Practising Judaism and Islam Violates Freedom of Religion?

Christianity is the only religion that doesn’t violates human rights. Jews and Muslims violate human right when they practise their religion because it includes observance and not faith alone. And religion is faith, nothing else. With this narrow definition of religion, religious freedom is guaranteed by free speech and it’s up to anyone to decide, from hour to hour, if they are Christians, Muslims, or Jews. That is, basically, what Per Dannefjord, board member of the Swedish Humanist Association, says in a seminar on freedom of religion.

This is bullshit. No one can decide for himself that he is a Jew. Sure, it’s up to every person to believe in whatever he or she wants, a Gentile can observe all the mitzvoth, but that does not make he or she a Jew. There is no conflict between being Jewish and being an atheist, even though Jewish status is determined by Jewish law. Since the Jewish homeland was re-established in 1948, the Jewish status is also a legal matter. The right to settle in the state of Israel is awarded every Jew, and it has nothing to do with Dannefjord’s silly definition of Jewishness as mere matter of religious belief.

The anti-Jewish lobby is getting stronger by the day in Sweden. I thank previous generations of Jews for establishing the state of Israel. In a near future, if people like Dannefjord get their way, Jewish life in Sweden will be impossible. What Dannefjord and the Swedish Humanist Association are advocating is a state where forced assimilation is legitimised by a redefinition of equality—“equality” that requires of everyone that they adapt to the custom of the majority group.

This is a typically xenophobic lecture. Dannefjord uses all the rhetoric known from all bigoted movements. For example, he says that everyone has a limit to their tolerance, and that those Jews and Muslims who defend their right to circumcise their sons most likely wouldn’t tolerate other types of religious oppression—such as honour killings, female genital cutting, child marriage, etcetera—and therefore act selfishly when they argue for their rights.

This is precisely the type of argument I’m faced with when I debate gay rights. Homophobes love to make the case that same-sex marriage is wrong because paedophiles are not allowed to marry children, and since gay activists don’t argue in favour of paedophile marriage, they are selfish and insincere. So, as long as gay activists don’t embrace all types of paraphilia, they are dismissed as hypocrites. Only the majority culture, being it heterosexual or Christian, has the right to set norms for everyone else to adjust to.

Take a look at Per Dannefjord’s face. It’s the face of modern xenophobia. He produces lies about Jews and Muslims, and the audience clap along like the bigoted fools they are. As a Jew, I’m offended—but I’m no longer surprised by anything the Swedish Humanists say to delegitimise and dehumanise minority groups.

Read more in Swedish at Humanistbloggen (I’m sure they will tell you how irrelevant my criticism is, being the disgusting queer Jew that I am).