Is religion or nationality more important to you?
| 14:30 UK time, Thursday, 3 August 2006
Hello. There was little doubt in our meeting today that there's a strong desire to discuss the situation in and . But we took a long time to settle on exactly how. The reason was that the nature of the violence we're seeing today in places like Gaza, Iraq, , and Afghanistan (the list goes on), could be seen as evidence that for many people religion is increasingly more important than nationality.
Some of the team (I was one of them) argued that we should hear from people in Iraq and Gaza first about what's happening there before allowing the conversation to broaden. Others argued more convincingly, that by asking those of you in Iraq and Gaza about your attitude towards religion and nationality, we are sure to find out about your reaction what’s happening in your home country. So that’s we’ll do, ask a simple question with many different answers and perspectives -
As I sat eating my lunch after the meeting, our newsroom flashed two new explosions over the loud-speakers we have here - nine killed by a , then moments later over 20 killed by a . It was a timely reminder that Iraqis are killing Iraqis, Afghanis are killing Afghanis. Are those planting these bombs exceptions, or does religion rather than nationality do more to define the nature of armed conflict in the world? And more generally, do you think loyalty to religion has more influence on what happens in your country than loyalty to the country itself? And while we're very keen to hear from the countries I have already mentioned, wherever you live or are from the conversation is open to you.
I'll speak to you later and remember you can listen to the programme live on this blog at 17 hours GMT.
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