Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History Of Religious Murder And Madness

Holy Horrors is a concise and yet thorough compilation of religious atrocities dating from the Crusades on up to 1990, when the book was written.  Author James Haught is known for his journalistic defenses of the separation between church and state.  Here, he demonstrates the dangers inherent whenever a given religion becomes the law of the land.

The fanaticism that religion can breed is brilliantly displayed on each page.  Haught begins his grim tale by looking beyond the stereotype vision many people still have of the Crusades, so often seen in terms of knights, fair damsels, and chivalry, and exposes the horrific realities lurking underneath: rape, pillage, torture, and countless unspeakable acts committed by those inspired with the fire of their religion.  How and why did all this begin? Simply because one man, who happened to be the pope (Urban II) decided in 1095 that it was time to “rescue” the Holy Land from the Muslim “infidels.”

Of course, Islam is far from blameless as well, as its history and recent global events have conclusively demonstrated.  The Islamic Jihads, or Holy Wars, are recounted here in all their gore.  Among the many sects discussed are the aptly named Assassins, a small, fanatical group that emerged from the hills only when there was a murder that needed to be done to protect the faith.  Holy men as well as political and military leaders were among their targets: although gone for centuries, their name lives on in our vocabulary, a fitting legacy to a fundamentalist religious faith.

Christianity’s enmity toward the Jews is well documented throughout the centuries and is also examined here.  The origins of this enmity can be documented from the earliest manuscripts of the Christian sacred writings.  Haught takes it from there: the Russian Pogroms around the turn of the twentieth century are examples of how the religious climate influenced the political arena in that country, eventually becoming ubiquitous throughout Europe, creating an environment conducive to the rise of Naziism.  As Haught explains: “Religion had split Europe into a dominant majority and a vilified minority.  Madmen rode this division to destruction.”

Holy Horrors closes by examining some of the modern “fruits’ of religious orthodoxy: the Jonestown massacre, the frightening theocracy in Iran, and the atrocities of both Soviets and Muslim rebels in Afghanistan.  These and far too many other examples demonstrate the willingness we humans have to commit atrocities against our fellow humans if we imagine ourselves to have a god on our side.

Despite this flood of irrefutable information, our leaders still doggedly insist that religious belief is somehow necessary to instill correct moral behavior  and the majority of our fellow citizens continue to profess belief in a benevolent deity.  Former president George H.W. Bush said that religion gives people “the character they need to get through life.”  Our responsibility as freethinkers is to show others the absurdity of such a statement.  Holy Horrors provides us with the documentation to do so.