Karen Armstrong on Religion and Violence

Just another interesting quote, also from the Karen Armstrong interview on Speaking of Faith.

It’s not that religion has sparked these traditions, it’s rather that violence has become endemic in a region and religion has got sucked into that vortex. The Arab Israeli conflict began on both sides as a secular conflict. Zionism was originally a secular movement, a secular movement — a secular revolution — against religious judaism and the PLO was essentially secular liberation ideology. The lesson is, let’s settle disuptes while we can while they’re still secular…