I shouldn’t have to explain to my son that other cultures exist, think of the children! /s
The fact that this comment section is full of “removed by mods” but still has so much racist nonsense… this topic really makes the scratched liberals come out of the woodwork.
Or the mods are right winger
racists.Edit for redundancy
Bullshit.
Please report those comments so we can get to them.
Comments section validating my hatred for France.
There are many people in France, you know. Some people accepted black French poets who wrote in French as French poets. If you walk around France you will see people of all races working in all jobs. I don’t know why this burkini thing triggers some of them that much.
This is G *rmany erasure
Both men and women are required to cover their hair in pools?
In most public pools yes. Prevents hair from clogging filters. Or that is the official line.
Yeah, you don’t properly shower before a pool in France normaly. You change into your swiming gear, then shower (all gendered areas) with gear on, then pool. The swimming gear is suppose to keep the filth in, so only tight enough gear is allowed. In Sweden for example it is a bit opposite. Get naked, shower (gender separated areas), put on gear, pool. You have showered and washed your hair out, you are good to go.
So when kids pee in the pool all the pee stays inside their pants I’m sure…
I guess they have not solved that one.
Mandatory underwater heat camera’s it is.
Until you’ve swum in a public pool that requires full body wash and shower, naked, you don’t realise the difference it makes to the chlorine amount required to keep the pool clean. Denmark has explicit instructions about where to wash, pre-soaped single use sponges that must be used, but hardly any chlorine in the pool water.
Humans are filthy, yo. I’d rather everyone cleans properly before I have share pool water with you.
Yeah, the issue here in France is that you absolutely can’t trust people to do the right thing. A lot of them would skirt the rules and not wash properly.
And even then, I’ve been a competition swimmer and am from Denmark and our training slots were mostly in the evening after public access hours. The pools were filthy as fuck. And that’s with the higher hygiene standards here. People are just filthy animals.
I know it was absolutely a thing in the past, my parents talked about it for example, but I’ve never seen all-gender changing rooms in a French swimming pool. Though I’ve seen the obvious signs of the retrofit in a few places, where you can clearly see that it used to be one big room that got separated in two.
I think you’re right that they don’t trust us to properly shower before going into the pool though, because to this day, I still see like ~40% of people barely showering enough to rinse their sweat off. A lot more people are actually showering than when I was a kid though (myself included)
Edit : actually, I’ve been in some pools that were constructed more recently that have mixed changing rooms, but these have individual stalls and the showers are still gendered
TLDR : the showers aren’t all-genders as far as I know. The “changing rooms” sometimes are but in this case it’s just a big room with stalls and lockers so privacy isn’t really an issue.
…here in the states its like a before and after thing. We are allowed to take two showers lol
you don’t shower in France normally
FTFY
Seems they don’t want anyone wearing too much clothing in the pool.
there aren’t a lot of kinds of uh water clothes? ig? Still weird thing to put a rule on.
To be fair more clothes weigh you down and produce more drag and potential for entanglement so it would be fair for the lifeguards to not deal with that.
That is probably the most sensible argument I’ve heard in favor of this ban but I don’t think any single french politician ever used it. Usually it’s some lukewarm argument about secularism, seemingly entirely forgetting the fact that only public servants in service are forbidden from showing any signs of religious affiliation.
What exactly is going on in this? Fumigation?
aaaaah, covid shit, got it
Don’t France have a law where you have to wear skin tight swimwear (regardless of gender) because they see it as being more hygienic as it’s much more likely you aren’t going to walk around in that swimwear and all get changed into it significant for swimming so it’s more likely to be clean or some shit?
Yes, that is what they say. They still chlorinate the shit out of their pools so I guess if they had to account for (gasp) swimming trunks everyone would come out blonde.
Honestly, the Danish (Scandi?) approach of “hey everyone, take an actual shower before getting in” makes more sense and makes a more pleasant pool experience.
That’s how it is in the uk too, you shower before and after going in.
The framing of this suggests that this is only against women, men also have swimwear codes in France. It’s crazy
Mandatory speedo?
Correct, shorts are also banned. The same city tried to change that to but got shot down there too.
Since state and religion are separated, public pools cannot make an exception based on religion. France had fairly strict hygienic rules for public swimming pools, which prohibit loose fitting garments.
