Inflaming Religious Hatred

Democracy inthe RB is implemented on the basis of variety of political institutes, ideologies, opinions. (Article 4)

Ideology of political parties, religious or other civic unions, social groups cannot be made as obligatory for the citizen.

Everyone has the right to independently define his attitude towards religion, personally or together with the others profess any religion or profess none, state and distribute its opinion, connected with the attitude towards religion, participate in religious cults, rituals, ceremonies (Article 31).

Constitution of the Republic of Belarus, 1994 edition

Severe verdict to Aliaxandar Zdvizhkou, editor of “Zhoda” newspaper, for the reprinting of famous caricature of prophet Muhammed, evidently didn’t mean showing the protection of the right of muslims. It was nothing more than an another act of intimidation of journalist community – it is doubtful that it was a flirt with muslim fundamentalists, Ahmadinejad, particularly. Nevertheless, there is a need to clarify verything about the formal reason of this repressive verdict.

In constitution and Declaration of Human rights it is said about prohibition of provoking religious or national enviety. But on the other hand it is not right to ban critical opinion towards ideas and ideologies, to which adhere other people.

All people are different. We can call objective differences, like sex, race, nationality, people are born with it. There are also subjective, that are connected with the thoughts of people, for example taste, political and religious opinion.
Innocent Danish caricatures on prophet Muhammed “hurt” religious feelings of some muslims so strong, that crowd organized pogroms of the embassies of European countries and churches, during which tens of Christians were killed. And what if tomorrow these people will get offended by the presence of people of other beliefs itself? There is a discrimination of Christians in arab countries for along time. According to Koran, for leaving islam a person has to be punished by death, and there are quite a lot places where this instruction is executed in good faith. Moreover, there were acts of violence from the side of muslims-migrants that decided that women offended their religious feelings by not wearing burqa.

It is illogical and immoral to criticize a person for something that is beyond his will, objective differences from the others: his family, colour of his skin. All this can have esthetical value in the eyes of other people, but it is a matter of opinion.

On the contrary, subjective differnces are defined by what man himself thinks. He can, undoubtedly, be wrong in his opinion, and, that’s why these differences have to be subjects of discussion. Main instruments of such discussion should be – freedom of expression of one’s opinion and respect to the opinion of the other’s.

In this way, religious and political opinion are subjective. Religious opinion has a more variable number of question, thatn political: creation and functioning of the world, reasons for it, place of a man in the world and the necessary way of behaviour. That’s why religioms differ in size of the problems, in role in the history and culture, image, created in the society, methods of argumentation.

Political parties have program documents in which they state their position with rational proposals about sate politics.

Religions also have state documents – saint books. But usually religion states its position not rationally. It refers to “the will of God”, that was passed through dogmas of only this religion (not he others!). Here can be recalled famous phare of Lenin, though it concerned politics, not religion: “Teaching of Marxism is reasonable because it is right.”

Religion is a matter of belief, no logics. It is good when a person has the religion inside of him or offers it in a for of a civilized dialogue. But when due to the lack of mental outlook he impudently starts imposing it on others, it should not be tolerated and must be met with a repulse.

Western newpapers everyday print caricatures on politics and important personages, there are satire shows about politics on TV.

But why should the representatives of religion have privileges?

It is possible to understand the reasons of this “immunity” for the religion. People do not always chose certain religion, more often they are brought up with certain religion and grow u with certain vision of the world, that’s why religious adherence has outward similarity of “objective difference”. Other vision of the world destroys theirs, that is considered to be unchangeable and inviolable. And they struggle against it depending on the level of their educationa and tolerance towards opinion of the others.

To have certain religious opinion doesn’t mean to have an indulgence and it does not protect religion from criticism of other people.

It is forbidden to transport Bible on the territory of Saudi Arabia and non-muslims in the country have the same rights the black-skinned had in South Africa in times of apartheid. The desire to limit the contacts of the adherents with the other ideas, gives evidence about the spiritual bankruptcy of the church. There has to be contest also among churches.

In such situations, do European women have to wear burqa and go out only with the husband, so as not to “harm” religious feelings of muslims-migrants. Or we should change our opinion about dictatorial rightness of their religion.

Some of the modern religious practices not only may, but should have to be criticized, and the blindness, aggressive irrationalism of belief - first of all.

So, should European women wear burqa so as not to”hurt” someone’s feelings, or is it possible to review the “rightness” of their religion

A Russian proverb says that the truth is born in an argue. By appealing to irrational? Religion itself has the tendency to violence. It has features of war till total physical destruction of the opponent.

A man can grow spiritually and intellectually only when he is ready to challenge his vision of the world, ready to listen to the opinion of others. It is necessary to teach and to study the tolerance to the opinion of others.

People of all religions should be tolerant towards each other. If the caricaturists are guilty, then God will punish them after death (if he exists) and, what is more important, if he really counts that what they did - was a sin.