ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE SECOND
 ' RELIGIOUS FOUNDERS DAY ' CONFERENCE
OF THE AHMADIYYA MUSLIM ASSOCIATION [UK]
MARCH 24TH 2002
It is with great pleasure that I accept the invitation of Mr Mohamed Arshad Ahmedi of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association to say a few words on the crucially important subject of 'Bloodshed in the Name of Religion' this afternoon.
I am a practising Christian, but I do not stand here before you today claiming that the views that I express are necessarily the views of all Christians or even of many Christians; instead, you will hear my purely personal opinion based on what I have observed and thought myself over the months and years.
On reflection, perhaps a more accurate term for our subject today would be ' Killing for Religion,' or, more accurate still,
' Killing for God.'  There are people of faith around the world today who are convinced that their religion, and their religion alone, is right and true, and who are prepared to go to any lengths to ensure that only their voice is heard.  They believe fervently that they alone have the monopoly on truth. ' Wherever the word of God is cherished,' wrote  James Walsh, 'some clutch of believers is becoming more certian that faith compels a resort to violent measures. Far from being limited to Islamic terrorism, bloodshed in religion's name is infecting many faiths.'
When killing for God, religious fanaticism appears to be associated with fears about the stability of the social order, with fears that their culture or very way of life is being undermined. Religion provides a sort of absolute authentication of a group's social cohesion and political aspirations and grievances, and, they believe, gives moral legitimacy to its killing. In the minds of Muslim extremists the killing of American civilians- which for us is an inexplicable horror-  is justified for them by what they see as American-led western and Israeli killing of Muslim civilians in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq.
Giving religious legitimacy to killing is not absent from the post September 11 American-led reprisals. President Bush's appeals for revenge have often ended with ' God bless America', and just as Osama bin Laden divides the world into the realm of Allah's faithful on one hand and the empire of evil America on the other, so in the speeches of George Bush, who cites Jesus Christ as his political philosopher, the world is divided into two sides, the side of good, or the side of God, and the side of evil.
President Bush insists on this basis that anyone who is not unquestioningly with him is against him, is indeed on the side of evil. This situation was exacerbated by President Bush's unfortunate use of the term ' crusade against terrorism ', which brought up for many Muslims images of the mediaeval conflict I will outline later.
Thus, Bin Laden, in a video recording made last December, felt able to claim that the ' West hates Islam' because much of the American media has mistakenly confused terrorism with Islam. The Taliban and Bin Laden may be Muslim, but they are not true Muslims as described in the Qur'an or in the sayings of Prophet Muhammad.
Killing for God is by no means a new phenomenon. It is not something that suddenly sprang into existence on September the 11th  last year. We only need to look at world history to see how far back in time its roots spread,  and how long peoples memories are concerning it.
' Blessed are the peacemakers,' said Jesus Christ, but European Christians 1,000 years later carried out the harshest brutalities in the Holy Land and elsewhere as part of their holy Crusades against the Muslims who had conquered their holy places.
Of course, the Crusaders overlooked the fact, or were entirely ignorant of it, that Jerusalem is also a very holy site in Islam, at one time in its history being the place towards which all Muslims turned when they prayed. Nor were the Crusaders averse to killing other Christians, as they did when they attacked and looted Christian Constantinople in 1204.
So long are peoples memories that only last year Pope John Paul II apologised to the Muslim people of the Middle East for the acts of violence, may we say acts of terror, perpetrated against their ancestors up to nine hundred years before during the various 'Holy Crusades ' of Christendom in and around the 'Holy Land.'
As we have seen, in the past Christian has persecuted Christian. During the sixteenth century in England Protestants were burnt at the stake by Queen Mary, a staunch Roman Catholic; while her sister, Elizabeth I, a staunch Protestant, similarly later burned Catholics.  The famous ' Gunpowder Plot ' of 1605 was an attempt by Catholic 'extremists ' to blow up Protestant King James I and his court and parliament, and so on and so forth through the years.
Many Irish Catholics today still remember with hatred the acts of oppression committed against their ancestors by Protestant forces under Elizabeth I, Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the religious tensions which began three to four hundred years ago are still running high in Northern Ireland as we saw on our televisions recently when screaming and hysterical Catholic children were walking to school through a Protestant area of Belfast. In Northern Ireland today religion has become closely interconnected with politics also.
And what long memories we have when it comes to our religion. In 1453 Constantinople, the magnificent capital of the Greek Christian Byzantine Empire, fell to invading Ottoman Muslim forces. The city was soon renamed Istanbul, literally meaning
' The City.' Today, 549 years later, the head of the worldwide communion of Orthodox Churches has his cathedral church in Istanbul, but he is not called the Patriarch of Istanbul. He is called The Patriarch of Constantinople!
In the Spanish city of Granada an annual pageant is held in which the local and predominantly Roman Catholic population re-enact the 1492 re-conquest of the city by the Christian Spaniards from the Muslims. Pretty young girls dress up in plastic or cardboard armour and parade through the streets beating drums to the applause of the tourists, while up on the battlements Christian soldiers 'slaughter' the Muslim defenders [really locals dressed up in Arabic-costumes] to the cheers of the crowds below.
But what chance do we have of fostering religious harmony in the world when, year after year, the erroneous view is perpetrated in so crude a manner that history proves Muslim and Christian cannot live together without violence and enmity? 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself!' the Christian Gospels teach us. Who is my neighbour? Everybody, regardless of race or culture or religion.
