(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience our natural impulse toward the Divine, which does not make others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)

HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S BLOG…
* Looking at violence in our world
* We are killing ourselves with our anger
* Even people within the same country and culture are doing it
* Can organized religion help? Will it?

(This is the sixth in a series of blogs on the seemingly unending conflict in our world. The series makes the point that there is a way to avoid the constant conflict and killing upon the earth, and that way is for the earth’s people to adopt a New Spirituality — a new “story” about God, about Life, and about Each Other.)
In our entry Tuesday we took a look at the story that we tell ourselves about what life is like here on the earth. We are also passing this story on to our children. We tell them that this is just “the way things are.” We tell them there is “nothing they can do about it,” and that “you can’t fight City Hall.” (Meaning, you can’t fight the power base. You are powerless here.)
In the entry on Monday we explained how this story came about. We talked about the myths upon which this story is based. We talked about the foundation of those myths, our present Cultural Story, and the 10 Illusions of Humans from which all of this has emerged.
If you have not read those previous CwGBlog entries, it might be beneficial for you to do so. They form the basis for a greater understanding of what you are going to read next. If I had designed things this way, I couldn’t have done a better job than Life has been doing recently.
Just as I launched into a more detailed discussion of why there is conflict in our world…

…and just as I spoke of the need for those of us who disagree with the use of terrorism as a means of resolving our differences to form our own “cells” around the world to place a new idea in the common culture about how we might approach the challenge of bringing together differing points of view… just as I spoke of all of these things, CNN came up with an extraordinary news story in the last week of June.
The story was datelined Yogayakarta, Indonesia, and said that “militants will continue to target Westerners on the streets of Indonesia as they fight to impose full Islamic law,” according to “an accused terror leader” who said this in an exclusive interview with CNN.
“Bomb attacks and other strategies are possible, according to Abu Dujana,” the CNN story said. CNN reported that police call Abu Dujana “the most dangerous terror suspect they have ever dealt with. He is the military head of Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian group linked to al Qaeda which has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds of Westerners and civilians.
The CNN story went on to report that Abu Dujana said, “‘We will continue fighting and we may use other methods,’ in a jailhouse interview days after being captured by Indonesian authorities. Abu Dujana is accused of direct involvement in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2002 that killed more than 200 mostly Western tourists, and of subsequent attacks on the Australian Embassy and J.W. Marriott hotel, both in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.”
Abu Dujana, who police say is 37, described Jemaah Islamiyah in the CNN interview as “an underground organization” saying, “It will continue to exist and continue to move on with its plans” to create an Islamic state under Sharia law, despite his capture, along with six other alleged terrorists earlier this month.
“When a part of it is cut off, [in this case] the head is cut off, there will be a replacement, it’s only natural,” the CNN story quoted him as saying. “Indonesian police officers, he says, are under threat because the government does not implement full Sharia law.”
And what is the basis of this terrorists’ ideas? I’m sorry to say that it was (perhaps predictably) one man’s “take” on his religion.
The CNN story quotes this man as saying, “I didn’t read it in the Koran. It’s based on the teachings of our teachers, clerics, especially what Osama bin Laden first said.” The CNN story went on to say that Abu Dujana told them: “Because of America’s arrogance, many in the Muslim world know, believe, it’s permissible to kill American soldiers. It’s halal; it’s permitted.”
The CNN story said that Abu Dujana was “quick with messages of hate, calling all Westerners legitimate targets because of the actions of leaders like President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair who he says are not giving Muslims the chance to be in power.”
“If they refuse [to let Muslims rule], we’ll continue doing what we are doing,” he was quoted by CNN as saying.
Just two days later we heard of the suicide bombing at a large Baghdad hotel which killed a dozen people, including four Sunni sheiks who were apparently sipping tea as they sat in the lobby and spoke about how to bring together, in the spirit of reconciliation, Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite populations. So much for talking peace. So much for trying to bring an end to violence.
The ongoing killing between members of a single country’s divided culture — the Sunnis and the Shias in Iraq, Hamas and Fatah in Palestine — defies logic, defies reason, defies everything that we think we know about how to live together in the space of our differences. Just as the world shook its head during the 50 years of violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, it now stands in utter incomprehension as people of different sects within the same religion slaughter each other on the streets of Iraq.
And, of course. this is the same kind of thinking that allows terrorists and governments which act like terrorists to strike out at people all over the world — innocent people, people with no ax to grind, people creating no trouble whatsoever, people wishing only for a joyous, creative, fulfilling, and peaceful existence — killing them ruthlessly, with an utter disrespect for life.
Is this all part of the human condition? Is there nothing that can be done to turn the tide of such primitive behaviors? What kinds of beliefs could possibly form the basis of a value system that would not only allow, but actually recommend, violence as a course of action in the face of differing points of view — and even in the face of what people on one side or the other of a disagreement would call “oppression”? Is there simply no way to heal this aspect of humanity’s collective experience?
Some people might say that a firm belief in God might be the answer, but it is obvious to all observers that religious fervor has in too many cases done very little to bring about peace. Such fervor has, in fact, been the actual cause of much of the violence in the world today — and over many centuries and millennia. Yet if religion can’t stop the violence, what can? If God is not a deterrent, then who and what could possibly be?
Stay tuned.