After reading through some documents on Boko Haram I went on to investigate the correlation between violence, war, and religion. Now before I start I will like to highlight that I do not for one second believe the general morality of people are generated from their religious beliefs simply because most religious people tend to only run a religious program as a comforting thought but make no effort to study what they claim to practice. I will also like to state that I do not see Boko Haram as a representation of Muslims in Nigeria or any part of the world.

That being said, I found that of all the religious wars the world has seen, a good 95% percent could be linked to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. In fact the only ones that involved other religions were as a result to their actions against oppression by one of the Abrahamic faiths. Naturally I wondered why the world’s most popular religions also doubled for the most violent even as they proclaim to serve a peace loving God.

After a lot of thought and analysis I came to the conclusion that this is as a result of the doctrines thought by these religions on a popular scale. Most other world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Western philosophy) challenge the participant to integrate the belief into their day to day life with no rigid set rules. There is even an atheist school of thought in Hinduism. Abrahamic faiths on the other hand are taught with the idea of a set standard and set rules which can easily corrupt the mind when mistranslated. I guess you could say the fact that other religions view their scriptures as just a philosophical guide and not a life manual or detail of history of time is the major difference here. Someone once said Christianity causes so much trouble because it is the only religion that requires you to have faith not only in God, but in the idea that Jesus is His son and he died for your sins. The same can be said about Prophet Muhammad being the last prophet as Muslims believe his word is final and trumps all others before him. So while Jesus was free to turn water to wine and God allowed drinking then, Prophet Muhammad has labelled it Haram and it is banned now. You get the picture.