Yet do we really learn from history? Has mankind learned from the grave atrocities of its past? Was the genocide that was the Holocaust of the last century, in which eleven million people, six million of them Jews, were murdered in the killing factories of Europe the last such genocide the world has seen or will ever see again? I need only mention the words 'ethnic cleansing' to remind you that it is not.
On September 11 2001, six short months ago, shocked news agencies around the world reported that Muslim extremists had commandeered and flown two commercial airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. For many of us in the west, one of the most disturbing aspects of the attack on New York City and Washington, beside the awful loss of lives, was the perpetrators' conviction that these attacks and the mass killing of innocent people were somehow pleasing to God and would earn them immediate salvation. Of course, hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world shared the pain and horror experienced in America, and were outraged that these attacks had been carried out by fanatical members of their own religion.
Subsequently, we have heard much in the news concerning Islamic 'fundamentalists' and 'fanatics.' Here in the UK, some have 'looked sideways' at their Muslim neighbours, ordinary peaceable, family- loving people, believing that, as Muslims, they must be in sympathy with the aims of such terrorist groups as the Al Qaeda. 'When all is said and done,' they say, 'they are all Muslims aren't they?'
It must also be remembered that acts of terror and violence are not unique to Islam; It is a hard fact that extremists exist in every religion. Timothy McVeigh was recently executed in the United States having been found guilty of a bomb attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, in which 168 people died. Until September 11 this was America's worst terrorist attack, and initial media speculation was that the attack had been made by Islamic extremists.
Later it was reported that Timothy McVeigh had been arrested in connection with the attack. He was a Gulf War veteran; he was also a Christian, and it is believed that his attack was in retaliation for the assault by US government agencies on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco in Texas in 1993, in which David Koresh and his followers, some of them children, had died. Yet no-one, so far as I am aware, has ever referred to McVeigh as a Christian terrorist!
I have heard it said that the September 11th attack was not an attack against the west, or against capitalism, or even against America, but that it was, purely and simply, an attack against Christianity. Islam vs. Christianity.
The media told us to brace ourselves for jihad-a word that conjures up images of 'a marching band of religious fanatics with savage beards and fiery eyes, brandishing swords and attacking the infidels!' But that is not what the word 'jihad' represents to the vast majority of Muslims. For them, it does not mean 'holy war', and is not the Islamic equivalent of the word 'crusade', but rather means making an effort, to endeavour and strive in a noble way.  It may refer to a war undertaken in legitimate self-defence, but wars of intolerance and aggression are not permitted according to the Holy Qur'an and the example of the Prophet Muhammad himself.
And in order to demonstrate that the vast majority of the world's one billion Muslims are opposed to such acts of violence and terror, let me quote for a moment from the comments of some Islamic leaders from around the world concerning these attacks:
'Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem and considers the attack against innocent human beings a grave sin...I categorically go against a committed Muslim's embarking on such attacks. Islam never allows a Muslim to kill the innocent and helpless.'
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Muslim scholar
' Attacking innocent people is not courageous; it is stupid and will be punished on the day of judgement. It's not courageous to attack innocent children, women and civilians. It is courageous to protect freedom.'
Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed al-Tantawi of Al-Azhar mosque and university in Cairo.
' It would be a grave calamity when the followers of this [terrorist] phenomenon use religion as a camouflage, because true Islam stands innocent from all that. Its teachings stand aloft from people who believe in violence as a course of action and sabotage as a method and bloodshed as a way of reform.'
Sheikh Abdul-Rahman al-Sudais at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
So, what is the solution? How do we curb the violence of religious intolerance? Can there ever really be a solution? How do we prevent a repetition of what we saw on our television screens last summer when we witnessed race riots on the streets of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, areas which the government's official report described as 'shockingly divided communities?
The Foreign Office started to lay the foundations for such a solution when it launched a six-month programme of cultural events aimed at improving the image of Britain's Muslims among the wider community. Derek Fatchett, the Foreign Office minister, said ' One of the things that I am determined to do is avoid giving any credence whatsoever to an argument which says that there is going to be, inevitably, a clash between civilisations, a challenge between Christianity and Islam. That is immensely dangerous thinking. I think there is a lot more we can do in that respect.'
As a teacher I naturally believe strongly in the power of education. I believe strongly that any real and lasting solution can only come through education, and the education of our children and our grandchildren in particular. They must be taught about understanding and tolerance, particularly when it comes to religion and religious differences and culture.
The west must not be perceived of as a threat to the east, or vice versa. Perhaps single faith schools, with their intrinsically Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Sikh curriculum are not the best way forward in the promoting of understanding and in the breaking down of religious and cultural barriers.
Earlier this month religious leaders set out a plan for Britains first multi-faith state school. At a meeting in  the House of Lords representatives of the Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh faiths published details of the proposed school, which is intended to link all the main religious communities.
The idea is for a mixed comprehensive school with single-sex classes. An extended day will leave time for religious education in faith groups, with pupils coming together for other subjects. It is hoped that the school will open somewhere in London in the next five years.
This new school will only be a small step in the direction of religious understanding, especially concerning the wider global picture, but will be a step nevertheless, and any step is better than standing still.
G A Christodoulou