Sentiments will always get hurt, especially religious ones. There is no other way. Society cannot just stand in one place. Nothing will progress in this way. People averse to the idea of progress will not accept it, and will raise questions.
People don’t act out in such barbaric ways when other sentiments are hurt, as they do when religious ones are hurt. Why are religious sentiments so important?
Some say this is because a large portion of the world is religious. I often hear that it is not right to hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion people.
People are giving too much importance to the number of people here. It seems like you can offend people in small numbers, but offending large numbers of people is a problem. Would it be okay if it was 150 or 1500 instead of 1.5 billion?
People who support the bloggers are saying that the bloggers did not hurt religious sentiments. So, do they also think that it is wrong to hurt religious sentiments? This is where the problem is. I have noticed that even the liberals seem to find it hard to accept that hurting religious sentiments is not a crime.
It is completely wrong to want to spend your entire life without an instance where your feelings might be hurt. It is normal to be offended by different things. There is not a single person in this world who has never been offended by something or other. People are bound to be offended multiple times every day when they socialise with different kinds of people. That is just life.
Imagine A says that he believes in socialism and B says that some socialist leader has character problems, and that socialism has no ideological value.
Then is it okay for A to say that B has offended his political sentiments? And this gives A the right to sue B and maybe also slaughter him in public? B has, in fact, hurt A’s political sentiments. The question is, so what?
These incidents don’t happen when other sentiments are hurt. They only happen when religious ones are hurt. Why do we have to be so respectful of religious sentiments? Because religion is true, or because many people love the religion?
People who think religion is true should learn to react to it in the same way they react when their other feelings are hurt. The politics of sentiments is not new.
It has been raging against democracy, knowledge, science, women’s rights, human rights, and equal rights for all. Now we must choose which side we want to save — religious sentiments or democracy, knowledge, and equal rights.
The politics of religious sentiments has taken a violent turn. The solution for this is not to protect religious sentiments. Rather, the opposite. It must be attacked constantly. Even more so than before. This is how people will eventually learn how to deal with it. Otherwise, the people in the business of religion will destroy what is left of society.
No one has been able to achieve women’s rights without offending misogynists, and no one has been able to establish human rights without offending people against equal rights for all. From establishing democracy to science — some people have always been offended. If the business of religion is to be stopped and stale social norms are to be broken, religious sentiments must be regularly attacked.
If you want to side with the bloggers or the atheists, it is not appropriate to say that they did not hurt anybody’s religious sentiments. Rather, you should say that they attacked people’s religious sentiments because it was necessary to do so. The fundamentalists want the word “atheist” to be a curse word. If “atheist” is a curse word, then “believer” is the same.
You may curse as you please, but violence is not acceptable. Ideology must be fought with ideology. The battle between science and religion is perennial. Scientists don’t hack people who refuse to believe their theories, but fundamentalists do. This will not stop unless the entire country protests together.