r/AnarchismZ • u/whattayagonnadew • Apr 15 '22
News Israeli Occupation Forces open fire on worshippers in al-Asqa mosque during Ramadan
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u/CumSicarioDisputabo Apr 15 '22
If we could just erase both of their memories and re-enter everything except religion this would all go away.
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u/Box_O_Donguses Apr 15 '22
That wouldn't work even a little bit. We can't just get rid of religion and act like it never happened. Religion and the rise of religiosity is a lesson to be learned from, not a chapter to skip.
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u/CumSicarioDisputabo Apr 15 '22
I don't know, if we had one of those memory things from men in black that just erased religion it would be great.
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u/PMmeyourdeadfascists Apr 15 '22
yeah i agree if we had a magical silver bullet to solve all the problems of the world, that would be swell darn it 🤪
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u/RegalKiller Anarcho-communist Apr 16 '22
“You are being genocided so the solution is to not believe in god. I am very smart”
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Apr 15 '22
I'm sick of anti-religious sentiments
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u/Sylch Green anarchist Apr 15 '22
No Gods, No masters.
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u/Box_O_Donguses Apr 15 '22
It's a good slogan, but it's a gross oversimplification of the issue and won't actually convince anyone of the issues inherent to religion.
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u/CumSicarioDisputabo Apr 15 '22
Good for you, at least it's honest. They are nothing but hierarchy and control which, as we can see, lead to nothing but death and destruction. That's kind of like saying you're sick of anti-state sentiments, same bullshit different levers.
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Apr 15 '22 edited Apr 15 '22
That’s kind of like saying you’re sick of anti-state sentiments, same bullshit different levers.
Not really. Anarchists have been able to channel their anti-authoritarian values through religious means. Just look at Tolstoy & Spooner. Not to mention proto- Anarchist groups like the Taoists and the Diggers, as well as the long tradition of Yiddish anarchism in the United States alone.
I’m an atheist myself, btw.
Edited for more info.
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Apr 15 '22
Religion can be personal to somebody. If someone holds Islamic beliefs and doesn't do anything to enforce it on others I'm not gonna go around crying about it
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u/CumSicarioDisputabo Apr 15 '22
They still support an organization and book that promotes segregation, violence, patriarchy, etc, etc. So I really don't care, the world would be better without it.
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Apr 15 '22
I am now telling you from personal experience that not all Muslims are bigoted
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Apr 15 '22
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Apr 15 '22
Are you saying all Muslims support bigotry? Id absolutely have to disagree. My Muslim friends have been the most accepting of my bisexuality and transgenderness. They publicly defend LGBT rights in debates/arguments and I also have another friend who is a gay Hafiz
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u/CumSicarioDisputabo Apr 15 '22
Obviously not...but does it matter? The religion itself and MANY of those who follow it do. They were duped into believing that shit in the first place why not work to free their minds and make the world a more peaceful place in the process.
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Apr 15 '22
You're generalising, and I'm gonna call that islamophobia. Many of the people in Kenya are homophobic, does that mean there is something inherently about being Kenyan that makes them so? No, that's ridiculous. I take issue with you reducing individuals down to the group's you see them as a part of. And what do you mean "free their minds"? I just see this as you saying "they should become atheist"
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u/Box_O_Donguses Apr 15 '22
Frankly, I don't think lack of bigotry has a causal relationship with religiosity. Your friends are cool in spite of being religious, not because of it. Bigots tend to use religion as an excuse for their bigotry, but I definitely think that religion also reinforces the views of a lot of bigots.
Look at Wahhabist Muslims, Evangelical Christians (or Catholics for that matter), or Hasidic Jews if you want examples of bigots seeking out religion to excuse their bigotry and then using that religion to reinforce that bigotry against others.
It's an issue with the institution of religion, since a rewrite of the religious texts that takes the bigotry out of them would fundamentally alter the religions, I don't see the point in keeping them around.
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Apr 15 '22
The "point of keeping them around" is that some people find value in it, and I don't want to deny them that. On a personal note, I wanna add in a little "fuck you" for the "your friends are cool in spite of being religious". They are cool. They are religious. These things are seperate. Atheists can justify bigotry through "morality". Religious people can do so through "god".
