#obviously everyone has the right to critique religion and i'm not saying that we shouldn't

[mahoushojoe]

tbh what i don't like is that a lot of the "hey we shouldn't mock/belittle religious people" stuff was rooted in or began with people defending the religious rights of certain marginalized religious communities (for example, SWANA christians such as Copts who are persecuted by the Muslim majority) but then the argument was co-opted by people belonging to hegemonic religions to mean "people should never criticize hegemonic religion Ever and christianity Always Bad and other religions Always Good and Oppressed" which isn't true, bc the experience of a minority like French Muslims, for example, go through is not comparable to the experience of Sunni Muslims in, say, Saudi Arabia, where Sunni Islam is hegemonical and thus the perpetrator of religious persecution to minorities within that country, so I think in this very sensitive conversation we need to like, separate the two situations. so i think what we should all be doing is instead of making blanket statements like "oh christianity is horrible and terrible and every christian ever is a horrible terrible person" and "(x PERCIEVED nonwhite religion) is so great in comparison to (x) etc etc" we should be analyzing the idea of religious hegemony and the marriage of religion and state, because most religions, including the nonwhite ones that are persecuted in the West, have been a hegemonical religion in some state or other and have been responsible for terrible acts of persecution against minorities. while i think that victims of religious trauma have every right to express their anger at their experience, and this isn't about them btw, i just want to kind of move past blanket statements when it comes to like, genuine discussions of religious power dynamics. its really reductive and also really global north-centric to reduce the whole debate to "christianity bad", and it also kind of erases the very real damage and trauma that many other members of non-christian religions have inflicted on other religious minorities or gay people or women etc etc. i think it would be more constructive and inclusive if we analyzed it from the point of hegemony and power dynamics instead of trying to find flaws in the religions themselves

#obviously everyone has the right to critique religion and i'm not saying that we shouldn't #but like i feel people talk themselves in circles going on and on about how x religion is Inherently Bad when it's more about how #people act when they belong to a strong and populous group that gives them a sense of identity and there's another smaller group that they #can easily subjugate and oppress #ughhh its 5 am and i probably am gonna wake up and be horrified by how badly written this is jfiajrhdjwje #religion #persecution #lgbt rights #hegemony #christianity #islam