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Blasphemy is necessary

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I’m an atheist. Not the sort who never got around to believing in a god, but the sort who was raised and taught to be religious and who finally rejected religion. So I’m pretty clear on what I believe and why and what I don’t believe and why.


I’m also not the sort of atheist who demonises the religious. It’s true that I dislike gods so much that I’ve even been called a “misotheist”, but that’s the thing. It’s the gods I don’t like, not the people. 


I don’t just believe blasphemy is OK, I believe it’s important. As a humanist, I believe strongly that humans matter the most, infinitely more than gods ever will. 


Blasphemy dis-empowers gods, and that’s vitally important, because gods should not be powerful. They should not hold more respect than humans. They should not be unapproachable, unquestionable, or sacred. The authority of gods needs to be challenged. I strongly believe this.


And for that reason I am absolutely distraught at the news that twelve people are dead because of a cartoon, probably because that cartoon was blasphemous.


Nothing can justify the shooting. It’s perfectly OK to believe in gods, but gods are not more important than people. Gods. Are. Not. More. Important. Than. People.


But really I’m preaching to the choir today. I severely doubt a single person reading this believes that it’s OK to shoot someone for drawing something you don’t like. Criticise them? Yes. Complain? Fine. Fight back with your own art? Absolutely. Shoot them? No. Of course not. 


On the other hand, I bet a lot of people reading this believe it’s perfectly OK to react to these attacks with hatred towards an entire group of people, simply because they likely share the religion of the attackers.


Muslim people themselves are loudly speaking out against the attacks, but that hasn’t stopped the hatred towards Muslims that can be seen everywhere at the moment. People are dead because of hatred, and now people are responding to that by trying to use it to justify more hatred. 


It’s like everyone’s forgotten the CIA torture reports. Islamphobia is deadly. 


There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. There is simply no justification for attacking and blaming all of them for the actions of 2, maybe 3 men. 


People who kill people for insulting a god are guilty of placing more value on religion than on people. And people who are using these terrorist attacks as an excuse for their Islamophobia are also guilty of placing more value on religion than people. 


They’re so eager to protect religion, they don’t care who gets hurt. They’re so eager to attack religion, they don’t care who gets hurt. 


People are important. Gods are not. And Muslims are people. They're not some evil dark force. They're not orcs. They're human beings who have to, yet again, face wide-spread Islamophobia because people are using terrorist attacks to justify hatred of an entire group.

Follow Laura on Twitter or visit her blog.

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