If you don't know me by now
Here is something that I needed to write down here, not as a manifesto, but probably because I had to get it out of my chest. So bear with me.
I am an atheist, which means that I don't accept the notion of deities, and I don't need any god in my life. I'm a woman of thinking not a woman of faith. That is simply not the way I work, not the stuff I'm made on. But godless doesn't mean heartless, and I understand the need to wonder, or the charm of what is "marvellous". And guess what? Since I've been working on a dominican inquisitor from the XVth century for years now, I actually quite understand the way he thinks and sometimes I even like him (granted he's been dead for more than 500 years so it's probably easier to like him through his writing than if he were standing in front of me)!
Also, being a historian I know very well how much religions have spilled blood over the centuries and I have no doubt that they will keep on spilling blood, unfortunately. You don't need to go in those faraway countries to see it. It happened in Paris on Friday 11/13/2015, but it also happened in Paris before. At the time of the St Barthalémy carnage, in 1572, the chronicles told that the Seine was red with blood because of all the Protestant bodies that Catholics had been thrown in the river. Not all religious movements are violent of course (take the Sufism for instance), but religions often provide a justification for doing the worst, all the things that human laws or morality tend to forbid: murders, torture, slavery. A religion isn't contained in one book - many religions don't have one book -, religion is what the religious people make of it.
In my book, religions have done more harm than good, but still they should be thanked for some fine art that wouldn't exist if people didn't have faith, whatever it is from polytheist religions or monotheist ones. So I guess it's something.
And I'm French, so I cling to our concept of laïcité even though most of the world doesn't understand it. Our Republic, our people, has fought for it, mostly against catholic Church, since 1789, and I am a child of the French Revolution. It is our identity. So I will fight against any religious movement trying to rule us all, even if I have to go through Mordor and cast the ring into...oops sorry I got carried away.
Yes Wahhabism and salafist jihadists are currently the main danger, but fundamentalism exists in every religion and I have been extremely concerned by some things fundamentalists, either Christian or Jewish, have said or done lately (if anything the controversy about marriage equality in France showed us that even though they are not in charge they are lurking and will size any opportunity). And don't get me started about fundamentalist hindus...I've been in India three times, I know how dangerous they are.
But yes, at the moment Daesh, and the islamist ideology, that countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar have been promoting for decades, are the main issue. Terrorism is an awful thing because it often aims at innocent civilians but when terrorism is paired with religious fundamentalism, it's even more dangerous and scarier. Because you can't bargain or reason with people who are convinced that the end of times are coming and who are embracing their death urges, or with the brainwashed morons they send to kill us. Those eschatological stances freak me out.
The great Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in Christendom and as The Commentator among Christian theologians, would be horrified to see that insanity, he who loved reason so much and whose writings were burned by bigots of his own time.
That said, I'm ashamed of people committing violences against mosques or verbally or physically assaulting Muslims or supposed-Muslims - not that it is worse to attack non-Muslims whom attackers can't tell apart from Muslims, it just shows how ignorant and moronic some people are - , and as much as I'm determined not to show any more respect to any religion than to any ideology or opinion, I'm deeply respectful of human beings and I loath racism. It is just wrong, and also dangerous.
Besides, the way I see religions or the fact that I'm willing to mock them and criticized them doesn't mean that I reject religious people, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs on us or claim that their religious rules are beyond the laws (which is usually a bloody good excuse to be outlaws, if you ask me) and that we should accept it and adapt to their way of "thinking". If people find comfort in religion good for them. I have not very religious friends, but not all my friends are godless, far from it.
Also, I'm extremely sad to see that the tragic events that happened in my beloved city of Paris have led to justify anti-refugees demonstrations or even anti-refugees political decisions in various countries. We had only one night of horror and terror (okay, we also had the murders/attacks in January and before that the Mera 's thing a few years ago), but those people lived through that all the freaking time! Let's imagine that what happened on Friday lasted weeks, months, years! If I lived in a country like Syria or Irak, I would probably be among them, fleeing from daily horrors, risking my life on a small boat that shouldn't contain so many people, and seeking refuge elsewhere.
