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In Spain religious symbols in public workplaces, official places and buildings are banned since years. You will see them only in religios buildings and churches, maybe in some old monuments.
Sounds fair to me, we need less religion everywhere.
What I don’t get is the right wing pushing this and the left wing being against it, while the hero of the far left said ‘Religion is the opium of the masses.’
There’s a rather considerable current of leftism that is libertarian. Over-regulation of what a person can do, especially with something as, well, personal as appearance, is at odds with left-libertarian values.
Left-authoritarianism is of course compatible with such regulations.
The problem is that you have to treat religion equally and for a lot of European countries that would mean pushing Christian symbols out of public offices as well. Most Nordic countries, Greece and Malta have crosses on their flags for example. Many countries like Germany have parties, which are explicitly Christian. The Bundeswehr uses the Iron Cross as a symbol, which is in direct heritage from a crusader order.
The problem for those countries is that baning Islamic symbols is very often just racist rethoric to hit Islam, rather then a proper separation of state and religion.
It would be religionist, not racist. Islam is followed by many different races. But I get where you’re coming from. I’m all for getting rid of all the religious symbolism etc.
I am interested, what exactly constitutes a “religious symbol” for you?
An argument I’ve heard against it is that it’s overly harmful against non-western religions, specifically Islam. A pretty common tenet in Islam is some kind of head covering for woman. Banning that is a pretty sweeping reform. Christianity and Catholicism don’t have anything like that, and if you really wanted to wear a cross you could just hide a necklace under your shirt. And Judaism, most non -orthodox Jews don’t wear a yamaka 24/7. So in the end (typical) white religions aren’t affected while minorities are.
Personally for me I don’t care about wearing a religious symbol as long as you’re not pushing your agenda. I don’t care if my boss has a Bible on his desk any more than if he had a copy of dragon Ball z.
Nuns and priests would not be allowed to wear their religious clothes either, so I’m okay with that.
It is not the secular state’s fault that one religion chooses to be more backwards than the others by requiring religious clothing from all women, and is thus more affected by a ban on religious symbols.
Adapt to modernity or get the fuck out
And you expect that to be enforced?
Given that in one German state it was mandatory by state law to have a cross in every public building, from a party that is very overt about banning hijabs, i strongly doubt that.
The reality will be that this will target muslims everywhere and maxbe a few stry christians. But the vast majority of christian strongholds, like Germanys catholic south will simply not enforce it against christians.
So, we should just accept backwards superstition and archaic societal ideals because Bavaria is made up of Christian reactionaries?
Enforce it from Berlin then. Deploy personnel to monitor the application. If Bavaria tries to play favorites, big fines for each case.
As a german I am tired of conservative obstructionism, especially when it’s Bavaria, the german state embodiment of selfish and short sighted backwardness.
So, we should just accept backwards superstition and archaic societal ideals
No, we should fight that. With words. With arguments. And not by banning clothing.
Clothing is just a symbol and the meaning changes all the time and from context to context. People who want to ban clothing are just in favor of putting pressure on other people, on forcing others to be like them. It’s despicable.
I was a teenager with very long hair in the seventies. I loved my hair, it told the world that I was a free spirit. And it was a very powerful asshole-detector. Every now and then some backwarded adult would come up to tell me I would have been sent to concentration camp under Hitler. And it was quite obvious that they wished Hitler to come back and do so again. Just for me wearing long hair.
I don’t think you believe, but I am convinced that there are quite a number of young Muslimas here in Berlin who chose to wear a headscarf to uni while their mother says “Please, don’t risk your career!”
And they say: “Mother, this scarf tells them where I’m from. And if they keep me from having a career it’s not because of the scarf, it’s because they hate who I am.”
“All this pseudo-liberal, pseudo-tolerant, pseudo-feminist, pseudo-open-minded assholes, I would never detect them without that scarf! Now leave me alone, I’ve got a heritage to defend.”
