Anti-Catholicism

[the171]

I believe this dead horse has been beaten to an unrecognizable pulp. He looks like red mashed potatoes now.

[Annie12]

[quote name='Delivery Boy' timestamp='1333954009' post='2414704']
Ya this whole thing about persecution is silly unless you are suffering violence for being a christian. Just because people don't like the catholic church or think catholics aren't christians doesn't mean you are being persecuted. How long did catholics say that protestants were outside the church and going to hell ? Go to china if you want to see real christian persecution. Although it may be here in america at times for the most part I don't think its an issue.
[/quote]
I agree,I think I just wanted to know other people thought about the matter. This is a great point I had not thought of! Thank you! I don't know where I heard it but (Maybe Timothy Dolan, I don't know) But some one was sawing that we can be martyr in more than one sense of the word. You can put everything on the line for God, your reputation, your house, you job, everything and he was saying that this is the modern martyrdom. I thought that was interesting but any who, I do understand your point here and agree with you!

[savvy]

I wouldn't say there's physical persecution, but I have come across people who would not be caught dead saying things about Jews, blacks, or gays, but make an exception for Catholics. There certainly is a lot of prejudice and ignorance.

For example, the NYT ran an anti-Catholic ad, but refused to run an anti-Islam ad.


It certainly is the last acceptable prejudice.

Edited April 9, 2012 by savvy

[cmotherofpirl]

[url="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Anti-Catholicism-Acceptable-Prejudice/dp/0195176049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333984442&sr=8-1"]http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Anti-Catholicism-Acceptable-Prejudice/dp/0195176049/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333984442&sr=8-1[/url]

[Ice_nine]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1333953184' post='2414692']
You agree that it's violence. My point was your attempt to conflate the consequences of living in a secular, liberal society with being actually persecuted. Nobody is violating your rights by not wanting to associate with you or by criticizing your beliefs and values. My beliefs and values are attacked and, at times, mocked here all the time. Is that persecution? Absolutely not. I'm choosing to be on a Catholic website. Your argument was that while [b]little things[/b] like being starved and murdered for having a last name ending in 'stein'
[/quote]

K, I'm gonna stop you right here. I never meant or intended to downplay physical suffering that people face, just to say that physical violence is not the only form of persecution. In your opinion (and probably in most peoples' opinions) it's the worst, most severe form of persecution. (tangential but, most people also assume physical ailments are more real and more devastating than mental ones, but I think that physical ailments are simply more obvious and the effects more immediate, and the severity comparison must be made on a case by case basis).

You are conflating persecution with the violation of rights. There is certainly a lot of overlap, but persecution by definition is an attempt to "exterminate, drive away, or subjugate" which doesn't necessarily entail anyone's rights are being violated (the drive away part in particular). Just as tho in The Scarlet Letter, Hester was persecuted and shunned for conceiving a child out of wedlock, without any incidence (that I can remember) of physical violence. Were her rights violated? Debatable, but not necessarily so. If this is what you call "freedom or association," then her rights are not being violated, people are just exercizing this freedom in a terrible and damaging way. Of course, the stigmatization rarely plays out in such a clear, identifiable way in a globalized, pluralistic society, but I'm just using it to illustrate a point.

But would you not call that persecution? What about non-physical bullying then? My right to the freedom of speech and freedom of association means that I can tell everyone the gay kid at my school is a homogay qwerty and no one should talk to him cause they'll catch the gayness. Rights being violated? Not any you've mentioned. Persecution? I don't see how you could say it is not. These things too fall under that umbrella-ella-ella.

My point: persecution can happen without rights being violated. You can be a law-abiding citizen, and still persecute people, and still be a dickhead.

[quote]You never really give any analytic clarity of exactly what that is but inferential it stands that it amounts to people not wanting to associate with you or disparaging your ideas. That's not a different kind of persecution. It's not persecution at all. Its your fellow citizens exercising the very same rights that you have. Below you are attacking my beliefs. Is that ideological violence? Obviously not. I attacked your beliefs and now you're attacking mine. That's how progress gets made in a free society with a market place of ideas. [/quote]

No, neither of us are persecuting one another (although persecution tends to be carried out by group-think rather than individuals). We're debating. It's great fun.

