Extremism existed in Christianity too

Cecilia Jeyanthi Victor, The Ant daily

Religious extremism is not confined to any one particular religion. It is also seen in other religions, and Christianity is no exception.

Yes, we hear of jihadists and extremists from the Islamic State (IS) carrying out atrocities, all in the name of Islam, as these misguided people believe that such acts are sanctioned by their religion.

The Sunni-dominated IS, for example, is waging a war to establish a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, they are carrying out ethnic cleansing, killing every unbeliever.

Their atrocities also include the massacre of their own kind, the Syiah Muslims.

The existence of bad blood between these two religious sects dates back to after Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 CE.

Following his death, there was the succession issue. The Sunnis believed a devout member of the prophet’s original Quraysh tribe should become the next leader, while the Syiah believed that his successor should come from the same bloodline.

When Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr became the first caliph, conflict between the two sects had already intensified.

History has a lot to do between the Syiah and Sunni conflict which is never-ending.

So, just as Muslims are now waging a war in the name of their religion, so did the Christians too in the past.

At a recent forum, Malaysian Bar Council Human Rights Committee (BCHRC) co-chairman Andrew Khoo noted that atrocities also occurred in Christianity.

“First and foremost, we have to ask this question. Can we distinguish between the non-believers and the believers?”

“When we look at the jihadists, such as the Islamic State killing people, it also happened in Christianity. There have been immense atrocities in the name of Christianity over thousands of years.

“If we look a long way back at history, there was battle and there was conflict,” said Khoo at a roundtable discussion on the topic “Is Islam a Religion of Peace?” on Dec 7.

He said Christianity, which started off as a minority religion with its followers defending it after Christ’s persecution, later evolved into a dominant religion.

Nevertheless, the religion split into two major divisions – Roman Catholicism and Protestantism – with followers from both sides fighting among themselves.

The conflict eventually led to “The Thirty Years’ War” which was a series of wars in Central Europe between 1618–1648. It was one of the most destructive religious conflicts between the Protestants and followers of the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in bloodshed.

Protestants under the doctrine of Martin Luther believed that salvation and eternity in heaven was not based on good deeds, rather was through faith in Jesus Christ which ultimately redeemed them from sin.

This theory challenged the Catholic Church which said “unbelievers” from both sides paying the price for whatever their belief was.

Said Khoo: “In defending your religion, you go out to conquer in the name of religion.

“Both Islam and Christianity are religions of peace but we cannot deny that both are used for war purposes.”

He explained that both religions had used war for missionary purposes and also for jihad.

He said religion was used to torture people and anyone who did not subscribe to what was believed to be of pure faith was put to death or suffered severe forms of punishment.

“The years 1435-1436 was very much a time of struggle and the conflict took 910 years to be resolved,” Khoo said, drawing similarities between what happened then and what was happening now to IS extremists.

Thus, he said, it was his view that the mosque and state must stay separate from each other for the religion to be seen as one that is of peace.

“But that would take the power of the state. The Europeans had the experience between the church and state. In conclusion, we need to see the context in which Islam was birthed,” he said.