There are more than 7 billion people and 4,200 religions in this world. 7 billion people who are different as fire and water. Socializing is in our nature, yet in our blood; therefore, we are in need of being with other people whom we feel safe with. From the very beginning of the world, we have been creating communities with people that we share the same backgrounds or beliefs. These communities grow and create traditions. On the other hand, religion is a system of beliefs, rules, practices and morals that is used to worship a supernatural force. Religion does not refer one specific tradition or community. As an example, In Islam, there are two major denominations: Sunni and Shia. These two different denominations have different traditions and characteristics. But even in one denomination, you can see hundreds of different communities and people from all backgrounds. But what am I trying to prove with this information?

What is the most horrendous result of hate? At some point of our lives, we feel hate to something or someone. Most of this hate that we feel don’t stay around so far, we move on with our lives by usually ignoring and then forgetting it. But what about the people who don’t ignore, forget and move on with their lives? What about the people who don’t realize the possible alarming causes of hate? Imagine someone who is capable, who has power. Someone who does not know how to avoid or stop the hate he feels or more tragically who doesn’t even know it’s something bad or something that should be stopped. Based on the records, we lost 11.5 million people in Holocaust. 6 million people of this number were practicing Judaism. It all started with one heart which was full of hate. People who were practicing one common religion were first judged then classified, symbolized, dehumanized and massacred. A very natural feeling made people killers. This is the danger of hate. You can maybe stop people who are responsible for these kind of evil actions. However, you can’t stop the hate that those people feel by punishing them. Old people who are responsible for previous evil actions die and the new ones are born. Today, the media keeps targeting one specific religion again. Yes, this time it’s not Judaism. But why should it matter if it’s Judaism or any other religion?

Whenever we feel even a little amount of hate for someone, we start trying to find reasons to justify our behavior. We think about that person’s other bad characteristics, mistakes and even his background or religion. We usually pass characteristics and mistakes because there are so many people that we know with the same characteristics and who made the same mistakes. However, we usually stuck with religion because it is different and strange to us. We think about what we know about that religion. If we’re not someone who has a specific interest for researching other religions, the news we watch on TV and the articles we see on social media come to our minds. We don’t question them in the hurry of searching for something to justify our hate. We accept the labels without questioning. The next step is generalizing that hate and applying it to everyone we see with this religion. Now we’re ready to take our place in the observers’ room.

Everyone is different as water and fire. Everyone is beautiful in different ways. Since there can’t be a salad with only tomatoes, it can’t be a world with only one religion or community. We can’t hate the rest of the apples, if one of them is rotten. Why hating an orange, because it’s not an apple? We should start discovering the beauty of different communities, religions and traditions. Because what we used to do was hating them and it’s clearly not working anymore.

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