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Comment by tsol | Hacker News Reader

I mean I grew up leftist, punk rocker, etc and all my formerly niche opinions are now in the mainstream. On the other hand, I also grew up Muslim and I can say that being a practicing Muslim right now can feel very counter- cultural. Dealing with constantly waves of anti- religious criticism from atheists(which for some reason liberals seem okay with, so I have to deal with this everywhere online), views that the government doesn't approve of in their current idea of what is acceptable, fighting to make me and my communities voice heard when neither party in power is really interested in listening to our complaints-- this all feels very rebellious to me as someone who grew up rebelling. I'm not even interested in rebelling anymore, but at this point the system does not even try to represent us.

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Yes, we seem to have reached a point that being discriminatory against religion, a persons looks or being lower class are the few traits that are somehow still fashionable despite everything else being a cause for censorship, loss of employment, lawsuit or prosecution.

Note, to front-run the typical knee-jerk reaction: I do not believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed, but that those most on the left who scream of oppression everywhere are extremely comfortable with making snide remarks on religion (and class, provided its white people).

Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they are almost universally more religious on average than white people.

> I do not believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed

Aren't they? Sure, western religious oppression is not violent and nothing compared to what happens in say Iran. But there are many circles where coming out as religious is a terrible idea and religious people feel it and end up self-suppressing and hiding their identity. Who wants to be known as the Christian when the world has decided they are idiots at best or villains at worst? You never quite know when it's safe to open up and when you could face sudden social exclusion, bullying, internet mobs, career impacts, etc.

If this comment were under my real name I'm not sure I'd have dared type it with the way the winds are blowing. Even with anonymity, it's giving me pause whether it's really a good idea.

I say this as a Christian who doesn't go to church much since COVID but used to go more weeks than not.

I would argue the idea that in the US religion is in any way actually oppressed is more vibes than reality. But vibes matter for votes if your party is the one seen to be against religion.

Remember that one of the two major US parties is basically the pro-theocracy party. The SCOTUS appointees by the former guy follow with that theme, of trying to impose a specific religions morality upon the nation, etc. So I think it's hard to say.

> Who wants to be known as the Christian

Christians do; many quite vocally, even aggressively. Thus the pushback.

“Christians” do, sure. But not all of us behave like that, or want others to behave like that. This is especially true outside the US, where a huge chunk of the Christian community is watching the US situation with concern.

Some, sure. No different than some vegans, atheists, DJT voters and Jets fans.

I don’t remember hearing about, say, Buddhists having to hide their religiosity.

There is opposition about certain specific religions, which come from the fact those religions were, and often still are, hostile towards other people. An example would be Catholic homophobia and misogyny.

tl;dr in the western world the “oppression against religion” is actually opposition against social pathologies promoted by certain religions

Buddhism had its share of violence too, IIRC.

Of course, and you will find cases of opposition to it in eg Tibet; on the other hand the negative aspects of Catholicism might be relatively unknown there.

I didn't think this needed a past tense?

>I do not believe the religious are in some way actually oppressed

Then again, there are western countries where women cannot control what parts of their body they reveal in government jobs. They have to show their hair-- Muslim women cannot wear a hijab. The problem is when discussions about religion come up people don't think about the experiences of most of the other religions in the world, they default to whatever branches of Christianity exist around them.

>Ironically this runs up against the preferences of the people the left wishes to keep inside their political tent - they are almost universally more religious on average than white people.

Yes. And while I generally support the democrats more, I as a minority feel they are going to run into big problems if they continue the way they do. Allowing the anti-religious sentiments will push away a lot of people that currently make up their base. Whether you like religion or not, it's a bad strategy.

Personally, we should all aim to be tolerant of others' paradigms. Religions are really just heuristics for how to live, including being sources of comfort based on the idea there is some larger purpose. And aggressively shitting on someone's belief system in passing conversation is a terribly unkind thing to do.

But societally, religion has been used to keep people down for millennia. It continues to drastically fuck up our political environment, like the recent attempts of prohibiting basic medical care. Religion's proper place is that of personal belief system, not as a Schelling point to rally around for oppressing others. Until its malevolent societal power has been neutered, it's not terribly surprising that many of those of us on the receiving end will overreact.

Also for what it's worth, the rabid atheist seems to be a less frequent real-world occurrence than the religious person who won't stop mentioning the concept of god.

So pretty soon it won’t be okay to hate religious or poor people anymore?

What will people do with themselves when there’s not a single group of people left that can be blindly hated and scapegoated for everything? I mean they might have to self-examine and look at how they can improve their lives instead of blaming strangers.

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