[quote]
Ok? I think that you're talking about the very most extreme of secularists as even Dawkins and Hitchens would talk about having religious friends. So if they aren't for the ostracization of religious people then I don't know who is more extreme than they. But even if such people do exist how is the persecution? [b]It's not a warning backed up by violence.[/b] They just don't want to associate with you and don't want to associate with people who do associate with you. That's freedom of association.[/quote]

Ah, the old "but my best friend is . . ." argument. This doesn't do much to disprove my point. The bold part I hilighted is just to reemphasize that your understanding of what persecution is, is incomplete.

I'm talking about a type of branding that exists which goes something like this: religious people are backward neanderthals. They are dangerous to our society, and extremely dangerous to the precious god of progress. Therefore, dear people, do not associate with such people, do not allow them to have any bearing on public policy UNLESS they privitize these silly beliefs or conform their beliefs to a more tolerable, less threatening level.

Notice, there's no rights being violated and I'm not claiming there is. There is however and attempt to push religious principles out of the public realm. Which is fine, people are free to push and pull and such, but painting religious adherents as dangerous, derranged, bigoted, and/or otherwise harmful unless they relegate all of their religious beliefs to the (very) private sector, is a form of persecution. I don't know that Dawkins et. al fit this bill, but it's out there (in my opinion).

I don't really take issue if you disagree with this. I have no meta-analysis of how prevelant these attitudes are or anything. Just anecdotes, observations and some intuition. But it's based on the idea that persecution can happen without rights being violated and without physical violence. Throwing it out as a thought/possibility.

[quote]
I don't know where I called you a monster or where I said or implied that I was a particularly loving, accepting, or moral person. Much less the most loving, accepting, and moral person in the world. There are all sorts of people who I don't like and don't associate with. [/quote]

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I was speaking in second-person. I meant "you" in general, not "you" Hassan specifically. I meant there are people who paint certain religious people as cretins and spew all sorts of nastiness about them AND THEN turn around and act like they are the freakin beacon of morality.

[quote]Well do you actually believe that you are being persecuted and are the target of some insidious form of violence that is more subtle than the overt persecution that Polish Jews and Bosniaks faced? [/quote]

I think I clarified above, but I'll try again if I was unclear. I do think there is an effort to drive religious people like myself from the public realm, and will only let me in if I water-down or privitize my beliefs. I think we've already seen a form of disenfranchisement in the suggestion that we can't fully participate in public life unless we check our religion at the door, but do I think the chances of religion being totally eradicated in public life is not an immediate threat. I can see it 50 years down the line tho.

And I just realized, through no fault of your own, you misunderstood by what I meant by ideological violence (it does need more fleshing out obv). It's an abstract idea and you're trying to make it concrete. I don't mean that an ideology is intending to inflict harm on me, as a person, but rather inflict "violence" onto competing ideologies as to eradicate them.

Which is understandable, because that's what ideologies tend to do. There are many belief systems that leave no room for pluralism (fascism, extremist Islam, some periods in the Christian-era etc). Only those belief systems at least tend to be more honest about their intentions to wipe out the heretics and nonconformists, whether by violence or other means.

No imagine an ideology that similarily does not allow for pluralism, but has also decided that people nowadays have a strong aversion to killing off dissenters (precluding the use of violence to conquer spheres of influence). There's a problem. How does the ideological conquest take place? It must "kill" the thoughts/beliefs that oppose it.

Fine, they're welcome to try. I would assume that many find Catholicism to be ideologically violent in the same way (and some distortions of Catholism really are). The difference is when you're burning heretics and killing infidels or throwing Christians into the lion's den . . . it's a shred more obvious. You KNOW that it's an attempt to stomp out, squash, and squander the opposition.

With a relativists however, usually secular and/or atheistic, it's more insidious. Not in the means it chooses, but in the way that it denies that the thing they most desperately want and need is for anti-relativist belief systems to be likewise stamped out. But since relativism is inherently flawed, it's no surprise that its adherents can hold such disdain for absolutists all the while proclaiming that everyone has the right to believe what they want, so long as they don't believe in anything that threatens the regnancy of relativism (again I'm reminded of B16's "the dictator of relativism" comment).

