Even with the harrowing experience the occupants of this boats found themselves in, they still had presence of mind to discriminate among each other based on religious differences. One would have thought that the hazardous journey would have served to bind them in an unbreakable bond, but the power of religious indoctrination, especially the added fallacy that one's own religion is the true path to salvation or paradise, was strong enough to blind them to their common peril. The muslims still saw themselves as muslims, and others as infidels deserving of death for not being muslims. And the perfect opportunity to act on this belief came in the form of a christian who literally said his last prayer.
We expressed outrage at the picture of the 3 year old boy who drowned along with his mother and 5 year old brother when their boat capsized on their way to Greece, but we forget that some of those who die during the perilous boat trip across the sea into Europe are also children, and at least a million children die yearly from malaria alone in subsaharan Africa. Other prolific child killers worldwide are childhood cancers, congenital anomalies and infectious diseases. If all the money given to religious leaders worldwide, to maintain their opulent lifestyle and sponsor terrorism and religious conflicts, were put into medical research, there wouldn't be children dying needlessly, and certainly not from seeking a better life across the Mediterranean.
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