Editorial Note
Religion has retrogressed into a divisive machinery, sowing the seeds of hatred in the minds of the masses.
The celebrated dictum of Karl Marx — “Religion is the opiate of the masses” — is as relevant as ever, from Bronze Age Palestine to the twenty-first-century knowledge societies we inherit. The positive correlations between genocides and the development of religions have had profound implications in the way societies are demarcated on the lines of “our God” and “their gods,” and often receiving religious and scriptural sanctions to exterminate “non-believing infidels”. The Crusaders did receive a plenary indulgence, too, through a papal bull to fight and kill Muslims, pagans and heretics. In an interview with the American channel CBS in 2001, Hamas activist Muhammed Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel, was quoted as saying;