Politics do not need religious divisions

The Sudanese are killing each other. Milosevic massacred millions of Serbs during the 1990s, while the Rwandans lost over 100,000 in genocide of their own making. Before that Adolf Hitler mercilessly murdered six million Jews.

These genocides, civil wars and conflicts were all the realization of deep-rooted ethnic hatred. One group hates another enough, purely from a traditional context, to try and exterminate the other.

Today, Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq are careening out of control on the road to civil war and possibly genocide. The sectarian divisions, beliefs and violence driving the problems between these two groups are centuries old. The hatred is deep-rooted and has and will continue to plague their society.

The conflict between the Shiites and Sunnis may seem far away from our "utopian" American-dream society.

The danger is not as far away as many may think.

The United States is slowly encouraging its own sectionalized society. Our own dangerous and violent cultural divisions may be just over the horizon.

Our founders created the United States under the idea that all people should come together and find acceptance in a new society. As Americans, we believe in this principle completely because it sounds good in our ideology. At the same time, many Americans look down on countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran that govern based on religion.

Slowly over the past decade or so, the United States of America has begun to polarize based on religion.

Our leaders promoted and advanced religion outside the private sector, where it belongs, to take hold of public politics, schools and places of business. For the past four or five years, the current administration has acted as though their power comes from God. In 2003 during the onset of the Iraq war, Bush stated, "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." This is a terrifying contention to believe.

Later that year, he then said that the arrest of Saddam Hussein was God's will carried out by the United States. Today it seems that he governs by the now well-known policy either you are with us or against God.

To act on the belief that God has willed your every action is a terrifying attitude for a leader to have.This is an attitude shared by Hitler.

I am not at all implying that the current administration is anything similar to the Hitler's government in Germany during the '30s and '40s, but the attitude of the country is heading in the wrong direction - a sectionalized and hateful one.

Every politician who runs on a born-again platform and pledges to uphold religious values as his No. 1 goal in this country brings us one step closer to living in a sectionalized and hateful country.

Why are politicians running on religious platforms?

If the country continues on this path of a government of religion, we will soon find our own civil war on the horizon.

We are one step closer to living in a fundamentalist-Christian run country. We are one step closer to a country like the ones that we pity and deem void of human rights for women and others.

We are taking one step closer to having a national religion imposed on all citizens. We are one step closer to a homogenous society.

We are leagues away from the melting pot this country was meant to be.

Jessica is a senior history student. Contact her at rinskyj@email.uc.edu.