As I was watching TV the other night, I came across the trailer of “Fifth Estate”, the movie based on the sequence of events lived by the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange. The trailer ends with “you want the truth; you should seek it out yourself. That’s what they fear the most, YOU”. Right after that, you start wondering if you are living in a lie plotted by your religious and political leaders. They all have talk-shows, press releases, and their own page in journals, claiming to enlighten us about the current situation. In fact, they create all that fuss just to get us off the path that ends with the realization of the game where we are puppets and they are the puppeteers and the strings are the religion. The whole game revolves around two things, money and power.
One of the first religious wars we know about is the one between Jews and Pagans. They would invade the enemy’s villages claiming to defend their gods, kill the men and take gold, women and animals. However, isn’t it just a cover up? If the reason is just religious, why rape women or steal gold instead of converting the villagers and thus increasing believers? And so on, every so called religious war is never about preaching, it was only about money and power. Preaching doesn’t require a physical force, so why go with weapons and artillery? They are only giving right to their actions by the fear they create.
Nevertheless, as some human minds evolved, religion has been used to mobilize many fanatic groups of people against each other leading to the gain of the ones with the evolved minds. Why were the Jews placed in the midst of the Arab world? Do you think that the Israeli-Arab conflict was not planned for? Did you really think that America and Europe will let the Arab nations develop and take conscious of all the riches of their lands? They act as if their main concern is to solve our problems but they actually plan how to ruin us even more. Let’s evaluate the Lebanese situation and how much we, as Lebanese, are wrapped up with shells and skip the core element of our problems.
In 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, it almost took over it. Why did Israelis withdraw? When Palestinians were defeated in the civil war, why they were not banished for good? How did Hezbollah managed to gather all the Shia under one cause? Why do we keep having new fanatic groups in Lebanon? Why hasn’t Israel wiped out the area clean from Muslims? Well, the answer is easy, without puppets, there is no game, and without a game there are no winners, and that is just unacceptable. They intend to keep the conflict religious to keep the hatred in the hearts of the people. This status quo in Lebanon is not due to the amazing skills of Lebanese to live together, it’s rather an endless gold mine to the great nations whose economy flourishes with our conflicts.
We ask ourselves why are we still living in a war that started 40 years ago and has supposedly ended? We cannot escape the plot designed for us by other nations because we are fighting over convictions and beliefs. Religious wars have only one solution: one part must disappear, and so conveniently all nations interfere right before the extinction of a group to keep the tension going and keep us distracted from the intellectual level they’ve reached.
Hence, the great nations has definitely gained from the religious conflicts we have in our country, however, Lebanese parties did not restrain themselves to take advantage of the conflicts either. The current war between Shia and Sunni is the result of the objection of the Shia minority against the underestimation they were facing in politics.
Karl Marx said: “religion is the opium of the masses”. Our blindness by religion has become “the ring of Gyges”. This magic ring was invented by Plato, the great philosopher. It turns invisible whoever wears it. Consequently, Plato confirms that a just or an unjust man wearing the ring will not be able to resist the desire to go to the extent of its power and capacity due to the lack of censorship. Well, our ignorance is “the ring of Gyges” for politicians. Add to that, some use excuses like we are disgusted or there’s not much to do anyways, to justify their lack of motivation and drive. Well, I say to these people: “All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing…” ― Edmund Burke.
[hr]
Sources:
http://ovaismirza-politicalthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/09/religion-and-politics.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/should-religion-play-a-role-in-politics/?_r=0
http://www.legrandsoir.info/La-religion-au-service-du-pouvoir.html
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2013/01/LERER/48585