EXCHANGE VIEWS, ROTARY – 2014

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I reflected on some of the concerns raised at last night’s meeting: war or peace, dialogue, the positivity of religion, how a religion is identified is a label of belief common to a group of people or something else.

Until the Second World War the regions of the globe were inhabited by people in a given territory, a country, linked by a common denominator same culture, religion, creed habits and the like for example: countries of Arabic language and culture with a majority Islamic creed, Europe the West, India and Pakistan, Japan, China, etc., each fairly uniform within itself without the drive of revolutions caused by diversity. See the case of the Armenians in Turkey. It can be said, for example, that the unifying element of the populations is the religious one, that is, the common Islamic religion. I do not know of populations without a creed, religion even atheism after all is a label similar to a religious creed discriminating against those who believe.

There was not this range of crossbreeding of cultures that we find today in a given territory. An invasion of populations attracted by economic pressures, ease of movement, the internet, the media and the like that put us in front of a fait accompli. They bring the cultural and sentimental baggage that has come to them through the teaching of their religion through the education they have received in their families and schools.

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