So let's just say that I don't even have a problem with this type of ideological violence, as I recognize the inevitability of different ideologies rising and competing to stamp the other ones out. What I DO have a problem with is BOTH physical violence to acheive these ends AND when certain ideologues say we should all play nice and that it's ok to believe whatever you want . . . even when that's not what they believe and that's not how they play.

[quote]I apologize if I've made assumptions about you. I will try not to. But in this particular post I think I only responded to what you've actually said.[/quote]

You tried, a valliant effort to decipher my babbling. And you did a decent job. However, your comments about politics come the hell out of nowhere sometimes, and I truly do wonder why, if I say something is "wrong" there's the assumption that I want the government to come in and right it.


[quote]
There's nothing but laws. The only rights that anybody has are those which they are willing to take or defend by violence. Which is why we have the state.[/quote]

yikes. This is a whole 'nother can of worms. I'll spare you my babbles . . . for now.


In closing I'd like to say, in my understanding and description, "ideological violence" can occur with or without persecution (physical or otherwise) but, persecution cannot occur without "ideological violence." I know it's convoluted, but I think it's worth mentioning that while there's a lot of overlap, I don't intend to say they mean the same thing.



sorry for the novella. Have a nice evening

Edited April 9, 2012 by Ice_nine

[Ice_nine]

ETA: ignore the last part. The two terms are different, but they are both connected to each other.

[Luigi]

Recent examples - from other countries, not the US - in which nations and the political leadership thereof seem to be persecuting religious believers - persecution not in the sense of physical violence but in the sense of forbidding/precluding/inhibiting public expression of beliefs, thus marginalizing the believers as members of society. The examples listed have not all been successful, but I wouldn't say they've been successfully defeated, either - perhaps defeated for now, but not necessarily defeated permanently.

1. France - there was an effort (last year?) to ban Muslim women from wearing the head scarf in public - the specific claim was that the scarf was an expression of religious belief. I think a case could be made that it's as much cultural custom. If I recall correctly, the European courts defeated the effort, supporting the right of Muslim women to wear scarves. But if France can/could ban Muslim women from wearing the veil, could it also ban women religious from wearing the habit in public, or priests from wearing the cassock, or priests from wearing the Roman collar, or bishops from wearing their mitres, as too strong an expression of religious belief?

2. England - there is or has recently been an effort to ban the wearing of crosses/crucifixes. As I recall, the case involves a woman wearing a cross on a chain around her neck at work, similar to other kinds of pendants worn as jewelry. The claim is that the cross is an expression of religious belief. I don't know where that case stands. If wearing a cross on a chain is banned, I should think that lapel pins, rings, and all other kinds of cruciform jewelry could also be banned. Could they also ban tattoos of crosses?

3. Italy - There was a court case one or two years ago about crucifixes in classrooms - many schools have them, and someone wanted them out. I don't really know if this applied only to tax-funded schools or if it applied to private Catholic/Christian schools, too. I also don't know anything school funding in Italy - it might not be the same as here in the US. I [i]think[/i] the European court came down on the side of crucifixes-in-the-classroom, but I'm not sure.

I contend that these are examples of persecution - not extreme persecution such as torture or violence, but negative pressure (peer pressure, social pressure, political pressure, legal pressure) applied selectively to non-favored groups simply for who-they-are and what-they-believe.

If it's happening in the western European countries, it's only a matter of time before it's happening in the US.

[4588686]

[quote name='Luigi' timestamp='1334032431' post='2415292']
Recent examples - from other countries, not the US - in which nations and the political leadership thereof seem to be persecuting religious believers - persecution not in the sense of physical violence but in the sense of forbidding/precluding/inhibiting public expression of beliefs, thus marginalizing the believers as members of society. The examples listed have not all been successful, but I wouldn't say they've been successfully defeated, either - perhaps defeated for now, but not necessarily defeated permanently.

