This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has highlighted conflicts between religious aims and public policy.
I am sure that it was Beethoven's religious aims in the long and intense central movement of the quartet that Eliot had in mind when he wrote these words.
"Socrates and Plato were shocked by the sophists because they had no religious aims," he writes, and adds that many of the ancient Greek philosophers "founded fraternities which had a certain resemblance to the monastic orders of later times".
"Sadly that tragedy, that genocide, was the first of the deplorable series of catastrophes of the past century, made possible by twisted racial, ideological or religious aims that darkened the minds of the tormentors even to the point of planning the annihilation of entire peoples," he said.
The destruction of Al Araqib has brought together a strange coalition of supporters, including left-wing Jewish activists from the Negev and politicians and volunteers from the southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a social and political organization that also has religious aims.
A Syrian imam – of the Khadija al-Khobra mosque in Damascus – with a lean, dark face, told us of his meetings this year with four Syrian "militant groups" in the city which had different nationalist and religious aims, of how he tried to unite them, but discovered that they were thieves, killers and rapists rather than jihadis.
This might be due to the religious aims of the encyclopedia.
Has God delegated to secular rulers such as kings and emperors the authority to wage war in order to achieve religious aims: the conversion of the infidel or the repulsion of unjust attacks on the true faith?
It is critical that the Saudi regime, which holds captive the holy cities of Islam, fails in its religious aims.
The printed program for "Swaha" — like, presumably, the words sung in the taped music — explains the religious and spiritual aim of each section.