I can’t tell if you’re joking or not
I’m not, this has nothing to do with women’s rights
Of course not it’s just Apartheid against Muslims. France tried doing this even for beaches. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/burkini-ban-france-overturned-1.3736823
It’s true. Some people wore surf shorts all day and didn’t change. So… That’s the current situation.
The thing they said about this ridiculous mandatory speedo rule is true. But this here is still all about racism. They could just make an exception. This would not be an issue at all if it weren’t an opportunity for politicians to spew anti-Muslim hate.
Looks like they have em in the USA too
Time to jail this repugnant dress code violator!
We don’t need to go that far. It’s not like he’s wearing a tan suit.
I bet this despicable elitist eats Dijon mustard on a regular basis!
The insane part of this would be if Zohran didn’t wear a suit. The New York Post would be like “MAYOR ATTENDS OFFICIAL EVENT NOT IN A SUIT!!!1!!!11!!!”
I agree that Zohran is not sufficiently naked to be swimming in a public pool. Zohran, shame on you! Take off your clothes!
Come on now, they just wanna see Zohran without his clothes on! Now we can’t blame them for that…
This made me afraid for his shoes, but obv he took them off.
We outright need to get rid of these financially obese people.
Another W for secular society and Womens rights. Stay mad barbarians.
Yeah, forcing an effective ban on Muslim women swimming is a real victory. Wouldn’t want them to think you had respect for them as people or basic human decency, now would you?
/s
Brother, trying to ban things you don’t like doesn’t work. It just makes the world a worse place to live. This isn’t a win, it’s a loss. You accept people as they are and make the world safer for everyone, not fucking ban a bathing suit because you disagree with a religion.
It’s nothing to do with religion and everything to do with French pool hygiene. Atheist men are typically not allowed to wear baggy shorts for example, the only reason I own a few pairs of jammers.
No, it fucking isn’t. The burkini is made out of the same fabrics as all other swimwear. The amount of fabric doesn’t magically make it a hygiene issue. Stop spouting racist nonsense, my guy.
I hope you’re not stupid enough to actually buy the dumbest excuse in world history to enforce Apartheid against Muslims.
You are delusional. This hygiene law is very old. I think it is a weird law but it has nothing to do with Apartheid or discrimination against Muslims. It is just a weird law. If a non muslim woman visits a Muslim country she also needs to dress accordingly. Which is just their law or is that white christian/atheist Apartheid to you?
You should look up when France colonized Algeria (and other African countries). This stuff all goes back quite a while. France also tried banning Burkinis at beaches recently (but failed).
You think these people take swimming hygene seriously?
Colonization and what happened in colonies is a tragedy. That should never have happened. But I don’t think they came up with their pool hygiene law to discriminate against Muslims.
And for the Seine… Atleast they tried and put more than 1 billion euro into getting it cleaned for the Olympics. Before that, there was a ban to swim there.
It happened around laicite so I can imagine that it was used against Christians as well. The laws were also not universally applied until much later around the 80’s.
Maybe in the 1900’s people jumped into the pool with the same pants they wore all day but that certainly isn’t happening these days. Swimwear is specifically put on before going into the pool and people can take showers beforehand. Archaic laws like this have no real reason to exist other than enforcing Apartheid. You can find plenty of other archaic laws like it which aren’t enforced at all
According to a 1910 law, again technically still in place in France, it is illegal to kiss on train platforms.
While it remains in place no formal penalty exists so you should be safe to share a goodbye kiss before catching the train.
The actual solution to the problem is obviously for people to take a shower before entering the pool and to wear clothes for swimming. Not to ban certain types of swimwear.
Why would “muslim” women be singled out here unless there were some other aspect that you are intentionally trying to link to being muslim. Is there some kind of inherent quality of muslim women that require them to wear a particular style of swim garment that non-muslim women don’t wear?
Yeah, their religion you dense hippo. Congrats! You’ve learned that some things are haram. Like women showing their hair to men that aren’t family.
Cool sounds like exactly the kind of thing a secular society should be marking as “haraam,” and passing laws against. Ideally it would be even stronger mandating that “religion” isn’t welcome in a modern society and all markers of that relgion should result in the followers being deported.
Also we should probably be deporting racists like you that associate “muslims” with Islam, along with Jewish Zionists.
