‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations
I can’t say I blame them for feeling betrayed but Islam like the majority of the Christianity leans to the conservative side socially when it comes to sexuality and gender identity. They shouldn’t be surprised when an all Muslim majority city council starts to act on their belief system and enact ordinances that run against the more socially liberal citizens.
It really is time for people to start realising that religion of all varieties has no place in modern society.
I would not go that far, but I can never fully understand why people buy into some of this stuff. Keep in mind though there are a huge spectrum of people. We hear more about groups acting badly and often not at all in line with the teachings they claim to follow.
In a broader context people are part of religious organizations for many reasons, and many of them good. It is just when religious people want "freedom" and then go about that by suppressing the freedom of others. At that point it becomes a problem. In that case it is not about freedom but power.
That seems extreme...
It isn't.
If you weigh the good that organized religion provides compared to the bad it outputs then it's not even a question. Note that I say organized religion. Individual religion is not a problem but the second that you're actively trying to influence various people, or governments, around the world? Then you're just a cult with a franchise. Not to mention the fact that if you're using your religion as a guide as to how you should feel about people different than you? Well you're probably a bad person.
As a gay dude I've only seen people use religion as a justification for their hate of me. I've seen church people change their minds when they found out I was gay and in need of help.
It shouldn't matter here if they are Muslim or Christian. Maybe there's a small amount of "Hey, you were a minority group too and should treat other minority groups a little better" but at the end of the day if social conservatives are democratically elected into power it's going to follow that they will do social conservative things.
As a side note, and this is NOT a "this town should have done" thing, but it doesn't take much qualification to run for city council in most cases. For example, here are the requirements to run for council in the city of Toronto, Canada:
To run for mayor or city councillor, on the day the nomination paper is filed, a person must be:
- A Canadian citizen
- At least 18 years of age
- A resident of the City of Toronto, or
- An owner or tenant of land in the City of Toronto, or the spouse of the owner or tenant
- Not legally prohibited from voting
- Not disqualified by any legislation from holding municipal office
If you're worried about your town encourage people who'd be a good fit to run. Or maybe run yourself.
And as I said this isn't in judgement of the town in the article, but a message for anyone reading the article who may start to feel like there's nothing they can do when they live in a more conservative town. It may not work. But it just may.
I've never understood why Muslims and Christians seem to dislike each other when they both agree we should all have to live under religious law.
In general, Muslims don't. Only the extremely conservative ones do.
Many religions have conservative factions that think that their religious laws should also be general laws.
Muslim religious law, just like Jewish religious law, only applies to people of their faith. For most people in their faith, the religious law is only applied in religious settings. It is independent of non-religious law because both religions realize that not everyone belongs to their faith. It's only when you get zealots that you get the idea that everyone has to follow the religious laws.
It's only Christianity that tries to force non-Christians to live by Christian rules, whether it's businesses closed on the Christian Sabbath (something that's waned in the past 50 years, but I can recall it being hard to find stores open on Sunday in the 1980s), laws about women's reproduction rights (outside of extremists, Judaism is pro-abortion) as well as gender and sexuality, and protests over absurd things like the words "happy holidays."
I've yet to see Jewish people protesting that bacon is sold at Kroger or Muslim people demanding that they're wished Eid Mubarak.