Why the liberal secular groups can’t win the fight against religions (or communalism).
The Charlie Hebdo case in France has taken a new turn as the controversial cartoons about Prophet Mohammad are republished in the magazine. It coincides with the start of the terror attack trial in court.
… it was “unacceptable to start the trial’’ without showing the “pieces of evidence” to readers and citizens. Not republishing the caricatures would have amounted to “political or journalistic cowardice,’’ they added. “Do we want to live in a country that claims to be a great democracy, free and modern, which, at the same time, does not affirm its most profound convictions?’’ — The New York Times
Earlier in 2015, Islamic terrorists had attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine in France, for publishing the controversial caricatures. 12 people were killed in this attack. The terrorists claimed to be ‘avenging Prophet Mohammad’ for breaking two commandments in the Quran. One, to not portray any imagery of Allah or His Messenger and two, to not criticize the two Holy figures.
Republishing the cartoons is a significant event in the history of creative freedom and freedom of speech in the liberal democratic world. One can only wait and see how the other end is going to respond to it. But it’s naive and foolish to assume that they’d be more tolerant this time.
Despite this act of assertion from the Magazine, most liberals are torn on how to respond to these issues: do they stand for freedom of speech? Or for the fragile religious sentiments of the “minorities”?
To such liberals and secularists, I would like to put forth this question: are we losing the ideological battle with the “believers”?
I know how simplistic this question is, but I want to explore all facets of it in this article. Please let me know in the comments if I missed out on any point or information on the same.
The historical background:
The ideas of equality, liberty, and fraternity spread from France in the 18th century. As we all know, it was the response to the hegemony of the Church and the divinely ordained rule of the aristocracy. As quickly as the word spread, many countries wanted to dismantle their hegemonic, religious and divine rulers and social structures in the next few centuries; many of them succeeded at that too.
Feudalism became irrelevant, monarchs and empires fell around the world, modernity and reason were triumphing. The waves of it hit the Indian sub-continent too, where social and political reforms began simultaneously.
Most of these nations remain democratic republics after their long fight for freedom and equality from all kinds of power structures.
Consequently, many ideologies too lost their mass support.
No one is going to take you seriously if you try to revive Catholicism or the hegemony of the Church, because it’s ingrained into every generation how anti-progress, anti-liberal, anti-science, and anti-woman it is. Few will support someone who wants to make human trafficking, slavery, and ethnic cleansing legal again (these things happen illegally still, I agree)because we’re well educated on how inhumane and horrific they are.
In India’s context, the same is true about the caste-based and gender-based discrimination. No one would want to revive the legitimacy of such destructive cultural institutions. Again, I’m not denying their existence, but it’s punishable and condemnable in India today.
But the liberal secular population has concluded that this is all there’s to it. As long as you raise voice against traditional majoritarian social structures and deny all the metaphysical alternative belief systems, democracy will be sustained.
Yet, somehow Islam is still at large, killing, torturing, enslaving, and radicalizing people in the name of the metaphysical, and are we losing the battle to them? After all, it’s just another Abrahamic religion, it’s sister religions are subjected to severe scrutiny wherever they are a majority.
Atheism and the terrible mistakes it makes:
When Karl Marx opined, religion is the opiate of the masses, many agreed. Eradicating the superstructures of religion and replacing them with the communist ethos of atheism and materialism seemed like a fantastic solution, something many in the Left-liberal space still believes in.
Now, there is another section of atheists: the proponents of science and its intellectual superiority over religion. The people who believe that only science and rationality can take them forward while faiths, beliefs, and prayers should be thrown out of people’s minds.
What misconceptions do these atheists make?
— First and foremost, atheism cannot be imposed on people, as revolutionaries and communists would want to. Some are claimed to have ‘reformed’ people through rationality and modern education, but this has only created more problems in society than it has solved.
— Second, atheists make a terrible mistake in branding all religions and religious people as irrational and misguided. One could be a rational, liberal, and scientifically disciplined person and still be a believer. We could have scientifically advanced, progressive, and liberal cultures that still worship gods and goddesses. This is a very crucial aspect of history most secular liberals miss to understand because of their prejudice.
— This brings me to the final and the most important point. Branding all religions together and rejecting them all at once disallows one to see how genocides, ethnic cleansing, and communal violence actually take place.
Different religions believe in different things, some are atheistic or agnostic even. And based on this, conflicts happen between the religions. By ignoring this important facet, liberals and secularists are losing fast against Islamists, communists, and the growing Right wing of the world who has clearly understood this difference.
A religion like Islam that believes that there’s no greater god than Allah feeds on minorities and more peaceful religions. Communism also feeds on the more tolerant and open religions while siding with the violent ones. The Right wing of the world gathers support in the name of a few religions they want to save from obliteration and fight for them. In the meanwhile the secular liberals lose their narratives and support systems because they cherry-pick faults in every religion and pit one against the other. This snubs the voice of the religiously oppressed people, who is fighting for their emancipation. Consequently, the secular liberals lose their battle against despotism, hegemony, and oppression, solely due to their ignorance and prejudice.
I want to end this article by clarifying that I’m not against criticizing any religion or being an atheist. There are many people, especially Muslims, who have come out of their faith because of the terror they see in it. Many atheists criticize religions constructively. The problem is generalizations, misconceptions, and false propaganda sold in the name of liberal secular ethos; also the lack of proper understanding of what every religion stands for.
In the next article, I’ll go into details on how each religion is different in their ideology, practice, and history.
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