Religious Entrapment

The recent events in Paris have come to signalise that there is more that divides us as a species than there is that unite us. Multi-culturalism, as it appears, cannot tame our intrinsic drive that seeks violence as its primary outlet in the resolving of conflict of any sort, whether cultural, religious or political. This in turn leads us to the belief that all refinement of our species undergone in last one thousand years is solely attributable to education, cultural integration but above all plenty of tolerance for difference on both sides. Therefore, religion-driven violence cannot and must be not be the modern canvas on which a new "Religious Deal" can or should be dictating the road forward in the shaping of the new formula of co-existence. Many of us in the western world may have thought that mankind had addressed and resolved the issue of Christian persecution once and for all through the "Edictum Mediolani" in 313 AD, when Constantin the Great had decreed the tolerance of the Christian Religion in the Roman Empire and the cessation of Christian persecution. In light of the recent events in Paris, it now seems that this pact has been factually annulled and replaced by blind Muslim and Jihad violence. In addition, on December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" in whose Article 19 the following have been laid down: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." It is somewhat more than ironic that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted at Palais de Challot in Paris, i.e. the same "crime scene" in which it was factually annulled the day before yesterday. It is without the slightest doubt that this constitutes a new dawn for civilisation as we knew it. Namely, many steps backwards...God (any god for that matter) help us!