You’re much closer to Söder than to a humanist.
So you whipped up a whole fictitious little story in which I’m the evil reactionary based on me being anti theist? Okay then.
And just for the record, you comment also illustrates perfectly the cognitive dissonance employed here. A muslim immigrant that is proud of their muslim heritage isn’t brave or admirable, it’s the same dumb shit as any german christian who would try to argue that.
I don’t want people to feel free to be ultra conservative religious quran thumpers because we are so liberal and tolerant. I want them to be taught that this shit isn’t welcome here and if they want to be they have to leave it behind.
So, we should just accept backwards superstition and archaic societal ideals because Bavaria is made up of Christian reactionaries?
Enforce it from Berlin then. Deploy personnel to monitor the application. If Bavaria tries to play favorites, big fines for each case.
While i agree with your sentiment the reality is that christian fundamentalists (in appearance, in behaviour they are devilish unchristian) are still powerful in German politics and we see a resurgence in their popularity among the voters. The majority of the German people is happy with persecution of muslims and doesnt care about favoritism towards christians.
I would vastly prefer if my boss had DBZ rather than a Bible. BDZ is just literature, the Bible is a symbol of indoctrination, I don’t want my boss to be influenced by some made up nonsense
The right wing is pushing specifically for the banning of things like the hijab or other religious head coverings usually worn by women. They justify it by saying that these head coverings are a symbol of oppression against women, and have to place in a free society.
Thing is though, how free is a society if it feels it has to dictate what women can and can’t wear?
That’s the catch 22 isn’t it… “You’re not free to dictate that women must wear a hijab, because we are dictating they can’t wear one.”
However, this is only legislating public workplaces not everywhere, so it’s less dictatey than Islam.
There have been plenty of efforts and attempts to ban hijabs completely, in different European countries at different times. The debate started probably around the time the first Islamicimmigrants came to Europe.
The rest of the quote is: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Take from that what you will.
I also don’t know that most people who identify as or are called left wing would call Marx their hero.
Good. Religion is like a penis, you don’t pull it out in public or at work.
Not pulling out your penis in public comes from Abrahamic religious tradition, just like crosses. We sometimes forget that our modern Western hangups come from Christianity tapering the “immodesty” of cultures like the Greek and Celtic
Why though? What danger does a person that is visibly religious pose to the public?
What danger does walking around with your dick out pose to the public?
It has predatory connotations. It makes people fear for their safety.
There are tens of thousands of people who got sexually harrassed by catholic personel. I think for them and their families a cross has quite strong “predatory connotations” and makes them “fear for the savety of their (or their children)”
So we should ban all displays of religion in public and at the workplace because of the actions of vile clergymen? I agree that religious symbols can be a trigger to people who have been subjected to harrassment and assault in a religious context. But I haven’t heard these people talk about a ban on religious symbols in general.
So … no actual danger, but it makes people uncomfortable. Just like religion.
People that feel uncomfortable because they fear for their safety around openly Muslim people are islamophobes and their comfort does not matter more than the Muslim persons right to practice their religion.
in general enforcing a cultural nonreligious hegemony by banning any religious displays at work and in public goes against the freedom of religion.
Freedom of religion is stupid anyway. Freedom of speak and expression already allows people to believe any fiction they want, there is no reason why a certain selection of fictional ideas need a special status.
They are given a special status by being banned though. Freedom of expression extends to being free to express your religion through clothing, these laws exempt them from this right and give them a special banned status.
I fear for my safety around Christians.
I’m a non-Christian who has feared for my safety around atheists before.
But I shouldn’t have a right to demand atheists act differently so I stop being scared.
I don’t have the right not to be offended. Nor do I have the right to have irrational phobias honored. Neither does anyone else.
Many people fear for their safety around men. Should we ban men?
Its completely irrelevant if it’s Islam or anything else.
