Byron wrote:Blackadder wrote:The face veil is not a part of the Muslim religion. It is entirely a cultural more, followed by a narrow segment of Arabian peninsula rednecks, who are aped by some of the more fuckwitted Muslims from other parts of the world. It is perfectly reasonable to ban it in non Muslim countries. If they don't like it, they can fuck off to a country where it is accepted.
For many Muslims, it is part of their religion. It's not the courts' job to settle theological disputes, merely to protect freedom of religion, subject to restriction where a compelling justification can be shown. None was shown by Strasbourg in their nebulous community cohesion argument against veiling.
I detest the patriarchal thinking behind the veil, but tolerance for things you approve of is worthless. Outside a few narrow exceptions, already noted, a ban's unjustified. Veiling, freely chosen, causes no-one direct harm. It's a decision for the believer and the believer alone.
Freedom of religion is what protects atheism. If it's undermined here, it can be undermined there. Careful what you impose on others: it can be used as a precedent against you.
True. But the truly secular state is the only type of state that will enshrine protections
for religion and
from religion. Religions make assumptions about the world, and how we should live in it. We ALL make decisions about the world and how to live in it, how to get on with people. We are a social species and so we need to know how to live together well.
So everyone's freedom has to be compromised, religious and non-religious alike. There should be no special privileges or authorities. So to protect what freedom we can have, we have to know, and mutually decide, which freedoms are most most compatible with social harmony and maximising individual freedoms without unnecessarily compromising the freedom of groups and individuals.
Of course, there are many religious people who see the value of true secularism, just as there are atheists and anti-religionists who want to restrict religious freedom beyond the necessary minimum.
Blasphemy laws are undeniably bigoted. The dominant religion will find every other religion [or indeed sect] inferior to its own [at best] or it may reward dissidents of religion X with prison or death]. So we can use the general rule: "When religion claims special privilege, it can be a very bad thing".
So using special privilege as a guide, we can ask questions like : "Is it a security threat to allow some religious [or any other] special privildge to be exempted from an identity check or whatever? The answer clearly has to be no. But it is not picking on Islam or whatever. Out of the billion or so Muslims, there are a handful that going around setting bombs off in public places or whatever. But everyone [except the terrorist] gets a payoff. Because bombs kill everyone, Muslims or not, veiled or not. true, this may mean a veiled person has to, under special circumstances, remove a veil or provide an ID, but that is just bad luck.
So suppose a person wants to believe that males are superior? Ok, I think that is warped. But OK. Now what happens if this male wants to enact on those beliefs [religious cultural or whatever], then that is a different question. Does the woman genuinely want to submit to wearing the veil? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If someone is brainwashed by religion from birth the issue of "informed consent" can be highly problematic.
And this is problem for all religionists, but especially orthodox ones that hold some tenets of their religion to be absolute, so there will always be potential conflict between such people and the wider community, and especially against a secular state, which holds that special privilege means that only the cool kids get a fair deal.
So what about other religio-cultural shit like circumcising kids [male and female]. Again, the issue is informed consent. How can a baby or small child be giving informed consent? An adult MAYBE?
Societies have to work all this shit though. UFO freaks don't get special privileged for their woo, so why should religion or "culture" have special privileged
TO ENACT their woo. Cookie beliefs [evidence/reason free] are not the only problem. As Matt Dillahunty remarked he worried about some of the thinking processes of believers, not just what they believe. So in that sense, cookie thinking is a worry. Not all the time. people can harbour cookie beliefs and not act on them. But often they do, and they harm others, or reduce the freedoms of others, as a consequence of their beliefs. Of course, religions are not the only problem. Ideologies, dogmatically held, can produce pretty much the same toxic results in society and against people.
Is there a perfect common ground? Probably not. Unless all people grasp subscribe to the idea that special privilege is wrong wherever it is found, and should be destroyed.
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