Please start with banning crosses as wall decoration in bavarian public authorities
Would be too funny to see Markus Söder’s face if this would actually happen. “DeClInE oF tHe OcCiDeNt” or something like that.
I think they are already illegal by the Grundgesetz and Bavaria is just Bavaria and do whatever they want.
illegal by the Grundgesetz
Hm, what Article would that be?
Unfortunately the separation of state and church is not very thorough in Germany.
And then there is Article 4
Article 4 [Freedom of faith and conscience]
(1) Freedom of faith and of conscience and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed shall be inviolable.
(2) The undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed.
Article 4 does indeed ban it.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruzifix-Beschluss https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/kruzifix-urteil-bayern-jubilaeum-1.4906155
Bavaria is indeed violating the constitution here. There’s merely not much done to enforce it here.
How about crosses in public institutions? Asking for a (bavarian) friend.
In Italy I was a member of UAAR (The Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics) and we supported the legal costs of people battling against crucifixes in the workplace, compulsory prayers and even acoustic pollution caused by the church bells. This was in the late '90s to early '00s.
acoustic pollution caused by the church bells.
I really, really wish religious people would finally switch to clocks and phone notifications for their niche events like everyone else. Many people also have an odd romantic notion of this noise pollution. Sort of like the idiots who think loud motorbikes or sports cars make them look cool.
I guess it’s cus everyone has a different standard of what pollution is for them. For me, the sound of windchimes calm me, I find industrial air vents relaxing, and church bells oddly peaceful, but can’t stand someone even driving near me, dogs barking, babies crying, or fluorecent lights flickering. But you know, people need to drive, dogs and babies need to talk, and the world goes on.
I think it has more value than lets say cars and trucks, loud parties and fireworks.
Church, and mosque, not as religious symbols but as a community centers reminds lonely isolated people that they can go now and they will find people there to chat a little bit with.
Phones for older generation doesn’t work and annoying as well.
Sounds fair to me, we need less religion everywhere.
What I don’t get is the right wing pushing this and the left wing being against it, while the hero of the far left said ‘Religion is the opium of the masses.’
I for sure would prefer if women wouldn’t be forced to wear it. But lets be realistic: banning it doesn’t make things better, only worse. These women won’t stop wearing a hijab, they will just stop going outside. And now you made the situation even worse for them.
thats bad, but still not as bad as the government responding with mandates on what women are or are not allowed to wear, nor is this an answer to the problem
like, how do you reckon this is going to pan out? you reckon women who actually are coerced into covering up are going to take it off when they go to public buildings (including schools), or do you reckon the men in their life just wont let them go to public buildings (including schools) anymore?
the right either has not thought about this law or is completely disingenuous about why they support it
I think it would be hard to find a leftist who is not supporting the struggle of Iranians against being forced by law to wear a hijab.
And equally we are against Western governments forcing women to not wear a hijab.
Forcing people is the wrong doing. Easy to understand, isn’t it?
The rest of the quote is: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Take from that what you will.
I also don’t know that most people who identify as or are called left wing would call Marx their hero.
Take from that what you will.
The only things anyone with a brain can take from it is that religion is a cancer, masquerading as a source of strength and hope when it in fact supresses those qualities, leading to an alienated population.
Opium is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions.
The answer to this by you is: Ban opium!
My answer would be: Fight oppression!
The fight is not about drugs, it is about self-determination, dignity, freedom. It is the fight against capitalism. And today the search is on how to prevent the socialist society from turning into an autocracy.
Children have questions, e.g.: Where is grandma now? Until we have a satisfactory answer to this, religion will exist. But in a free world it will no longer be addictive.
And everyone can put on or take off whatever they want. We should start with this immediately.
An argument I’ve heard against it is that it’s overly harmful against non-western religions, specifically Islam. A pretty common tenet in Islam is some kind of head covering for woman. Banning that is a pretty sweeping reform. Christianity and Catholicism don’t have anything like that, and if you really wanted to wear a cross you could just hide a necklace under your shirt. And Judaism, most non -orthodox Jews don’t wear a yamaka 24/7. So in the end (typical) white religions aren’t affected while minorities are.
Personally for me I don’t care about wearing a religious symbol as long as you’re not pushing your agenda. I don’t care if my boss has a Bible on his desk any more than if he had a copy of dragon Ball z.
Nuns and priests would not be allowed to wear their religious clothes either, so I’m okay with that.
It is not the secular state’s fault that one religion chooses to be more backwards than the others by requiring religious clothing from all women, and is thus more affected by a ban on religious symbols.
Adapt to modernity or get the fuck out
And you expect that to be enforced?
Given that in one German state it was mandatory by state law to have a cross in every public building, from a party that is very overt about banning hijabs, i strongly doubt that.
The reality will be that this will target muslims everywhere and maxbe a few stry christians. But the vast majority of christian strongholds, like Germanys catholic south will simply not enforce it against christians.
The problem is that you have to treat religion equally and for a lot of European countries that would mean pushing Christian symbols out of public offices as well. Most Nordic countries, Greece and Malta have crosses on their flags for example. Many countries like Germany have parties, which are explicitly Christian. The Bundeswehr uses the Iron Cross as a symbol, which is in direct heritage from a crusader order.
The problem for those countries is that baning Islamic symbols is very often just racist rethoric to hit Islam, rather then a proper separation of state and religion.
