this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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Crudely:
Beautifully put imho.
I became an atheist before but i can see how the primary threat is and will always be imperialism and not religion. It is used by imperialists in all possible directions.
The more sinister point from an on the ground perspective is that religion can help people who struggle to survive but is also stripped of any anti imperialist sentiment, especially in the west.
I would like to learn more about its DM point of view. Do you have a recommendation what to read to get a good entrypoint to analyse the contradictions from a more theoretical point?
Thank you, I am "re-learning" DM myself:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9855623/7353553
But to better answer your question the authors/topics that came top of my head was Roland Boer, Samir Amin and liberation theology, so I did mini-research to make a reading list which I will be also adding to my own pile:
(Addendum - I am an athiest myself but wanted to read around the topic you mentioned. I can't pinpoint sources for the opinions I have so chances it will become hopefully more refined with time)
An absolute banger of an answer! This goes into my saved posts! Thank you very much, comrade! I always love to get educated by comrades. :)
I completely forgot the Indian experience, so here's some more to my pile:
Western Hemisphere:
Pan-africanists:
It's complicated, but if I had to boil it down to a few crystals:
Religion makes a good person good and a bad person bad.
*All people have good and bad urges, and most people find themselves wrestling with whatever they view as "bad" sometimes. *Most people see the "bad" in everyone but ourselves and favorite people.
Believing in a literal deity isn't necessary to believe in the overarching message, good, bad, or indifference.
I can't go to any church within a reasonable distance because I'm not into people being unable to abide abortion or political assassination of our own corrupt leaders for any reason, but have no problem with genocide/invasion and regime change for commodities and real estate.
There are two UU churches in two different directions over an hour away. 😕
Pill me on the politics of Unitarian Universalism. How bad/good are they?
Like any place of gathering, it depends on individual congregations. Most are just very liberal liberals or social Democrats, I imagine. But I really liked the ones I've visited, some more, some less.
https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
I might dare to imagine some congregants in locations farther away may be actual socialist, maybe in other nation-states, but who knows?
They're pretty accepting of any beliefs, from atheist to neo/pagan, including Buddhist, Taoist, satanism (I doubt Laveyan; I doubt anything involving blood sacrifice, but who knows). I don't recall ever having a Eucharist, but it's been a couple of decades.
Palestine would have been completely gobbled up if not for the principled anti-imperialist revolutionary liberation theology of the Islamic Revolution.
Communists saying that religion is always backwards just shows these "anti-imperialist" dont see us as human.
Hopefully that's not what you took from what I said and my subsequent messages. (I didn't downvote you)
You are right - a lot of people come from parts of the world that if it weren't for Muslims there would have been no formal liberation as we know it from colonisers.
On the other hand, what you said could be flipped. One could argue some of those who are religious see a non-believer as less than human because they (the non-believer) deserve not to enter their heaven, and lead a godless (in their eyes) life on earth. Indeed the purge of socialism in the Global South was partly using this metric of equating communism with anti-theism; the Jakharta Method with the killing of half a million Indonesians being a famous example.
So if both religious and non-religious folks could see each other less than human then the common denominator here is not the religiousness, or lack of it, but some other material condition in play that leads to that view?
What you need to decide for yourself is those who see you less than human is what material conditions lead them to that awful conclusion eg their western chauvinism vs their self-claimed marxism?
No no. I replied because you're one of the few reasonable replies here.
I agree, the contradiction is imperialism and it will use whatever methods available to maintain itself.
Apologies (and thank you)! I misunderstood what you said. I will leave my reply as is for those that are still lurking around.
No problem and thank you for the conversation.
Don't get me wrong, lots of times religions have been used as a weapon, like in Indonesia as you said but we could really talk about so many.
But to use that and say all types of Islam are equally reactionary and to blanket criticize religion generally is just xenophobic chauvanism. People in the Lemmy version of this thread are saying pretty heinous things and theres still a lot of questionable posts in this lemmygrad one too.
The development of Resistance Islam as part of Khomeinist revolution in Islamic politics and thought is objectively good for all people on earth, Muslims and not Muslims. One cannot be Pro-Palestine and think such things about religious people and faiths generally. Thats my only point here.
And to drive the point really home: the genocidal Israel is a secular project.