Right, the comfort people that feel uncomfortable around others simply because of their religion is of no importance, regardless of the religion they feel uncomfortable around because there is no actual threat. It “just happens” to be more prevalent around muslim people which is why I chose that example. My edit meant to clarify that.
Considering most religions are death cults, openly religious people have very different priorities than I do, and many of them do not think my life has value. Some even think I am not truly alive without belief.
Not terribly comforting.
People that feel uncomfortable because they fear for their safety around openly Muslim people are islamophobes
Go try being gay or an atheist in a muslim country and see how irrational that fear actually is.
try being gay or an atheist in a muslim country
Following that logic it would be rational to be afraid of people with an American accent because of Desantis.
There are moderate Muslims. Albania and Bosnia their populations consist of something like 30% Muslims and those countries have “normal”/progressive LGBT-rights.
I was raised christian in a majority Muslim country. I know exactly what these laws do, because I felt it myself. Hence me speaking up. The shoe being on the other foot does not suddenly make it right.
I dont believe people should wear crosses or headscarves in public sector jobs. Public sector jobs are supposed to be neutral ideologically.
Why should your beliefs dictate whether another person has to choose between their religion and job? And why these two things in particular, what about Orthodox Jews, people with a bindi and so on?
Do you have any material reason to discriminate against people like this? Particularly since this discrimination will be felt by minorities more harshly than the rest of the populace.
People wearing clothes at all makes some people uncomfortable. Women not covering their hair is as bad to some people as “walking with your dick out”. People (of religions I don’t believe) being forced to remove attire makes me feel VERY uncomfortable and tyrranized. I’ve always been part of the movement to push back against dress codes and uniforms in workplaces because authorities having power of “style” is unacceptable to me.
Why do only a small number of people get a say on what everyone must do, and everyone else who feels uncomfortable or oppressed “needs to suck it up”?
If your goal is to make the fewest people uncomfortable, you let them wear their religious attire. If your goal is to make the most people uncomfortable… dicks out. If your goal is to discriminate against classes of people you don’t like, you shouldn’t be the one making decisions.
Someone felt aggravated by your words, apparently, yet it is pure good sense, regardless the colorful choice of words.
can they ban you for wearing a necklace with a cross? or a scarf around your head? This is madness, what bad does it do to other people, this is like banning lgbtq people from kissing outside cause it makes others uncomfortable.
The title is false, it’s only a judgment in court on whether member states should be allowed to ban such visible signs for public servants or should be deprived of that right.
like banning lgbtq people from kissing outside cause it makes others uncomfortable.
We’re talking about bans in workplaces here. And I think that your example is fitting. If a workplace can ban people kissing (or wearing a pyjama then it should be allowed to ban religion affiliated clothing as well. That sad, I do be live that in most cases employers shouldn’t be allowed to ban these things. If you end up working with your boyfriend and occasionally share a short kiss, that’s not going to affect your work and if you’re able to do your job in your PJs, then you should be allowed to do so.
No they can not ban you, but they can ban your cross.
If you can’t live without your cross, that is on you.
Technically, covering your “naughty bits” is a religious taboo. Can they ban that?
Other people are calling that a slippery slope, but crosses as symbols absolutely transcend religions as much as clothing as a religious moral.
thing is most peoplenIknoew, when they wear a cross or smt, it’s not even a big deal for them, theyre just just wearing, doesn’t mean they are going to siddenly start talking to you about religion.
Those people aren’t the problem. The people who can’t even take that little step of taking the cross off are the problem. Religion should be kept out of matters of state.
Religion should be kept out of matters of state.
Demanding someone remove jewelry because you don’t approve of its religious connotations is not secularism. It’s the opposite.
If religion is kept out of matters of state, state needs to be blind to religion, not zealously purging all signs of it.
This isn’t about banning people from wearing their religious merchandise in public. This is banning religious objects from workplaces. More precisely just public workplaces. Of course a secular state should also have secular workplaces. And the way labour rights are personal life can be completely banned from your workplace. Why would religion be treated differently?
