Controversial religious places that give you some food for thought

<![CDATA[The clash of two communities over religion has been witnessed several times by the world. In many of the cases reaching a common consensus hasn’t be possible until date.

The Western Wall

Everybody knows that in a list of controversial religious places the name of Jerusalem will definitely be there. The Jews regard this wall to be sacred as it was once a part of their holy shrine. There are two known conflicts here, one is within the Jew community and the other one is with Muslims. The traditional Jews think that women should have a separate area for praying, this has met with rebellion from women’s groups. Muslims have the Al Aqsa mosque in the vicinity and they too regard the area as religiously significant to them.

Yasukuni Shrine

In order to maintain good relations with South Korea and China no Japanese Prime Minister had formally visited the Yasukuni Shrine until 1980. The shrine was raised in 1869 by the followers of Shinto religion in Tokyo. The shrine was erected to honor the war martyrs of the various Shogun wars. Millions of Japanese soldiers who died in battle between 1853 to 1945 were buried here. Amongst the buried were soldiers who committed serious war crimes, during the World War II, especially against China and South Korea. More than one thousand soldiers who had raped women, committed massacres and shown brutality to war prisoners were laid here.

The Buddha Statutes at Bamiyan

The Taliban extremists declared the two statutes of Buddha at Bamiyan in Afghanistan to be ‘idols of an alien religion’ and anti Islamic. They ruled that the destruction of these was essential and quite succeeded in their attempt in 2001. The act was condemned worldwide and communities and governments across the global have vowed to get these ancient statutes restored. These sandstone statutes of Buddha have been declared as the World Heritage site.

Ayodhya

According to the Hindus there was a temple dedicated to Lord Rama on the controversial site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, India. This place is also regarded as the birthplace of Lord Rama and known as ‘Ramjanam bhoomi’. The Muslims destroyed the temple in the 16^th century and built the ‘Babri’ mosque there. In 1992, a group of Hindus destroyed the mosque and demanded a temple of Lord Rama to be built on the site. Thousands lost their lives as a result of conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims.

These sites have been places where the sentiments of communities have been hurt and people have died. Wonder if the world has taken lessons for history.]]>