Religion and War

I found myself wondering this week what I should post my blog about. I have recently been reading a fasanating book about the third crusade entitled "warriors of god". The book depicts the religious conflice surronding the crusades , and provides biographical commentary and the lives of Richard the Lionheart, and Saladin. The book does a very decent job of staying un-biased although it leans towards the muslim viewpoint (which is suprising because the author is an American). For those of you who do not know the main cause of the crusades was differnces in to VERY similar religions, being Christianity and Islam. Both religions have the same basic princples their holy books were simply written by differnt people and in differnt religions. However, these minor differnces were the cause for untold bloodshed during the crusades. These differnces ,which can be more accuratley discribed as PERCIEVED differnces, are still the cause of a HUGE AMOUNT of blood shed in the modern world. Wether it is car bombings in Iraq, shootings in Jerusalem, or planes dropping bombs, the majority of the worlds wars seem to be cause by percieved differnces in relgioins. Most of the modern wars involve the three judiac mono-thestic relgions, being Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Chistianity and Islam have their roots in Judaism and to some extent both honor their Jewish roots. However, these similaritys which vastly outweigh the differnces do not seem to stop the extremist followers of these regions from declaring war on each other, and bringing the other level headed members of their particular religion into the fight. The most extreme members of each relgion seem to forgot that Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed all preched peace to other men. In fact all of these men saw and taught their followers that there was no reason to fight a war. So my question is is why do we follow extremists? Why cant we just stand back and with a level head take a look at things. is there really any need to fight over relgion. The answer ,from my psotion is NO! I do not believe that there is ever a reason to fight over relgion. Just for the readers refernce I will list some of what I beleive are "relgious wars" going on today. The most obvious is the Israeli-Arab conflict. In this conflict there has been never ending blood shed for the bast 60 years in an attempt for the Muslims and Jews to stake a claim to the same land. My question is this why can't the Muslims and Jews share a country? I know that I am not in their postion but it doesn't seem to much to ask for does it? I would not have a problem with our president being a Muslim, Jew, Buddisht, Atheist, or their relgious pratices at all! A leaders relgion does not nessacarily reflect on their "goodness" or ability to lead a nation. As long as the leader was equally fair to all relgious groups and treated them the same, people of faith should have no problem letting a person of a "differnt" faith lead them. The 2nd as last "relgious conflict" I will discuss is the U.S. war in Iraq. Although, I personally beleive that the war was for oil, it has enormous relgious contations. First Mr. President Bush , for some reason which is beyond me, called the war in Iraq a holy Crusade for the Christian people of the U.S. First off my question is this when did the U.S. become a SOLELY christian nation. I understand that the majority of people in this country are christian and that many of our fine national traditions are in fact Christian. However, the national government ,although made up of mostly christians, should not be pushing a Christian agenda, as per the bill of rights. The church and state should not be joined toegether, in fact in order to run a government effectivley they should be seperated, because relgious convictions ,no matter how rightoues, have no place in the running of government, because those in power will place religion above the needs of the people, which would defeat the purpose of having a government. In other words a religous governing body would serve the relgioin first and the populace second. Now back to Iraq. Becuase of Mr. Bush's so called "crusade" he has created an enemy. Invading Iraq was the worst thing Mr. Bush could have done if nhe was trying to make friends with the common middle eastern citizen. This war has given Islamic extermeist and excuse to pervet their relgioin and raise another generation to hate Chrisitans, America, and western society in general. So heres the question if we just learned to accept each others religous differnces, and accpeted we , at this time , cannot possibly know who is EXACTLY right and wrong when it comes to god, wouldnt we be much happier and the world a much better place?