When religion is fused with ambition and power, it becomes a tool of division and social exhaustion, writes Mohamed Elbaikam. 

FAITH IS MEANT to be a private moral bond between human beings and God. But when it is fused with ambition, fear and power, it becomes a language of division that leaves societies morally exhausted.

My grandmother used to scatter sugar for ants, so that life could continue.

It was a small act that might have seemed insignificant, yet she gave it deep meaning. She used to say that a person’s relationship with God must remain clean and pure. She was not a religious scholar, nor did she speak in theoretical language. And yet, in that simple sentence, she carried a wisdom that I feel is painfully absent from our public life today.

Because the real crisis of our age is not religion itself, but what human beings have done with it.

At its core, faith is an intimate relationship between the individual and the creator. No one has the right to measure another person’s closeness to God. Nor can anyone honestly claim exclusive ownership of divine truth. Human beings do not possess absolute certainty; they possess interpretations, experiences, wounds and hopes. We see life from our own angles, never from the whole picture.

That should lead us to humility. Instead, politics often turns religion into a performance of certainty.

Across large parts of the world, religion is no longer left within the sphere of conscience and ethics. It is pulled into struggles for power, identity and control. It is used to harden boundaries between communities, to sanctify political projects and to transform worldly interests into sacred obligations. This is where ordinary political conflicts begin to speak the language of heaven.

And when that happens, disagreement is no longer treated as disagreement. It becomes blasphemy. Opposition becomes betrayal. Compromise is presented as moral surrender.

This is what makes politically framed religious conflict so dangerous. Its real roots may lie in land, influence, security, memory or domination. But once these conflicts are wrapped in sacred language, they acquire a destructive emotional force. At that point, the opponent is no longer seen as a human being with whom negotiation is possible, but as an existential threat. In such a climate, peace itself begins to look like weakness.

Here lies the great contradiction of our age. Humanity has advanced enormously in technology, yet in many ways it has regressed morally. We have built astonishing machines, expanded communication and accelerated knowledge. But we have not advanced at the same pace in empathy, self-restraint or moral clarity. We are more connected than ever, and yet often less capable of recognising one another’s humanity.

At times, it feels as though the human mind itself has been taken captive. Not necessarily by some literal supernatural force, but by darker forces within human life itself: fear, humiliation, resentment, greed and the systems that profit from them. There are political cultures that feed on permanent outrage. There are media environments that reward emotion more than truth. There are leaders who grow stronger each time society becomes more divided. In such a climate, the worst parts of human nature are not calmed. They are organised and exploited.

As a child, I used to ask a question that troubled me: why do the animals we keep not run away? Why do they not understand that one day they may be sold or taken away? Why do they remain calm in the hands that feed them, unaware of what awaits them?

It was a child’s question, but it returns to me whenever I watch human beings being led into conflict under grand and noble names: religion, nation, honour, history, destiny. They are flattered by rhetoric, mobilised, and emotionally armed. They are told they are defending something sacred. Yet many do not realise how easily they can be used in the service of interests that are not truly their own.

And here an unsettling question imposes itself: has science now reached, through its accumulated knowledge of human psychology and through the tools of influence enabled by technology, the point where it can charge the human mind and turn it into a killing machine under many different names? This is no longer merely a philosophical reflection. It has become one of the defining anxieties of our time, as propaganda, digital technologies, psychological engineering and ideological discourse intertwine to shape a collective consciousness that may drive human beings toward hatred while convincing them they are practising virtue.

In the end, everyone loses.

The dead lose their future. The living lose part of their humanity. Societies lose the moral ground that once made coexistence possible. Even those who appear victorious lose as well, because any victory built on the dehumanisation of others is, at its core, a moral defeat.

That is why the answer is not to attack religion, but to protect it from political exploitation. Faith should not be excluded from public life, nor turned into a badge of power. It should remain, in its best form, a discipline of conscience, a source of humility, a language of mercy and a call to restrain the worst impulses within us.

My grandmother understood something that many powerful people fail to understand: the sacred can be corrupted. The purest relationships can be polluted when touched by selfishness, ambition and the desire for domination.

And if religion is to retain any meaning in this century, it must help human beings rise above the worst within themselves, not bless it. From the moment faith becomes a political weapon, it ceases to elevate humanity and begins to participate in its destruction.

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/when-religion-becomes-a-political-weapon-everyone-loses,20795

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