You can see how mandating that a woman doesn’t wear a particular garment is a pretty poor example of a “women’s rights win”, right?
Oh god my daily reminder of why I loathe western people opinions.
I mean, you’re on the Europe community, but I’ll bite. What is it in particular that seems to be crushing your cashews?
Why are you acting like you can’t understand what Islamaphobia and racism is and why Euros are especially obnoxious about their subscription to Islamaphobia and racism?
I normally avoid this community now (Euros don’t like it when you act like colonialism happens still), but you seem to recognize colonialism in Britain, so, it’s not like you can’t understand it. Did you mean you literally just wanted some examples of what we, of course, anticipate to be what they are referencing?
Well I didn’t go on a particularly deep dive of ZeroHora’s posting history, so I was mostly just wondering if they were for or against the ban.
I don’t know if that first line is meant to suggest I did do a deep by reading fewer than three of your most recent comments, but you’re saying you genuinely didn’t understand what they were saying irritates them about European (“western”) opinions in the context of this post?
You’re saying you genuinely didn’t understand what they were saying irritates them about European (“western”) opinions in the context of this post?
They didn’t say what irritates them, is my point. Are they annoyed by Islamophobic opinions? Are they annoyed by insufficiently Islamophobic or anti-religion opinions? Are they annoyed by the hypocrisy of the people defending women only when it involves punishing women? Should I just assume it’s the first one based on nothing more than an @lemmy.ml username?
I don’t know if that first line is meant to suggest I did do a deep by reading fewer than three of your most recent comments
It isn’t meant to suggest anything other than that I looked at a couple of pages of comments and then stopped before I found any clues.
The racism in most western opnions even the most “progressive” people seem to have some brainworms with this shit.
I couldn’t find it but there is a amazing quote comparing white supremacy with a black hole, sometimes is not directly observable but you can detect it’s presence in people opinions
To all you fucking reddit atheists
Atheism without class struggle is just white supremacy
New Atheism and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race
I fucking loathe these dipshits
Atheism is simply the lack of a belief in a god.
I’m not sure where you’re getting all this other weird baggage
No, not a god. All gods.
Frans Fanon - A DYING COLONIALISM
We have seen how colonial society, the colonial administration, perceives the veil, and we have sketched the dynamics of the efforts undertaken to fight it as an institution and the resistances developed by the colonized society. At the level of the individual, of the private European, it may be interesting to follow the multiple reactions provoked by the existence of the veil, which reveal the original way in which the Algerian woman manages to be present or absent.
For a European not directly involved in this work of conversion, what reactions are there to be recorded? The dominant attitude appears to us to be a romantic exoticism, strongly tinged with sensuality. And, to begin with, the veil hides a beauty. A revealing reflection-among others of this state of mind was communicated to us by a European visiting Algeria who, in the exercise of his profession (he was a lawyer), had had the opportunity of seeing a few Algerian women without the veil. These men, he said, speaking of the Algerians, are guilty of concealing so many strange beauties. It was his conclusion that a people with a cache of such prizes, of such perfections of nature, owes it to itself to show them, to exhibit them. If worst came to worst, he added, it ought to be possible to force them to do so.
A strand of hair, a bit of forehead, a segment of an “overwhelmingly beautiful” face glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train, may suffice to keep alive and strengthen the European’s persistence in his irrational conviction that the Algerian woman is the queen of all women.
But there is also in the European the crystallization of an aggressiveness, the strain of a kind of violence before the Algerian woman. Unveiling this woman is revealing her beauty; it is baring her secret, breaking her resistance, making her available for adventure. Hiding the face is also disguising a secret; itis also creating a world of mystery, of the hidden. In a confused way, the European experiences his relation with the Algerian woman at a highly complex level. There is in it the will to bring this woman within his reach, to make her a possible object of possession. This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity. She does not yield herself, does not give herself, does not offer herself.
Everything exists in a vacuum it seems…
If by atheism you mean anti-islamism you might have a case. ‘lacking belief in a god is inherently white’ is a fucking wild take.
Their works – Dawkins’s, The God Delusion, Harris’s, The End of Faith, Dennett’s, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and Hitchens’s, God Is Not Great – were all essentially written as a blind reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and all zoomed in on Islam and the Muslim world, demonstrating a remarkable ignorance of both.
