I recalled writing something similar to this in our April edition, about a seminar in Germany that discussed religious freedom and the freedom of speech. We also talked about the abolition of the paragraph 166, which is just an extra paragraph to interfere again with the rights of religious people and their so called right to fight against blasphemy and discrimination. The problem is that the protection of intolerant groups is sometimes bigger in comparison to other tolerant groups due to fear of violence and public excesses basic political conflicts are mostly the activator for using §166,which is often more based on emotions than on arguments. It seems, to me, that people without any religious background or supernatural believe can take criticism as less emotional than others. We should be more often insulted as philosophy of life as we have the same right to express our insult, but it seems that non-religious people have less problems to interact with criticism. Why is that so?
Religious criticism should be accepted as social criticism. Right now church competitors do not have the same protection like to church on its own. So why is there seen a need for extra paragraphs, for extra articles in our laws to protect religious people? I think, if they would be a balance and acceptance from all sides, we would not need that. The only thing what is neccessary would be the human rights charta for everyone as it is the most important today. Without making differences in front of the law, without any different behaviour to people with or without any religion or believe – each person, each man, woman and child would have the same rights including the performance of religious practize and the abstinence to it. Which beautiful imagination would that be, to see people just discussing with opposite statements, but without fighting and arguing against each other. Until then, I hope we can raise some questions we do not understand and hope to clarify with the help of our discussion and maybe also with the help of our YouthSpeak.
I wish you a nice reading.
Silvana Uhlrich