Sections missing
Sep. 10th, 2007 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo I'm reading a bit of meta now via metafandom, and it's about racism and being Jewish. And it made me think about religion. There's a word for being anti-Jew and there's a word for being racist but is there a word for religious discrimination that includes lots of religions?
Sometimes in textbooks there's a bit on religion mixed in with the bits on race, or the bits on... whatsit, colonialism? Orientalism? That going to far away places and looking down your nose at them thing.
But a lot more often there's just unthinking all-Christians-here woven into the notes. I mean there were notes in the back of a play from last year that explained what 'Buddhism' was, because clearly this needed explaining, but assumed everyone knew Christianity and only needed Pope Joan explained, not the general Pope concept. And it was just a *facepalm* moment, because I don't know much about Buddhism but I know there's a bunch of different strands and it all gets very complicated. Like Christianity gets complicated, in all those different varieties. But the book assumed 'Buddhism' as some odd monolithic Other that needed explaining, and Christianity as something that only needed notes on the unusual bits. And it happens over and over, notes will just casually refer to some Bible story or other, and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of good Christians who aren't that up on their Bible. I know mostly bits of Bible as turn up in horror stories, Lazarus, Cain and Abel, that lot. Still more than some as might turn up in church and not feel like it was foreign territory.
Sometimes race and religion are all tangled together. Sometimes the perception that they are is part of the problem. Assuming that a certain color skin makes a muslim is a knot in the big problem that is figuring islam means terrorism and being all grrr at a whole religion. I'm not real clear on the history of, well, *any* religion, especially the ones that root back in different bits of geography than I've studied up on. I think I know more about Vikings than Islam. Which could be considered a bit *facepalm* I'll admit. But I'm pretty sure that, in general, faith and race are different strands, and you can't tell what someone believes by looking at them, unless they happen to have it written on their shirt. Or, you know, with the appropriate symbols somewhere about them. Except that gets complicated, because how many people wearing a yinyang pendant actually hold religious beliefs about it? And I wear an Ankh quite often, and a Dagger print waistcoat, and there have been times mum has approved of this for the specific reason they can pass as crosses and not get questioned. So symbols is quite complex.
But there's whole sections of ... should-be-an-ism, sections of prejudice with jokes and judgements and nasty misunderstandings, that are all about religion and not about skin or ancestors or geography.
I mean, my mum made satanist jokes for years before we actually communicated long enough she grasped that actually we believe a whole bunch of the same things, I just don't think Jesus was any more the son of god than the rest of us. Also, if I'm wrong about that, he talks like he's a reasonable enough man to forgive an honest error and judge on that 'by their fruits you will know them' thing he said in that book. That's a pretty good rule; seems to me it means judge by results. Or there's "Be excellent to each other". Living by that one works out nicer.
The fact that I hold both rules to be about equal weight and authority is pretty much where me and mum part company.
But anyways, there's lots of bad things been done in the name of religion, or done to people on account of their alleged religion, and that's bad ism right there. And there's lots of stereotypical portrayals of lots of religions, as per usual with isms. And there's lots of hidden assumptions woven in about 'us' and 'them' by some group as thinks it's dominant, and again we have ism.
Which ism is that?
Me, I like the Chaos Magic books. Different points for different religions, see which point works here. Lots of different points of view and finding the value in them. Sounds cool to me. But I am aware it sounds many kinds of wrong to many of those different bits that get studied. I mean, if you've got some dude saying he's *the* way, then having someone else say he's *a* way isn't going to sound like good guy talk, you know? So I can see the problem. But even so, I still think looking at possible solutions works a bit better than not even looking past the first one.
Monotheism seems weirder to me than monogamy. I mean, at least with monogamy you're allowed to acknowledge that other hotties are real.
Okays, is quite late and sleepy here, and I'm not sure I'm making any sense whatsoever, so I'll post this and go bed.
PS: Am not saying XYZ is not a race. People can name themselves. They say they're a race, fair enough. People know better from the inside.
Race is weird. It's like saying rainbow and making stripes. Rainbows are secretly not stripes, you know, you can't find the edges of the lines. People are like that, all smooshed together around the edges.
Except then they try and make lines, and put people on different sides of them, and mostly around then things get everso complicated and my head gets desky. Sorry.
Sometimes in textbooks there's a bit on religion mixed in with the bits on race, or the bits on... whatsit, colonialism? Orientalism? That going to far away places and looking down your nose at them thing.
