Ramanisblog

Tag: secularism

  • Secularism Different Views.

    Secularism means a lot of things to various people, depending on what your attitude towards Life is.

    If you are a Christian, acceptance of the other sects of Christianity .

    Definition of Secularism
    Secularism.

    For Islam it is the embracing of Islam.

    For the Communists, it is bourgeois   culture.

    For Indian Politicians the appeasement of Muslims and Christians and the baiting of the Majority Hindus.

    For Christianity and the Bible ‘Heathens’

    For Islam ‘Kafirs’

    For Hinduism,

    Sarve janas Sukino Bhavanthu’ May Everyone be Happy’

    Aakasathpaththam Thoyam yatha Gachchathi Saagaram,’

    All sources of water, Rivulets, rain drops,rains,Rivers ,streams.. all lead to one ocean, so all the faiths are’

    Some observations from the Guardian Readers.

    ”

    suspect it doesn’t mean anything particularly original to me: I simply think of it as the separation of church(es) from the ambit of the state – which is why I consider it a desideratum. The disestablishment of the Church of England would be a welcome move, as would the removal of all bishops, rabbis, mullahs et al from the upper chamber. That the state shouldn’t be in the business of funding faith schools goes without saying.

    • Will Self is a novelist and professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University, London.

    We live in a time of faith-based everything. Economics is supposed to have no foundation in maths, or reality – we just have to believe. Political policy is based on swivel-eyed assumptions and prejudices, rather than the world, evidence, the reality of suffering, the reality of global warming. And religion – in rather too many cases – wants to be a faith-based political and economic force and to hell with all opposition.

    Ours is an age of faith as a path to control on a very wide scale – something rigid, paranoid and utterly destructive. And we’ve been here before, but it would be just immensely cheering if we didn’t have to stay long, or reach this point again. It’s not OK for what you believe to hurt other people, or hurt you.

    Massive disconnects between reality, behaviour and policy threaten our species in both small and apocalyptic ways and if I see secularism as anything it’s as a pathway to sanity. We probably always will believe weird shit, but it doesn’t have to harm us, or others, or the world. Our beliefs can elevate and inspire, and well-policed secularism – a version of secularism that doesn’t itself become an alternative set of rigid, aggressive beliefs – could help us to do both.

    • AL Kennedy is a novelist and critic.

    Secularism means the possibility of getting things wrong and being corrected as a matter of collective concern; it means not having to take orders from one particular way of thinking, but to put oneself in a position to try to understand them all. Secularism to me is a situation where reason meets empathy and compassion in the name of shared values. It means accepting that the spirit of inquiry should always be allowed to flourish and go wherever it is led, even if these are paths that continue to displace the centrality of the human or upset the usual ways of conceiving of the world.

    Secularism is having the courage to question everything in such a way that no one belief system – religious or otherwise – is permitted to dominate. Secularism is tolerant, critical and open-minded. Above all, secularism means keeping open the possibility that there may not be satisfactory answers to difficult questions, be they scientific, political or existential, that humanity cannot help but ask.

    • Nina Power is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Roehampton University and the author of One-Dimensional Woman.

    Secularism for me is the house that is Southall Black Sisters, where black and minority women, of all cultures and religions and none, co-exist freely in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect. It is not about the absence of religion but the absence of religious power, a freedom from patriarchal straightjackets that might stifle our lives, dreams and aspirations.

    It is a space which validates our right to choose our own identity, unlimited by culture, religion or nationality. To quote one of our users: “Tomorrow I celebrate Valentine’s Day. Islam says we shouldn’t dance. I used to get awards for dancing. I love celebrating Valentine’s Day. I will wear red clothes and red lipstick and get a red rose from my husband. I wear lots of make-up and perfume. I also love celebrating Diwali and Christmas and Easter. These are small pieces of happiness.”

    Secularism for me is about the removal of religion, not just from the state, but also from power relations within the family and the community. That is why our struggle for feminism is linked inextricably to our struggle for a secular space.

    • Pragna Patel is director of Southall Black Sisters.

    Source:

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/26/secularism-what-does-it-mean-to-you-panel?CMP=twt_gu

  • Shankaracharya Hill Now .’Takht e Suleiman’ says ASI,India

    Yet another instance of appeasing the Muslims.

    What more can one say excepting to request my readers to read my posts on ‘Temples Converted into Mosques’?

    Secularism by India.
    Shankarachaya Hill converted into a Muslim name

    Click on the Image to enlarge and read the Full Story.

    Source:

    http://epaper.tribuneindia.com/c/1678679

    Related:

    It is well-known that the Temples of India were destroyed, razed to the ground by the Moguls.

    The wealth of the temples were looted.

    The Stones, pillars were used construct Mosques, mostly at the same site.

    In Benares, the  Holy City of Hindus, the Shiv Linga was destroyed  and a Mosque erected.

    The Linga can be seen in the well near the Temple entrance;the wall of  a mosque abuts this.

    http://ramanisblog.in/2013/07/22/temples-converted-into-mosques-a-pointer/

    Related Articles

  • My compatriots’ vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

    Fact is Muslims never integrate into the society in which they live, excepting in Muslim countries.It is too much of a simplification of the issue that Europe has been waiting for an issue.No.It is due to terrorism unleashed in the Name of Islam and also the transnational loyalty of Muslims..People who follow Islam,,can stop both acts if they take concrete steps by openly ostracizing terror groups,instead of being ambivalent.
    Remember, as you sow, so you reap.
    Story:

    The Swiss have voted not against towers, but Muslims. Across Europe, we must stand up to the flame-fanning populists

    By Tariq Ramadan guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 November 2009

    It wasn’t meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34% of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organised in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.

    Today that confidence was shattered, as 57% of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to – a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people’s fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope that the ban will be rejected at the European level, but that makes the result no less alarming. What is happening in Switzerland, the land of my birth?

    There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext – the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

    Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands – and so on. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic – and it is scary.

    At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalising, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colours, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

    Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates – violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few – it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamise our country?

    The campaign against the minarets was fuelled by just these anxieties and allegations. Voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions. Posters featured a woman wearing a burka with the minarets drawn as weapons on a colonised Swiss flag. The claim was made that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Swiss values. (The UDC has in the past demanded my citizenship be revoked because I was defending Islamic values too openly.) Its media strategy was simple but effective. Provoke controversy wherever it can be inflamed. Spread a sense of victimhood among the Swiss people: we are under siege, the Muslims are silently colonising us and we are losing our very roots and culture. This strategy worked. The Swiss majority are sending a clear message to their Muslim fellow citizens: we do not trust you and the best Muslim for us is the Muslim we cannot see.

    Who is to be blamed? I have been repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible, active and proactive within their respective western societies. In Switzerland, over the past few months, Muslims have striven to remain hidden in order to avoid a clash. It would have been more useful to create new alliances with all these Swiss organisations and political parties that were clearly against the initiative. Swiss Muslims have their share of responsibility but one must add that the political parties, in Europe as in Switzerland have become cowed, and shy from any courageous policies towards religious and cultural pluralism. It is as if the populists set the tone and the rest follow. They fail to assert that Islam is by now a Swiss and a European religion and that Muslim citizens are largely “integrated”. That we face common challenges, such as unemployment, poverty and violence – challenges we must face together. We cannot blame the populists alone – it is a wider failure, a lack of courage, a terrible and narrow-minded lack of trust in their new Muslim citizens.

    Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University. His most recent book is What I Believe.
    http://pakteahouse.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/my-compatriots-vote-to-ban-minarets-is-fuelled-by-fear/#comment-22282