For one week I had been exposed by news about war because of the religion in several places. The one of the example is Rohingya refugee who came to Sumatra to get help. Stories about Rohigya genocide have been massive in media since last year. According to Wikipedia, Rohigya are indigenous to Rakhine State that migrated to Myanmar from Bengal during British rule in Burma. It is about 1.3 million Rohingyas live in Myanmar in 2013. Rohingyas received attention from international organization who related with peace and human rights.
Then in 2015, thousands of Rohingyas tried to escape from violence and persecution by migrated to Southeast Asian and called as boat people. They used boat as transportation and several thousand more are remain trapped on boat in the middle of the sea. I actually don’t know what the main problem is but as long as I know, media always relate the war with religion. The majority religion tried to protect their existence, then limited access for minorities. But is that true? I mean don’t we get prime by what we hear and see from media.
I tried to searched the truth, had religion as the prime cause to war and in objective perspective and like Huffington.post (2012) said that “Encyclopedia of Wars” authors Charles Philips and Alan Axelord showed document from 1763 wars only 123 have been classified to involve a religious causes, less than 7 percent of all wars. That fact gives me some release, that my hypothesis is true. I always think that war nowadays is the way to cover up the main problem. Religion is something sensitive and private to discuss. This is the one of misconceptions about religion, because many people think that faith is incompatible and religion claim to absolute truth. Some people still think that violence is the will of God to worship His power. In fact, this way of think actually make us walk back into the dark of past.
Human make connection to three aspects God, nature, and other human being. Those connections are the roots of the way living. First is God which indescribable and people believe that God or power is omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolent. That make human feel secure and always get help when they in the worse condition. Second is nature which we call it sometime Mother Nature, and divide as earth, fire, water, and earth. The third is our connection to other human being, which include animal too. If we realize and fully keep the harmony of three connections, I believe there’s no war.
While I am in junior high school until senior high school, I was studied at private school. My school is based on catholic foundation and actively in many catholic activities. But, this school is still open for anyone with various religions and so I learned many things for that. We have religion subject and not like many religion subject in several schools, I learned about other religion too. For the first time its hard and excited, because I need to understand how many religion see about one theme. Then, in that time I remember that I always excited when learned about Buddhist because the explanation is simple and just one paragraph . What I learned from that subject is fascinating, the perspective of many religion see about one problem is actually same. They have positive way to solve that problem and give advice for the people. The different is just the way and for several problems the different even just the term.
Based on my experienced, in 21th century we need more critical with what we see, hear, and talk. I saw the differentiation with children nowadays who still get study about their own religion. The way religion subject teach in my school maybe have several deficiency but this is the good way to make children learn about other religion. Children will build their foundation that all religion have good way to make better world. They will more critical with the fast information in this digital era. And not only about religion subject but also how school protect the freedom of speech, and destroy the wall of majorities and minorities is small step to decrease the opportunity of war in the future. Peace is the highest religious aspiration for which we must work.
PS: This is what I want to tell after hear arise several problem in the name of religion in Indonesia. I hope we don’t get trap in utopia vision, that the problem start not because religion and must be solve in the name of peace and humanity.
Thanks to
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-alan-lurie/is-religion-the-cause-of-_b_1400766.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God
