2y ago

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

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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.

65 comments

Never trust someone religious. By definition they are ruled by fairy tales, and that's not a rational approach to living.
- I meannnnn…I'm an atheist, but how is this any better or more productive than a religious person saying never to trust one of us?
  
  It's not, confrontational comments like that come from a place of pain. When you see smug assholery about religion and coming from an American, 99% of the time it's coming from someone who got treated like shit by their evangelical parents. Comments like the one you responding to aren't really an expression of opinion; if you could translate it into its most basic form, all it actually says is "fuck you, dad".
- The same is true for ideologies. It's the same irrational approach imo.
  
  Depends on the ideology.
  
  It's especially difficult to argue against supernatural beliefs. It means they don't even have to pretend to care about reality.
  
  The distinction is meaningless. A zealot is a zealot.
Dude I don’t want an any religion majority council.
- That does sound like something an ethical AI would say
"Same bigotry, different religion"
- Hard-core Muslims and Christians should really drop all pretense and just get together on an island somewhere and create their perfect little backwards community, they have much more in common than the rest of civilized society.
  
  Please no, we have enough trouble with them while they're fighting each other. And you know they won't be happy until everyone is under their thumb
Wow what a shock, religious people using it as an excuse for their bigotry? Who could have ever guessed that this could happen!
i think this line of thinking is easily the least useful anti-theist critique you can make of religion. even if we dispensed of all religion, spirituality, and superstition, most people would still be fundamentally irrational actors. religion might influence the ways in which they are and how that practically manifests—but let's be clear, most people do not even come close to having a coherent moral system or set of beliefs and that wouldn't even if you made them blank-slate irreligious people. the problem you are describing is not a religious problem, and it would exist even if we had no religion.
EDIT: fyi this post was attached to something previously but something fucked up happened so it's totally context-less now lol. upvote if you will but this makes no sense in the context it's now being displayed in
- Irrational, yes, but not fundamentally so. Without supernatural beliefs, they'd have to at least think that they care about empirical reality. Their beliefs would be falsifiable, whether they're willing to acknowledge it or not.
  When you throw religion into the mix, though, you can't even guarantee that much. Were the beliefs of Heaven's Gate wrong? I'd like to think so. Can I prove that? Not in the slightest, because supernatural beliefs like their founders' "revelations" are fundamentally unfalsifiable. For all we know, there's still a chance they were right, and that all 8 billion of the rest of us are still under the thumb of the "Luciferians".
  That fundamental inability to be reasoned with, which I would consider fundamentally irrationality, is unique to supernatural beliefs. Even if they don't take it nearly as far, it's still a concern I have with other religions. I'd like for people's moral ~~beliefs~~ judgements to at least be ostensibly possible to reason with.
  EDIT: "belief" is a bit too nebulous on second thought.
  
  Irrational, yes, but not fundamentally so. Without supernatural beliefs, they’d have to at least think that they care about empirical reality. Their beliefs would be falsifiable, whether they’re willing to acknowledge it or not. [...]
  That fundamental inability to be reasoned with, which I would consider fundamentally irrationality, is unique to supernatural beliefs.
  i just do not think this at all nor do i think falsifiability is a meaningful consideration in this conversation (because people do not care about falsifiability, i'm sorry. to my knowledge this is well studied and the bulk of those studies show that proving someone wrong seldom influences their opinions in any meaningful way). you don't even have to get harmful here: just try reasoning with a person who thinks Pluto should still be a planet at this point about why it isn't. there is no rational underlying justification to continue to believe this, yet people will go so far as to say the Whole of Science got it wrong and there is no argument you can make to convince them. people will gladly die on fundamentally irrational hills and fundamentally be incapable of being talked out of defending those hills with or without religion. this is not a supernatural thing.
- religion is what gives them cause to act on their shitty way of thinking. It gives them an excuse that they can then go to sleep thinking they've done right.
  Without religion society would come down so fucking hard on them for their shitty ass views.. Sadly lots of people are religious so even those that don't agree, agree that it's against god or w/e stupid ass shit they come up with.
  
  you're just describing being an asshole here, which is not religion exclusive. how would your point—which appears to be this is some unique property of religion—reconcile someone like Mao Zedong? Mao was not a religious person in any meaningful sense of that word. he renounced Buddhism and was basically an anti-theist (and/or at least an atheist) for most of his life, and in fact presided over one of the largest systematic destructions of religious heritage in modern history during the Cultural Revolution.
Religion-driven identity is literally toxic to humanity.
I'm from MI, nonreligious, and I live in an area with a decent Muslim population. This wasn't inevitable. There are a lot of places across the state, and across the country, that really rely on these sorts of coalitions of voters to stand against conservative strongholds. Religion aside, it's just a bad political move. They've splintered their supporters and really raises the question of if they can keep their gains. Really a damn shameful "cut off the nose to spite your face" situation.
“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”
Let's see what happens when this Muslim majority council calls for solidarity against discrimination of Muslims.
People victim of discrimination based on religion deserve to be defended. At the same time this council deserve to be recalled they were threatening others' right not too long ago. A little shaming won't hurt and hopefully would make them rethink their stance.
- A recall is necessary but I highly doubt anything will be learned. Religion fosters absolutist-type thinking, and expecting Muslims to be an exception to this just because Christians don't like them is absurdly silly.
  
  Not all Muslims agree with them, of course. These are conservative Muslims. "Rights for me and not for thee" is a right-wing trait, regardless of religious belief or heritage.
mad
Whatever happened to separation of church and state?
- Unfortunately there is no separation of hatred and state.
There used to be a subreddit called r/selfawarewolves this would’ve fit right in…
What did you expect
- This comment could stand to be nicer and/or more open to further discussion, like some of the others in the thread. Please try to incorporate that into your future comments.
  
  Is this a bot
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Unlikely crusade: Are Muslim immigrants joining the anti-LGBTQ right? Yes and no
Over the last two weeks, a series of contentious and even violent LGBTQ Pride month protests, from Southern California to suburban Maryland to Ottawa to Calgary, have given rise to a new hope on the right: Has the push for LGBTQ rights and representation so badly alienated immigrant and Muslim communities that these generally liberal or left-leaning constituencies are switching sides? Across social and right-wing media, conservative pundits and activists have trumpeted that claim. "The Arab community is sending a message to the woke that they are not accepting this!" "Selling immigrants on hating liberals would be the easiest thing in the world." Crusade nobody saw coming. Muslims, Christians, and Atheists vs. Pro-Child Mutilation groomers."
Can I just say I’m pretty tired of democracy in general. Thing is that democracy always leads to simple majority rule, and let me be frank, the majority is racist, stupid, selfish, etc. The anti trans stuff proves this. As far as governments go I’m most in favor of a constitutional republic which protects our rights, and I wish we had more right and not just those which defend capitalism. However beyond that I’m leaning anarchy. This is as a leftist.
- Constitutional republics are just a type of democracy, and the US is already both. What distinction are you trying to draw?
  
  Yeah but aren’t they one that specifically is about the protection of rights decided by a super majority and not much else?
- While I'm with you partly (I don't think rights should be removeable to majority rule), I'm not sure how much effective democracy we actually have, as I don't see much of a straight line between the power of individuals to vote and the ability to gain policies that people actually want.
🤷‍♂️

65 comments