Religion as a Tool used to Brainwash Children into War

1 Religion as a Tool used to Brainwash Children into War Introduction Religion is a powerful psychological tool whose influence on the beliefs and behaviors of individuals can be so immense where there is lack of control. Although religion plays a role in shaping people’s lives, it has often been realized to lead to negative outcomes. Religion’s influence has been negatively exploited in some instances and individuals convinced to act in a particular manner with the guise of fulfilling a spiritual belief or teaching. Thus, religion has been effectively used to brainwash believers into acting and reacting in certain peculiar ways often with the promise of reaping benefits in life after death. This paper explores in detail how religion has successfully been used as a tool to brainwash and, in particular, lead to wars that followers believe have actually been sanctioned by the deity whom they worship.

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Understanding religion and spirituality Religion is a system made up of organized beliefs, practices, rituals, as well as symbols, all of which have been specifically designed to facilitate nearness or closeness to the transcendent being. It has also been purposefully designed to foster a deeper understanding of individual’s relationship and responsibility with respect to others who together share a community. On the other hand, spirituality is the personal desire and quest for finding accurate answers to questions about life, what it means, and about relationship with the transcendent being. These actions may result in religious rituals and eventually form a community. The aspect of spirituality is bigger than religion; that is, spirituality encompasses religion (Erlendur & Houtkooper 51).

There are, however, distinct characteristics that differentiate spirituality from religion.

While spirituality is more individualistic with little or no authoritarianism, religion focuses more on communal issues and employs authoritarian methods in order to instill discipline and enforce the rule of law among the members. Spiritualism also lacks particular doctrine orientation and is both emotionally oriented and self directed. On the contrary, religion strictly follows a doctrine often that of doing good or evil and it is behavior oriented. Religious practices are always directed by external activities and behavior. Religion is also formal, orthodox and organized as compared to spiritualism which is less formal, has little conformity to accepted norms and rights and often is less systematic. Finally, spiritualism can hardly be seen or measured and is more subjective than religion which is objective, observable and measurable.

Believers of a religion are expected to learn and understand how to cope with or adapt to life situations that may in a way appear unbearable. Certain activities are involved as religious

3 individuals cope with situations and they include praying to God for either emotional strength or for changing situations, consciously trusting in God, as well as reading inspirational texts and scriptures for relieving anxiety or to have comfort. Other methods through which religious believers cope with poor and bad scenarios include discussing matters out with a chaplain or minister and employing other religious behaviors and thoughts with the hope of relieving stress (Windscheffel 1).

Religion and psychology Sigmund Freud, a renowned early psychiatrist in trying to understand how powerful religion influenced the actions of human beings compared such religious practices as prayers and rituals to a neurotic’s obsessive acts. Another psychiatrist, Albert Ellis, was of the view that devout, orthodox and dogmatic religion correlated significantly with emotional disturbance. Ellis goes further to opine that there exists differences between religious and non religious persons to the effect that an individual who is healthy emotionally is flexible, tolerant, open and changing as compared to a religious devout who often is inflexible, intolerant, closed and unchanging. In drawing his conclusion, he asserts that there exists a very thin line that separates religiosity from irrational thinking as well as emotional disturbance. Later in 1988, Ellis identified a total of 11 pathological characteristics which distinctly define religiosity and enumerated them as follows; religiosity fails to encourage self-acceptance and self-interest. It complicates relations between human beings and is prone to fanaticism. Additionally, it encourages inflexibility together with intolerance since individuals end up being filled with guilt to an extent that they cannot pursue their goals. In overall, such ardent religious subjects find it too difficult to live comfortably in a world that has been unmasked of the religious veil (Hester 303).

4 Thus, a majority of the prominent professionals in the mental health department, including Freud and Ellis, seem to all come to a common consensus in as far as the analysis of effects of religion on human being’s mental health is concerned. They have argued passionately that beliefs and practices in religion, particularly Christian traditions and teachings affect the mental health of individuals negatively (LaMothe 161).

The main process of religious influence The human brain conversion undergoes 3 main stages which eventually lead to total mental manipulation or brainwashing. The first phase is known as the equivalent phase where the brain does not give varying response to different stimuli despite there being widely opposite. For instance, a person deprived of sleep for longer hours often lose judgment and perception and will react with the same level of irritability to a major challenge or a slight question. The second phase, the paradoxical phase is where the brain responds with more activity to weak stimuli as compared to its reaction to stronger stimuli. Judgment further gets impaired at this stage as they would tend to give much concentration to feeble threats in their surrounding than they would to those which are more serious and threatening. Civilians as well as soldiers subjected to social injustices such as rape and horrible traumas and war for far too long are more likely to exhibit such indications respectively.

