Not sure anyone here will argue middle eastern societies are utopias we should strive to emulate. Let’s look at what can be improved, not what could be worse.
Comment on Seeing shit like this kills me. People are so ignorant.
_LordMcNuggets_@feddit.org 4 days ago
she’s not wrong though. as a christian in the middle east, you have mosques kicking off every morning, Islam is noticeable in everyday life everywhere (to the extent that I feel that you have a substantially higher religious freedom in Europe as a muslim), and if you do something that is socially (and therefore religiously - as there’s a nonexistent division between church, states and culture here) risque, you can also gtfo. so what?
Miaou@jlai.lu 4 days ago
Saleh@feddit.org 4 days ago
Have you ever been to Southern and Central Europe? Churches ringing their bells every day. Villages being mostly dark at night, with the church being shined on with a dozen spotlights. Religious festivities including parades around holidays. Priests and Nuns casually walking in the streets.
As you can see with the statement above, the fact that religion is “noticeable in everyday life everywhere” has nothing to do with religious freedom.
Islam is quite accommodating and tolerant to other religions. Religious minorities enjoy protection and are allowed to practice their ways even when it contradicts Islamic law, such as Christian being permitted alcohol. What we have seen over the last century is the result of deliberate meddling by outside imperial forces that promoted wahabism and other extremist strands twisting Islam into being a tool of oppression and riddling it with hypocrisy.
Also we see how religious minorities are instrumentalized to start divisions and civil wars in places like Syria and Lebanon. Areas where Christians and Jews have lived for Millennia and built vibrant communities, with religious tensions being the rare exception. Or looking at Iberian Peninsula, where the Jewish community fared well for centuries under Islamic governance, until the Christian conquerors slaughtered them and forced them into conversion and hiding like the Muslims.
Finally the western nation state model is incompatible with Islamic governance, but again was imposed upon Muslim majority countries.
loudwhisper@infosec.pub 4 days ago
So accommodating and tolerant. Many countries have the death penalty for apostates, in others it might be technically legal but you would still face harassment from police and general institutions. Isn’t this wonderful?
…m.wikipedia.org/…/Apostasy_in_Islam_by_country
Classic overcorrection I have seen many times: western countries have mostly a Christianity problem, and to counter the bigotry, racism and intolerance, progressive people take the defense of other barbaric, intolerant and bigot religions.
This is especially frustrating when it comes from a leftist perspective. Religion is a form of institutionalized control and oppression, and as such is a fundamental enemy of the working class.
Saleh@feddit.org 4 days ago
As i have written:
A common argument is that Jesus would be a socialist by todays definitions, condemning the corruption of the rich and sitting with the poor. The prophet Mohamed, blessing and peace be upon him, was persecuted by the polytheists because Islam was challenging their business model surrounding the idol worship and they tried to coopt him into furthering their economic agenda. Moses was liberating his entire people from enslavement under the Pharaoh. The Abrahamic prophets all fought injustice and corruption in their society.
I agree with you that the institutionalization is an issue, but that is an issue of the particular institutions, not the religion itself.
loudwhisper@infosec.pub 3 days ago
Derubricating everything to the “external” imperial forces is dismissive and forgets centuries of violent history, including those of Muslim empires. Islam, like most religions is bigoted, intolerant and barbaric.
And that’s nonsense.
No, I think it’s actually religion and religious thinking specifically the problem. Institutionalized religion is just the natural consequence of the issue.
Religion is fundamentally a reactionary ideology because it prescribes an external entity (or entities) which decided how things should be. This deresponsibilizes people and inherently justifies the existing. All the religious emancipation still happens under the umbrella of a reality that has to work in a certain way.
For example, most religions tend to accept suffering and poverty as a given, as a test or as something that in general is by design. Assigning virtue to being oppressed (like in case of some Christian messages) is far from a revolutionary stance, it’s a tool aimed at controlling those who are oppressed.
If in millennia every religion ever has been used to crystalize a power hierarchy in humanity (from the clergy to caste systems), maybe there is a reason. And the reason is that religious thinking and mindset inherently enables these hierarchies.
Electricd@lemmybefree.net 4 days ago
‘quite’ is the word
But indeed in the reality it doesn’t go well. Too many interpretations of the same book (www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3At…)