1. France - there was an effort (last year?) to ban Muslim women from wearing the head scarf in public - the specific claim was that the scarf was an expression of religious belief. I think a case could be made that it's as much cultural custom. If I recall correctly, the European courts defeated the effort, supporting the right of Muslim women to wear scarves. But if France can/could ban Muslim women from wearing the veil, could it also ban women religious from wearing the habit in public, or priests from wearing the cassock, or priests from wearing the Roman collar, or bishops from wearing their mitres, as too strong an expression of religious belief?

2. England - there is or has recently been an effort to ban the wearing of crosses/crucifixes. As I recall, the case involves a woman wearing a cross on a chain around her neck at work, similar to other kinds of pendants worn as jewelry. The claim is that the cross is an expression of religious belief. I don't know where that case stands. If wearing a cross on a chain is banned, I should think that lapel pins, rings, and all other kinds of cruciform jewelry could also be banned. Could they also ban tattoos of crosses?

3. Italy - There was a court case one or two years ago about crucifixes in classrooms - many schools have them, and someone wanted them out. I don't really know if this applied only to tax-funded schools or if it applied to private Catholic/Christian schools, too. I also don't know anything school funding in Italy - it might not be the same as here in the US. I [i]think[/i] the European court came down on the side of crucifixes-in-the-classroom, but I'm not sure.

I contend that these are examples of persecution - not extreme persecution such as torture or violence, but negative pressure (peer pressure, social pressure, political pressure, legal pressure) applied selectively to non-favored groups simply for who-they-are and what-they-believe.

If it's happening in the western European countries, it's only a matter of time before it's happening in the US.
[/quote]

The case you are referring to in the UK came about because the government said that employees to not have a right to wear a cross at work. People in the UK can wear crosses. They just don't (according to the UK, the case is being contested in the European Court) have a RIGHT to wear a viable cross at work if their employer doesn't want religious symbols worn by employees at the work place.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1334032994' post='2415297']
The case you are referring to in the UK came about because the government said that employees to not have a right to wear a cross at work. People in the UK can wear crosses. They just don't (according to the UK, the case is being contested in the European Court) have a RIGHT to wear a viable cross at work if their employer doesn't want religious symbols worn by employees at the work place.
[/quote]
The UK decided that a cross is not a required symbol of Christianity, but a Muslim can wear a veil and some other group ( can't remember who) is actually allowed to wear a knife. Who in the hell ( and I don't mean that term lightly) set the government up to decide what is or is not required for Christians?

[4588686]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' timestamp='1334035477' post='2415310']
The UK decided that a cross is not a required symbol of Christianity, but a Muslim can wear a veil and some other group ( can't remember who) is actually allowed to wear a knife. Who in the hell ( and I don't mean that term lightly) set the government up to decide what is or is not required for Christians?
[/quote]

Wearing a hijab (at least) for Muslim women and wearing that knife for a Sikh has been a religious obligation of both of those faiths for over a thousand years. It is different from wearing a jewelry cross necklace which is elective and often religiously vapid (just that literally the necklace in question is usually decorative in the west). I agree with you. I don't think that it is wise for the UK to attempt to use the government to sort out what is an is not a religious obligation. But I don't think that they are pulling the distinction out of therir arse. There is no hint that a Muslim could wear a tee-shirt saying 'I <3 Mecca' if a tshirt is not part of the businesses dress code or that a Catholic couldn't wear their ashes to work. We don't even know how the case will be settled in the courts.

While the distinction is valid I think the path they are heading down is very unwise. And it isn't totally fair to Christians since Jews, Muslims, Sikh's et cetera are able to make daily expressions of their faith since al have religiously obligatory clothing while Christians do not. My only point was that Luigi's presentation of the case was incorrect in a few key ways and that the situation is unique to a government that doesn't separate religion from the state. Which again is why a strong reading of the first amendment protects religion as well as the secular.

[4588686]

[quote name='Ice_nine' timestamp='1334007195' post='2415100']


yikes. This is a whole 'nother can of worms. I'll spare you my babbles . . . for now.