But a lot more often there's just unthinking all-Christians-here woven into the notes. I mean there were notes in the back of a play from last year that explained what 'Buddhism' was, because clearly this needed explaining, but assumed everyone knew Christianity and only needed Pope Joan explained, not the general Pope concept. And it was just a *facepalm* moment, because I don't know much about Buddhism but I know there's a bunch of different strands and it all gets very complicated. Like Christianity gets complicated, in all those different varieties. But the book assumed 'Buddhism' as some odd monolithic Other that needed explaining, and Christianity as something that only needed notes on the unusual bits. And it happens over and over, notes will just casually refer to some Bible story or other, and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of good Christians who aren't that up on their Bible. I know mostly bits of Bible as turn up in horror stories, Lazarus, Cain and Abel, that lot. Still more than some as might turn up in church and not feel like it was foreign territory.
Sometimes race and religion are all tangled together. Sometimes the perception that they are is part of the problem. Assuming that a certain color skin makes a muslim is a knot in the big problem that is figuring islam means terrorism and being all grrr at a whole religion. I'm not real clear on the history of, well, *any* religion, especially the ones that root back in different bits of geography than I've studied up on. I think I know more about Vikings than Islam. Which could be considered a bit *facepalm* I'll admit. But I'm pretty sure that, in general, faith and race are different strands, and you can't tell what someone believes by looking at them, unless they happen to have it written on their shirt. Or, you know, with the appropriate symbols somewhere about them. Except that gets complicated, because how many people wearing a yinyang pendant actually hold religious beliefs about it? And I wear an Ankh quite often, and a Dagger print waistcoat, and there have been times mum has approved of this for the specific reason they can pass as crosses and not get questioned. So symbols is quite complex.
But there's whole sections of ... should-be-an-ism, sections of prejudice with jokes and judgements and nasty misunderstandings, that are all about religion and not about skin or ancestors or geography.
I mean, my mum made satanist jokes for years before we actually communicated long enough she grasped that actually we believe a whole bunch of the same things, I just don't think Jesus was any more the son of god than the rest of us. Also, if I'm wrong about that, he talks like he's a reasonable enough man to forgive an honest error and judge on that 'by their fruits you will know them' thing he said in that book. That's a pretty good rule; seems to me it means judge by results. Or there's "Be excellent to each other". Living by that one works out nicer.
The fact that I hold both rules to be about equal weight and authority is pretty much where me and mum part company.
But anyways, there's lots of bad things been done in the name of religion, or done to people on account of their alleged religion, and that's bad ism right there. And there's lots of stereotypical portrayals of lots of religions, as per usual with isms. And there's lots of hidden assumptions woven in about 'us' and 'them' by some group as thinks it's dominant, and again we have ism.
Which ism is that?
Me, I like the Chaos Magic books. Different points for different religions, see which point works here. Lots of different points of view and finding the value in them. Sounds cool to me. But I am aware it sounds many kinds of wrong to many of those different bits that get studied. I mean, if you've got some dude saying he's *the* way, then having someone else say he's *a* way isn't going to sound like good guy talk, you know? So I can see the problem. But even so, I still think looking at possible solutions works a bit better than not even looking past the first one.
Monotheism seems weirder to me than monogamy. I mean, at least with monogamy you're allowed to acknowledge that other hotties are real.
Okays, is quite late and sleepy here, and I'm not sure I'm making any sense whatsoever, so I'll post this and go bed.
PS: Am not saying XYZ is not a race. People can name themselves. They say they're a race, fair enough. People know better from the inside.
Race is weird. It's like saying rainbow and making stripes. Rainbows are secretly not stripes, you know, you can't find the edges of the lines. People are like that, all smooshed together around the edges.
Except then they try and make lines, and put people on different sides of them, and mostly around then things get everso complicated and my head gets desky. Sorry.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 04:51 am (UTC)There's a discussion on, "Jewish: race/ethnicity, religion, nationality, or what". Don't know if you have an opinion on that.
Me, I like the Chaos Magic books.
*nods pretty bigly*
Monotheism seems weirder to me than monogamy. I mean, at least with monogamy you're allowed to acknowledge that other hotties are real.
