Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race!

[sqbr]

Note: I am posting links to two posts in anti-racist communities. Keep in mind that the assumption is that readers are familiar and agree with anti-racist ideas so they're not explained or excused, and I'd rather you reply here unless you genuinely mean to join them (in which case, as always, read the userinfo first!) Also, as I say in the first post, please do not use this as a chance to snipe at other people's religious groups.

So a while ago I posted a post called How to reconcile anti-racism with atheism (or other religious belief) to debunkingwhite, and thought about posting it here since it's something I'm interested to discuss with other atheists but at the time didn't feel up to dealing with the discussion. But hey it's not like I have anything better to do at the moment...

I actually think Towards an Intersectionality of Atheism and Race is a better post on the subject, though :)


EDIT: So, being rambly, I conflated racism towards people of middle eastern descent with Islamaphobia and cultural intolerance. These are of course three separate things, albeit with a very high correlation coefficient (even though, as australians should be very aware, most muslims aren't from the middle east!) In general I think atheists tend to be less explicitly "I hate all brown people" racist and more culturally intolerant anyway.

Anyway, for those of you who are atheist: do you agree there's a racist subtext to a lot of atheist discussion? Sam Harris (a moderately well known author) is certainly quite annoyingly bigoted against muslims. Something I didn't mention in the post but which has struck me since is that while libertarian "yay individuality!" american-style atheists may focus on Islam as a symbol of Religious Dogma And Oppression, left wing european-style atheists can treat the jews as symbols of Evil Conniving Capitilism. And of course, when people talk disparagingly about "jews" and "muslims" there is pretty much always a racial subtext.

There was a woman at Femmeconne who insisted on seeing middle eastern women as helpless victims of their society who need to be saved by Brave Enlightened Feminists Who Know What's Best (supporting the local women's groups (who do exist!) in doing their own thing is just not as rewarding or something) The fact that colonialism has always painted itself as "helping the poor victims of uncivilised societies who don't know what's good for them" (and that pretty much every time a society uses this justification, it ends up oppressively and selfishly colonialist, see the "liberation" of Iraq) is something I think a lot of people don't like to admit.

Those of you who are not atheist, how do you deal with bigotry in your own religion? I know my christian and (secular) jewish relatives have complicated Issues with Islam, and the common protestant view of catholics as superstitious and exotically weird is pretty problematic (the whole "How do we stop them from breeding too much and taking over?" thing goes to a bad place pretty quickly)

Then of course there's the huge issues with mix-and-match religions appropriating bits of other cultures' religions without engaging with them deeply or giving anything back to those communities. But that's not something I feel qualified to talk about much since it's something I don't do (It's always much easier to critique behaviours you know you're innocent of yourself :D) But this post about Taoism was interesting.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Sam Harris isn't just critical of Islam, he's bigoted: Watch this clip of him saying suicide bombers are clearly just made crazy by their religion, rather than having any secular reason to be angry (Reza Aslan, the muslim he's debating, makes some really good points as well if you can bothered watching the whole debate)

But I think greteldragon has made my point better than I could, so I'll let you two duke it out :D

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

At work at the moment, so I'll check it out later. My point was that thinking that Muslims are all crazy isn't racism, it's religious intolerance. The usual atheist perspective is that people who are devoutly religious are either crazy or stupid, regardless of their race or culture... and I don't think that can ever really be separated from atheism, since one of its central tenets is that all religions are false.

I maintain that there is a difference between religious intolerance and racism, because religion and culture are not the same thing (though they have strong ties). If Harris' problem is with Islam as a whole, then that transcends culture. If he only has a problem with middle-Eastern Muslims, then yes, he is racist, but it isn't his opinion on Islam that makes him so.

Nobody but me thinks semantics are important. :(

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

I'm an athiest but I don't think religious people are stupid or crazy.

More mistaken or mislead. . . and really as long as their religion doesn't hurt me or anyone else it's none of my business.

However I think that blowing yourself up in the name of anything at all is both crazy and stupid. (lets face it that's one attack on whatever it is your against, whereas if you blow something else up you can do more than one attack)

In the case of muslim suicide bombers they justify it through and because of religion. . . but I'd think they were just as crazy if they were blowing themselves up for anything else.

[alias_sqbr]

People have been martyring themselves since the year dot, and while I'm not in favour of it it's not a completely stupid gambit, since people remember martyrs, and whether or not it makes any sense tend to see them more sympathetically(*). Look at the feminists who threw themselves in front of horses, or went on hunger strikes etc.

(*)Suicide bombers may not get much sympathy here, but I get the feeling they do in the middle east, which is where they're trying to make an impression

[alias_sqbr]

The thing is, people use words as code. He says "muslim" but he means middle eastern. It's like when people here say "immigrants" they don't usually mean the ones from England and new zealand. When americans talk about "hip hop culture" they mean african americans, even though most people who listen to hip-hop are white.

Now that doesn't mean it's ok to assume that's what people mean when they say "muslim", "immigrant" etc, you have to look at how the words are being used and point out the subtext.

Also, while atheists are obviously going to have a lower opinion of religious people than of ourselves, I strongly disagree that we are justified in thinking they're all crazy, since most of the world (and any given country) is religious and no more crazy (on average) than we are. We can think they're wrong/deluded etc about that one thing but that's different from dismissing them and their opinions in general. And since most religious people are, quite obviously, not insanely violent, dismissing an insanely violent persons actions as "just the inevitable result of religion" is nonsensical.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

"It's like when people here say "immigrants" they don't usually mean the ones from England and new zealand."

And definitely not those Catholic Youth who have overstayed their visas.

[alias_sqbr]

Well obviously, that's completely different!