Though undocumented, it’s been said that when the Romans crucified the Apostle St. 
Peter, they crucified him upside down to prevent any chance of him ascending to Heaven 
as Jesus Christ did before him.   On the other hand, St. Peter was married at the time of 
his crucifixion and even though he is singularly accepted as being the first Roman 
Catholic Pope, he was openly opposed to clerical celibacy while he was alive.


And so it was that from antiquity till the birth of our modern-day democracies, religion, 
though not always right, dictated both conscience and morality.   But as centuries passed, 
mankind became better informed, his religious zeal began to dissipate, and he began to 
question.   And while his uncertainty increased, his civil laws also increased.   Meantime, 
the testaments of the many faiths we pay homage to remain unchanged, for the most part, 
and vociferously exclusionary from all the rest.   And in the name of our many gods, we 
continue to kill and plunder mercilessly.   


Today because of the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York City, 
by Islam fanatics, we find ourselves at war against terrorism.   And even though we were 
told that these Islam terrorists were a world apart from the majority of Muslims that exist 
today, we Armenians find it hard to accept because of what the Ottoman Turks did to us 
in 1915.   


Sad?   Tragic?  Unfair?  Without a doubt, because aside from the Ottoman Turks, some of 
the worst terrorists in history were non-Muslims.   The question is, where do we go from 
here?   


Well, for one thing, if we remain on our present-day course, we will no doubt rebuild our 
modern arsenals to much greater levels of destruction while empowering our leaders with 
laws giving them more and more authority.  This may be good for the short term but in 
the long term, we may wake up someday to find out that we forfeited all of our 
democratic liberties in the exchange.   


On the other hand, we should support all of the upgrading of our antiterrorism capabilities 
in order to guard ourselves against all possible contingencies.   But at the same time, we 
must also keep an eye on what direction our lawmakers are going in.   We must make 
sure that they don’t throw our baby (our liberties) out with the bath water (the democratic 
laws we live under). 


Meantime, the more forward thinking leaders from all of our many faiths must get off 
their duffs and start sanitizing their timeworn antiquated doctrines of faith.   One thing 
that would help this process along would be if they publicly stated that by whatever name 
we call Him, there is only one God.   And that regardless of which faith we follow, that 
they all lead to eternal salvation.   Impossible?   Absurd?  Undoable?   I don’t think so.   


During World War II, we had chaplains representing every faith in the book and on 
occasion, if the circumstance presented itself, a chaplain from another faith would 
administer last rites.   What’s more, there was also an incident where five chaplains from 
five different faiths, drowned together holding hands when their ship was torpedoed and 
sinking in the Pacific.


Dear friends and unknown enemies, the time has come for all of us to learn how to make 
peace between ourselves and with the rest of the world around us.   Let’s not wait until 
we’re on the brink of extinction before we bury that same hatchet that we’ve been burying 
in each other’s heads for centuries.   


Technology has shrunken our world to a small fraction of what it was centuries ago when 
Moses, Christ, and Mohammed walked among us.  And if they were here among us 
today, I’m sure they would be the first to say that the time for religious fundamentalism 
has passed.   


As John Donne said five centuries ago, “No man is an island.”


Joseph Vosbikian