Religious freedom is a privilege many people are dearly attached to and for good reason: spirituality is often intimately connected to who we believe ourselves to be in relation to the rest of the world. Disparate religious practices and traditions more often separate people then bring them together until a common moral ground is found between seemingly incompatible groups. The problem is what to do when one group wants to grow in number.
It seems that, in India, when 84% of the billion-plus residents are threatened by less than 3% of the remaining non-Hindus, the proper thing to do is burn an orphanage to show your displeasure. And killing a teacher in the process.
While mob justice could be argued to be a nearly universal human phenomenon, there is reason to question why the attack involved the building rather than the priest and the woman they were angry with. Perhaps it was intended to destroy what they felt the Christians represented: unwanted forcible conversion in conjunction with ecclesiastic colonization. On the other hand, it could be that there was a reason they didn’t want the displaced children no one was caring for–otherwise they wouldn’t have been at the orphanage in the first place–to have an education and escape the poor circumstances they were dealing with. A particular brand of cigarettes, so tiny in circumference that they must be rolled by children’s hands, comes to mind.
Finding the common moral ground here has been nearly impossible.
This is, ostensibly, because there was absolutely nothing moral about it.
– D.C.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26393959/
