The 22nd August is designated by the United Nations, ‘Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief’.
‘There are continuing acts of intolerance and violence based on religion or belief against individuals, including against persons belonging to religious communities and religious minorities around the world, and the number and intensity of such incidents, which are often of a criminal nature and may have international characteristics, are increasing’.
https://www.un.org/en/observances/religious-based-violence-victims-day
In 2020 the day was designated, by various ex-Muslim organisations, ‘International Apostasy Day’.
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is calling for people to ‘doodle on religious texts’ and post the results to social media for the purpose of, ‘ defending freedom of expression and the right to apostasy and blasphemy by subverting religious texts’.
They comment, ‘Whilst we might not agree with burning Qurans and books (usually associated with a long history of state and religious censorship against dissent), we nonetheless recognise the right of individuals to express their abhorrence to bad ideas and the persecution and murder of freethinkers and apostates.
On Apostasy Day, join us in celebrating blasphemy and apostasy as rights by subverting and doodling on the Quran, Bible, Torah, the Vedas or any other religious texts to proclaim. It is important to reiterate that burning, murdering, torturing, persecuting human beings are violence and hate, not burning the Quran or religious texts’. Further, ‘Ideas are not sacred, human beings are’.
The Socialist Party’s views on religion are a matter of public record or can be easily ascertained by reference to articles in the Socialist Standard or to Party pamphlets.
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/socialism-and-religion/
How the Gods Were Made by John Keracherhttps://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/how-the-gods-were-made-by-john-keracher/
‘The fundamental idea of religion is a belief in the persistence of life after death. Originally, and in essence throughout, religion is a belief in the existence of supernatural beings, and the observance of rites and ceremonies in order to avert their anger or gain their goodwill. “Corpse worship,” as it has been tersely called, “is the protoplasm of religion.”’. (SaR)
The right to peaceful protest of any kind should be sacrosanct (no pun intended). Unfortunately there are many examples where this is not, and has not been, the case. The actions called for by CEMB does appear to be the equivalent of tying a firecracker to a cat’s tail.
Whilst not decrying the motives, or the right of anyone to participate in this protest, it has to be asked, what will this achieve? It seems highly unlikely that those to whom these texts, rightly or wrongly, holds some value, will feel compelled to renounce their inculcated beliefs because of this.
Is the defacing of religious texts, or of any book, a pointless exercise? Put simply, yes. The obvious solution to religious fanaticism of any kind, can only be the general realisation that religions are a form of dominance over the masses that benefit those pushing the fairy tales as a means of power over the various adherents. And that the social system which continues to encourage the divisions caused between various religious groups and organisations profit the asset-owning class, not the vast majority who give up the possibility of the material gains that come from living in a money-free, class-free society.
When capitalism is replaced by Socialism religion will have had its day.
As Karl Marx wrote, ‘The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to Nature’. Capital Volume One.
That actions have consequences, and not necessarily the ones intended, is lately demonstrated by the recent events in Sweden which have led to that State instantiating a raise in the level of threats facing the country from ‘high threat’ to ‘heightened threat’.
The Swedish prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson said, ‘“There is no reason to intentionally offend someone else, because it actually risks threatening Sweden. Calm and realising the seriousness of the situation is my message.”
Addressing future planned Qur’an burnings, he said the government was looking at its public order laws, but also cautioned: “Everything that is legal isn’t [necessarily] appropriate”’.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/17/sweden-raises-terrorist-threat-level-after-quran-burnings.
