Do Your Religion a Favor: Live Up to Its Principles 

I meet monthly with the Downtown Senior Clergy of Minneapolis. This week we listened to one of the imams in the group describing increasing violence toward Muslims. Last weekend cars in the masjid’s parking lot were spray painted and otherwise damaged. Women wearing the hijab have been sworn at and confronted in public spaces. Muslim children are being ostracized and humiliated in schools. There have been several acts of vandalism and arson against shops owned by Muslims.

First, I have to ask a few purely logical questions:

Q: What is the quickest way to recruit fence-sitters into radicalized partisans?

A: Extreme reactions against peaceful Muslims.

Q: What do terrorists want?

A: Extreme reaction against peaceful Muslims and hardline action by governments that will catalyze opinion against moderates and liberals.

Q: What is the best guarantee that there will be another generation of extremists?

A: What we are doing now.

Q: What is the social cost of excluding the many because of the few?

That’s the logic. The logic says don’t be stupid. Don’t do exactly what the extremists assume you will do.

Whatever religion (or no religion) you are, this simple logic should be enough to convince you that Muslim-baiting among the US ruling class needs to stop right now, and with it the taunts and violence from the general population.

But we know that logic plays little part in US public discourse. So let’s go with religion—say, the higher values espoused by religions. Hate in the name of Christianity is the same as hate in any other name. Do your religion a favor: live up to its principles. Christianity doesn’t have a lot to say in its scriptures about refugees. Judaism, that “old testament,” certainly does, however.

Humanists don’t have any scriptures—our thinking moves too fast for that—but we do have a few core principles:

• We believe that human beings are more valuable than ideas.
• We believe that religions are completely and only human constructs.
• We believe that nation states are completely and only human constructs.
• We believe that human problems can be remedied only by human beings.

For Humanists, appeals to nationalism (“patriotism”) or a particular religion in order to justify inhumane acts are specious self-delusion. People act badly because we are primates and primates by nature sometimes resort to violence against our own kind. This is an unfortunate aspect of being a primate, and we need to work together to curb the impulse in ourselves, in others, and in the collective.

The human project is to encourage the flourishing of all living things and the earth itself. These goals are not accomplished by division and suspicion. The call of Humanism is to help heal.