As a Parliamentarian who represents a nation that has been fraught by generations of internal divisions and persecution, combating the scourge of hatred is something which I firmly believe must be at the center of global concern. Too much blood has been spilled to see this as anything less than a pressing issue that demands attention at the highest levels and with the greatest of intensity.
Hatred of the other is nearly as old as the world itself. In fact it only took one generation of humankind before man took the life of fellow man. Since that time, countless millions have fallen by sword, bullet and untold other forms of extermination driven by bias, discrimination and hatred.
No one would ever be as naïve as to suggest a world as utopian as a world without hate. The very nature of man is competitive and jealous of others to the extent that a certain degree of rivalry and anger will always exist within global society. To try and combat human nature is therefore a false hope and an exercise in futility.
Yet alongside this natural-born hatred which will always exist, is an aspect of baseless hatred, which through common effort and understanding can be significantly minimized, if not altogether eradicated.
Baseless hatred motivated not by reason or logic, nor by a sincere desire to succeed, but by an inexplicable will to remove another by violence or by force, often to the point of murder or genocide. The classic examples in modern history of such baseless hatred was that practiced by Nazi Germany, or by the Hutus in Rwanda, by the Serbs in Yugoslavia, among all too many other examples where lives were taken for no real reason other than the perverse desire to eradicate fellow man.
The question therefore remains, what can truly be done? Would any call to reason have swayed the Nazi racism to the point where the Holocaust could have been avoided? Could the Rwandan genoicide have been avoided by a better educated public? Simply put can love and respect for fellow man be taught on any significant global scale?
I firmly believe the answer is yes. To address this issue on the basic level, we know many examples of reformed haters. People who at one point in time were willing to enact the most virulent displays of evil on fellow man, including murder, but eventually “saw the light” and later became ambassadors for tolerance. While such behavioral transformations are not the norm, they do exist, proving hatred is a character trait that can be manipulated like any other and one is by no means genetically predisposed to racist tendencies.
With this understanding in mind,
Not everyone will agree, but I am convinced that the best place to begin is with religion. There is no denying that more people have been inspired to hate others in the name of religion than by any other motivation. I know this, you know this. From the historic canards claiming that Jews were the murderers of Jesus to the modern-days calls for Jihad against the West in the name of Islam, countless lives have been lost by religiously inspired hatred.
Because it is rooted not in fact but in demagoguery- this is entirely baseless hatred. Religious leaders therefore need to reject all hate-speak and use their respective pulpits to denounce the actions and speech of those who hide behind faith in their hatred of others. More than politicians or any other public figures, clerics bear the heaviest onus of responsibility to ensure that the world become a more loving and tolerant place.
I call upon my fellow parliamentarians the world over to embrace this quest and to rally the support of religious leaders to speak out against hatred in the strongest terms possible. As powerful a role as our clerics have in spreading good will and spirituality to all corners of the globe, they similarly have the influence to stop the spread of evil. This is a goal which deserves the participation of all peoples of all backgrounds, wherever on earth they might be found.