Saturday, November 22, 2008

Monks Brawl in Church of the Holy Sepulcher

2 comments:

Max Bevilacqua said...

Recently Greek and Armenian monks got into a brawl in the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. While I hate to be negative, this unfortunate current event raises a pressing question within nonviolence that we discussed earlier in the year: With all of the undertones of religious tension in the world. Is nonviolence possible? While I would thcommon values and aspirations within all of the major religions, this video is clearly not the most hopeful evidence. Aside from the fact that these monks are individuals who have sworn their lives to the work and love of G-d, and aside from the fact that these monks are both of the Christian faith (differentiated only by being Greek and Armenian), the site of their brawl is thought to be the burial place of Jesus Christ. In light of Christian belief regarding the type of loving leader Jesus was, surely if this holy site is in fact where Jesus was buried, he was rolling in his sepulcher. To make matter worse, comments on this video on youtube allow a forum for a favorite pastime of hateful and ignorant people…scapegoating Jews.

“amot iranc....AMOT !
it was jews who started this, the evil rabbis want to create division amongst Armenians n Greeks so the jews can intervene and take over that locattion. that church brings in 4-4.5k tourists every month like clockword, its increasing every year, the amount of money it brings is is significant enough for jews to creat unrest/division amongts both parties so jews can intervene, establish dominance, and control the influx of money. for jews its all about that DOLLAR.”

It seems that perspective has been lost both in the immediate event of the brawl and in the responses thereafter. And when our better selves start to go out the window, it seems that we as humans become tribal and react impulsively and often ignorantly…further reactions to the above reaction get even better if you enjoy creative uses of profanity.

It is not until we take responsibility for our own religion, its denominations, our culture, our families, and ourselves and commit them to acknowledging our mistakes and moving forward towards peace, that a nonviolent world will ever become possible.

FB said...

Max, our blog is supposed to be about nonviolence, not violence. Yes, a brawl broke out and that's happened between people of different and same faiths before. But for the purposes of THIS blog, let's focus on the nonviolent actions that happen. I promise the violence will be covered elsewhere.