Politics Mix with Religion Usually Hurt The Humanists and Atheist the Most
MORE than 24 centuries have passed since Socrates was put to death (pictured) on charges that included non-belief in the state religion, and the situation doesn't seem to have changed all that much. In the great majority of countries, things are in some respect harder for atheists, humanists and the non-religious than they are for devout fellow-citizens. The extent of this disadvantage can vary a lot: from having to put up with political systems (including most democracies) that accord certain privileges to faith, to an immediate danger of death. Those are some of the main points in a report on Freedom of Thought by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (an umbrella group for humanist groups) that has just been published.
There are 13 countries, the survey finds, where being an atheist can lead to execution. In 12 cases, this reflects Islamic regimes that mandate the death penalty for abandoning the established religion. In addition, Pakistan prescribes execution for blasphemy, for which the threshold is very low; a court in that country has recently laid down that life imprisonment is insufficient for the crime of insulting Islam.
The report grades countries on a scale from "free and equal" to perpetrators of "grave violations" against those who dissent from religion. Some of the findings are surprising. A cluster of West African countries, some of which face Christian-Muslim tensions, are given a fairly clean bill of health: they include Sierra Leone, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, CĂ´te d'Ivoire and Senegal. Many Latin American states are ticked off for according privileges to Christianity, but Brazil and Uruguay get good marks. So does Japan. Most west European countries are deemed guilty of "systemic discrimination" against the non-religious by virtue of the special status that they grant to Christian churches. Many democracies also have anti-blasphemy laws, albeit rarely invoked. Norway, which has a national church and a Christian monarchy, is deemed "mostly satisfactory"—in part because it offers assistance to any belief-based group, including a large humanist association.
To its credit, the report observes that atheist tyrannies can crush human freedom at least as ruthlessly as theocratic ones. It notes that "totalitarian states like North Korea...impose a state ideology that is as all-controlling and intolerant as that of any theocracy" where "any hint of independent thought...is liable to meet with the severest punishment."
In the United States, the report suggests, most of the problems faced by the non-religious reflect the social and political atmosphere rather than any flaw in the political system, which strictly separates church and state. But there were at least seven American states where an atheist could be barred from holding public office, and the fact that hardly a single member of Congress dares to profess no religion is taken as a sign of strong societal pressure.
One thing emerges clearly from this report. Countries that make it impossible to disown all religious affiliation are usually pretty unpleasant places to profess a sincerely held faith. In any case, what comfort can there be, in this day and age, from a faith whose political patrons threaten with shackles all those who reject it?
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