I love this line. It should be hugged at night. And then maybe put on an icon or something that can be circulated.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 07:44 am (UTC)and icon quote would be neat :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 08:00 am (UTC)And, a) is not that simple and b) sometimes people can't really make an opinion on a large wide definition that should go in their 'self'... But that's a whole other... never mind.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-11 02:47 pm (UTC)*blinks*
that's... a lot of Stuff.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 02:15 am (UTC)*cheerful*
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 03:56 pm (UTC)I think the problem comes when a given ideology has massive intersectionality with some issue--so that anti-papism in the United States was used to oppress Italians and the Irish, anti-Semitism works in much the same way, etc. But I'm not sure that being, say, anti-Scientology functions much the same way, and being against all religions seems to erase the relevant intersectionality.
Now I myself am pretty explicitly religious; I use my Discordian Holy Name as my pseudonym and I talk about my Christianity a lot in my journal, sometimes under flock. But I'm not convinced that being anti-all-religions is a form of injustice, any more than being anti-Republican or anti-Tory would be.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 04:11 pm (UTC)But
there's behaviour that is nothing to do with a true and accurate understanding of a different set of ideas and everything to do with a stereotype based on misunderstandings, and that isn't about disagreeing with ideology, it's about aiming prejudice at some group of people.
Also, we study like marxism and it's about 'look! capitalist ideology!' and pointing out lurky invisible stuff
and it irritates me when christianity is lurky and invisible
and I feel like pointing at it sometimes
religion is an ideology but religious people are a social group and some groups get stomped on. groups getting stomped on is of the bad.
... my thinking is trying to adjust to you pointing out this now obvious comment though, so thanks.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 04:42 pm (UTC)Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say, acknowledging the ways that anti-religiousness can be a vector for/of social injustice, but summed up much more neatly and poetically and forcefully. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 07:02 pm (UTC)I call it faithism. Which maybe isn't entirely accurate, because not all religions have "faith" as most people understand it, but at least it's easy to attach to the meaning.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 09:39 am (UTC)Most people I meet who are biased against religions in general, or even just the ones they see as bigoted and misguided, don't have a problem with faith. The problem they have is with organised religion or the concept of organised religion.
I propose doctrinism, though I am aware that that is equally problematic, just for different reasons. Organised religionism would work, but it's a bit of a mouthful.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 02:15 pm (UTC)Most people don't have a problem with race... some people just don't want some races to have the same rights or live in the same places they do. We call that "racism."
"Faithism" wouldn't be the disliking of religions (or "faiths"), but the belief that some faiths deserve more rights than others. And that, I see breaking down on religious lines, not on organization/doctrinal lines.
I know a lot of neopagans who object to "organized religion" to such an extent that they refuse to get involved with any group with a set of bylaws, and think that if the same three people run a meeting for two months, it's "too dogmatic." But those aren't the ones trying to insist that politicians say "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays," or object to their children learning about the history of Egypt because it involves an awareness of non-Christian religions, or insisting that nativity scenes are fine for public venues but Hannakuh and Kwanzaa ornaments should be hidden away. They aren't the ones insisting that "in God we trust" is part of America's foundations. They aren't the ones insisting that town meetings be opened with a prayer, and forbidding non Judeo-Christian ministers from offering that prayer.
While I'm often annoyed at the anti-organized-religion crowd, they aren't the ones trying to strip away my civil rights because of my religion.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 09:46 pm (UTC)I really just want to spray paint this line on buildings and walls and, you know, people. *coughcampuspreacherscough*
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:30 pm (UTC)spraypaint takes ages, try stickersvandalism would be wrong
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 07:09 am (UTC)It's like spray-paint, but on the internet! :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 02:38 am (UTC)I think part of it is that australian culture is both more secular and less jewish ie we have four times as many muslims as jews(**). I get the feeling it's a lot easier to be a nonchristian here, so intolerance is more about culture and race (unless you're muslim, when it's all three), and regardless any religious intolerance is primarily aimed at the larger groups ie muslims and we atheists. We do have antisemitism here, but it seems about the perceived money and power jews have.
It makes it hard for me to understand the american jewish experience (or even the american atheist experience, they seem a pretty bitter lot)
All in all I think a lot of this stems from ...christian-normativity *makes up word* From my own self centered perspective I've noticed more atheist characters on (american) tv, though they are generally the stereotypical misanthrope with no sustaining philosophical/ethical system. But apart from Lisa Simpson and the "wiccans" on Buffy I can't think of many characters who aren't christian, jewish, or non-religious. There's that token muslim guy on...oh I forget the show now, it was that bad :)
Sorry, this is a rambly and off-topic!