[/quote]

I'm actually surprised that Winchester hasn't flown to NC and body slammed me for saying that. You're post was really, really long (no negative connotation intended there) and I haven't even read most of it yet. But I will. Just a note since I've responded to other posts on this thread. I'm not intentionally ignoring your response.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1334038631' post='2415315']
Wearing a hijab (at least) for Muslim women and wearing that knife for a Sikh has been a religious obligation of both of those faiths for over a thousand years. It is different from wearing a jewelry cross necklace which is elective and often religiously vapid (just that literally the necklace in question is usually decorative in the west). I agree with you. I don't think that it is wise for the UK to attempt to use the government to sort out what is an is not a religious obligation. But I don't think that they are pulling the distinction out of therir arse. There is no hint that a Muslim could wear a tee-shirt saying 'I <3 Mecca' if a tshirt is not part of the businesses dress code or that a Catholic couldn't wear their ashes to work. We don't even know how the case will be settled in the courts.

While the distinction is valid I think the path they are heading down is very unwise. And it isn't totally fair to Christians since Jews, Muslims, Sikh's et cetera are able to make daily expressions of their faith since al have religiously obligatory clothing while Christians do not. My only point was that Luigi's presentation of the case was incorrect in a few key ways and that the situation is unique to a government that doesn't separate religion from the state. Which again is why a strong reading of the first amendment protects religion as well as the secular.
[/quote]

The Sikhs are the ones I was thinking about, I just couldn't remember how to spell it. However I think the Muslims are a different story only because there are Muslims who do not wear the hijab but are still devout. But, the government has no business deciding who is devout or not for them any more than deciding for Christians.
I was creeping on the web and came across a discussion of this on a UK orthodox site where it was emphatically stated that the orthodox must always wear their baptismal cross, and in fact someone had been fired for refusing to take it off.

[Annie12]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1334038631' post='2415315']
Wearing a hijab (at least) for Muslim women and wearing that knife for a Sikh has been a religious obligation of both of those faiths for over a thousand years. It is different from wearing a jewelry cross necklace which is elective and often religiously vapid (just that literally the necklace in question is usually decorative in the west).

[/quote]
This is an interesting distinction. It leads me to the question, " does the government have a right to dictate religion and religious practices?" Personally, I believe religion is not politics so politics should stay out of religion. I don't think it is fair to say that one group of people can be more faithful to their religion than another.(I get the sense that's what everyone is saying here.

[4588686]

[color=#ff0000]K, I'm gonna stop you right here. I never meant or intended to downplay physical suffering that people face, just to say that physical violence is not the only form of persecution. In your opinion (and probably in most peoples' opinions) it's the worst, most severe form of persecution. (tangential but, most people also assume physical ailments are more real and more devastating than mental ones, but I think that physical ailments are simply more obvious and the effects more immediate, and the severity comparison must be made on a case by case basis). [/color]

[color=#ff0000]You are conflating persecution with the violation of rights. There is certainly a lot of overlap, but persecution by definition is an attempt to "exterminate, drive away, or subjugate" which doesn't necessarily entail anyone's rights are being violated (the drive away part in particular). Just as tho in The Scarlet Letter, Hester was persecuted and shunned for conceiving a child out of wedlock, without any incidence (that I can remember) of physical violence. Were her rights violated? Debatable, but not necessarily so. If this is what you call "freedom or association," then her rights are not being violated, people are just exercizing this freedom in a terrible and damaging way. Of course, the stigmatization rarely plays out in such a clear, identifiable way in a globalized, pluralistic society, but I'm just using it to illustrate a point.

But would you not call that persecution? What about non-physical bullying then? My right to the freedom of speech and freedom of association means that I can tell everyone the gay kid at my school is a homogay qwerty and no one should talk to him cause they'll catch the gayness. Rights being violated? Not any you've mentioned. Persecution? I don't see how you could say it is not. These things too fall under that umbrella-ella-ella.[/color]

That depends on the context. If this occurs in a public school then I would certainly say that his rights are being violated since attendance is compulsory and we are talking about a child. I would say the same thing about a State University that penalizes a student for holding religious beliefs that the Professor doesn't like. But outside of some narrow confines then no, I would not consider that persecution. That IS the freedom of association. The freedom of association means that you may associate with whoever you want. I feel the same way in reverse. Last semester most of the students at my school threw a hissy fit because Psalm 100 (A Christian acapella group) expelled a gay member. That's not persecuting homosexuals. They are free to associate with whoever they want. And I'm free not to go to any of their stupid shows.

