In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city became the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council. They viewed the power shift and diversity as a meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign. This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
Sure, people of all types can be awful, but there’s definitely trends within an organizations history from which a larger effect can be seen. Religion isn’t needed to be an asshole, but the venn diagram overlap is rather large. If you’re looking at things structurally, religion is often used as a tool of population management and often times goes hand in hand with imperialism. Everything from the Kamloops massacre and genocide to the undertones of homophobia in dancehall music often times comes from religious values imposed by authority figures.
Sure, there are philosophies such as liberation doctrine and the like that seek to make religion as a means to lift people from oppression, but if you take a large look at the effects of organized religion, that is very clearly the exception to the norm. Organized religion is often used as a structural hierarchy to dictate and govern morality, which is why it shares a lot with authoritarians that want to set up strict hierarchies of other means.
Theres ways to practice religion in non-assholish ways, but the religion itself, especially those with more organization in their structure, absolutely to spreads hate and vileness