The third and final stage in the process of human mental manipulation is the ultraparadoxical phase where conditioned responses as well as behavior turn from one opposite to the other. Individuals get to this stage when they become acquainted to new commands or ideas and they all over sudden develop feelings of possession or become hypnotic. Once one individual successfully undergoes these stages, he or she becomes fully converted mental wise and changes the way he used to perceive things previously. The individual loses key markers that defined his

5 world and instead fails to function. The basic beliefs together with the assumptions that individual held become completely challenged and it is only after a different map of the world is built a new that such an individual can function properly. This process can be summarized thus as disorientation, orientation and reorientation, often abbreviated as D.O.R. This process sums up what religion does to believers after consistent subjection to intense trauma. As the trauma continues, the person begins behaving differently from the way he or she used to. Their original personality is bogged down completely as it paves way to new thinking which could be as a result of either forceful coercion or intentional action (Faas 187).

Brainwashing individuals to achieve war In this day of religious fanaticism, it has become even easier for wars to be sparked off because of religion. In influencing people into thinking they were fighting for their religion, it is often the psychological as well as metaphysical make up rather than physiologic and mechanistic make ups that are influenced into thinking in a particular manner. The continuous repetition by religious ministers, bishops, imams or any other leader occupying an influential position within the ranks of a particular religion towards the followers often disposes their mental belief and way of reasoning about various aspects in life. The preachers manage to bring their congregations to a hypnotic state through constant talk, singing, praying, or other religious practices that heighten emotions like fasting and worshipping. This ripe hypnotic state is closely followed by fire-andbrimstone sermons that induces fear among worshippers and builds tension. Such threatened worshippers often react to the tension by giving testimonies and witnessing events which they relate to spiritual power and influence. People begin to relate normal actions and events to the power of being healed. At this stage, psychological manipulation or beginning to get

6 brainwashed is underway and as the sermons, songs, hymns and testimonies continue, the room gets charged with fear, expectations, together with intense excitement (Lord 33).

To such charged congregations, it becomes easier to convince them into acting in defense of their faith and religion by killing, maiming and beating up those opposed to their belief or who follow different faiths. The world’s history is full of wars that were started and fought along religious lines. The long standing conflict between Israel and Palestine, the Northern Ireland troubles between Protestant unionists on the one hand and Catholic nationalists on the other, and the numerous jihad wars proclaimed by Muslims on mainly western countries are perfect examples of how religion has been used to brainwash its followers into war.

Religious indoctrination often goes hand in hand with political indoctrination, with the activities of both situations being inspired by high and noble motives. The most kindly and generous human beings are known to be conditioned in such a way that they commit acts which appear horrifying to those conditioned differently. Many people who are otherwise very sensible cling to views that appear strange and cruel simply because these ideologies have successfully been implanted within their brains and it becomes difficult to convince them otherwise.

Religious brainwashers successfully achieve their mission by using a conversion technique whereupon they build anxiety within an individual or successfully make an individual feel as though he or she was guilty of something. The trauma is then internalized, resulting in an intense conflict between accepting salvation that is new and salvation, and fearing hell fires that cause damnation.

In the Muslim faith, hordes of youths who proclaim the faith have been conditioned into believing that their God, Allah, will reward them heftily if they fought and killed members of other religions whose teachings failed to match those of Islam. These youths, some of them even

7 well educated professionals have been known to carry bombs within their bodies and committing suicide by detonating the bombs whenever they reach their targets. What Muslim preachers and imams have succeeded in preaching year in year out is the brainwashing ideology that Israel was evil and cursed. Muslims are fed with this information right from their childhood, the moment they join madrasa, which is an Islamic college for giving instructions mainly to young Muslims, and their minds are continuously bombarded with the same messages until they grow old and they begin the same cycle afresh, this time telling it to their children and grand children. To effectively pass the message, the preachers get to an extent of using videos and accounts of murders committed by other Muslim followers to mentally challenge their congregations.

The young Muslims therefore grow up idolizing acts of terrorism and become completely brainwashed into believing that Israel is evil. Some of them travel hundreds of thousands of miles from countries such as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq to go and fight a jihad war in Palestine. As they depart from their home countries, they are given words of encouragement by their parents, colleagues, and preachers, becoming famous overnight because of taking such courage to go and defend Islam from being attacked by evil. Contributions are even made to raise funds that will sustain the young Muslim as he engages on a mission to go and kill people.

The jihad war is also extended to other communities and countries that sympathize with Israel. The United States of America and Britain have been victims to this ideology as they are perceived by the Muslim world to favor Israel in her altercations with neighboring Palestine, Syria, Iran and Lebanon. In what remains to be the worst incident of terror attack committed on American soil, scores of people were killed when hijackers flew two passenger planes and crashed them on the twin towers of The World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. On the

8 same day, hijackers flew a third plane that crushed near the army headquarters in Pennsylvania killing everybody on board.

