When will they ever learn?

Crumlin Road Presbyterian location

Here we are sitting in Seattle, Washington State. In yesterday's edition of the Seattle Times we were told that during the last couple of weeks of February there were something like 400 people killed in Iraq. Since the end of the lst Iraq war the inforced peace and cohesion has fallen apart. This seems to have come as a surprise to many in the USA but what more can you expect- the cohesion prior to the war was enforced by Sadham Hussein. When a society is fractured before a conflict it will surely remain fractured afterwards. When Iran was the great danger the enemy was perceived to the Shiites but now it is the sunni.

Rahim Abdul Karim is quoted as saying "I don't want tgo be brothers with Sunnis, because tghey continue to kill Shiites so it's very hard to follow the religious leadership [who caling for an end to all sectarianism] onthis matter."

Illustrating this the story nos told of Salim Rashid a 34 year old Shiite labourer in an overwhelmingly Sunni district. At 6pm on Friday evening he was told to leave his home otherwise he would be killed.

To somone like me living in Northern Ireland this could well have been said to someone living in an area in Belfast were the predominent population is from the "other side". This is not the action of a real Muslim any more than the same kind of actio in Belfast was from either of the Christian communities.

We are not unique in the world as people who cannot live with one another, even though we like to think that we are. Like many other people we are fractured because of the old enemy-sin! We are known the world over as a people who will respond in great generosity when people are in trouble, as was so during the recent Tsunami - while we have given freely and without question to Muslimsand Hindus in the far east we cannot give the time of day to our neighbours because they are another branch of thre Christian faith!! Weird or what?

Perhaps the lessons are best learnt when they are taken from far off places? Perhaps we can really understand the need for reconciliation when we see the protests after those infamous cartoons.

Iraq stands at the crossroads which our society has faced so many times- will we learn from them or will they learn from our mistakes? The Christian gospelhas reconciliation at its very heart- the heart of God has the dna of reconciliation and that is why he sent his son to die that we might be forgiven. How many more people will have to die before we learn of a better way? How long will it be before our world leaders learn that the answer to the problems of the world will never be solved by democracy alone.