[FoRK] 16 year old girl "Peace and Love"d to Death over Hijab

[Aaron Burt]

On Sun, Dec 16, 2007 at 07:03:00AM -0800, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote:
> On Dec 14, 2007, at 9:45 PM, Aaron Burt wrote:
> >Been hearing aboot that for the past few days up here in Canada.
> >I still think it wasn't religion per se, just plain ol' domestic  
> >violence.
> 
> Tut, tut, Aaron. Don't you realize that *every* evil act committed by  
> a religious person *must* be because of their religion, whereas any  
> good act done by a religious person is to due to social and cultural  
> factors?

That doesn't help things.  Nor does sanctimony.  

What helps in a society like Canada is finding ways to address the usual
social issues (e.g. violent culture clashes between immigrant parents
and assimilating kids) without triggering fears of religious oppression.
Of course, every group has rabble-rousers happy to raise such fears, make
a fuss and boost their prestige thereby.  Welcome to the monkey house.

What also helps is finding ways to talk about this stuff without getting
people all het up about swarthy foreigners, exotic cuties, infidel
religions, or the strange practices of far-off dark continents.  Mind,
that's the stuff of cheap adventure stories and romances, so it's ideal
for modern journalism.

> :-)

Not so much.

> >Not that it helps her any,
> 
> Yeah, that's the real tragedy.  I fear we both (religious and secular  
> alike) are so busy blaming each other for the problems of the world we  
> don't have any time left to solve them...

Nothing to fear, there.  Those who are addressing the problems of the
world don't screw around with arguing over religon.  They either leave
it be and let folks thank the entities of their choice, or they make
sure it's THEIR religion that gets the credit.

-- 
"The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was
claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so
well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always
coincides with their own desires." -- Susan B Anthony