States and Religions

Apologies to all those who are champing to read my thoughts (!!)... having a young family with the flu is one of life's more unpleasant experiences.

I have just been reading Legal Eagle's very impressive rant about anti-semitism.

It occurs to me that this is a problem wherever states represent religions. Israel is one such state. Iran's actions under the Ayatollah, and Afghanistan under the Taliban, tended to lead to generalisations about Islam (I remember being taken to see Not Without my Daughter at school, and being horrified by what I thought were the necessary consequences of Islam).

Similarly, Protestants and Catholics were persistently tarred with the actions of Northern Ireland (and England) and the Republic of Ireland respectively during the Northern Irish conflicts.

This is one reason for the separation of religion and state. Of course, the contrary argument is that states are there to protect a people with some form of common need or culture or ideology. Be that as it may, that people or members of that religion may need to wear the fact that their representative state will in fact represent them.

This is no excuse for racism. Nor is it an excuse for wilful ignorance of such events as the Holocaust. But the actions of Israel do bring succour to those willing to be antisemitic, just as the actions of Iran or the Taliban generate Islamophobia.

Indeed, this phenomenon extends to any state which claims to represent a particular ideology. The communism of East Germany, Russia, China and Cuba are each entirely different manifestations of a political system based on marxism. However, the actions of the worst offenders are always equated to the ideology itself.

The moral of the story? If a culture or religion explicitly uses a state as a means of expression and protection of their people, that people must take responsibility for the actions of that state, and instead of saying "we're jews; we're different from Israel", say "we're jews; and as such we oppose the actions of Israel".

Then again, I confess I am a secular woman in a (supposedly) secular state. I have never experienced the feelings of those with a deep connection to a state outside my own, nor have I ever experienced the desperate need for protection within my own people. These are the constraints on my views, and I willingly acknowledge them.