Using Religion to Justify Violence is Always Wrong

My understanding of religion is that it can have no justification for violence of any kind -- domestic or general. Violence is justified by priests in all religions by misinterpreting and/or misunderstanding a philosophy. Added to this is the tragedy that that we approach religion dogmatically.

For instance, in the case of Hinduism, those who justify violence say the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu sacred text, is all about a war between the forces of good and evil. According to my Grandfather, Mohandas K. Gandhi, this is a dogmatic approach. Firstly the text was written thousands of years ago and secondly it is written in the form of a poem and obviously the poet has taken literary license.

The war depicted was not meant to be taken literally but it was to be understood in the figurative sense as the war (or turmoil) that we all face everyday when we are called upon to choose between what we know at that moment to be good and evil. Similar arguments can be made about the depiction of turmoil in other religious scriptures. Grandfather said: When imperfect human beings (there is no one among us who can claim to be perfect!) translate scripture we reach an imperfect understanding of religion. God and religion is, and can only be, about love, compassion, understanding and not someone who is blood-thirsty for revenge.

By Arun Gandhi  |  February 25, 2009; 12:03 AM ET
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