Needless to say, none of the four was able to offer any serious historical understanding of this terror act, why it happened, what it meant, or how to prevent similar acts of wanton violence in the future. Nor did they make any intellectually challenging or noteworthy contribution to the millennia-old debate on belief and disbelief in God.
That publishers have chosen to resurrect, today, this 12-year-old Islamophobic backslapping session advertised as a “landmark discussion about modern atheism” is indeed quite telling. With white supremacy currently flourishing in the US and elsewhere, a book on “new atheism” – a pseudo-intellectual movement that has heavily contributed to its rise – would surely sell.
Before proceeding any further, let us be clear: Atheism as such is a perfectly healthy proposition and the world, including the Muslim part of it, has never been devoid of atheists – all the power to them.
Across religions and cultures, there are decent and reasonable atheists, as there are equally decent and reasonable believers, who can and should openly engage in debate about religion and the belief in God without succumbing to hatred and convictions in one’s supremacy. Such open and honest conversations are indeed healthy for any community or nation and should be encouraged.
So who are these four “new atheist” crusaders (yes, they may deny it, but they are indeed very much the product of the white Western Christian crusader tradition)? They are all white older men, who have never embarked on studying Islam, do not speak Arabic – the language of the Qur’an – and certainly have no special insight into any Muslim community on earth. They are, literally, illiterate.
This is actually really complicated because of the way Christian identity is woven into colonialism, white supremacy, and the west overall. I fully agree with you that there’s a sort of new atheism that can and has been a deadly pipeline to hate and Islamophobia, but also, the growth in the population of unbelievers especially in the United States and Europe is imo a positive trend to breaking so many people free from delusions that keeps them living in a separate reality and creates a different flavor of Islamophobia alongside other bigotries against the LGBTQ+ community and many other groups.
Not an easy subject to unpack
If I’m trying to make a point with a single bolded sentence I would maybe choose my words carefully and not use the term for a broad group if I’m talking about a specific subset. They didn’t say ‘the new atheism movement’ they said ‘atheism’.
This is about how Atheism can (and has) be used for colonialism, not that it necessarily follows or must be an integral part of it.
Ironically the New Atheist movement primarily just recycles crusader-age Christian propaganda
If I was ignorant on how fascism have been again entrenching itself in western society over the last 20 years, on how and through which pipelines ideologies were spread I would at least stay silent instead of trying to pull out semantics :v
So I guess by your logic it’s fair to say Islam is terroristic. Obviously distinguishing between the broader Islamic community and boko haram or al qaeda is just semantics.
Yeah surely broader islamic community congregated in millions on social media and forums between 2006 and 2016, mainly in western countries, mainly appealing to young disenfranchised men. To don’t know the context, you either got on to the internet in 2020’s or somehow, for 20 fucking years did not encounter an atheist from this batch, either irl or online. Or you’re deliberately bullshitting.
Your false dichotomy of every atheist is either a white supremacist or a communist is still complete batshit even if some fraction of new atheists fell into the far right pipeline.
They are, literally, illiterate.
That’s not what illiterate means. If that was the case, every person on Earth who doesn’t speak Arabic and study Islam would be illiterate… which is of course completely ridiculous, and bigoted, for that matter.
It’s like becoming a “China critic” without speaking any Chinese or having any concept of Chinese culture but instead repeating racist stereotypes about Chinese people you saw on Fox News.
I don’t speak Chinese, know very little about Chinese culture or Chinese history. Am I therefore banned from criticizing the well documented and ongoing violations of human rights in China? The treatment of Uighurs, the death penalty, the lack of democracy, the suppression of women’s rights?
I don’t speak Chinese, know very little about Chinese culture or Chinese history.
Now imagine you deleted that part of your comment and replaced it by saying you’re an expert on China and Chinese human rights.
Imagine I did, would that give more or less credibility to my disdain of how the Chinese government is behaving in regards to these issues?
Yes, if you don’t know what you talking about shut the fuck up, free speech is not for telling the entire world how dumb you are.
Thanks for the respectful response. Always nice to talk to someone who knows how to behave themselves and treat strangers well.
To all you fucking reddit atheists. Atheism without class struggle is just white supremacy
To you:
No, it’s not, you are silly
The audacity of Facebook believers like yourself never ceases to amaze me.
