for those who no longer have words

One of the stories that has haunted me (along with the rest of the world) is that of Anders Behring Breivik. The first photograph I saw of him showed me a good-looking man, some might even have said beautiful. He has well-defined bone structure, good skin and golden blonde hair with deep blue eyes. He was dressed as a policeman when he stood on a rock and beckoned the young adults, who were swimming around the island to come towards him. Even in South Africa, I believe, where many of us fear the police, he would not have seemed a threat. After all, for many people (Annelie Botes and Donald Trump among others), a brown skin is the first signal of danger.

There have been many articles about him: his extremism, his religion, his Islamaphobia and the possibility that he is clinically insane. He is living proof of the damage violent extremists do to everyone, even their "own kind" (whatever that is), the ones they profess to be protecting.

But he still has words and voices at his disposal. The dead do not. Their stories are the ones that need to be told.

When the people at the camp swam towards the handsome, beckoning "policeman", he opened fire on them, killing sixty-eight people. His bomb killed a further eight people (at last count). The number is equivalent to over two South African government school classes, or three private school ones. If you go to the Guardian Online website, you can see the pictures and read some information about the people who are dead or missing presumed dead to have been identified thus far.

There is one man (barely a man, he is only twenty-three) named Gunnar Linaker. He has a roundish face and flushed skin that makes me think he was once part of a debating team. He positioned himself in front of the younger people (most of the dead are teenagers) to shield them. He survived the attack but died in hospital.

Hanne Annette Balch Fjalestad was one of the older people who died in the attack. She had come out to the camp from Denmark with her twenty-year old daughter. She also died protecting the younger ones, including her daughter, who survived. Hanne leaves beyond four children.

Ismail Haj Ahmed had appeared on "Norway's Got Talent". His picture is a publicity shot and he has a fresh Disney smile of an untarnished High School Musical star. His brother found his body on the rocks.

The photographs and the anonymous silhouettes where faces should be looks eerily like facebook: a group of smiling young people and a few of their parents. No doubt if the camp had a facebook group the album photographs would look something like it. Except that this is a group of people were put together because none of their smiling faces are alive anymore.

In South Africa - I am not sure why - when something bad happens to someone, even if we did nothing to cause it, we say sorry, perhaps because some hurts move beyond complex statements of compassion.

So I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

I'm coming out of the closet...

For me, telling people I'm a Christian is like coming out of the closet. It's liberating to tell the truth about myself, but there is always that chance that people will turn away, repulsed by the thought of what I do (or what they think I do) in the privacy of my home or church. There's sometimes a sense that I can do what I like as long as I don't do anything in public, where others may be disgusted by my displays of affection for the one (or in my case the One) I love.

In other cases, even being a Christian in the privacy of my own home is too much for people. It is deemed morally reprehensible and irresponsible: I must acknowledge that I am deluded and more importantly, be prevented from spreading my delusions and my lifestyle to society at large. At least Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens think so. Much of society is not Christian friendly. And yet, a friend of mine is an atheist, and she has experienced the exact same thing. Her family ostracize her, and friends look on her with patronising pity. Another fellow blogger, a Muslim, has also expressed the belief that society is Islamaphobic (I actually agree with him there. Even in England - the least racially polarised place I have been so far will come out in full force to defend their cities against some kind of "Islamic Invasion").

So it seems no one is safe. We're all being targeted by society. But if everyone is being targeted by society, who is left in the society to other us? It appears it is no particular group that started all the hatred. It is rather, people in general who find a particular channel for hatred and exclusion.

An atheist would argue that it is the fault of religion for causing such divisions. If I wasn't Christian, the Muslim fundamentalist would have no problem with me because I would not be Christian, and the fundamentalist would not be Muslim. We would be siblings on this earth with no divisions...except for our different race, class, culture, sexual orientation, language and gender.

We are all different, religious or not. Sweeping away religion will not change us into accepting human beings, living together as one. Christopher Hitchens is an atheist but that does not stop him from being misogynist, as his pompous declaration that women aren't funny proves.

Obviously religion can divide people violently against each other and commit great evils. Churches burn Korans and legislate violent anti-homosexual legislation, and Muslim states stone adulterous women and prevent anyone from worshipping any other gods.

It is not religion however, that causes the major wars, but greed and a will to power. The First World War was a mess of countries trying to out do each other and prevent smaller countries from gaining independence. The Second World War was caused by the problems of the first and race hatred. Even so-called religious wars are frequently run through with longing for riches, self-determination or power. I'm over-simplifying the causes more than a little, but anyone can see the Crusades were not just Christians going out to defeat the "infidels" and convert or kill.

In its best form, however, religion unites. When I go to church on Sunday, I am amazed by the cross section of people sitting in the pews. People of all colours, ages, and fashions, heck even people of different beliefs. I seldom - if ever - see gatherings of this diversity anywhere else. Even at universities, the most liberal pockets of our society, there is a narrow age range and of course, a group of people who are school-book smart. There are no plummers or factory workers, shop assistants or floor cleaners who associate with students on equal footing. Our still-present apartheid land act ensures that not many churches include people of all classes and races, but the church I attend in Braamfontein, next to the university and across the bridge from a taxi rank, is home to people of all sorts. We all say the same liturgy, sit in the same pews and drink from the same cup. We all have to admit publicly, that all of us are equal in the eyes of God. Anyone who has ever worshipped in a mosque, synagogue, temple, outdoor circle or church may have experienced something like this.

One of my favourite illustrations of the nature of prejudice rather than the nature of religion is a series of documentaries made in the 1950s on apartheid that you can find on Youtube (riveting stuff).

Two priests are interviewed. One is a Dutch Reform priest, and he asserts that reasoning behind apartheid is in fact written in the Bible. The second looks like an Anglican priest, and he states that if one is a true Christian, apartheid is completely opposite to Christian morals.

I am still a baby Christian, it is true, and not an orthodox one. I am wrestling with my own problems with this exhilarating, nourishing and incredibly complex thing called faith. But what I know for sure is that it is human prejudice, and not considered, questioning, meditative faith or morally grounded unbelief that causes people to hate and fear one another. It is people who are evil, and use religion or militant atheism for their own means to power. They play on many people's innate prejudice and fear. Anyone who ever looked at the bank account of Richard Dawkins or a charlatan preacher or seen a poor religious militant's heady sense of power over his followers could see why.