(*)the men tend to be ambivalent about religion :)
(**)Looking it up:
Aus: 66% christian, 15% nonreligious, 0.4% jewish, 4.5% other religions
US: 88% christian, 8.4% no religion, 1.8% jewish, 1.7% other religions. Just a slight difference :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:51 am (UTC)So, I don't really have any experience with anti-semitism, or anything Jewish, other then watching television and the death camp I visited in Austria.
So it's difficult for me to form any type of opinion on a subject I know very little about (and I suspect most Australian know very little either).
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 04:30 am (UTC)By chance I spent a week in a jewish uni college in Sydney (organised by someone else who didn't know I was part jewish but just though it looked nice, which it was) There's a fairly vibrant jewish community there, and spending that time hanging out with them was very eye opening to this whole subculture I didn't know really existed over here, as well as giving me a feeling for what it's like to keep kosher and a weird nostalgia for the life my family could be leading but doesn't. I've also met quite a few members of the jewish community in Perth through local fandom (which I know much less about, since I only ever see them in non-jewish settings), but I'm probably more likely to notice them.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 07:02 am (UTC)Incidentally, and jumping sideways here, I have the swastika all through my house. In it's original context as a Hindi/Buddhist symbol. For a while I wanted to have one as an icon, but I'm aware that, as a symbol, although it represents my 'beliefs', that it has entirely different connotations for others. It makes me really annoyed at Hitler actually for taking on that symbol and giving it that reputation.
(one that hasn't translated to Asia, as you see it everywhere).
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 07:27 am (UTC)I've seen the swastika reclaimed by being used along with other clearly not nazi symbols (the star of david for example, I'm not sure what that means as a combination!)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 11:58 pm (UTC)I don't know what the star of david means, but I know the swastika was used to decorate various synogogues in Israel and in the Middle East centuries before Germany as a nation existed.
I also know that after the Holocaust some people went through some of these older synogogues and hacked out the ancient tiles with these symbols, or covered them up, which is pretty sad. I always get a bit *twitchy* when old things are destroyed, especially with religious and spiritual significance.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-14 02:19 pm (UTC)I bet you just loved Mao's Cultural Revolution.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 02:42 am (UTC)But the thing that got me going, and seriously had me in a depression for two weeks, it physically hurts, was when the taliban destroyed those giant Buddha statues.
I'm a non violent person, but I was around the person who made that decision, and a heavy blunt object, there would have been blood.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 09:34 am (UTC)is there a word for religious discrimination that includes lots of religions?
"-isms" identify oppressed groups. Racism indicates oppression based on race, sexism discrimination based on gender and so on.
Historically, religions have been the oppressors, not the oppressed. There are exceptions, there always will be when one faith is in a minority. But "faith" as a whole has never been oppressed merely for having a religious belief in the way that women around the world suffer merely for being female.
"Faithism" or whatever you'd choose to call it won't be valid until faith is the minority position. It's not and never has been, on the grand scale. It might be in the future. In some parts of the world there are signs of it. But not yet. I don't know of any place where you can be subject to violence or poverty simply for having a belief in any religion at all. For not accepting the dominant faith of a place, sure. I guess the Soviet block a decade or two ago comes closest, but atheism is no longer a state "religion" even there.
Religious discrimination certainly does exist and I'm not trying to minimise or defend that, but many religious jokes are (assumed to be) funny because the listener is of a different faith, not of no faith. Or they attack the way in which faith is practiced without attacking the actual beliefs (I'm thinking of Dave Allan and his comedy routines full of anti-Catholic-Church jokes, for example - they're a lot funnier if you're Catholic yourself.)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 11:49 am (UTC)Saying "faithism" has to be against anyone with a faith is like saying racism is against anyone with a race or sexism against anyone with a sex :P (heterosexism and homophobia are admitedly counterexamples, presumably in part because sexualorientationism is too long a word)
Oh, and also here from
(*)I feel more confident than normal about the gender of the OP in this case :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 02:51 pm (UTC)Well...no. Because everyone does have a race and a sex. And no one gets a choice about that. We have limited choices in how we identify in terms of race and gender but we can't really choose not to have them.
But not everyone has a faith, and everyone can make choices in that area.
The original question I was offering an answer to was is there a word for religious discrimination that includes lots of religions?.