It would be religionist, not racist. Islam is followed by many different races. But I get where you’re coming from. I’m all for getting rid of all the religious symbolism etc.
When the right talk about Islam they aren’t talking about the religion. They have no problem with the Muslims from Kosovo for instance. They are specifically targeting Arabs and Africans.
Most Nordic countries, Greece and Malta have crosses on their flags for example.
Those crosses don’t carry any religious meaning, they’re simple historical artifacts. It’s akin to how I still say things like “oh my god” or “go to hell”, despite being a militant atheist.
Denmark, Iceland, Greece and Malta have some form of Christianity as their state religion. Norway only separated church from the state in 2017. Finland requires a change of the constitution to change the church law, which gives the local lutheran church special rights. Sweden is secular since 2000, but even today grants the local lutheran church special rights.
The right wing is pushing specifically for the banning of things like the hijab or other religious head coverings usually worn by women. They justify it by saying that these head coverings are a symbol of oppression against women, and have no place in a free society.
Thing is though, how free is a society if it feels it has to dictate what women can and can’t wear?
That’s the catch 22 isn’t it… “You’re not free to dictate that women must wear a hijab, because we are dictating they can’t wear one.”
However, this is only legislating public workplaces not everywhere, so it’s less dictatey than Islam.
Because banning something so petty like a hijab is just a dick move which serves no purpose other than cause more tension, if any women is wearing something by her choice, who the fuck are we to judge? Isn’t that the whole point of tolerance and being left wing?
I agree that forcing them is a problem, but a lot of these women themselves complained to the authorities, so i doubt in this particular case they are being forced, and how does outright banning it help the issue? People are forced to work with poor wages, why not ban all jobs?
And who are you to tell what’s other people choices and what not. That’s unbelievably arrogant.
Wearing jeans (or any other iconic piece of clothing) isn’t your choice, it’s just normal where you grew up. You just adapted to the culture you live in. You’re just a conformist. Or a ‘Spießer’ as we say in German.
And this probably isn’t limited to dress codes. How about ideas, ideologies, worldviews different from yours?
If Muslim women no longer wore headscarves because they weren’t allowed to, how would you recognize the oppressed people you want to “liberate”.
See, now I know you either just didn’t read it or didn’t understand. It applies to all religious symbols, not just a hijab. Can you argue it’s unfair to non western religions like the above commenters? Yes and probably should. But what you said is wrong. They are not “banning something so petty like the hijab”.
They are…, no other religion really has something like this like one of the comments here said, almost all cases are about hijabs
Also how tf is hijab a ‘religious symbol’ anyway? It’s just a piece of clothing which is no different than those caps you find in jackets or hoodies
I see no point in doing something so stupid like this, why not ban cigarettes instead of discriminating for wearing a piece of clothing?
Edit: kinda misunderstood your comment, you called them out for discriminating non western religions, sorry its 4AM and i am cranky AF
There’s a rather considerable current of leftism that is libertarian. Over-regulation of what a person can do, especially with something as, well, personal as appearance, is at odds with left-libertarian values.
Left-authoritarianism is of course compatible with such regulations.
Good, fuck religion. The earlier we get rid of that shit, the earlier we can unify as a species.
That will never happen. If religion is erased from the equation, ideology or culture will take it’s place and cause friction
It’s not, but it’s a step towards that. By removing the religious symbols you make people think about it less, even just subconsciously.
If that was the case we wouldn’t have christians running around nowadays. Mainly cultures and empires throughout history have tried to ban some form of religious symbology, but it doesn’t ever work, and typically just makes the conflict worse.
Except wars were waged for political reasons, not religious ones(, some civil wars excepted).
And good actions were quite often done for religious reasons, which is why rejecting religions was(is) seen as rejecting the call for virtue, and to God.
You can have technologies or not, be in a communist/royalist/democrat/‘(“anarcho”-)capitalist’/republican/… state or not, it’s not enough to live in paradise, you’ll still find assholes, an environment including religions will( also) be made to improve ourselves. Not saying it didn’t failed there as well, since people in the past weren’t always “christians”, it only means it isn’t enough by itself for 100% of the population, not that it isn’t the way forward.
Downvote me all you want, i.d.c., but argue before doing so if you ever have time to learn by a mutual debate.
here is my argument, most of my friends are some flavor of christian, and christening’s are happening to their kids, if I suggested to them that their kids should be brought up rhe islam way, taught about it from the start etc, they would think I am trying to brainwash their kids, but ofc doing the same with Christianity is not brainwashing, it’s normal. as someone who was completely isolated from religious brainwashing I don’t think someone like you who I assume wasn’t can ever comprehend how fucked up religion looks from the outside, no different from any other cult.
Funny because i don’t think you understand my point of view either, especially if you’re equating all christians with literalists, if you read the Bible you’ll be forced to interpret it allegorically, which is why being raised in a nonreligious environment doesn’t prevent from having misconceptions either.
But sincere thanks for your polite answer though.
“unify as a species” aka “only unify under my belief, Athiesm”. That’s what Islamists thought and so did the crusaders. How is your belief any more important?
You believe that there is no god or gods, and that people shouldn’t believe in them either. That is a belief.
Ah yes the universe came from nothing and time started by itself. Don’t question it people or this man sends you to jail.