[color=#ff0000]My point: persecution can happen without rights being violated. You can be a law-abiding citizen, and still persecute people, and still be a dickhead. [/color]

I don't think the point is valid unless there is some credible threat of violence that backs up the aversion to the association with the person. Otherwise that is simply citizens exercising their right to choose who they associate with. It's no different than the forum you are currently participating in. I am allowed to associate with the people here so long as I do so within predetermined confines. I can't curse and blaspheme. If I try to circumvent the ban and do these things then I will be expelled from the community temporarily or perminately. That's not persecution. dUst and the community more broadly has every right to determine who they want to associate with.



[color=#ff0000]No, neither of us are persecuting one another (although persecution tends to be carried out by group-think rather than individuals). We're debating. It's great fun.



Ah, the old "but my best friend is . . ." argument. This doesn't do much to disprove my point. The bold part I hilighted is just to reemphasize that your understanding of what persecution is, is incomplete.[/color]

Where did I make a 'but my best friend is...' argument?

[color=#ff0000]I'm talking about a type of branding that exists which goes something like this: religious people are backward neanderthals. They are dangerous to our society, and extremely dangerous to the precious god of progress. Therefore, dear people, do not associate with such people, do not allow them to have any bearing on public policy UNLESS they privitize these silly beliefs or conform their beliefs to a more tolerable, less threatening level. [/color]

That's an opinion that some people really do have. There are people who believe that religious belief is backwards, that it is dangerous. These are beliefs of private citizens. How is their advocating this position any less legitimate that you advocating your faith? In fact the has several verses in your holy text that advocate this very position in the reverse:

2 Cor 6: 14
[color=#001320][font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][background=rgb(249, 253, 255)]Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?[/background][/font][/color]

Are Christians who take this verse seriously advocating the persecution of obstinate unbelievers?

[color=#ff0000]Notice, there's no rights being violated and I'm not claiming there is. There is however and attempt to push religious principles out of the public realm. Which is fine, people are free to push and pull and such, but painting religious adherents as dangerous, derranged, bigoted, and/or otherwise harmful unless they relegate all of their religious beliefs to the (very) private sector, is a form of persecution. I don't know that Dawkins et. al fit this bill, but it's out there (in my opinion). [/color]

I believe that religion is harmful unless it is relegated to the private sphere. I don't think that religion should be the sole foundation of policy. I have no problem with religion motivating people and informing the political orientation they wish to follow but I think that if they want to enact policy they need to justify it in a language and reason that is objectively accessible to all citizens. How is that in any sense persecution? You can also advocate that all law should be motivated solely by religious faith. As long as I use non-violent means to convince other citizens that this position is correct then I see nothing wrong at all with it.

[color=#ff0000] I don't really take issue if you disagree with this. I have no meta-analysis of how prevelant these attitudes are or anything. Just anecdotes, observations and some intuition. But it's based on the idea that persecution can happen without rights being violated and without physical violence. Throwing it out as a thought/possibility. [/color]

If people go around threatening your neighbors to not associate with you because you believe that homosexual activity is immoral then I would label that persecution. If your neighbors choose not to associate with you because you believe that homosexual activity is immoral then that is freedom of association. Would you associate with someone who actively advocates the murder of black Americans? If not then are you persecuting them?






[color=#ff0000]I think I clarified above, but I'll try again if I was unclear. I do think there is an effort to drive religious people like myself from the public realm, and will only let me in if I water-down or privitize my beliefs. I think we've already seen a form of disenfranchisement in the suggestion that we can't fully participate in public life unless we check our religion at the door, but do I think the chances of religion being totally eradicated in public life is not an immediate threat. I can see it 50 years down the line tho. [/color]

[color=#ff0000] And I just realized, through no fault of your own, you misunderstood by what I meant by ideological violence (it does need more fleshing out obv). It's an abstract idea and you're trying to make it concrete. I don't mean that an ideology is intending to inflict harm on me, as a person, but rather inflict "violence" onto competing ideologies as to eradicate them. [/color]

That's a very broad definition of violence. How is that any different than just simple argument?