I would call you illiterate but then I risk another paragraph of you arguing that you know better than english dictionary
Yes, we all know how much you despise paragraphs, it’s not your fault, really. You never had a chance.
I’m happy that you can manage full sentences from time to time, well done.
You probable know about elevatorgate already, but Dawkins’ racism was pretty apparent even then when he picked some cultural practices that are widely shunned and extrapolated them to billions of people. This was his comment under the infamous video.
Dawkins, racism
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and … yawn … don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so …
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
I could interpret this in the following ways:
- a genuine but poorly articulated curiousness
- a mockery by a vain person that took an idea, never examined it beyond surface glances and then takes pride in their smug ignorance
Which way then?
Yeah you hear that all of you non white athiests! You just secretly hate yourself according to this idiot.
Everyone knows only white people experience class conflict /s
Maybe you should leave the west for a bit.
west is very welcome to leave and can do it whenever it pleases, yet for some reason it chooses not to… peculiar isn’t it?
Look how far Christianity is spread across the world. That was white supremacy. (You can put all Abrahamic religions in this box)
Look how far Christianity is spread across the world. That was white supremacy.
Genuinely curious what else you think it was? Like maybe not during the time of Constantine but anything done during and after Columbus’ time definitely is
I said it was.
Well, most sects of christianity were and are tools of colonialism but oppressed peoples tend to develop them into various flavors of liberation theology. islam has it’s own spin on them, with only judaism kinda sticking out, mainly due to amerikkkan project in the middle east (but out of all three I’m the least knowledgeable on judaism)
What has class struggle got to do with atheism?? Atheism: a-theism, as in “not theist”, without religion. Class and race have nothing to do with it.
Are you trying to tell me, with a straight fucking face, that material conditions and socioeconomic position of an individual doesn’t affect whether they become religious or not? And that the sudden change of their status will not affect their worldview, both present and down the line?
From my very limited understanding, this comes down to the difference in how France treats religion. In the US we have a “freedom of religion” where people are supposed to be allowed to practice whatever religion they want. In France they have a “freedom from religion” where people’s religion are not supposed to br demonstrated or encroach on others. So the mentality becomes you can go to the pool, but you can’t wear that religious garment.
If Iran said they were providing “freedom from Atheism” everyone would realize how incredibly stupid this sounds
That would be pretty stupid, agreed.
Atheism isn’t oppressing and brain washing people.
These laws exist for colonialist purposes so you couldn’t be more wrong.
I could be actually wrong instead of made up wrong.
This, and it doesn’t have any symbols or practices associated with it in the first place, so what would one even ban? Atheism isn’t a religion, it’s the lack thereof.
Marxism does not mean blanket hostility towards religion in all situations
That is true and isn’t what I would support, but the comment above wasn’t blanket hostility, not in this context anyway. Pointing out the often prevalent cases of religion being used as a tool of oppression and that it’s all based on indoctrination is absolutely valid when discussing the motivation for France’s measures. You can of course disagree with it and with the measures discussed here, independently of each other even, but if this is already “blanket hostility” to some people, they should stop viewing religions through rose-colored glasses. I mean, do you genuinely believe that religions are NOT used for this purpose at all? I have a hard time believing that any actual Marxist would see religions uncritically, even with the understanding of them being the way they are as the result of material conditions, and even less so as Marxists-Leninists if one has actually read Lenin’s “Socialism and Religion”.
And even if you were to consider it blanket hostility, why would this be worthy of a ban and comment removal instead of simply engaging with the comment in an intellectually honest way and possibly providing the commenter a different perspective?
You do realize that atheism is an ideology like any other, prone to the same manipulations?
And that the issue taken here is weaponisation of said atheism by bourgeoise, wielded by rabid libs against whomever empire deems an enemy, uncritically due to internalized chauvinism?
And that you can’t argue that republic “kill all algerians” of france is suddenly having safety and prosperity of muslim women in mind, let alone that they’e realizing whatever piss dreams of seculairity they have?
Atheists can of course also be manipulated, but not based on their atheism. There’s no organisation behind atheism, there are no specific set of beliefs that you could be indoctrinated with, etc.
I know what the issue is and as I said in another comment, I also disagree with it. But that doesn’t make the statement by the commenter above wrong.
