[lbo-talk] Re: Islamophobogenic NY Times coverage

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 10/11/06, BklynMagus <magcomm at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Dear List:
>
> Yoshie writes:
>
> >Generally, the principle of non-discrimination has come to be applied,
> if unevenly, to conditions that are held to be beyond individual choice:
> sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and so forth.  But that
> is not the case with a matter of choice, and religion is thought to be a
> matter of choice unlike the aforementioned categories.
>
> Religion is a matter of choice.

At a certain age, yes, in a conventional sense.  But till children
acquire critical self-consciousness, they basically inherit their
parents' and/or their community's religion or lack thereof.


> Whatever religion a person is born into, she always has the opportunity
> to reject it.  A religion is an operating system and human beings have the
> opportunity (unless they have suffered brain damage) to adopt/discard
> operating systems as they see fit.
>
> Is this process easy?  No.  But it is possible.  And since no person is
> destined/determined to any particular operating system, criticizing the varied
> operating systems human beings have developed is a legitimate (and
> necessary) practice.

It's not religion as such with which Europe has a problem.  It's a
particular religion common among its new immigrants, and therein lies
the difficulty.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>