And yes, I'm a citizen and a lefty, so I'm concerned with the rise of far-right, not only in France but in Europe as well. We know what happened in the 30's. I wish I could make people understand that far-right groups or anti-immigrant opinions are actually ISIS' best allies. They are "the useful idiots" ISIS chiefs despise but have integrated in their strategy to bring on chaos and recruit more so-called "warriors". The terrorists who killed my fellow citymen weren't refugees, they were French citizens who lived either in France or in Belgium, our two countries unfortunately providing legions of new jihadists day after day. The problem isn't the refugees but the returnees, that is the ones who left once...looking for meaning/adventure/revenge, whatever. Apparently, according to experts, religious motivations represent only 10% of their mobile.
I say mobile, because those are criminals. They fancy themselves as warriors but they are just killers who used war weapons to shoot people in cold blood, people who were simply enjoying themselves in a concert hall, listening to rock'nroll, or at a café terrace or in a restaurant. People who could be anyone. Among the victims there was a violonist prodigy from Algeria, Khireddine Sahbi, who was also a student at La Sorbonne. He was probably a Muslim. I don't know, and frankly I don't want to know. I only see people, whatever their faith or lack thereof might be.
The last thing that makes me sick is the war speech our government has adopted and the military solution that ensued. As if it ever worked to do anything else than causing more chaos in Middle East and spreading the seeds of terrorism. Hawks are among us. It's Bush 2.0, no matter how obviously misguided that policy was. *sigh*
So I'm less numb with shock and grief than I was in the last three days, but I'm disheartened and kinda demoralized.
Now I'm going back to my inquisitor and his brillant argumentation about how the crime of heresy was exploited to sentence Joan of Arc to death, covering political motivation under the veil of a religious trial and how that motivation showed through various legal flaws.
I am an atheist, which means that I don't accept the notion of deities, and I don't need any god in my life. I'm a woman of thinking not a woman of faith. That is simply not the way I work, not the stuff I'm made on. But godless doesn't mean heartless, and I understand the need to wonder, or the charm of what is "marvellous". And guess what? Since I've been working on a dominican inquisitor from the XVth century for years now, I actually quite understand the way he thinks and sometimes I even like him (granted he's been dead for more than 500 years so it's probably easier to like him through his writing than if he were standing in front of me)!
Also, being a historian I know very well how much religions have spilled blood over the centuries and I have no doubt that they will keep on spilling blood, unfortunately. You don't need to go in those faraway countries to see it. It happened in Paris on Friday 11/13/2015, but it also happened in Paris before. At the time of the St Barthalémy carnage, in 1572, the chronicles told that the Seine was red with blood because of all the Protestant bodies that Catholics had been thrown in the river. Not all religious movements are violent of course (take the Sufism for instance), but religions often provide a justification for doing the worst, all the things that human laws or morality tend to forbid: murders, torture, slavery. A religion isn't contained in one book - many religions don't have one book -, religion is what the religious people make of it.
In my book, religions have done more harm than good, but still they should be thanked for some fine art that wouldn't exist if people didn't have faith, whatever it is from polytheist religions or monotheist ones. So I guess it's something.
And I'm French, so I cling to our concept of laïcité even though most of the world doesn't understand it. Our Republic, our people, has fought for it, mostly against catholic Church, since 1789, and I am a child of the French Revolution. It is our identity. So I will fight against any religious movement trying to rule us all, even if I have to go through Mordor and cast the ring into...oops sorry I got carried away.
Yes Wahhabism and salafist jihadists are currently the main danger, but fundamentalism exists in every religion and I have been extremely concerned by some things fundamentalists, either Christian or Jewish, have said or done lately (if anything the controversy about marriage equality in France showed us that even though they are not in charge they are lurking and will size any opportunity). And don't get me started about fundamentalist hindus...I've been in India three times, I know how dangerous they are.
But yes, at the moment Daesh, and the islamist ideology, that countries like Saudi Arabia or Qatar have been promoting for decades, are the main issue. Terrorism is an awful thing because it often aims at innocent civilians but when terrorism is paired with religious fundamentalism, it's even more dangerous and scarier. Because you can't bargain or reason with people who are convinced that the end of times are coming and who are embracing their death urges, or with the brainwashed morons they send to kill us. Those eschatological stances freak me out.
The great Ibn Rushd, known as Averroes in Christendom and as The Commentator among Christian theologians, would be horrified to see that insanity, he who loved reason so much and whose writings were burned by bigots of his own time.
That said, I'm ashamed of people committing violences against mosques or verbally or physically assaulting Muslims or supposed-Muslims - not that it is worse to attack non-Muslims whom attackers can't tell apart from Muslims, it just shows how ignorant and moronic some people are - , and as much as I'm determined not to show any more respect to any religion than to any ideology or opinion, I'm deeply respectful of human beings and I loath racism. It is just wrong, and also dangerous.
Besides, the way I see religions or the fact that I'm willing to mock them and criticized them doesn't mean that I reject religious people, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs on us or claim that their religious rules are beyond the laws (which is usually a bloody good excuse to be outlaws, if you ask me) and that we should accept it and adapt to their way of "thinking". If people find comfort in religion good for them. I have not very religious friends, but not all my friends are godless, far from it.
Also, I'm extremely sad to see that the tragic events that happened in my beloved city of Paris have led to justify anti-refugees demonstrations or even anti-refugees political decisions in various countries. We had only one night of horror and terror (okay, we also had the murders/attacks in January and before that the Mera 's thing a few years ago), but those people lived through that all the freaking time! Let's imagine that what happened on Friday lasted weeks, months, years! If I lived in a country like Syria or Irak, I would probably be among them, fleeing from daily horrors, risking my life on a small boat that shouldn't contain so many people, and seeking refuge elsewhere.
And yes, I'm a citizen and a lefty, so I'm concerned with the rise of far-right, not only in France but in Europe as well. We know what happened in the 30's. I wish I could make people understand that far-right groups or anti-immigrant opinions are actually ISIS' best allies. They are "the useful idiots" ISIS chiefs despise but have integrated in their strategy to bring on chaos and recruit more so-called "warriors". The terrorists who killed my fellow citymen weren't refugees, they were French citizens who lived either in France or in Belgium, our two countries unfortunately providing legions of new jihadists day after day. The problem isn't the refugees but the returnees, that is the ones who left once...looking for meaning/adventure/revenge, whatever. Apparently, according to experts, religious motivations represent only 10% of their mobile.
I say mobile, because those are criminals. They fancy themselves as warriors but they are just killers who used war weapons to shoot people in cold blood, people who were simply enjoying themselves in a concert hall, listening to rock'nroll, or at a café terrace or in a restaurant. People who could be anyone. Among the victims there was a violonist prodigy from Algeria, Khireddine Sahbi, who was also a student at La Sorbonne. He was probably a Muslim. I don't know, and frankly I don't want to know. I only see people, whatever their faith or lack thereof might be.
The last thing that makes me sick is the war speech our government has adopted and the military solution that ensued. As if it ever worked to do anything else than causing more chaos in Middle East and spreading the seeds of terrorism. Hawks are among us. It's Bush 2.0, no matter how obviously misguided that policy was. *sigh*
So I'm less numb with shock and grief than I was in the last three days, but I'm disheartened and kinda demoralized.
Now I'm going back to my inquisitor and his brillant argumentation about how the crime of heresy was exploited to sentence Joan of Arc to death, covering political motivation under the veil of a religious trial and how that motivation showed through various legal flaws.