In London, three suicide bombers managed to sneak their way through into the underground railway network on July 21st, 2005 and blew themselves up inside three trains.

Scores of people were killed while many others sustained injuries during the deadly attacks. In such incidences, terror groups often admit responsibility almost immediately as if their actions require worldwide recognition for doing something positive.

News of such heinous attacks is often received well in the Muslim world as believers have been successfully conditioned into thinking their God is happy for such attacks. In their mental understanding, those who commit such acts as well as the entire religion believe that their successful execution is because of God’s sanctioning. They have been brainwashed into thinking they kill and maim for the sake of God. The political reasons that underlie such actions have successfully been covered under the guise of religion and instead, the perpetrators have been given a different mental image which they have been convinced to fight for. The preachers and imams could also be brainwashing their followers because they have themselves been brainwashed with the same message. It is difficult for an individual who has been fed on the same kind of information right from his childhood to maturity to fight away the notion unless they are successfully freed mentally.

It is difficult to imagine what the ideals of Islam were prior to the formation of present day Israel because all the efforts seem to have been directed towards the state’s existence. A majority of Muslims wish they had a chance to go and fight Israel in their lifetime if that would please their God. The mental distraction that has blocked them from determining what is real and that which is imagined appears to have been done permanently and might require a generational

9 change to have them look at things a new. It is important to understand that in fanning these religious wars, a prize is actually promised to those who participate. In Islam, it is believed that a follower or believer who kills for the sake of his or her religion actually receives eternal life in heaven in return. It is the ultimate prize promised to believers that further fuels these animosities as a majority of hopeless individuals find hope in such promises (Fox & Sandler 293).

How religion succeeds in brainwashing All religions, be it Christianity, Hinduism, Islam or Buddhism, can successfully brainwash their believers into believing and acting in certain ways. This is explained by the fact that for a religion to qualify to be referred to as a religion, there has to be an element of authoritarianism in the ways of its operations. There has to be a superior figure at the helm who issues instructions and the followers act as instructed without questioning further. The doctrines of the religion further cement its authoritarian command.

Thus, the process of religion in influencing results takes place through a number of procedures and action processes. First and foremost, the belief that a particular religion carries often sets off the process of brainwashing. Certainly all religions have their beliefs which they endeavor to pass through to the followers through various means, including prayers, worshipping, singing, and the intentional fasting that denies one of various necessities such as food or water. This belief is what defines the religion and the two are hardly inseparable.

Once individuals have been introduced to a particular belief, their affiliation is heightened. Most wars that are fought because of religion happen on the principality of affiliation. In the case of the Northern Ireland conflict between Protestants and Catholics, the affiliations of each group could hardly allow the other to thrive because of hard stance affiliation.

Both the Protestants and Catholics are groups of communities living together in Northern Ireland

10 but it is their subscription to the respective religious groupings that sparked off the violence.

Members of the Northern Ireland community have been mentally conditioned into thinking that they are better of fighting than accepting and tolerating each other. Their affiliation to Protestantism and Catholicism has blurred their mental vision of realizing that they are one and the same community. Their respective religions have succeeded to push them into wars through incapacitating their mental minds and instead conditioning them into believing that their affiliations were more important than the brotherhood that they shared.

Once religion succeeds in strengthening affiliations among believers, it moves on or transforms to organizational religiosity. Believers are more contained in an existing structured organization than would be the case if they remained unorganized. It is easier to control their thinking and even influence their actions if they were in some form of religious organization. It is this organizational religiosity that later on transforms to subjective religiosity, making it easy for one to be coerced mentally. Man-made subjective forms of religion do not share a commonality with the original teachings and tenets of religion. Instead, subjective religion tends to pursue objectives and goals that belong to human beings. The preachers and imams enter into the process of brainwashing at this juncture. Being human beings that enjoy some degree of spirituality and being viewed by their followers as the connection between them and the transcendent being, these preachers and imams interpret spiritual texts in ways that suit their reasoning and mind. They then emphasize their teachings through continuous sermons that relay the same message to their congregation until such a time when this message instills fear in people.

The ultimate fear brought about by subjective religion later on gives birth to religious commitment and motivation. In the Muslim world, the subjective religion of preachers and

11 imams has nurtured a lot of commitment and motivation in their followers. The commitment is to take up weapons and enter into wars with perceived enemies of Islam who in the first place have little information about their wars with Islam. The main combatants who resort to war have little knowledge of the fact that they are only being used as proxies to engage in wars. The real people who often are involved directly in the fight are the leaders of the religion who could be objecting certain ideologies but they conceal their displeasure in religion. On the other hand, the followers and believers who take part in the actual war cannot help but engage in such wars because of the anxiety and trauma that has successfully been built in them.

