IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION

In junior high school, I watched as the entire Israeli Olympic team was slaughtered.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

My younger peers when I was in high school were raped by five different Catholic priests.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

As a college student, I watched as Americans were taken hostage in the revolution in Iran as a republic of peace was established there.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I watched as terrorists from the religion of peace took down the twin towers in New York.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I watched as Palestinians were separated under apartheid from "real Israelis" and recently were denied vaccinations.

Yet the events have nothing to do with religion.

I watched as a young novice nun in India was murdered, as children were stolen from their unwed mothers, as the dying were neglected and told to suffer, and as Catholics bribed top government officials to delay a trial for two decades on the murder case.

Yet these events have nothing to do with religion.

I watched as immigrant children were stolen from their parents by the U.S. government and sold by church adoption agencies.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I lived among Indian students of many religious backgrounds from Hyderabad who waited for days to hear from their parents and families and friends because phone lines were overloaded after bombs were detonated around the city of Hyderabad.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I comforted a Hindu woman when she was just denied a needed loan from a bank and the bank worker told her "your life would be so much better if you accepted Christ as your savior."

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I watched as a friend's brother took off from an airport in India to come to the U.S. minutes before explosions took place at the airport.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I comforted my Telugu spiritual teacher after she was harassed at her apartment by students from her university classes who claimed she was teaching "paganism" in her international literature class. They were banging on her windows while wearing Halloween masks. It wasn't Halloween.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I was teaching a class at the university, less than a mile from the cinema when John Houser decided to shoot up a room showing an "immoral" movie. One of the dead was from my home town of Franklin.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

When Westboro Baptist Church, after inciting Houser online, threatened to protest the funeral of the woman in Franklin, I showed up to block their protest.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I watched as representatives of the religion of love who were not elected officials dictated the terms of the most strict anti-abortion law in Louisiana's history to those elected officials present. A law that, had it not been overturned, would have caused the deaths of women from pregnancy complications.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

I watched in January as religious fanatics stormed our nation's Capitol, urinated and defecated inside, but held a prayer rally in the Senate chambers.

Yet the event has nothing to do with religion.

Now I watch as shooting after shooting are made by religious fanatics who do not hide their motivations. Many of them state their motivations outright, yet I also watch idiots ignore it all and claim mental instability over religious indoctrination.

Yet the events have nothing to do with religion.

Or so I've been told.

#religion #fundamentalism #terrorism #shootings