No religion in this world preaches violence; yet down the ages horrible killing have taken place in the name of religion. Why? There is no simple answer to this question. Perception definitely has a role in this. The fault somehow always seems to lie with the other religion. Could it be that we perceive other religions with bias or ignorance? Perhaps this explanation would have made sense in the dark ages when distance made communication very difficult. Today, it’s different- there is free flow of communication. There is a great intermingling and intercourse b/w individuals and communication across the world. Outwardly there seems to be no reason for acrimony to exist on the basis of one’s faith, yet not only does irascibility exist, it is getting to be more pronounced.
It is human to find faults with others. We also tend to give our own interpretation to doctrine. We get conditioned unconditioned unconsciously through subtle environmental influence. The prejudices thus acquire blunt our power to reason and we become less receptive to new thoughts and ideas. In other words we happily close our minds we kill the spirit of inquiry and drift away from the truth.