It seems like religion really is the opiate of the masses…
Marx did not consider illterates who conviced themselves they could read…
Have you ever seen “atheist” and “sceptic” community and their talking heads?
Umm so what atheist garmets would they be banning in this case exactly?
Mandatory hair coverings for women “to protect them against the weather outside.”
Nowhere is any kind of hair covering mandatory because of atheism, nor to protect for the weather outside which wouldn’t be because of atheism in any case.
No there’s mandatory hair-uncoverings. In France. Because of “Atheism” as a shield for colonialism.
I’m just pointing out that Iran wouldn’t ban atheism, it would ban every other religion except its own. Banning atheism doesn’t make sense in a way, it would mean forcing everyone to have a religion. Like the state would demand you wear religious symbols and pray once a day? Doesn’t matter which tho, as long as you have at least one religion.
I think these kinds of laws (though not this one) is more about setting boundaries and keeping a proper separation than outright banning.
That being said, I see the headscarf and bikini as a cultural symbol more than a religious one. I agree this law is more about plain old xenophobia.
I think a better example would be the uproar there would be if the kippa was banned in public or at the pool.
Tbh though, I’m very anti religion and I’m for banning the lot of it in public (crosses, kippas, etc), just not the headscarf because there’s nothing actually religious about it imo. The burka is a bit intense and strikes me as clear oppression of women, but I don’t see anything wrong with the burkini really.
By banning all religions the defacto position would be Atheism which would make it a competing “religion”. That would make it no different than forcing your own ideology on others in the same way of religions doing forced conversions.
Iran has crosses and kippa’s by the way.
Even Stalin’s crackdown of religion is often defended from the angle of destroying the power of the Church. But religious institutions already don’t hold much significant power these days so you’d just be destroying people’s cultures.
Except that’s not how this work. What you described is specifically for representatives of the state (the french nation does not have a religion and it’s representatives should not show theirs either) the citizens are free to do whatever they want and be as visibly religious as they want. Now, theright (including wauquiez) have a problem with Muslims having the same rights as the others but that’s another story
Congratulations on creating a secular theocracy, Quebec and France. Really valuable contribution.
I mean, I would like to live in a world without religion. Sounds a whole lot better than our current Christo Fascism.
When you create your utopia that ruthlessly purges all religion, do not be surprised when the definition of “religion” expands to politically unpopular things that have no relation at all to faith. Right wingers already call being pro-LGBT “a cult” or “a religion.”
“I want secularism but I still want overbearing authority figures telling people what to wear” is the silliest version of secularism. I want secularism but not the good parts, basically.
I agree that these measures are a bit over the top, but I don’t really get your points.
Which good parts of secularism do you think are missing here?
And “secular theocracy” is an oxymoron. Theocracies require the belief in at least one deity as a supreme ruling authority to guide the state, which is not the case at all here, completely the opposite even. So what makes you think that it’s a “secular theocracy”?
Which good parts of secularism do you think are missing here?
The part where you have enough social liberty that you don’t have government officials telling you how to dress.
And “secular theocracy” is an oxymoron. Theocracies require the belief in at least one deity as a supreme ruling authority to guide the state, which is not the case at all here, completely the opposite even. So what makes you think that it’s a “secular theocracy”?
Putting aside that ‘secular theocracy’ is wordplay making fun of their attempts to secularize in such a way that they take on features of a theocracy, such as dress codes. It’s absolutely not an oxymoron. You could presumably have a Buddhist theocracy without any sort of belief in a supreme ruling deity.
Buddhism is not a theology?
This is a concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheistic_religion
Can and in fact have!
The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.
The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation–including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation–were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.”[21] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.[22]
The whole Parenti essay is fascinating https://redsails.org/friendly-feudalism/
The part where you have enough social liberty that you don’t have government officials telling you how to dress.
That would be good indeed, but isn’t really an aspect of secularism.
‘secular theocracy’ is wordplay making fun of their attempts to secularize in such a way that they take on features of a theocracy, such as dress codes.
Fair point.
You could presumably have a Buddhist theocracy without any sort of belief in a supreme ruling deity.
I think that wouldn’t make it a theocracy, as it’s more of a philosophy or way of life rather than a belief in a higher being that has a strict set of rules that a state could enforce. But I don’t really know that much about buddhism, so I might be wrong.
