On religion and managing emotions (letter)

Bruce,

Sorry about your cousin. I certainly understand your anger.

That being said:

-Religion has throughtout history been wielded as an ideological weapon to manipulate people. This applies to christians, muslims, and many others.
-On the positive side, by using mythology as a theoretical background, most religions pontificate good values, serving as a behavioral roadmap for many people striving to be better, and providing therapy to those afflicted souls whose belief in a God gives them hope to go through life.
-That being said, the root of all evil in the world is the search for money and power. To achieve said purpose, those in leadership positions will use intolerance as a strategy to materialize their goals. Their tactics include not only religion, but race, sexual proclivities, political affiliations, and so on. Whatever makes others look as adversaries, unites their blind followers to inadvertedly serve as their pawns. It's called divide and conquer, the root of populism.
-If we let anger and hate (however justified, as in your case), rule our emotions to the point that they subjugate reason and perpetuate in our minds vacuous generalized steorotypes, we're taking the facile way by vesting the blame of our frustation upon innocent others. This is what the vicious leaders you ctiticize want; that's how they achieve control: steering good people like yourself towards the dark path of hatred by offering steorypes as scapegoats. Divide and conquer. Never fails.
-The closest to a solution we can come is by realizing that there're good and bad people across every race, religion and nationality. Just like nice Mexicans outnumber bad ones, good Muslims prevail in numbers over morally-derailed ones. The trick is that only the deeds stemming from bad seeds get reported.

As someone who hasn't gone through your pain, but fully empathizes with your situation, I can offer only this bit of advice: Think about what would your cousin want for you. I'm sure if he were still here he would wish you to be as happy as possible.

Bottling hate inside you does not lead to an emotionally stable life. Even if you're not aware, it eats you inside and negatively ordains yours actions. Try to realize that this is not conducive to achieving justice; ironically, it only hurts yourself. And by doing that you're not exalting the memory of your loved one. Let go of the prejudices, embrace the memory of your cousin, cherish forever the great moments you shared together, and live a happier life, free of the nefarious grips of prejudice and hate.

As a parting thought, a brief reflection: Many a terrorist will initially be a victim of a terrible crime whose emotional angst is manipulated by ideologues to transform them into what they hate the most. Remember, terrorism does not spring fully-formed out of nothingness. (Of course this does not apply to you, but it's a powerful thought: Hate, when feeded with faux prejucides, makes the perfect recipe to converting an otherwise good human been into the very evil that he was initially rebelling against).

Best regards,

Carlos