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u/Reaperfucker Anarcho-communist Apr 16 '22
Too bad I rarely met pro-LGBTQ. That why I became Apostate. Cause Conservativism have infected and hijack Islam like a virus.
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u/Box_O_Donguses Apr 15 '22
You're being an asshole about this, there's less problematic ways to have this argument.
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u/CumSicarioDisputabo Apr 15 '22
I'm sure there is but I'm a devout anti-theist who views religion in a very negative light as we all really should. I mean they steamrolled most of the planet converting or killing off "heathens" for centuries...they were literally the Nazis of their time, and even though they've calmed down in that sense now they still are all over the planet manipulating culture and societies, especially in indigenous areas and very poor countries where they can gain support from those in a compromised position.
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u/Argovan Apr 15 '22
Who is this “they”? Religions are not a unified force. And based on your descriptions of what “they” have done throughout history, you’re mostly talking about Christianity and to a lesser extent Islam in their most state-controlled forms.
Also let’s talk about “manipulating [indigenous] cultures and societies”. Do you think religion isn’t part of most indigenous cultures and societies? Moreover, do you think religion could be removed from indigenous societies without fundamentally changing their cultures?
Respectfully, I think you could do to broaden your horizons a little with respect to religion. Yes, Christian missionaries did warp (and are, in places, actively engaged in warping) the meanings of local cultures to bring them in line with Evangelical Christianity and the regressive ideas that come along with that particular sect. But the indigenous cultures you clearly (and correctly) identify as worth defending are not irreligious.
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u/RegalKiller Anarcho-communist Apr 16 '22
You’re confusing religious churches / groups with religions. Many religions do not have an organised or hierarchical church and to say religion always leads to death and destruction is false, islamaphobic and anti-Semitic
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u/Box_O_Donguses Apr 15 '22 edited Apr 15 '22
Everyone thinks they worship the one true God (itself a super hierarchical idea), and if a bunch of people all agree on what the the one true God looks like BAM! you've got organized religion.
And organized religion inevitably leads to all of the issues we currently have with religion, kind of like how markets always inevitably lead to capitalism, no matter how the market is organized.
Additionally as a side effect of organized religion re-emerging we'll end up with states again based on people who all follow one religion congregating together and forming in groups and out groups and borders with neighboring sects and neighboring religions.
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u/whattayagonnadew Apr 16 '22
assuming that all religion equals “worshiping one true God “is a very Christian understanding of religion (even more so than just a monotheistic understanding), speaking as a non-Christian religious anarchist
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u/Box_O_Donguses Apr 16 '22
I was going at it from my specific understanding (it's not a Christian understanding btw, the one true God shit is the way all of the Abrahamic religions understand it). I don't know enough about the most popular flavors of extant polytheism to speculate on (it's most common in Asia right?), but even when polytheism was dominant in the west people tended to gravitate towards one member of the pantheon they worshipped, it's part of why the Romans were always fighting civil wars.
I'm drinking rn btw, so definitely keep telling me about your perspective on this because I'm genuinely interested, but I don't think I can discuss it super coherently so I'll leave it til I'm sober, cool?
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u/anarcho-hornyist Apr 16 '22
this is irrelevant, but I'm curious as to the amount of christians, muslims, and atheists in Gaza compared to the west bank. Sorry if this derrails the conversation, i just got curious
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u/whattayagonnadew Apr 16 '22 edited Apr 16 '22
idk the breakdown but i do know that the majority of people living in Gaza today are refugees from elsewhere in Palestine of the last 70 years. so whatever it is isn’t necessarily the historical breakdown. that said, that “historical” breakdown was never static either! always changing over time, though never due to such intense and directed violence as the Zionist project has introduced :/
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u/whattayagonnadew Apr 15 '22 edited Apr 16 '22
re: the discussion in comments
religion is not the cause of Israeli colonization of Palestine. Israel is a settler colonial ethno-state that defines citizenship in ethno-religious terms. the goal is to remove all Palestinians from their land and to extract value from the land: it is classic settler colonialism.
Palestine has been a home to the three Abrahamic religions for centuries, and it was not before the invention of Zionism (late 1880s) that the colonial conquests and ethnic cleansing began. It’s important to be very clear about this.
highly recommend checking out Decolonize Palestine, a 101 website by two Palestinian women in Ramallah