[color=#ff0000]Which is understandable, because that's what ideologies tend to do. There are many belief systems that leave no room for pluralism (fascism, extremist Islam, some periods in the Christian-era etc). Only those belief systems at least tend to be more honest about their intentions to wipe out the heretics and nonconformists, whether by violence or other means.

No imagine an ideology that similarily does not allow for pluralism, but has also decided that people nowadays have a strong aversion to killing off dissenters (precluding the use of violence to conquer spheres of influence). There's a problem. How does the ideological conquest take place? It must "kill" the thoughts/beliefs that oppose it.[/color]

All of those use violence to suppress competing ideologies.

[color=#ff0000]Fine, they're welcome to try. I would assume that many find Catholicism to be ideologically violent in the same way (and some distortions of Catholism really are). The difference is when you're burning heretics and killing infidels or throwing Christians into the lion's den . . . it's a shred more obvious. You KNOW that it's an attempt to stomp out, squash, and squander the opposition.

With a relativists however, usually secular and/or atheistic, it's more insidious. Not in the means it chooses, but in the way that it denies that the thing they most desperately want and need is for anti-relativist belief systems to be likewise stamped out. But since relativism is inherently flawed, it's no surprise that its adherents can hold such disdain for absolutists all the while proclaiming that everyone has the right to believe what they want, so long as they don't believe in anything that threatens the regnancy of relativism (again I'm reminded of B16's "the dictator of relativism" comment). [/color]

Catholics try to do that as well. They try to convince people to abandon their incorrect ideologies and embrace Catholicism. And if you follow the lead of the Ustashi government and start murdering Serbs and Jews who don't embrace Catholicism then that is persecution. If you just try to convince people that Catholicism is right then I don't see what's wrong with that.

[color=#ff0000]So let's just say that I don't even have a problem with this type of ideological violence, as I recognize the inevitability of different ideologies rising and competing to stamp the other ones out. What I DO have a problem with is BOTH physical violence to acheive these ends AND when certain ideologues say we should all play nice and that it's ok to believe whatever you want . . . even when that's not what they believe and that's not how they play. [/color]

Ok.


[color=#ff0000]In closing I'd like to say, in my understanding and description, "ideological violence" can occur with or without persecution (physical or otherwise) but, persecution cannot occur without "ideological violence." I know it's convoluted, but I think it's worth mentioning that while there's a lot of overlap, I don't intend to say they mean the same thing.



sorry for the novella. Have a nice evening [/color]

No need to apologize. It was a bit difficult since you seemed to modify your position as you progressed. which is fine but some of my comments may be more in synch with what you said earlier rather than how you finished. But since I'm a bit busy I just left them as they were.

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[quote name='cmotherofpirl' timestamp='1334068589' post='2415349']
The Sikhs are the ones I was thinking about, I just couldn't remember how to spell it. [b][size=5]However I think the Muslims are a different story only because there are Muslims who do not wear the hijab but are still devout.[/size][/b] But, the government has no business deciding who is devout or not for them any more than deciding for Christians.
I was creeping on the web and came across a discussion of this on a UK orthodox site where it was emphatically stated that the orthodox must always wear their baptismal cross, and in fact someone had been fired for refusing to take it off.
[/quote]

I think that the decision was a reasonable attempt in the UK system to balance two competing interests: the private religious beliefs of citizens versus the rights of business owners. Which is why I object to the story being used to show the the government had some vindetta against Christians. But I think the bolded part of what you said is exactly why the legal framework is flawed. Since religion has been decoupled from official state sanction and generally decentralized there really is no fair way to do this. There is no reason that a Christian couldn't consider some public declaration of their faith as a genuine religious obligation and there is no reason that a Muslim who is very serious about her religion couldn't consider the hijab completely superfluous. Just because something has historically been a facet of a religious life doesn't mean it's relevant to the lives of the adherents.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Hasan