How to Get Rid of Religious Fanaticism

Religion. It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. – Jon Stewart

“The impact of religion is on the rise on a global scale,” concludes the latest Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Survey.

As we learned in the previous essay in this series, our world’s overall quotient of religiosity—the number of people who identify very strongly with a religious belief—is dramatically increasing. In the Western world, that may not seem like the case, because the number of people who consider themselves religious, and the influence of religion itself, has declined in some developed countries. But from a broader global perspective, the number of people affiliated with a religion is expected to grow by 2.3 billion between now and the year 2050. The number of people with no religious affiliation, by contrast, will only grow during that same period by about ten million.

What does that stark, startling demographic trend mean for our planet’s future? Could it signal a rise in religious fanaticism, conflict, hatred and violence? Or, if we can find ways to emphasize the true underlying message of religion, could it usher in a new era of peace, love and interfaith understanding?

We certainly have plenty of historical evidence for concluding that an increase in religiosity could produce more conflict and pain. In the past, religious differences have produced dissension, discord and hatred, leading to warfare and worse. Religious prejudices have degenerated into violence; religious contention has become the source of great animosity; religious hatreds have even flared into mass genocide. The Baha’i teachings lament and speak out against these terrible outcomes:

Irreligion has conquered religion. The cause of the chaotic condition lies in the differences among the religions and finds its origin in the animosity and hatred existing between sects and denominations. The materialists have availed themselves of this dissension amongst the religions and are constantly attacking them, intending to uproot the tree of divine planting. Owing to strife and contention among themselves, the religions are being weakened and vanquished. If a commander is at variance with his army in the execution of military tactics, there is no doubt he will be defeated by the enemy. Today the religions are at variance; enmity, strife and recrimination prevail among them; they refuse to associate; nay, rather, if necessary they shed each other’s blood. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 161.

Baha’is believe that the greatest challenge facing humanity—one that will determine what our world’s entire future holds—involves this vitally important question of religious understanding and unity:

Religion must be the means of good fellowship and love. It must upraise the standard of harmony and solidarity. If religion is conducive to hatred and enmity, irreligion is better, because such pseudo-religion gives no result, nay rather its existence is harmful to the welfare of the body-politic.

God has founded the religions so that they might be the bond of amity and mutual association between the people. – Abdu’l-Baha, Star of the West, Volume 3, p. 54.

Our aim is to free the foundation of religion from its moss grown dogmas; to dispel the black impenetrable fog of creed so that the religions may be flooded and illumined. May these foul clouds never return; may the rays of the eternal sun encircle all countries, for verily the resplendent sun of reality shines from age to age. – Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 157.

“Our aim is to free the foundation of religion from its moss grown dogmas,” Abdu’l-Baha said to a Western journalist interviewing him in 1912. That renewal of the true underlying spirit of religion, the Baha’i teachings proclaim, calls for freedom from the sectarian divisions, religious prejudices and warring creeds of the past:

But when we speak of religion, we mean the essential foundation or reality of religion, not the dogmas and blind imitations which have gradually encrusted it and which are the cause of the decline and effacement of a nation. These are inevitably destructive and a menace and hindrance to a nation’s life… – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 363.

In the past few decades, the world has witnessed the terrible impact religious fanaticism and fundamentalism can have on society. The Baha’i teachings focus their strongest and most serious prohibition on such dogmatic intolerance and fanatical narrow-mindedness:

In matters of religion every form of fanaticism, hatred, dissension and strife is strictly forbidden. – Baha’u’llah, Tabernacle of Unity, p. 39.

So, given what we know about the vast increase in the number of people with religious convictions in the next few decades, what can we each do to reduce the potential for conflict and fanaticism? What path can we take to minimize and even rid the world of religious violence and extremism?

Baha’is believe that each person can take two major individual actions to bring about religious unity: discard all imitation and then independently investigate the truth for themselves. Imitation means adopting the beliefs of others—parents, peers, clergy or authority figures—without examination. Imitation, according to the Baha’i teachings, actually deprives us of the true knowledge of God:

Imitation destroys the foundation of religion, extinguishes the spirituality of the human world, transforms heavenly illumination into darkness and deprives man of the knowledge of God. It is the cause of the victory of materialism and infidelity over religion; it is the denial of Divinity and the law of revelation; it refuses Prophethood and rejects the Kingdom of God. When materialists subject imitations to the intellectual analysis of reason, they find them to be mere superstitions; therefore, they deny religion. – Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 161.

…blind imitation of the past will stunt the mind. But once every soul inquireth into truth, society will be freed from the darkness of continually repeating the past. – Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 248.

Once you’ve looked inside yourself, examined your actual beliefs and rejected the imitated ideas and concepts you’ve acquired from others; you’re ready to independently investigate the truth.

Next: Accepting Truth and Rejecting Ignorance