That would be good indeed, but isn’t really an aspect of secularism.
I would say it’s an aspect of secularism when done in a sane way.
I think that wouldn’t make it a theocracy, as it’s more of a philosophy or way of life rather than a belief in a higher being that has a strict set of rules that a state could enforce. But I don’t really know that much about buddhism, so I might be wrong.
Well, I would say that ultimately all theocracies are that. In my view there aren’t any deities, so all theocracies which claim to base their legitimacy on a supreme being are, well, wrong. They are really enforcers of cultural norms that just happen to have a belief in a particular deity as one of those norms.
Yeah, I agree with you there. This is a bit of a weird way to go about what they’re trying to do.
Don’t know about Quebec. But the “freedom from religion” French attitude is just being weaponised against Muslims at the moment. That Wauquiez is very close to far right.
In 2019 Quebec passed a law prohibiting public workers who are in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. The law violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly rights around freedom of religion and expression. But there’s a fancy little mechanism called the “notwithstanding clause” that allows you to pass unconditional laws under some circumstances, which Quebec invoked and allowed the law to pass and withstand court challenges.
Seriously. Do they ban Catholic priests, monks, and nuns from wearing their religious attire? Or, let me guess, is there some broad exemption for “tradition” or some such bullshit?
The ban is effective only for civil employees at work and such. So depending on where you live you can even see hijabs, priests in cassoks, and topless ladies suntanning at the same city park.
Also kids in school IIRC. Did you forget about that whole shitshow where a girl got in trouble for wearing some dress (from a fast fashion brand that was extremely popular with girls her age) because someone declared it was a burqa… then they were more or less forced to recognize that her skin color was the issue since hundreds of white french girls wore that dress to school with no issues.
The amount of Reddit Atheists showing up here who would wish China was actually putting Uyghur Muslims in extermination camps is off the charts.
In my view, one isn’t really an atheist if they are a liberal (or conservative, but I repeat myself) as it is effectively another religion, with Capital as it’s “god”, it is kind of like those liberals that call themselves “socialist” and support controlled opposition, compatible “leftist”, and friend of epstein, bernie sanders.
Edit: for some reason I can’t see the rest of the comments while logged in, so I’ll put it here: I think a more accurate and inclusive phrase would be “freedom of religion or atheism”, as it would be shitty if one had to declare some religion or another without just “none” as an option.
If I said that in my view, one isn’t really an atheist if they are a communist as it is effectively another religion with Historical Materialism as it’s “god”, you’d probably consider that a pretty brain-dead take.
Can we leave the no true Scotsman fallacies to the religion defenders, please?
The problem with that is that it is a false equivalence, Dialectical and Historical Materialism is a part of the Socialist Scientific method, where as Liberalism is not Scientific or based on it, using those who are incorrectly treating Marxism Leninism as dogma to argue that it is a religion is the same as pointing to Scientologists pseudo-science cult as proving that Science is a religion. The biggest difference between a religion and a science, such as Marxism Leninism, is one is at odds with reality and the other explains it and has been proven through experimentation (putting Theory into Practice and refining the Theory based on the results in MLs case).
I see your point, but it is important to realise that humans in general are creatures of belief. A person can make claim to have no beliefs, but it only takes a moment of observation to see through and identify what a person revolves their lives around.
Secular states, as I’ve noticed, are prone to falling into identity cults, whether it be Nazi Germany, North Korea or even modern day America, just to name a few.
The underlying problem to me, isn’t religion but cultism itself and I identify cultism as an obsession to the point of causing harm to oneself and others.
Cults can exist in every religion but not every cult has a religion.
We live in an age of material cults, or profit cults as I call them. They won’t stop their behaviour even when the graph rising doesn’t make any sense nor as their companies fall apart because that’s where their instinctive obsession lies.
For Lukács, liberalism is the more dangerous ideology because it is hypocritical: it promises emancipation while delivering exploitation. But calling it a “religion” is analytically sloppy. Religion, for Marx, is the “sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world.” Liberalism offers no such sigh; it offers a rationalization of the heartless world.
