treasure and the grain which for many a long year had been stored in the fort became the spoil of my soldiers.”

Taken from the Tuzk-e-Taimuri‎, Timur’s (alleged) memoirs recount a fateful day of “ethnic cleansing” as he looted and plundered and amassed wealth and a haraam harem. I could see Timur being an egotistical, religious maniac, exaggerating his escapades to sound impressive; to furnish a permanent place in the annals of lunatic murderers. But in spite of his bloated ego, Timur’s intent is clear. The infidels must be purged. Allah’s will be carried out.

Elsewhere, less than a couple of centuries away, the French Religious wars raged on, 36 years, probably desensitizing a couple of generations of brie lovers to violence. The culture shock the French must have faced was thankfully short lived. Nearby, less than 20 years later, the Germans and the British would start one of their own wars based on their inability to agree on the details of what god “instructed” some random asshole on some remote mountain over a millennium ago. Over these 66 years… and one day, an estimated 15.6 Million people would be wasted away at god’s command¹.

Almost instinctively, the apologist is certain to point fingers at the murderous tendencies of prominent “atheist” mad men, Hitler² and Stalin³. While this argument has swiftly and effectively been rebutted by the “four horsemen”, I choose to show that the genocides and wars that raged from religious and theistic impetus have been far more gory, gruesome, blood curdling than the major wars of the 20^th century, The World Wars.

In comparison, the two world wars overshadow the two major religious wars (that I can recall) by sheer volume of cadavers. With conservative estimates of 19 and 40 million chronologically, they far outyield the 15 million estimated of the religious wars.

Tanks, mines, missiles, gunships, bombers, fighter planes, submarines, and of course, Fat Man and Little Boy have made the body count of the world war’s possible; making wars a little more impersonal in the 20^th century. The days of staring into the eyes of the enemy had been left behind in the medieval ages, to those who could stomach the blood and gore; to the pious. Technology in battle had the ability to delay the effect of battle, the effect waste of human life can have on a rational mind, only bringing it to the foreground post mortem.

But what the religious wars lose in body count, they make up for in sheer callousness and underestimation of human life. Staring into the enemy’s eyes, day after day, for decades together, mercilessly slaughtering, is a task that the religious masses seem to effortlessly pull off and master. Only god knows what devastation these armies would be capable of, if they had the resources of the 20^th century, with enough enemy bodies as in the 20^th century⁴.

1. These remain just the most obvious, bloody, and patent representations of religious violence. James Haught recounts other atrocities that have been committed by religion and the pious.

2. Hitler’s religious beliefs are still highly debated, and to this day, attempts to prove his atheistic ideology have been inconclusive. However, Hitler was a practicing Roman Catholic and remained one until his death.

There is an obvious rebuttal to this point of mine, and I will preempt it by offering my rebuttal, saving us some time.

Many claim that Hitler, an irreligious man (at least one who was against Christianity in his heart), used his ties with the roman catholic church to gain the sympathies of the catholics and protestants, and was nothing more than shrewd confidence trick. Having said that, it was the above mentioned churches that lent credibility to Hitler among the people of Germany, and more importantly, they were not against the bloodshed and means of the Nazis and Hitler. So as co-conspirators, the above mentioned churches are just as guilty as Hitler’s ideology (whatever it may be).

3. Hector Avalos, a scholar of the Bible, has in his book “Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence” claimed that Stalin “had a complex relationship with religious institutions in the Soviet Union.” I say claimed, as I have not read the book myself and rely on a source, while not completely reliable, certainly no worse than the monkey work contained in certain other texts.

4. The world population and its explosion has been a primarily 20^th century phenomenon. During the period of the two world wars, the population rose from about 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion, in spite of the massive bloodshed in the two wars, of 131 million or 0.131 billion, or more importantly 6.5 percent of the mean population. While the world population during the 100 year period of the two religious saw a negligible rise from 427,000,000 to 500,000,000 and the death toll at 3.5 percent.

While that figure might seem to indicate the brutality of the world wars, it is limited, as almost all statistics are by the “big picture”. The big picture here shows of a zealous war, fought with no major technological assistance, in just a small portion of the earth (the world wars were fought by 35 and 68 countries compared to a handful during the two medieval wars).

Forgiving Eva Kor/Pugh/Hercules

It’s been a while since I have blogged about anything. It had reached a point where I was thinking about having it deleted. Then I watched the documentary, “Forgiving Dr. Mengele” and I realized why I do have this space.

The documentary revolves around Eva Mozes Kor, a holocaust survivor, part of Mengele’s experiments on twins, consisting primarily her version of what happened at Auschwitz, and a comparison of the emotions of the other survivors of the twin experiments. The movie obviously had great reviews. It’s one of those topics that no one dares to voice a contrary opinion about.

I too, for a large part of the movie, got sucked into the emotion that the movie-maker so obviously wanted the viewer to concentrate on. One of the user reviews on imdb by Eric Monder (obviously having nothing critical to say about the issue on a public forum) could only find the sweetest nectar.
“In one of the many dramatic sequences, as a group of Jews argue with Kor at a Jewish centre, the meaning of the word "forgive" is even debated, but the isolated and outnumbered Kor holds her own”

But by this time, the sappy hold that the movie had on my dormant emotional repertoire had let loose enough that I could see clearly once more. After the “strong-willed” Eva Kor forgives her “Nazi captors” the movie begins to delve into what forgiving is all about, at least from the viewpoint of Kor. The movie goes about following her, past her public statement forgiving the Nazis and into new territory. To me, this was the meat of the movie, surrounded by inedible fat of her “act of forgiveness”. Obviously, it was a very sick cow.

On a mission to test her theory of forgiveness, in order to heal wounds of the past, she makes her way to the “promised land” to meet with some Arabs, to discuss with them the issues that they face and to see if dialogue cannot lead to a better understanding of the situation and heavily interspersed with debates and discussions with Jews in the US on her act of forgiving the Nazis, including one at a Jewish center in Chicago. From then on, anyone not so teary eyed that they can’t see the screen will find it hard-pressed to miss the obvious contradiction in her statements.

Firstly, you immediately notice her body language, defensive and unwilling to listen in a room full of Arab scholars and teachers. Her comments about how she feared that they might kidnap her shows how much of a waste of time, effort and money the entire act was. A rather annoyed Dr Sami Advan (Professor of education at Bethlehem University) gets it just right when he tells Kor off for a statement she makes about how she would rather be asleep in her apartment.

Finally, the debate at the Jewish center in Chicago, where she is “grilled” on the meaning of forgiveness and her right to do so, in the wake of those that continue suffering through the trauma of the acts.

I will cut to the chase. By the end of the movie, I was hoping I hadn’t chosen to watch the movie. The movie was badly made, failing to delve deeper into anything about Auschwitz apart from the purely trivial, just sufficient to make sure the holocaust is refreshed in the viewers memory and to incite a barrage of tears. It showed that Kor, the subject of the documentary was unable to engage in fair discussion. Her discussion abilities were limited to parroting her stance on forgiveness (at best) to a complete unwillingness to listen or participate.

Lastly, is everyone so retarded today that they can’t notice the difference between making peace and forgiving? Quoting another halfwit off imdb lustyvita, “I don't see her forgiveness as being weak- quite the contrary, she just wanted to relieve its hold from her soul, she wanted the suffering to be over, so she let it go.” That would be the perfect layman’s definition of MAKING PEACE.

I guess, in a world of propaganda, blind faith and political correctness, there is no room to question those that have “gone through more than the human mind can fathom”.

P.S. The dictionary certainly should go into all those Books-to-buy lists everyone keeps making.