The fact that children of religious parents are brought up into a world were everyone around them is pre- labeled and tagged with either ”us” or ”them” makes religions divisive.

When the child grows up and adopts to his parents world view, he would feel threatened just by observing how ”they” are attacking ”us” and thus he would naturally try to defend himself, even if it was by means that are ineffective and would most likely cause more damage to his side that are orders of magnitude greater than to the so called ”them”.

Boycotting products and businesses in the local economies for having a reputation of supporting Israel and the support of parties such as Hamas and Hezbollah are two fine examples of this situation.

In reality there is no real ”us” and ”them”, there is only I, you and us.

The Iraq war was not made to weaken the Muslim Armies nor to destroy the history, culture and tradition of Iraq’s success in fields such as education.

It was a war for oil, it had nothing to do with ”us” or our religious believes.

The Afghan war was not about putting an end to Islamic Sharia rulings around the world, it was a stupid act of inhumane and irresponsible self defense that was made in hope of boosting the Bush administrations popularity after the 11th sep attacks.

The Danish Mohammed cartoons were not publish to insult the Prophet Mohammed and all the Muslims around the world, they were published to advertise, boost popularity of the newspaper and to make more profit which they have clearly succeeded at.

If Muslims do not react the way they do, the artists and the publishers would not have wasted their time and would have tried something else instead.

The US support of the Israeli occupation is not about invading Muslim countries, it is a desperate attempt by members of the US government to gain more votes to help them get elected to their positions.

I do not deny the fact that many wars have started because of religious believes, but most of the conflicts today that religious people try to interpret to be caused by religious reasons are incorrect.

Nor am I justifying these acts in anyway, what I am doing is pointing out the different i the different explanations to these conflicts that to me seem a lot more likely to be true.

This misinterpretation of reality that children of religious parents are brought up to adopt as part of reality is what makes religions very dangerous for our survival on this planet.

If any act committed by someone that does not belong to ”us” is immediately interpreted to be an attack by ”them” on ”us”, we will never be able to live together in peace.

Thankfully, In the past few years, globalization and the media made it easier for people that are brought up in religious families to see and understand the different world views.

Let’s hope to see more of that and less of religious extremism.