Stop Hating Others’ Religion

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When faith forgets mercy, and humanity waits quietly to be remembered

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There is a strange silence hidden inside every religion, a silence that asks human beings to pause before judging another soul. That silence is older than scriptures, older than temples and mosques and churches. It is the quiet understanding that no belief was born to humiliate another, and no prayer was meant to become a weapon. Yet when we look at the world today, it feels as if that silence has been deliberately ignored, buried under slogans, flags, and loud declarations of who is right and who must be defeated.

Every major religion on this earth carries, at its core, a simple instruction. “Look at the other human being with dignity”. It may be expressed in different words, different rituals, different stories, but the direction is the same. Respect the life before you. Protect the vulnerable. Restrain your anger. Do not let belief turn into cruelty.

If someone truly listens, every faith whispers the same thing. But listening requires humility, and humility is often the first casualty when religion is dragged into the marketplace of power.

Hatred between religions rarely begins with ordinary people. It begins quietly in rooms where influence is calculated, where fear is sharpened into strategy. A difference of belief is slowly presented as a threat. A neighbour becomes an enemy without changing anything except the story told about them. Once that story settles into the mind, violence feels justified, even righteous. The tragedy is not only in the blood that follows, but in how easily conscience is convinced to stay silent.

Consider Kashmir, a land once known for its poetry, rivers, and the slow patience of mountains. Today its name arrives in conversations already heavy with accusation. On one side, religious identity is wrapped around nationalism. On the other, faith is used as a shield and a slogan. In between stand ordinary people, shopkeepers, farmers, children walking to school, mothers waiting for sons to return before nightfall. They did not design the conflict. They did not vote for war. Yet their lives are the currency with which arguments are paid. While powerful men speak of honor and destiny, it is the powerless who bury their dead.
What is most painful is not that religions disagree, but that they are used to excuse the forgetting of mercy. A child killed by a bullet does not ask which scripture authorized it. A mother does not grieve in theological language. Suffering does not belong to one religion. It recognizes no border, no chant, no flag. It simply arrives and sits heavily on the human chest, demanding to be acknowledged.

There is a detail often missed in discussions about religious conflict. Hatred requires distance. You cannot easily hate someone whose hands you have held, whose tears you have seen up close. In villages where people of different faiths still share food, wells, and small jokes, violence struggles to survive. It grows faster where people are reduced to symbols, labels, and crowds. This is why propaganda avoids faces. It prefers numbers, slogans, simplified enemies.

Religion, when separated from power, is deeply intimate. It speaks to the loneliness of being human. It teaches patience when answers do not come. It offers a way to sit with grief without turning it outward as rage. But when religion is recruited into political ambition, its language changes. It becomes louder, sharper, impatient. It stops asking questions and starts issuing commands. And the most dangerous command it gives is permission to hate.

The world is not broken because of belief. It is broken because belief is often stripped of self-criticism.

True faith begins with looking inward, asking whether one’s own heart has become cruel, proud, or addicted to certainty. Hatred begins when attention turns outward, constantly searching for someone else to blame. This is why some of the most religiously loud spaces are emotionally shallow. They make no room for doubt, tenderness, or silence.

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There are scenes that rarely make headlines. A Hindu doctor treating a Muslim patient without asking questions. A Muslim man guarding a temple during unrest because it belongs to his neighborhood. A Christian nurse holding the hand of someone who prays differently. These moments do not trend. They do not serve any grand narrative. Yet they quietly keep the world from collapsing entirely. They are reminders that coexistence is not an abstract dream. It is practiced daily, often without applause.

The earth itself seems indifferent to our divisions. Rivers flow past temples and mosques without choosing sides. Rain falls on every roof with equal patience. Mountains do not rearrange themselves according to belief. It is only humans who insist on turning differences into hierarchy. And in doing so, they scar a planet that was generous enough to host everyone.

To stop hating another religion does not require abandoning one’s own. It requires maturity. The understanding that faith is not weakened by respect. It is strengthened by it. A belief that needs enemies to survive has already lost its center. When people feel threatened by another’s prayer, it is often because their own has become hollow, more performance than presence.

Imagine what would change if religious identity stopped being the loudest thing in the room. If it learned to sit quietly beside compassion, beside justice, beside shared responsibility for the future. Imagine a world where leaders were not rewarded for inflaming division, where children learned early that difference is not danger. This is not idealism. It is survival. A planet armed with ancient grudges and modern weapons cannot afford spiritual immaturity.

The most radical act today is simple decency. To refuse the invitation to hate. To question stories that demand enemies. To see the human before the label. These acts will never feel dramatic. They will not come with flags or chants. They will arrive quietly, like a hand placed gently on the chest, reminding us to breathe before we speak.

If religion is to mean anything in the future, it must return to its quiet work. Softening hearts. Restraining cruelty. Teaching humans how to live together without needing to dominate one another. The alternative is already visible. A beautiful world slowly made uninhabitable by pride disguised as devotion.

Perhaps the real test of faith is not how loudly one defends it, but how gently one treats those who do not share it. If this thought lingers, if it unsettles, if it brings a moment of silence rather than applause, then the writing has done what it needed to do.