I will tell Him how religion has caused more war than anything else in the world. How people use it to perpetrate evil in His name.
by Anwar A. Khan
It haunted me the entire night when I saw it. The child’s face speaks a story so appalling of mankind that makes me question the humanity left in this world, if any.
Such a sad and heart-breaking story. Pictures like this are so thought provoking, so powerful. Rich old men fight wars with young poor soldiers and the greatest impact is on the local population.
It is really sad. It is innocent words with deep meaning. I heard from a Syrian sometime in 2019, who had fled with his family to Saudi Arabia, about how this crisis started.
Uprising started on March 15, 2011 when group of students wrote anti-Assad regime slogan on school wall
As the Syrian civil war, which cost hundreds of thousands of civilians their lives, hits the 10-year mark, some 300,000 of the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced in Idlib, northwestern Syria due to the attacks of the Assad regime and its supporters returned to their homes, a year after a landmark deal between Turkey and Russia.
The war started with a protest uprising on March 15, 2011, in the southern province of Deraa, when a group of students wrote on a school wall, “It’s your turn next, doctor!” – a reference to regime leader Bashar al-Assad's earlier career.
As thousands and thousands more people took to the streets demanding reforms, the demonstrations soon spread to other provinces of the country.
Branding the people demanding change "terrorists," the Assad regime mobilized its soldiers and security forces to protect its existence.
The regime's use of force caused peaceful public demonstrations to turn into civil war. Armed conflicts between the forces of the Assad regime and military opposition groups gathered under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner started in 2012.
Through intense attacks and brutal blockades, over the years Iranian-backed terrorist groups and regime forces backed by Russia have regained a large part of the regime’s lost territory.
Millions of civilians displaced. Hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives in the civil war, and UN officials have noted the commission of war crimes such as the use of chemical weapons, starvation, deportations, blockades, arbitrary arrests, and torture.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 6.6 million Syrians had to leave the country, which before 2011had a population of around 22-23 million. Turkey alone hosts approximately 3.7 million of these people – more than any other country in the world.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), while 6.7 million people were internally displaced, at least 13 million civilians in Syria came to need humanitarian aid.
Followingan agreement between Turkey and Russia on March 5, 2020, the state of control of the conflicting parties over the country’s territory has not changed.
The regime and its supporters fully control the southern provinces of Daraa, Quneitra, the capital Damascus, Latakia, and Tartus on the eastern Mediterranean coast, and Homs in the central part of the country. Regime forces also dominate the center of Hama in the central part of the country, Aleppo in the north, and Deir Ez-Zor in the east. These regions account for more than 60% of the country.
The opposition is present in the Idlib demilitarized zone, the region freed of terrorists by Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield, the Afrin district cleared of terrorism by Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch, and the Tel Abyad and Ras al-Ayn districts liberated by Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring east of the Euphrates River.
The terrorist group YPG/PKK, backed by the US, occupies the districts of Manbij and Tel Rıfat in the north of the country and some regions east of the Euphrates.
The terrorist group Daesh/ISIS is holding on in the small region known as the Homs desert under an Assad regime siege.
The fact that people are willing to kill other people in the name of religion is terrible. However, it has been done for centuries. The problem we have today is continuing to allow it to happen. When we go to another country to help them in a war effort, we really aren’t helping at all, we are just causing more harm. We need to make peace and the only way for that to happen is for people to stop obsessing over religion.
It is a pure waste of time and energy. It has no satisfaction and will never meet the needs of the people. When someone says they are avenging their “religion” by killing someone with a different belief, not only are they not using their brains, but they no longer have a heart. They, as you said, have turned into monsters. The true heart is love and love only comes from acceptance.
Acceptance only comes from allowing the true God to make a change someone’s life. I really feel pity for those people who are killing, they have no love or compassion left in them because it has been beaten and torn from them. Love and compassion come from Allah or God or Jesus or Ishwar... He is the only one who can truly bring peace. I pray for that Syrian child’s family and pity the murders for they are so lost.
It feels you with guilt, remorse, anger, sadness, and regret. Not knowing the scope of his message, the picture itself carries a great weight and message. These wars, these legacies we are fighting for, should not come at the cost of those we plan to leave them to. And religious wars should follow the laws if the religion! The Creator is the ultimate tool in any war; acting as motivation, encouragement, recruiter, and weapon. Religious wars or violences are more dangerous than wars over religions, oils, land, etc.
I don’t think this picture of a 3-year-old Syrian child further needs any precise meaning for us to reason it in to sentence. The picture and the words rippling with it are far intense and far too deep or out of our reach to precisely feel what it is creating own self. And the honesty it is proving while the words are from a little child. Child who sees nothing but fair reality. And the reality it spoke was such innocent complain. Damn its more than a heartbreak feeling.
War means losing people, loosing lives, depriving the life that we should are enjoying for how many years, our life is just but one so takes care of it, life is so precious to the Creator.
I hate war or violence in the name of religion or any other grounds; indeed, I abhor it.
I will tell the Creator everything if I get to heaven. I will tell Him how the rich keep getting richer and the poor ever more so.
I will tell Him how religion has caused more war than anything else in the world. How people use it to perpetrate evil in His name.
Then I will tell Him about entering into darkness as my body tired and couldn’t cling to life anymore. I will tell Him of my wasted dreams and unfulfilled hopes.
Then I will tell Him to come down to earth and bring back sanity to the world.This write-up is dedicated to every soul lost to terrorists’ attacks all-over the world.
-The End –
The writer is an independent political analyst based in Dhaka, Bangladesh who writes on politics, political and human-centred figures, current and international affairs
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