I admit it may be sloppy, it is something my mind came up with long before I ever started reading Marxist Leninist Theory. I am almost certainly also biased on the topic as a result of childhood trauma that screwed me over for life. (I’ve made massive progress on overcoming it with help from my Therapist, but it isn’t fully resolved.)
Sorry to hear that. I hope you will feel better as time goes by.
I agree, that liberalism is more dangerous than religion, but for a different reason: liberalism is by definition pro-capitalist. Religious institutions are only actually almost always pro-capitalist in our time, but they don’t need to be this way for ever and some have been revolutionary, but were quickly crushed or dismantled, because of their attachment to hegemonic religious hierarchy (liberation theology in Brazil).
Historical materialism tells us, that offering a rationalization of existing power structures is the historic reason religious institution were allowed to exist and to grow and to incorporate into state structures. It’s their whole thing. Those that tended to be counter hegemonic were destroyed.
Also, most organized religious institutions are deeply liberal: pro-capitalist, reformist at best, tending towards fascism at worst. The big weakness of the Islamic political movements like in Iran, Lebanon, India and Pakistan is their liberalism and idealism that continuously causes them to make mistakes in judgement and seek alliances with western imperialism. They are still anti-imperialist because they represent national capitalist interests. Those capitalists are the ones who lead the religious political movements. They couldn’t do that without drawing power from unorganized proletarian interests, but those tend to be divided and they mostly fail at uniting the proletariat across concessional lines. Yes, it’s a fight for national liberation (which is good), but not a national front with organized communist forces, because those aren’t allowed / are to weak to organize at scale.
Especially western religious communists in the imperial core have a duty to try and build independent institutions of worship that are truly revolutionary, rather than rest on the laurels of the Islamic revolution, that they did nothing to contribute to. The Catholic Church, the protestant and evangelical mega churches, those are powerful and influential institutions that are entirely in reactionary hands. Western comrades who are religious need to demonstrate their ability to build alternative institutions or capture the current ones or, if they fail to do so, reject any participation in organized religion (which does not mean become atheist).
Unfortunately, most organized religions are evil. Exceptions are very rare and include Liberation Theology in Latin America in 1960s and Islamic socialism from 1930s to 1990s.
There was also a progressive religious movement in Vietnam, though maybe not revolutionary. In medieval times, some of the hussites and later, during the reformation the movement around Thomas Müntzer was revolutionary. During the Arab spring, there were Islamic anarchist currents. The original historic movement around figures like John the Baptist, Jesus and others was anti Roman occupation, anti taxation (that benefited only a tiny urban minority) and anti collaboration. But they didn’t reject the main contradictions of their time: slavery and tribalism. It remained a movement for only Jewish, free men. Slaves and non-jews were excluded on racist, religious and conservative grounds, thus they couldn’t build a large enough base and were crushed.
Great, this answers the question:
What stupid thing will people fight over next?
Need to hear the arguments on boths sides iterated 1000 different ways to truly understand the issue.
At least it will give trans a break.
This perfectly divisive issue, brought to you by people with too much time and distributed by your friendly oligarch.
Killlllllll meeee
So they, like. Passed a law saying women can wear whatever they feel comfortable in while swimming. And then, people got mad that women were wearing burkinis, so they de-funded the city until they banned them?
I mean, I see big dudes that wear long sleeve shirts into the pool to hide their man-boobs. They could also be doing it to limit sun exposure, which seems reasonable. I don’t judge. I figure these burkinis are kinda like that? Like, as long as nobodies wearing so much clothing that it becomes a drowning risk… What’s the BFD?
According to this site; they established these rules of only wearing tighter fitting swimwear because then people don’t wear them out and about, so they stay cleaner, thus don’t introduce as much dirt into the pool. (Makes sense since my public pool growing up wanted us to shower in the gym showers immediately prior to getting in so… I guess this is a valid concern at most pools)
However, they say that when they changed the rules to allow for burkinis, it was done as a religious exemption. So now the court says that changing the rules just for one random religion goes against the spirit of French law, so they changed it back.
I mean, I’m all for not giving a fuck about random religions and their weird draconian rules, but… Couldn’t they just have them shower at the pool prior to swimming? And think of all the poor fat men that desperately want to hide their shame 😞
Couldn’t they just have them shower at the pool prior to swimming?
The French right now
Sometimes you just need an ignorant American to explain things 🙂
