A few days ago, Friendly Atheist had a guest post by Alan Bao about what we can learn from the Paris attacks “without ignoring the elephant in the room”.
It was a drawing strip explanation of the Paris attacks, which I thought was fine, until I ran into this bit of the strip:
It defines Islamism as a “political ideology that seeks to impose its interpretation of Islam upon government and society”. Last I checked imposing the faith onto others is embedded in Islam —and other religions as well—.
So defining Muslims as people who “seek to live according to their faith” makes nothing for all the peaceful and moderate Muslims out there, who may be facing discrimination for what their coreligionists have done.
This “Islamism” term is just religious privilege and it plays into the hands of fundamentalists. By now, we should know better and be brave enough to acknowledge that Islam has dangerous teachings, and that a good amount of suffering is directly derived from its doctrine.
I’m sorry, I won’t tiptoe around Islam or any other superstition with a sacred book that literally advocates for the suffering of others, I won’t give any irrational beliefs special treatment — that’s religious privilege, and those who enable it have a share of responsability in the state of affairs today.
