Enemy At The Gate

                Enemy At The Gate is not an easy read.  From its factual language to its complicated message.  It is about the kingdom of Ottomans besieging Vienna in the late 1600s. The Ottomans have the might, the ambition and the loyalty, while the Hapsburgs have technology and well defended strong holds.  But the thing that really makes them different from each other is their religion.  Four hundred years ago religion was everything.  If you were a different religion from someone you were practically a different species, at least in their eyes.

                Contemporary authors would describe the pitched battles as “The soldiers of the One God launched their assault on the infidels” Or “For the love of their false religion they attacked in seven directions.”  While their closely situated may have had an effect on their many wars, Religion was the biggest component.  Each side could claim that “Heaven had brought their victory.”  Turkish janissaries would throw themselves into battle, believing that if they died, they would die a martyr.

                If I were to right now say that religion is unnecessary and causes war, I would bet that several people would point to Islam as the only religion that causes strife. Yet Christianity has an extremely bloody pass, from the crusades to the Spanish inquisition, to the holocaust Christianity has had its fair share of violence. In fact most religions have.

                To me killing people over different religions is the most pointless and sencless act of violence one can commit. To prove my point, you could say the religious wars are “An invisible man in the sky telling two different people to kill each other in his name.” When phrased this way, those wars sound pretty stupid. And not only that I never understood how people in religious wars could justify their killing people when their holy books say that murder is not allowed.   

                The problem is, these fanatics seem to be beyond logical reason. One could say “What evidence is there that god wants you to kill people?” Or “You and that human you are about to kill, are literally almost the same” but they could still find a way to justify the bloodshed.  For this reason Religious violence is hard to deal with.  It is scary to see  what humans do when they think they are right.