Is that the workplace you want? Devoid of personal lives but mere drones who congregate to labour and then disperse into their personal lives where finally they are free to express themselves how they want?
That’s what capitalism wants. They want their leaders and ceos to be their gods.
No I want democratic workplaces. But also workplaces without religion nonetheless.
I think it gets pretty hypocritical, singling out religion like that. In the workplace, I can have memorabilia of my favorite sports team even though someone else hates it (unless perhaps it’s a Catholic School team that has a cross in its logo?). I can have the flag of a hostile foreign country because I’m proud of my heritige. I can have a picture of me kissing my wife even though it would normally be just outside the common no-tolerance Harassment policy. Unless it was taken at the wedding, or in/near a religious monument. I can wear gauge earrings, or just a little star… as long as it’s not a Star of David. Ditto with pendants, even new-agey wooowooo pendants, as long as it’s not a pentagram. There’s no path there that isn’t hypocritical.
Freedom of religion and freedom from religion go hand-in-hand, and it’s not always an easy relationship to figure out. Forced private secularism is its own anti-freedom problem, even when discussing the employee at a government workplace. It’s not really secular if I’m forbidden from wearing something for solely religious reasons. Even if the religious reason is that the thing I want to wear is religious.
I’d say there is a difference between politics and regular hobbies at the workplace. Religion is a very political issue, one about your worldview and beliefs.
Religious symbols where they belong, in churches, temples and religious institutions, in public places, administrations, public libraries, schools and universities have absolutely nothing to do with, there they can result in offense or discrimination for people of another or no faith. Sad politicians making an oath on the Bible (in Spain they do it on the constitution, without additions like “with the help of God”). Religion is a true social backwardness, the proof is theocracies, there are none in the world where basic human rights are respected and where social progress is possible.
- “Justice exists to record legally, ritually control made by the cops to normalize people” Michel Foucault
- tl;dr : acab
WTH just let people wear what they want, as long as it is not too revealing.
as long as it is not too revealing
And how is banning “revealing” clothing any better than banning other other types of clothing that certain people might find offensive (e.g. headscarfs)? You won’t get hurt by seeing some nipples either.
So you want to allow people walking around with e.g. bare buttcheeks?
How could I tell apart an islamic and an atheist headscarf? My mother often wore one in the 1960s and 70s, as was the fashion back then.
I mean, it’s more about code of vestment. Let’s say the code of certain workplace say that you have to have your face fully visible, you can’t wear anything that obstructs your face, if religious symbols were allowed you can justify yourself with “religious obligation”, the “atheist headscarf” was banned from the start
Get a picture and ask enough people to get a statistically significant result. The meaning of a symbols is defined by what people think it means and of course that can change with place and time. Hence in Europe the headscarf would be religious now but not back then.
Just hope the 60s and 70s don’t come back, I guess? Or not care?
How about crosses in public institutions? Asking for a (bavarian) friend.
Yes please ban those too
Please start with banning crosses as wall decoration in bavarian public authorities
I think they are already illegal by the Grundgesetz and Bavaria is just Bavaria and do whatever they want.
illegal by the Grundgesetz
Hm, what Article would that be?
Unfortunately the separation of state and church is not very thorough in Germany.And then there is Article 4
Article 4 [Freedom of faith and conscience]
(1) Freedom of faith and of conscience and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed shall be inviolable.
(2) The undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed.Article 4 does indeed ban it.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruzifix-Beschluss https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/kruzifix-urteil-bayern-jubilaeum-1.4906155
Bavaria is indeed violating the constitution here. There’s merely not much done to enforce it here.
Wonder how they’ll cope here in rural Austria.
That’s how I know this law will absolutely be used to target specific religions unless the fundamentalist Christians take it too far.
Would be too funny to see Markus Söder’s face if this would actually happen. “DeClInE oF tHe OcCiDeNt” or something like that.
I mean he did argue that they aren’t a religious symbol before. He later contradicted himself and said that they are but I would not be surprised if he made that stupid argument again.
Banning american propaganda from european society?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling came after a Belgian woman alleged the local municipality where she worked had infringed her religious freedom by telling her she couldn’t wear a hijab.
The latest case arrived at the court after a Muslim employee of the eastern Belgian municipality of Ans was told she could not wear a headscarf at work.
The municipality then amended its terms of employment, saying they required employees to observe strict neutrality, which means any form of proselytising is prohibited and the wearing of overt signs of ideological or religious affiliation is not allowed for any worker.
Hearing the case, the Labour Court in Liège said it was uncertain whether the condition of strict neutrality imposed by the municipality gave rise to discrimination contrary to EU law.
In August France’s Education Minister Gabriel Attal said state school pupils would be banned from wearing abayas, loose-fitting full-length robes worn by some Muslim women.
The garment had been increasingly worn in schools leading to a political divide over them, with right-wing parties pushing for a ban while those on the left voicing concerns for the rights of Muslim women and girls.
The original article contains 369 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 48%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m not sure a hijab is a religious symbol. It’s just a covering worn for religious reasons. The hijab doesn’t have a fixed design or pattern that makes it significantly different from what western women wore in the fifties.
And if you can’t go out in public dressed like Sophia Loren, what even is the point of western civilization?
I’m not sure a hijab is a religious symbol. It’s just a covering worn for religious reasons.
The problem is, far rights won’t care.
Hardcore christian germans do have silly hair covering rules and such as well though.
They’ll say that’s not a symbol.
Well then there’s no discussion to the hijab either.
But as they are right wings, they’ll probably say hijabs are religious symbols. I don’t know what they’re thinking but that’s predictable.
I’m not sure a hijab is a religious symbol. It’s just a covering worn for religious reasons.
Lol
Such a cogent and articulate reply.
I didn’t think it was particularly impressive but thanks
So are headscarves for non-religious women going to be banned too? What about other modest clothing?
It’s stupid. I agree.
If an Islam woman not in hijab starts wearing headscarves everyday just as a fashion anyway, theoretically it’s not a religious whatever. So what’s the point of those far right idiots.
I would love so much to see headscarves and hair wraps become a trend just to fuck with this law.
Are headscarves for men going to be banned?
I’m really curious to see what ends up getting caught in these laws.
Orthodox Jews banned from public workplaces is not a good look tbqhwy.
But they’re not banned, religious clothing is
These bans are making someone choose between their religious convictions and employment.
And a choice is not a ban.
Its not a real choice. It is meant to reduce the number of people of certain religious affiliations from public workplaces aka ban them.
Consider if the “choice” given women was between presenting male and giving up their jobs. Or not to be considered for a job. It would in effect ban women because they would either have to give up their gender identity at least for the duration of the work or not work there.
Likewise here it would be allowed to make the denunciation of ones religious convictions a job requirement. It’s atrocious.
Give me all your money or I kill you. It’s not a ban on your finances, coercion, extortion or whatever bad words exist. You can just choose not to live. It’s a choice, your choice : )
Like Sikh turbans and Emerati ghutra? Yeah, I wonder too.
I assumed those were going to be banned in religious grounds too.
No, I just mean just a bearded hipster dude with a piece of cloth on his head looking all groovy and shit.
Are bandanas a trend again? Not really professional attire tbh but gen z is full of surprises.
“In the workplace” is the thin end of the wedge. Wait for “in government buildings” and “near schools”, before an actual honest to God ban.
Are they religious symbols?
Now do it on Zionist symbols please
EU states have their own sets of laws, so it’s not too surprising to me that the EU laws don’t intervene in this case.
That municipality really showed their islamophobia by banning hijabs in this way, though.