I'm saying I don't feel there can be an equivalent because historically the issues are not parallel. You can have a majority religious group - Christians, for example - experiencing privilege in the same way we speak of white privilege or male privilege. But the reverse of that isn't always going to be the case: you can't lump all of the other faith groups, including no-faith, together and pick a word that means they are equally disadvantaged because historically, many other faiths have been the powerful and/or the perpetrators of discrimination. You can't say that about race or gender.
The way the OP's question was phrased seemed to me to imply religion as an all-inclusive term, leaving lack-of-religion as the natural opposite. Perhaps I misunderstood, but that was my interpretation.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 02:26 pm (UTC)"Faithism" would be the oppression of minority religion(s) by the majority religion. Like the town council that refuses to have non-Christian ministers deliver its opening prayers. Like the fact that it took nearly 10 years for Wiccans to get their symbol approved for military headstones--but during that time, Sikhs got theirs approved in a month. (Sikhs are monotheistic. No threat to the dominant paradigm as long as they can claim, "they're all worshiping the same god with a different name." Polytheists bother them.)
Historically, religions have been the oppressors, not the oppressed.
I have no idea what you mean by this. Religious wars have always gone hand-in-hand with religious oppression. Are you claiming that the oppressed by various religious regimes generally didn't have a religion? Jews and Muslims in Europe; the Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban; the pro-Confucianist, anti-Buddhist sentiments in Korea; Hindu/Muslim conflicts in India... mainstream religions have done a lot to oppress any other religions they come across.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:06 pm (UTC)There is no historical example of men being oppressed purely for being male in the way women are. There are examples of black discrimination against white people (in parts of modern Africa, for example, where white-owned land has been taken back by force) but every single case is a backlash against white racism (the white folks stole the land in the first place).
But anywhere where any faith group is in the majority (or is a minority in power), that faith group can be shown to openly discriminate against other faiths. It's just not an equivalent thing. Non-Muslims are forced to comply with Muslim dress codes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Non-Christians suffer institutionalised discrimination in the UK (and I daresay elsewhere - I cite the UK because that's where I live so I see it every damn day). Non-Jews suffer institutionalised discrimination in Israel (and that's the only case I know of where it can truly be called a backlash). And so on.
There are a few faith groups which have never been in the majority anywhere: for them a term equivalent to racism might work.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 05:47 am (UTC)As far as I can tell you are only using it for "ism"s which apply everywhere at all times. Which does work for sexism and heterosexism, I guess (there are matrilineal societies where women hold all the power, but they're pretty rare) and kind of works for racism, but I don't think that's the important factor, and while it's your right to define "ism"s that way for yourself I don't think it's a common usage.
I do agree that it's worth noting that religious intolerance isn't as monolithic as racism and sexism, since most (but not all, look at the Sikhs) religious groups can find a country where they are or were the powerful group. But "not the same as" doesn't mean "doesn't exist". Gay people can "pass" as straight if they so choose, that doesn't mean they don't experience predjudice.
As for race, while white people have been pretty consistently oppressive and powerful for quite a long time, white vs everyone-else isn't all there is to racism. Look at south east asia: in some countries (eg singapore) people of chinese descent are in the majority and have privilige over other groups. In others (ie Indonesia) they're in the minority and resented for their percieved wealth, receiving similar treatment to the jews in europe. Indians are seen in a similar way in Fiji, but are seen as ignorant poor foreigners in Australia. I'm sure that knowing there's places where their racial group isn't discriminated against makes these people feel a little better about their own situation, but it would be somewhat cold comfort.
And to be pedantic, white europeans were an oppressed and looked-down-on minority in ancient greece :P
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 03:39 pm (UTC)http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sectarianism
sec·tar·i·an·ism /sɛkˈtɛəriəˌnɪzəm/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[sek-tair-ee-uh-niz-uhm] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun sectarian spirit or tendencies; excessive devotion to a particular sect, esp. in religion.
[Origin: 1810–20; sectarian + -ism]
sec·tar·i·an (sěk-târ'ē-ən) Pronunciation Key
adj.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of a sect.
Adhering or confined to the dogmatic limits of a sect or denomination; partisan.
Narrow-minded; parochial.
n.
A member of a sect.
One characterized by bigoted adherence to a factional viewpoint.
sec·tar'i·an·ism n.
noun
a narrow-minded adherence to a particular sect or party or denomination; "he condemned religious sectarianism"
***
that looks like, yes
no subject
Date: 2007-09-13 08:22 pm (UTC)http://www.bsalegal.org/faqs-195.asp
I already knew about the anti-queer thing. That's just wrong.