Reasons For The Salem Witch Trials Of 1692

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, a dark period in American history, resulted in the death of "two-hundred Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony" and the persecution of many more (Loock 528). This witchcraft crisis was sparked by religious intolerance and these wrongful actions were justified by the fact that they were purging the town of anything that went against their belief system. Frederick Douglass, a self-educated slave, could point out that people tend to fall back on religious belief in order to justify their cruel actions. The Salem Witch Trials prove that Douglass's assertion that men use religion to justify cruelty was not a new theory brought about by slavery. There becomes a point where people's morals become distorted and they

Religion itself is not the issue, it is the people who interpret it falsely to gain political and cultural benefits that serve as the issue. On the news, it is common to hear about new plots and tragedy brought about by terrorists and their organizations. Terrorists take religious practice seriously. For when a nation or person threatens their religion, it could result in the death of innocent people and could possibly take their own lives in the act. One of the most recent incident of terrorism was toward a French magazine office that had published a satirical, yet controversial, image of Muhammad, which triggered a terrorist attack among the office in order to bring justice to the terrorist's god. Terrorism uses violence to solve their problems, which spreads panic over society. Using fear in order to gain power is a common method, but in terms of moral correctness, no religion can justify the murdering of large masses of people. Life is precious and religion, especially Christianity, emphasis how valuable life is. It takes a corrupt conscious for a person to believe that killing others will solve ones problems, just like it takes a corrupt conscious to believe it is right to justify enslaving a race of people and treating them