Pupils will be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women, in France’s state-run schools, the education minister has said.
The rule will be applied as soon as the new school year starts on 4 September.
France has a strict ban on religious signs in state schools and government buildings, arguing that they violate secular laws.
Wearing a headscarf has been banned since 2004 in state-run schools.
You say that as if atheism is just another religion, which is missing the point. It’s not an unreasonable bias if the government agrees with me that 2+2=4 and that those trying to convince you 2+2=3 are doing you intellectual harm. I know religious people love the “but atheism is just another kind of religion!” adage, but it doesn’t hold water. Nobody is being denied human rights in the name of just atheism, nobody is being oppressed by just atheism.
Remember when we were kids and we were told not to judge people by how they look or other factors they can’t control, but rather to judge them by the things they say, do, and think? Yeah somewhere religious people started this lie that religion is some intrinsic part of being, like sexuality/sexual identity, but this isn’t the case. Religion is a choice. Religion is a belief. Exactly the kind of thing you should judge people for, same as any of their other beliefs or opinions.
The idea that a government shouldn’t endorse atheism, or at least legislate from an atheistic point of view, is insane to me, tbh.
Religion isn’t a choice - you can’t choose to believe something. I used to be obsessed with my religion and my relationship to god. Then I had a nervous breakdown, saw a shrink, and was diagnosed with depression and ADHD. Two weeks into taking wellbutrin, ALL CARES about my immortal soul and god and whatever just turned off entirely, like a giant breaker being thrown. It was amazing, and made me realize that people’s brain chemistry has as much to do with them being religious as cultural factors.
I don’t agree with your interpretation of constitutes an intrinsic quality. I do agree elements within organized religion exist to prey on various vulnerabilities, including those related to brain chemistry, but I don’t think those pressures or vulnerabilities absolve you the responsibility of thoughtfulness and choice. I have suffered from a genuine mental illness my whole life, and that fact does contribute to my choices and and may explain some of my behavior, but it never absolves me or excuses my behavior. Religion may arguably be a difficult or loaded choice, but it is absolutely a choice. A person isn’t a Baptist in the way that they might be inherently and intrinsically gay; a person chooses to be Baptist, even if that choice is one of passive cultural acceptance.
You’re talking about “cultural” religious adherence, where there is true agency. I’m talking about “true believers” – they are the ones that don’t have much conscious choice. They are mentally ill but for cultural norms that chalk them up to just “fervent believers.” If they weren’t driving their nonnormativity into religion, whose very continuance relies on large numbers of these people existing, but rather into other areas, their illness would be plain as day. They didn’t have a “choice” because their family backgrounds made religion the easy target of obsessive and compulsive behavior.
EDIT: I know I am generalizing.
Whether a person believes they have divine inspiration or not, it is still their choice to follow it. In fact, that’s a key tenant of the faith in question. A deluded person is deluded; we don’t have to and shouldn’t indulge their delusion as if it was reality. And to be clear I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about genuinely mentally ill people as you describe. If a mentally ill person truly believes they are a duck it does not mean they are a duck, even if they choose to behave like one. When a mentally ill person believes they know the holy spirit Spirit it does not mean they know the holy spirit, even when they choose to behave as such.