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Find out what you criticise. A religion, or religion as such? Religious communities and organisations? The power exercised by religious organisations or institutions? Religious mores? Behaviour of believers? Religious feelings of persons?
OK... for a few days I was under the false impression that you wanted laws or regulations against hurting people's religious feelings. If we're talking about rules of discussion, I'll try to clarify mine.
Criticising a religion, or religion as such, is out of bounds for me : something I hope I don't do. Religious communities and organisations : I reserve the right to criticise their practices and influence, the way they are organised or funded etc, to the same degree as I would criticize any other constituted body, no more, no less. Religious mores, I reserve the right to criticise, insofar as they impinge on others. Religious feelings of persons are none of my business, and not very interesting to me.
Behaviour of believers, or as I would prefer to call it, religious praxis, is of interest to me, and not exempt from criticism. When religiously-motivated or -justified behaviours are strongly at variance with societal norms, then this will inevitably be a subject for debate. Is it is a legitimate subject for debate? If it has negative effects on people -- outside the religious group, or within it -- then yes.
Random example : in my home country, I remember a controversy concerning Jehovah's Witnesses who refused blood transfusions for their children. It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
Criticising a religion, or religion as such, is out of bounds for me
"When religiously-motivated or -justified behaviours are strongly at variance with societal norms, then this will inevitably be a subject for debate. Is it is a legitimate subject for debate?"
Of course it is. If you criticise the behaviour of a persecuted minority, you must tread carefully though. And you cannot violate their human rights (I know that you don't see bans on headscarves as such, but you will at least concede that your view is controversial, right?) and start a nice unprejudiced talk about their religious praxis at the same time. You will have to decide which you want. With strong Islamophobian movements around you can't have a discourse with Muslims without rejecting the Islamophobian attempts and actively defending the Muslims' rights.
"Random example : in my home country, I remember a controversy concerning Jehovah's Witnesses who refused blood transfusions for their children"
Which is a matter of weighing different, conflicting rights against each other, not a matter of making a minority rightless.
With strong Islamophobian movements around you can't have a discourse with Muslims without rejecting the Islamophobian attempts and actively defending the Muslims' rights.
- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
That cuts both ways: With strong fundamentalist and anti-secular movements around, you cannot have a discourse with secularists without rejecting fundamentalism and defending secular society
You don't happen to claim that there are any fundamentalist and anti-secular movements around whose strength can in any way be compared with the Islamophobian movements all over Europe, do you? Muslims are assaulted, their Mosques are vandalised, and there are wide-spread campaigns for various legislation taking away more of their rights. The latter item gets support from people who should know better, which is my point.
You don't happen to claim that there are any fundamentalist and anti-secular movements around whose strength can in any way be compared with the Islamophobian movements all over Europe, do you?
When the Pope no longer has preaching rights in parliament; when the Russian patriarch no longer peddles partisan propaganda from the pulpit; when the League of Polish Families is no longer represented in parliament; when the Opus Dei no longer runs banks representing a gross asset portfolio comparable to the annual outlays of a small sovereign, then I might begin to take the notion seriously that anti-secularists should be given a free pass in the interest of making common cause against racists pretending to be anti-Islamists.
But until then, I'm taking the view that having a discriminated-against skin color is not a valid excuse for supporting religious privilege.
And I want no fucking violence and harassment, and we are only at the beginning of that. You and Eurogreen are playing with matches and there are explosives all around you.
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