In pursuing the religious quest of fighting an enemy, whether real or perceived, believers and followers attain a religious experience. They are captivated into thinking that their action in war is religious because it has the full blessings of their religious leaders. As they continue with their religious experience, they attain religious well being. The fulfillment that comes with their actions in war is attached to the belief that they have individually attained religious well being.

They cope in the difficult situations of war by practicing spiritual activities such engaging in prayers and worshipping God to provide them with the energy and direction that they require.

The fighters who eventually emerge from such wars alive live to pass the knowledge to the rest of the believers. They are viewed as martyrs and looked up to as inspirational role models who offer advice to the young and upcoming generations. In other words, they share their brainwashed piece of mind to the upcoming generation who then take up the weapons and continue with the war further. The end results are the continuous chain of wars that have been witnessed upon the face of the earth since time immemorial. As people die or get injured and properties worth billions get destroyed, the belief that all these are happening for the sake of

12 religion does not help matters. Instead, the involvement of religion is what worsens the situation further and destroys any hopes of reaching a stalemate (Jefferis 125).

Fundamentalism in religion and its contribution to war A fundamentalist is a believer of religion’s doctrines who extends his or her beliefs far to the right of center. Christian fundamentalism dates back to the 19th C during which time Christianity was in conflict with modernism. There are five essentials which are believed to have caused fundamentalism at the time; the belief that the Bible is free from any error, what is referred to as Biblical inerrancy as well as the literal nature in which Biblical accounts, such as miracles, have been narrated informed the thoughts of many fundamentalists. Additionally, the birth of Christ by a virgin woman, the resurrection of Christ on the third day of his death, together with the salvation that is believed to be acquired through substitutionary atonement following Christ’s death on the cross all contributed heavily towards the emergence of hard line believers (Savage 243).

These Christians are ready to die because of these teachings found in their holy text.

According to their own interpretations, and those of the other religious leaders who influence their thinking, they have an obligation of protecting their faith from any external aggression even if it means dying or killing others. Fundamentalism achieves these through a set of beliefs which are driven deep into the minds of believers with the intention of evoking some action and reaction in them.

But perhaps the most pronounced forms of religious fundamentalism are present in the Muslim world. The Middle East is in particular synonymous with quite a number of Muslim radical groups which have been formed purposefully to fight Zionism in the name of Israel.

These groups recruit young Muslims, both female and male, and train them on how to execute

13 terrorism as a way of expressing displeasure with Israel’s existence in the region. Getting recruits is an easier task in the economically weak countries of the Middle East owing to the hopelessness and resignation to fate exhibited by a majority of the youth in this region. However, their biggest motivation is the brainwash that religion has perfectly accomplished in them.

Groups like Hamas, Hizbollah, Mujahidin, and Muslim Brotherhood all carry out their heinous acts of war within the Middle East region with a single mission of eliminating Israel from their midst. Some of these groups which have been outlawed in the west receive financial backing from suspected governments in the Middle East region, including Iran and Syria and have constantly been a threat to the finding of peace in the troubled region.

These groups execute their actions basing on varied interpretation of the Muslim teachings as offered by the Holy Quran as well as by following teachings of controversial preachers and imams who themselves have a bone of contention with Israel. The extremism that defines their actions and activity does not offer chance for any sort of dialogue over a contentious matter. Their fatally distorted mental disposition holds that for any negotiations on peace to be held about the Middle East, the country must cease from existence first. They vow that unless Israel is officially removed from the map of the world, there shall continue to be wars and lack of peace in the region as well as in the rest of the world. To showcase the extent of their ideology and teachings on Islam and about war on Israel, dissidents from these groups travel to the rest of the world as they target foreign Israeli interests. Islamic fundamentalists typically believe that their reward for fighting Israel is promised by Allah and that each one of them will be handed virgins to make them their wives once they die while fighting (Friedman 216).

Conclusion

14 Religion succeeds to influence people into acting in ways that bring about conflict in the world. The process begins by the constant informing of believers by their religious leaders and preachers about certain ideologies which may be real or imagined. To help in transforming the minds and thoughts of their believers, the religious teachers use such mechanisms as songs, worshipping, fasting and prayers to bombard the minds of their followers until they reach such an extent where they are traumatized and threatened by such facts. This motivates them to go out and fight on behalf of their religion in the hope that they will be rewarded by God. Religious fundamentalism is born out of extreme brainwash mechanisms and has given rise to hard line extremism that is synonymous with the Middle East as groups are formed to fight for Islam by waging war on Israel.

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