Let's condemn religion for what it actually gets wrong

There’s plenty of comment out there about religion, particularly Islam. There always is in the aftermath of any terror attack, from islamophobes keen to make political capital of any catastrophe, to those of us on the left who become burdened with defending the 1.6 billion innocent Muslims who are the victims of an animalistic and highly uncritical human need to generalise, often crassly, in order to make sense of the world.

Really the argument should stop here. This pie chart is about as simple and factual as it gets. Not that I want to upset any bigots with evidence.

That’s my caveat for the rest of this article. Though I want to make a point about religion in general, not just Islam. All three Abrahamic religions, to a greater or lesser degree, subscribe to St Paul’s/Saul’s (whatever you want to call him) doctrine of the Golden Rule: that is to love thy neighbour as thyself, to do unto others as we would have done unto us. All the Abrahamic religions endorse charity as a virtue. Zakah/Tzadakah in Islam and Judaism. And in Christianity, one of Jesus’ most powerful lessons is that the rich should give to the poor, stating that it is ‘easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ It’s no coincidence, then, that the majority of work done to alleviate food poverty at the UK’s 445 Trussell Trust Food Banks is done through local Church communities and other religious groups. It’s clear, then, that for the most part, religion is a force for good in society.

So let’s focus on the real issues here – the ones that should be getting a lot more attention than bigoted islamophobic terrorism nonsense. Religion, it's safe to say, has not always been the LGBT community's best friend. A 2013 report conducted by Pew suggests a positive correlation between religiosity and condemnation of homosexuality:

Ah yes, well done Josh, you used a graph… but you’re misunderstanding correlation and cause (I can hear my critics shouting at their screens now). It is not religiosity which undermines tolerance of homosexuality; rather it is a cultural phenomenon. It just so happens that those countries with conservative cultures are generally more religious.

Well I don’t really like that argument. It’s a religious cop-out. Religion and culture are not the same entities, yes. Culture is an umbrella term, encompassing sport, entertainment, community and among other things… religion. So when it says in the Bible “No man must lie with another man as he lies with a woman for that is an abomination”, it does not surprise me to see that Christian countries are more “culturally” averse to homosexuality than us enlightened westerners.

But OK, let’s pretend that my critics have a point here. Well I can offset that. In France, only 35% of Muslims sampled believe that homosexual acts are morally acceptable. Christians in Britain do significantly better, with 61% supporting equal rights for gay people, though that still means 39% don’t support equal rights, or ‘don’t know’ which is still reprehensible.

It’s not just homosexuals that religions enjoy to condemn. It has taken until 2014 for the Church of England to approve women bishops. And the Catholic Church still prohibits them. In all orthodox Jewish communities and most mosques, women are forced to worship in segregation from the men. In orthodox synagogues, women cannot be rabbis, or even lead worship. This isn’t happening in the Middle East… this is happening in the United Kingdom in 2015!

I’m a liberal to the extent that I support people’s right to worship whomever they choose, and to belong to whichever religion they so desire. But I am not a liberal to the extent that I champion religious rights above human rights. If you genuinely consider homophobia to be an integral part of your religion, then no, I do not support your right to be a bigot.

So let’s not get distracted by the odd terror attack here and there. More people get killed by wasps and bees than they do by terrorists in Europe. Let’s have a meaningful discussion about religion and where it can improve its contribution to society. Let’s focus on the real flaws. The onus should be on the liberal-minded in the religious communities to lead these conversations.