Religion -- an observation
We have people on the right wing who are quite happy to mock
and attack Islam but react in outrage when anyone mocks or attacks
Christianity, even in cases where fundamentalists are pushing flagrantly
theocratic repressive policies which are hard to distinguish from
Sharî'ah law.
We have people on the left wing who are quite happy to mock and attack Christianity but shy away or start slinging labels when anyone mocks or attacks Islam, even in cases where radical Muslims are engaging in flagrant bigotry and brutality against gays and women which would outrage them if fundamentalist Christians were doing the same things.
That's part of why I wrote this post. I have no patience with carefully-cultivated half-blindness of either stripe (nor with efforts to nitpick tendentious "differences" between the two cases above). Both religions hold hundreds of millions of minds under an illegitimate and dangerous occupation. Both are engines of repression and backwardness and both need to be slammed relentlessly at every provocation. It is never acceptable to use the atrocities of one to excuse or minimize the atrocities of the other. They are two tentacles of the same Abrahamic octopus. The most perceptive atheist activists such as Dawkins, Hitchens, and Condell have always realized this -- and have accordingly directed their fire at both targets.
We have people on the left wing who are quite happy to mock and attack Christianity but shy away or start slinging labels when anyone mocks or attacks Islam, even in cases where radical Muslims are engaging in flagrant bigotry and brutality against gays and women which would outrage them if fundamentalist Christians were doing the same things.
That's part of why I wrote this post. I have no patience with carefully-cultivated half-blindness of either stripe (nor with efforts to nitpick tendentious "differences" between the two cases above). Both religions hold hundreds of millions of minds under an illegitimate and dangerous occupation. Both are engines of repression and backwardness and both need to be slammed relentlessly at every provocation. It is never acceptable to use the atrocities of one to excuse or minimize the atrocities of the other. They are two tentacles of the same Abrahamic octopus. The most perceptive atheist activists such as Dawkins, Hitchens, and Condell have always realized this -- and have accordingly directed their fire at both targets.
posted by Infidel753 at 2:18 AM
5 Comments:
Thank you for this post. Nothing else need be said. Other than this is perhaps the most rationally enunciated statement I have read anywhere in blogistan.
Thanks for the kind words!
"We have people on the left wing who are quite happy to mock and attack Christianity but shy away or start slinging labels when anyone mocks or attacks Islam, even in cases where radical Muslims are engaging in flagrant bigotry and brutality against gays and women which would outrage them if fundamentalist Christians were doing the same things."
Who are these people? Are they prominent, well-known people in leadership roles? I see and make plenty of criticisms of any religion, but I always try to keep it factual, not farcical, and I wouldn't consider it mockery or an attack to discus, say, the sex scandals of the Catholic Church, or other such common criticisms. Naming names and citing incidents of mocking and/or attacking Christianity would help me get a grip on what you're criticizing here. Meanwhile, I'm scratching my head -- can't think of any prominent players on the left who mock or attach Christianity the way many prominent players on the right mock or attach Islam.
Plenty of bloggers, journalists, etc. attack the fundies for their hatred of gays or authoritarian attitude about women. Plenty of people have mocked the Duggars, Phil Robertson, and suchlike. And I'm not criticizing people who attack religion -- just the contrary. I'm criticising people who think it's inappropriate to attack one religion or the other.
Bill Maher gets a lot of pushback for his attacks on Islam. It's not that he doesn't attack Christianity as well--he devoted the last part of the most recent "New Rules" to is--but he seems to have extra enthusiasm for going after Islam.
Post a Comment
<< Home