The Secular Religious Cult Of Now
I worry that our society is being irreparably harmed by the "woke" cult-think that is pervading every institution, including government:
Obad Omer has a piece at Newsweek, "I Left Islam for Liberal Values. Now Woke Liberals Are Embracing a New Religion":
I was raised in a religious Muslim home and practiced the faith for a long time. Eventually, I realized I was not a religious man, after spending a long time educating myself, immersed in our texts. Certain things bothered me after I investigated them deeply. I felt the hijab was misogynistic, and I opposed the strain of violence that had emerged from our holy books. Then there were the blasphemy laws outlined in the Quran, which seemed like the opposite of the liberal values I believe in. As a secular man, I went about my life, working as a contractor for the Canadian military for over a decade in Kosovo, Sudan, Bosnia, Haiti, and then Afghanistan. I encountered other Muslims, and others like me, who were not longer Muslim. But when I came back to Canada in 2014, I returned to a different country than the one I had left.I had left a country that was proud of being the opposite of what bothered me about Islam, that was proud of a tradition of free inquiry and free speech, open debate and civil discourse. The Canada I returned to resembled the religion of my youth more than it did its opposite.
I left a culture that was steeped in a sentiment that could be summed up as, "I may disagree with what you say, but I respect your right to say it." I returned to a culture summarized by, "I disagree with what you say, so shut up."
...Ex-Muslims like me who criticized the religion of our youth were called horrible slurs: "house Muslims," "native informants," "Uncle Toms," or bounty bars, implying we were brown on the outside but white inside. Strangers called me a white supremacist for saying the hijab is misogynistic.
...Once they started calling it racist to criticize Islam, it was easy to shut the conversation down completely. The accusation meant the accused was morally beyond the pale, and thus completely dismissible. Words like micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces became mainstream. An emphasis on pervasive racism grew exponentially. To even question the extent to which racism was everywhere resulted in accusations of being a racist. Like with religious blasphemy codes, you can only talk about certain topics in specific ways.
I couldn't help but notice there was an almost fundamentalist, faith-like aspect to these claims. It was as if in the years since I'd been gone, our society had decided to adopt the blasphemy codes of my youth. When I heard people asked to check their privilege or introspect the ways they have been racist, it sounded like the inner jihad that Muslims are supposed to perform to make sure they are on the correct path.
...Fall afoul of the right political view and you will be denounced; people throw around terms such as "political blackness" or "multi-racial whiteness." Just as apostates from Islam are said to not have been real Muslims, detransitioners are told they were never really trans and Black people who speak out against the tenets of critical race theory are told they're not really Black.
In Muslim countries, biology textbooks will censor evolution. Now, due to gender theory, biology is similarly coming into conflict with an ideology--and losing. A mixture of post-colonial theory and critical race theory is behind a push to disrupt texts, a call to decolonize the Western Canon and school curricula. Critical social justice ideologies are in direct conflict with Enlightenment values and the rigors of the scientific method, like Islam, and are thus a huge threat to liberalism--like Islam.








Just out of politeness, I suppose, we've let the ignorant and incompetent on stage for their moment. It's painful to watch and seems interminable. But it won't last.
The question is whether the competent are able to reclaim the dialogue and leadership - a hard road. But, it's Springtime, hope abounds.
Spiderfall at April 25, 2021 10:25 AM
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