Solihull News, UK
March 20, 2015

Hope despite all this destruction

Bahá’u’lláÁH, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith teaches us to “consort
with all religions with amity and concord.”

Yet, the history of the human race is filled with episodes of
religious prejudice and ethnic cleansing.

The last century has witnessed the Armenian genocide of the First
World War, the Holocaust of the Second World War, the massacres of
many thousands of defenceless civilians in the Balkans in the 1990s
and many more besides.

The victors of bloody conflicts have periodically and for a variety of
misguided reasons tried to erase all traces of their predecessors and
of previous civilisations.

Alarmingly, we now see this once again in Nimrud and Hatra, Iraq,
where the forces of blind fundamentalism have literally bulldozed two
UNESCO world heritage sites, just as the Taliban destroyed the giant
ancient Buddhas carved out of the mountains in central Afghanistan in
March 2001.

However, there is hope. The enduring legacy of the last hundred years
is that it compelled the peoples of the world to begin seeing
themselves as the members of a single human race, and the earth as
that race’s Despite the continuing conflict, violence and destruction
that darkens the horizon, prejudices that once seemed inherent in the
nature of the human species are everywhere giving way.

That so fundamental a change could occur in so brief a period –
virtually overnight in the perspective of historical time – suggests
the magnitude of the possibilities for the future.

True religion is concerned with the ennobling of character and the
harmonizing of relationships.

True religion gives meaning to life and has simultaneously been the
chief force binding diverse peoples together in ever larger and more
developed societies.

The great advantage of the present age is the perspective that makes
it possible for the entire human race to see this civilizing process
that is gradually, yet discernibly bringing our world into line with
the world of God.

“The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable,”
Bahá’u’lláh urges, “unless and until its unity is firmly established.”

Bahá’í Community of Solihull

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress