4 + 4 + 4 Why “Religionization” of Public Education is Harmful – Özgür Düşünce Hareketi

Editorial note: This article, “4+4+4 Dinselleşen Eğitim Sisteminin Zararları” (Part 1 and Part 2) was written collectively by Özgür Düşünce Hareketi (Free Thought Movement) in Turkey. It makes a thorough analysis of the recent transformations in the Turkish education system. We, Out for Beyond, decided to take this opportunity to provide an account of the educational reforms, referred to as 4+4+4 in Turkey (meaning that primary education, secondary school education and high school education will take four years each). The original text is intended for the Turkish audience, we therefore shortened the text and added footnotes in the translation for the English-speaking readers.

We are thankful to Broyd who carefully went over the translation, made essential corrections, and read the proofs of the text.

Note on translation: The original article frequently uses a term, which literally translates as “religionization”.It is in fact a well-established political term in Turkey, which is used as an antonym to “secularization”. It is not the same as reshaping the education system (or the society in general) in a dogmatic, non-evidence-based way; because the process is considered as a planned introduction of religious ideology into the social and political realms. It is also not Islamization, since it encompasses many aspects (such as creationism in biology textbooks) that are not restricted to Islamic ideology. Therefore, we chose to keep the literal translation “religionization” within quotation marks.

Hundreds of topics arise under the issue of “Turkey's education problems”. The most recent of those is the new system, referred as “4+4+4”, which prescribes an education system of separate schools, each taking four years. However, in order to understand this last reform and its singularity, we must first take a broader look at the education system in large and how it operates.

It is clear that the AKP¹ government pushes the education question as part of the “religionization” of the country as a whole. A combination of many factors led AKP to rise and enabled structural transformations in several items. This can be seen as AKP's desire as well as its promise. In accordance with the regional changes in the Middle East, the state paradigm must have changed too, and the arrow of change pointed against existing progress.

AKP's policies have always accorded with this wind of change. Hence, the intervention in the education sector started far earlier than the most recent reforms. Some concrete indicators are as follows: In contrast to the huge need for teachers, many unemployed teachers are put aside in the annual assignments whereas thousands of religion teachers are employed – and many of them take administrative roles in the schools. The curricula have been constantly modified in favor of creationism. The Imam Hatip High Schools² were taken off from vocational school status. There is an increasingly common discourse of “prayer rooms for each school”. The personnel of TÜBİTAK³ were replaced according to government's ideological priorities. In the rectoral elections in the universities, the president Abdullah Gül has not complied with the election results and assigned rectors according to other political preferences.

Although AKP had the opportunity to demolish the education system in Turkey, the foundation of this transformation was laid by previous governments. The greatest damage done to Turkish education system was due to the military intervention of 12 September 1980. This coup d'etat inserted religious education into primary schools and secondary schools, a strategic step towards a more religious society. The 1982 Constitution states in Article 24 that

“Education and instruction in religion and ethics shall be conducted under state supervision and control. Instruction in religious culture and moral education shall be compulsory in the curricula of primary and secondary schools. Other religious education and instruction shall be subject to the individual’s own desire, and in the case of minors, to the request of their legal representatives.”

This article not only immersed a harmful element into the formal educational curriculum but also paved the way for small children to be registered into religion courses not controlled by state authorities.

Let us now take a deep breath and ask ourselves: Why is the “religionization” of public education harmful?

It is a well known pedagogical fact that education should be given according to the cognitive and physical development of the child. With this in mind, we have a three-fold answer to our question.

1) Between ages of 6 and 11, children are capable of internalizing only concrete concepts. They can find simple solutions to simple problems, understand commands and exercise the necessary actions. What they cannot do is to contemplate abstract concepts and take actions about them.

In this period, one can talk to a child about all concrete things such as apples, toys and cars, but the child cannot make sense of concepts such as god, heaven, hell, demon and so on. Therefore, such a child would not have a healthy cognitive development because s/he would grow up in a terrifying environment where someone who watches her/him all the time, making notes of every single action and which s/he cannot see nor touch nor hear, an entity which will punish her/him for all her/his faults. The child would further grow strong guilt feelings whenever s/he does something (intentionally or unintentionally) that the religion orders her/him not to do. This would have deep psychological consequences.

After age 11, on the other hand, the child enters a critical stage in cognitive skills where s/he develops critical thinking skills. Therefore, the teaching of dogmatic, unquestionable knowledge would hinder this development.

2) Another harmful aspect of the “religionization” of education was deliberately introduced by the policy makers. The 1982 Constitution defines the religion course as “Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge”, thereby implying that morality is a concept directly linked to religion. Via compulsory religious courses, the borders of “morality” are framed and restricted by a particular sect (the Sunni interpretation) of a particular religion (Islam). This approach not only indoctrinates the unfounded claim of “no religion means no morality” but also undermines the education of morality and of religion.

3) As a direct consequence of secularism, public education should see to it that each individual is provided with the critical thinking skills that would enable her/him to reach her/his own conclusions about the world and give her/him the possibilities of self realization.

We have been observing the harmful consequences of the “religionization” of education for a long time, especially with the theory of evolution. This “spiteful of science” attitude will increase with the recently introduced religion courses. For instance, the new “Basic Religious Knowledge” course includes phrases like “the fine tuning in the universe”, “perfect human”, “intentional creation” as chapters' morals. These statements are not supported by evidence, and in fact contradict with it. The same course aims at teaching that “the aim of the creation of human is to worship Allah”. It is further clear that whenever there is conflict between the content of this course and other courses, the values and the information in the other courses will be censured.

The new education system surpasses the 1982 Constitution. Not content with the so-called “Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge” course, the system introduces “Arabic” in primary school and “Basic Religious Knowledge”, “The Holy Koran” and “The Life Of the Prophet Mohammed”, thereby teaching religious knowledge continuously. We should emphasize that by religious knowledge is meant the theological knowledge of Islam's Sunni sect.⁴ One example of this approach can be seen in the textbook for the course “The Life Of the Prophet Mohammed”, aimed at ninth grade students:

“By linking chastity with faith, Our High Prophet states that pudicity and faith are inseparable. On this issue, he spoke 'As a matter of fact, pudicity and faith are holistically united. If one disappears, the other disappears as well.' As can be understood from this hadith, pudicity and faith are closely connected to each other. When one is nonexistent, there is a danger for the other to vanish too.”⁵

Yet another problem of this system is that the Koran will be read in Arabic for the course “The Holy Koran”, as in the religious courses enforced by the state, due to the ridiculous claim that the book has its own language. However, for someone to understand the Koran or any other book (independent of whether it is considered holy or not) it is essential that one reads it in a language that one is competent in and at an age when one can grasp its content. It is clear that the (elective) Arabic course would not suffice for the students to comprehend the book properly and therefore what is expected from them is that they memorize it. This is manifested publicly several times. One instance is that the 85^th page of the instructor's book for “The Holy Koran” course gives hints on “some principles on how to make surah apprehension easier” where it is explained how the students can easily “memorize” those surah's. Moreover, Ömer Dinçer, the Minister of Education, confessed in an interview⁶ that the students “would not understand what they read”:

“But the Parliament declared: The teaching of Koran and the Life of Our Prophet. We will teach it in secondary school and in high school. We will teach how to read the Koran like Turkish. After all, Arabic is an elective course. We will not teach Arabic. It is a different issue to read Koran based on the Arabic alphabet in the Arabic language. This means, the child will learn how to read a word written with Arabic letters, but the thing s/he will read will be Koran. We will create a curriculum. S/he will read but will not understand. After all, the majority of those who read the Koran do not understand it, they read it as a holy book.”

The “religionization” is not the only problem arising from the new 4+4+4 system. At first glance, we notice the following: The system lets children of age 5-5.5 enter the primary schools, when they are not physiologically ready to hold pencils nor cognitively prepared to understand and implement commands. As a consequence, primary education is now reduced, in practice, to three years. Furthermore, by fifth grade, the classes will be given by branch teachers, resulting in reallocation and unemployment of many teachers. Also, the early start to schooling without any infrastructural preparations will result in overly crowded classrooms. We would like to give some examples of complaints in order to make the point clearer.

The Education Workers' Union released a declaration⁷, emphasizing that the separation of primary and secondary education in a manner that is not based on pedagogical principles would imply an increase in child employment and child brides. The way is now legally cleared away for the seclusion and forced marriage of female children, as child brides are generally of age 13, 14 and 15.

According to an interview published in haber.sol.org.tr on September 21st, 2012, Ertan Uysal, the chairman of the Education Workers' Union in Tokat, made the following remark:

“... while the mere existence of religious culture courses in private schools is controversial, it is a big problem to introduce forced elective courses on religion. This imposition of religious education on students who would primarily need courses such as arts, music and sports resembles the paradigm of the Middle Ages.”⁸

Much earlier than this interview, Hürriyet newspaper made a news item⁹ on the letters sent to the Ministry of Education by the parents. Here are a few items from those letters:

“ - I don't want my 5-year old child to get on and off the bus by himself to reach home.

- I don't want my child to be pressed by the class teacher who is forced to finish the annual curriculum.

- I don't want my 5-year old child to be open to the same risks as the students of age 12-13.

- While 7-year old children are having difficulties, I don't want my 5-year old child to start primary school.

The “religionization” of education is a big problem. When this transformation is accompanied by unhealthy, inconvenient practices, it may give rise to a social disaster. In order to prevent this, it is urgently needed to sweep away religious ideologies, not only from education but from all levels of the state affairs.

As Özgür Düşünce Hareketi, we believe that several reforms should be made.

1. Mixed-sex education should never be questioned. The religious separation of the two genders is one of the most important causes of gender inequalities and male violence. Furthermore, children that grew up in an environment where men and women are categorically separated would have difficulties in making sense of transgender identities and would be conditioned to transphobia.
   
2. Religious knowledge should be presented in the context of the history courses, under the title of history of religions and then one item being Islam. If religion teachers will be trained, they should get proper pedagogical formation.
   
3. Imam Hatip Schools should be abolished, as they give the teaching of the practices of a selected religion.
   
4. The so-called elective but practically compulsory religion courses should be abolished. Religious practices should not be taught to non-adults.
   
5. The new regulations on the dress code that promotes the imposition of headscarves on female children should be withdrawn.
   

1 Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – Justice and Development Party. The governing party in the Turkish parliament since the 2002 elections.

2Religious Vocational High Schools, that are meant to train imams but are in practice training for any profession.

3Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu – The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey.

4 Talim ve Terbiye Kurulu Öğretim Programları: http://ttkb.meb.gov.tr/www/ogretim-programlari/icerik/72

5 Ortaöğretim “Hz. Muhammed’in Hayatı” 9. Sınıf Öğretim Materyali: http://ttkb.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/kitaplar/hzmuhammedinhayati_9.pdf – s. 41.

6 http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/20293658.asp

7 http://www.egitimsen.org.tr/genel/bizden_detay.php?kod=217&sube=0#.UQZLPx3VdHJ

8 http://haber.sol.org.tr/kent-gundemleri/444-sistemi-tokatta-da-bircok-sorunla-basladi-haberi-59890

9 http://siyaset.milliyet.com.tr/tbmm-ye-4-4-4-sikayeti-yagdi/siyaset/siyasetdetay/02.04.2012/1522766/default.htm

The Origins of Religion

0. Prelude

We aim at two issues with this article. First of all; we want to build up our discussion on why atheists should take communists seriously. We believe that a marxist explanation of concepts such as "human nature", "morality", "ethics" etc. would be inspiring in resolving the confusions that occasionally arise in atheist circles. This is our first aim.

For an unprepared reader, it would be surprising to see Joel Kovel starting his book The Enemy of Nature with a comparison of Marx and Darwin. It is due to a very elegant approach that a book, which offers a frame of class struggles for the ecological crisis, reserves its introductory chapters to Darwin. And this brings us to our second aim: We believe that a discussion on the origins and the development of religions can be employed to exemplify the materialist worldview.

In accordance with its aims, this article will be rather abstract. Yet, with the awareness of the fact that we will not present any ideas that were not available up till now, we will choose to abstract from examples rather than providing a theoretical presentation.

1. Why was Marx fascinated by The Origins of Species and why did he send a copy of Capital to Darwin?

Marx points out an objective phenomenon when he states that capitalism revolutionizes the forces of production and will sweep all other relations of production. Also, Darwin declares the results of his research and not a situation he likes or prefers, when he puts forward the natural selection thesis. The scientific analyses of these persons do not prove that they fancy the results: That Darwin observes wasps place their larvae inside caterpillars in order to eat them alive does not mean that he enjoyed it. Likewise, it would be absurd to claim that Marx rejoiced to note the commodification of everything in the world.

The scientific propositions of both Marx and Darwin explain how the past came through to the present, and not how the future will be. As they are not psychics but scientists, they analyzed parts of innumerable parameters on which the knowledge of future rests. Neither would Darwin explicitly assert which species would evolve in the next million years, nor would Marx say which type of government would be adopted in a given century.

We open up a parenthesis here. A scientific claim does not prophesize, but by definition makes predictions about the future. This future can be, as in the case of physics, an event to be observed in the future, or, as in the case of history, a document to be discovered in the future. We hope it is clear that the above paragraphs are not meant in this sense.

Furthermore, the comprehension of the laws that brought the past to today enables to produce hypothetical scenarios of the future. It is a reasonable consideration to estimate (with some margin of error) which genetic features would disappear under given climatic and geographical conditions. Similarly, one does not need to wait until the 20th century and see with one's eyes to understand that capitalism would eradicate the Asiatic type of production. We close the parenthesis.

Marx and Darwin were searching for the laws driving the processes. However it was only Marx who could see the parallelism between the two scientific analyses. While he sent a copy of Capital to Darwin with this excitement, Darwin put the book aside without reading it.¹

Yet Marx was right: While Darwin was investigating the formation of the species, Marx was investigating societies.² The theory of evolution described how the genetic code which is more suitable to given conditions survived through natural selection, whereas historical materialism explained how a society established superiority over others by adopting more progressive relations of production.

2. The question of the origins of religions

To think that the question of how religions emerged would clarify the issue of religions is as ridiculous as supposing that one could predict which species would arise by knowing why a certain mutation took place.

Hundreds of thousands of new ideas emerge everyday in the world. There are thousands of messiah and prophet candidates available. We do not even count the new-age religions.

The point is not how an idea has initially emerged; the point is how an idea, once emerged, has survived throughout history. An idea can survive only if, in the given period of history, it offers a structure capable of eliminating its disbelievers.

It is not a coincidence that both Moses and the Catholic Empire have come through ideologies that aim to increase the population.³

When Moses defines the family as a norm and oppresses any homosexual experience, and when the Roman Empire declares every sperm sacred, the societies that adopt these ideologies gained an advantage over the other societies around. Human reproduction becoming such a hype, and the cognition of sex and reproduction as one and the same thing are due to this historical process.⁴

3. Intermezzo: The question of ethics

Let us not miss the opportunity here, to touch upon one of the subjects that is thought to sweat atheists. As all other social phenomena, from esthetics to languages, morality and ethics are historical as well. It is understandable that, in the philosophy of ethics, a distinction between morality and ethics was made; yet this situation led to a delusion among some atheists in the direction that we would be able to establish an ethics excluded from the society and history. Of course we can get outside the generally accepted ethical realm built by the rulers, but humans cannot go out of historicity. All human production (including opposing views) lies within history. The question is to understand how a certain view gained validity throughout history.

All moral questions, from finishing the food on your plate to not killing human beings, are results of the historical selection we mentioned in the first section. New moral statements, on the other hand, will gain as much validity as they survive this historical process.

Let us now focus on heterosexism, as it is a particularly delicate subject. Independent of our fancies, mechanization created the potential of the production becoming independent of concrete human presence. Yet this potential cannot be actually realized within capitalism (or more generally, in class societies): Machines do not produce surplus value. In a system based on exploitation, human has to be the primary element of production.

On the other hand, societies took action to utilize this liberation potential of mechanization for humane use. Large masses of people demanded the just distribution of wealth that came out. Owing to the rights gained in these struggles, production and power has become partially independent of population; that is, having more population began not to directly imply being more powerful. In proportion to this independence, superstructure institutions, such as family, have dissolved.⁵

Thus appeared the objective possibility of humanity freeing itself from the elements of alienation such as sexism and heterosexism. The rights gained by years-long struggles of militant activists should be seen in this frame; and not in that sexism were dogmatically “bad” and activists finally convinced other people to this argument. We are now fighting to abolish an element of alienation which we discovered at a certain period of the development of the means of production.

Now it would be beneficial to recall the parallelism between Marx and Darwin we suggested in the first section. Understanding the relation between the emergence of an idea and how it is widely accepted among the society is similar to understanding the relation between how a particular gene emerges and how it attains a place in the gene pool of a species. The legitimacy of an idea is not measured dogmatically and in abstract terms, but with its effect in the real world. Homosexuality is not abnormal because it is abnormal; homosexuality is abnormal because those who claim that it is have seized the power.

4. Human nature

Historicity is the key to understand humankind. The distinguishing characteristic of humankind among other species is that it has history; that the activities of previous generations shape the nature of future generations. Human individuals confront a social phenomenon that is extrinsic to them and that imposes itself to them. They produce on the production of past generations. Humankind has a history. Animals do not.⁶ This is the defining property of human species.⁷

Therefore, the question of what constitutes “human nature” is beyond the limits of biology proper. Moreover, as Richard Dawkins rediscovered through memetics, it is sometimes outside of biology proper. Dawkins especially exemplifies this by referring to diseases that need extensive care beginning from birth. If it were left to purely biological and genetical dynamics, such diseases should have disappeared from human species, as the diseased individuals would perish in natural ways. Yet societies have found numerous ways to deal with these situations, and they secured not only that the patients survive but also that they are capable of having babies in a healthy way, whereby transferring the relevant genetic code to future generations. Dawkins argues that in this example, the memetic code overrules the genetic code. The framework we summarized in this essay fits well into this explanation and further clarifies the laws of selection for “the memetic code” - namely, the development of the means of production.

What we wanted to emphasize here are that the “human nature” is changing way too fast compared to the biological evolution scales and that it by definition depends on time and space.

5. Epilogue

Let us briefly summarize our claim: To understand religion, it is unnecessary to understand how the idea of religion initially emerged. The question is how religion survived throughout generations, and this is an eminently materialistic question.

The survival of supernatural views and institutionalized religion is hidden in the fact that they reshaped and stretched themselves in all necessary ways in order to further develop the means of production. We gave instances of this in the preceding sections. These instances were, of course, not aimed at given an ultimate explanation about the roots of religions, but at exemplifying the attempt to understand religions, as historical phenomena, within history and the laws governing it.

In today's world (as a matter of fact, since at least two centuries), religion has no historical excuse anymore. Now, religion forms an obstacle in front of the development of the means of production and in front of humans creativity. The search for supernatural answers is regressive exactly in this sense of the word. (We addressed this subject in our previous article: “An introduction to why atheists should take communists seriously”)

A species that searches the causes of the floods and droughts all around the world which are becoming more frequent and intense in the moral degradation instead of climate change is bound for extinction – taking hundreds of thousands of other species with it. A species that, based on the argument “They have it; ergo⁸, we should have it too.”, produces nuclear weapons, potent to destroy all life on earth several times, and makes them the plaything of arbitrariness in the bargains of the ruling class, is indeed bound for extinction – taking hundreds of thousands of other species with it.

Richard Dawkins would say that the human species needs a dramatic change in the memetic code. Among friends, we call it the communist revolution.

1   As the great majority of the pages of Darwin's copy were found to be uncut, we deduce that he did not read Capital which Marx sent to him personally. (see Marx of Respect, Friends of Darwin)

2   "Just as Darwin discovered the law of development or organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.” (Friedrich Engels's Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx)

3   We hope that the evolutionist inside you would warn you: Moses or the Roman Empire may or may not know that population plays a crucial to strengthen power and to develop the means of production. Independent of whether this suggestion was made consciously, these ideas had objectively come to power.

4   We find it worth mentioning that, in textbooks of history, the extensive historical analysis on nationalism is passed over when it comes to religion. Yet we believe that the understanding of nationalism, which we are able to analyze thoroughly thanks to numerous data and documentation, would clarify many issues on the nature of religions.

5   We should make a remark here. We do not claim that family has dissolved. We claim that family has dissolved as much as the link between population and power has weakened. We describe the measure of this to be roughly as human labor going out of commodity production. It is a truism that today there is a reverse trend to this. What we want to emphasize is the parallelism between this historical process and the development of the morality institutions that have a dialectical relationship with it.

6   A comprehensive analysis of this topic is available in Turkish in this link: Yusuf Zamir – Yabancılaşmış Faaliyet

7   What one should observe here is that our definition is empirical. That means, this definition is not based on our personal taste but on the reality.

8   therefore

How to live like an atheist – v.1

This short note is meant to be an (always) incomplete list of remarks and observations on how we atheists can deal with oppressive religious situations and how we atheists may apply our atheistic stance in different contexts.

1. Atheist attitude

• The obvious initial remark is to come out and speak out. In a world where people believing that world is some 6000 years old are founding schools, in a world where people say an earthquake is the punishment of god to sinners; we have all the rights to speak out. As a matter of fact, we have the responsibility to come out and speak out.
  
  
• Keep scientific. Keep critical. Do not give away your critical attitude towards religion when it comes to other social “values” such as racism, nationalism and sexism. Always look for sound reasoning and evidence - and don't forget to question the evidence.
  
  
• Keep skeptic. Read, write, watch, listen. Be proud of not knowing. Openly declare things you don't know, and consult people who know about it. I used to make list of things I don't know and am curious about. I even sent those questions to some friends for reading suggestions.

2. Religious confrontation
   
   

• Keep confident. Do not retreat in discussions even with fundamentalists. If your opponent uses argument-blockers, spot and highlight them. Find shortcuts to eliminate time wasting discussions.¹ But never chicken out “non-theistically”. That is, never propose an intermediary agreement where everyone is supposed to be happy with whatever she/he believes in. We are correct. Almost all² the gods do not exist.
  
  
• Always specify which god you are referring to. And always ask for specification. Never forget that there are more than 4200 active religions in the world today, some with more than one god.
  
  
• Do not miss the difference between the possibility of some gods, and their existence. Of course their existence is in principle possible (that is, we can imagine a situation that they sort of exist). The point is, there is simply no sound evidence for their existence.
  
  
• Keep in mind that mild religiosity is not as unproblematic as people usually claim. It is against critical method. Untouchable zones, once granted, are out of the error-correcting mechanisms of skepticism and questioning. Mild religiosity is not only problematic because it gives way to fundamentalism, but also simply because it gives way to uncritical thinking.³
  
  

• It must be highlighted that religious people are against atheists whereas we atheists are against religions. In that sense, radical secularists, by which I mean believers who are against the institutionalization of religion, are practically atheists. Unless for philosophical joy, do not bother about what kind of ridicule they believe in in their personal lives.
  
  
• You might encounter criticisms arguing that atheism is not a significant political attitude (and therefore that it's not worth to speak out). Do not let them depoliticize you. Atheism is not “just another belief”; atheism is much more than “choosing not to believe.” Always keep in mind that our struggle is not against gods in person, but against the economic, political, gender and social exploitations with reference to religious doctrines. Religion is political, so is its anti-thesis. Moreover; given the oppression and violence the nonbelievers are subjected to, atheism is indeed a very precious political attitude.* 
  
  

1 Here are more than 600 “proofs” of god's existence, in case you needed one. And here are some of the common fallacies for you to spot them easily in debates. As a training, you can study the arguments of theists in this lovely video.

2 For a rigorous definition of “almost all” have a look at this Wikipedia entry.

3 This idea is due to a short essay of Greta Christina.

Religious symbols are political symbols.

There is an incomprehensible discussion on how to respond to the laws and regulations banning or restricting the wearing of religious symbols in certain public spheres. As is the case for most of the discussions on religion; once the question is put incorrectly, it is almost impossible to reach to a true conclusion by rational reasoning.

I will not waste my time by arguing against those who think that religious beliefs should be respected and that they deserve an infinite tolerance. However, even some of the most radical atheists such as Richard Dawkins falls into the mistake of equivalencing religious beliefs with personal opinions. I fully understand Dawkins' strategy when he aims at eliminating the undeserved privilege of religions, but this he does in a somewhat slippery zone. My aim in this essay is not to criticize Dawkins' arguments; Dawkins' arguments can only trigger productive discussions in the atheist community but no essential disagreements. I will instead try to improve the atheist argument against religions and their immunity.

1. What is a religion, really?

As mentioned in the introduction, one should first put a question correctly in order to find a proper answer to it. I insist that we should start by elaborating on what religion is.¹ What is Koran; a collection of ontological and epistemological arguments that pop up in several million people's minds, or an embryonic constitution of a first age empire? What is Christianity; a system defining ethics and morality for humanity, or the ideology of the Roman empire formed around the 4^th century? Nonreligious people who analyze concepts with a historical method – such as the author of this essay – prefer the latter explanations. (A tremendous amount of powerful arguments against religions are still at hand even when one chooses a the former ones, though.²)

Several people think that their nation is a priori superior to other nations. This is not only an unacceptable opinion but also a very dangerous ideology that occurred around three centuries ago. We know how nations were constructed during the development of industrial bourgeoisie in Europe. We know how the idea spread around the world, and most crucially, we know it is not a simple personal view, it is a political stance (with a very heavy historical load, indeed) which in certain cases may encourage people to assassinate or at least discriminate against other people - or at the worst case to make soaps out of them.

Nationalism is a historical phenomenon, so are religion, patriarchy, homophobia and many other social problems.³ And there is a method called historical materialism that we use when studying social phenomena. Seeing religion as a “personal belief” instead of an “ideological choice” is anti-Marxist. For some centuries, religion has had a strong ideological hegemony; henceforth “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”⁴ Unaware of this historical burden, thinkers may have fallen up to now into the fallacy of seeing religious beliefs as something outside of the political sphere. This attitude should be abandoned in order to be able to comprehend what the religious leaders and conservative politicians are aiming at.

2. Religions are ideologies.

To believe in allah is to support some version of the ideology of an Arabic empire founded in 7^th century. Nothing more, nothing less. To have faith on the ten commandments is to defend the social envisagement of an Egyptian tribe that existed some 2500 years ago. Nothing more, nothing less.

Prayer calls are political slogans repeated five times a day. Sunday worships at the church are political meetings. The pope's public speeches are political demonstrations. The Old Testament is no better than Mein Kampf.

There can't be enough repetitions of this: Religions are ideologies. Religious beliefs are ideological choices – whether due to conscious decisions or strong propaganda. Accessories, tattoos, posters, knickknacks and dresses are expressions of the wearing persons political stance. They are political symbols. The question is about what kind of an ideology they are representing.

Certain ideologies are considered to be against democracy: Racism has no right of expression, it is defined as hate speech and is considered a crime. Fascism has no right to associate because it aims at the destruction of all other associations. One cannot publicly defend slavery; even if she/he is not a member of an organization that defends slavery, it is still a crime against human dignity to promote such an ideology.

Most religions have a history comparable to the above mentioned ones; child abuse, massacres, homophobia and circumcision of women just to name a few.

Religious people should not defend their wearings by asserting that it is a religious symbol. This is awkward. They should instead prove that their religious institutions are not against the wellbeing of humanity. This is of paramount importance; as in the example of slavery in the above paragraph, it is not enough that they claim that their own personal interpretation of a certain religious belief is not dangerous, they must indeed demonstrate that the religious institutions that their wearings symbolize are humanistic at the least.

I believe it will turn out to be a very difficult task for the Jews, Christians and Muslims. Perhaps this is why they insist on a dogmatic immunity condition for their views; who knows...

1 I restrict my attention to the three Abrahamic religions, but, as the reader would see, all my arguments apply for many other religions - at least one thousand other religions I am aware of.

2 My favorites for this are the two amazing books The Impossibility of God and The Improbability of God. The editors of both are Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier.

3 It is hard to exaggerate the analogy between nationalism and religions; and perhaps this analogy is the best way to explore the functioning of religious institutions in the society.

4 Karl Marx, German Ideology, 1845.