Discrimination against atheists

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With discrimination against atheists social, especially state-approved or funded is discrimination against, or persecution of atheists and agnostics because of their explicit and open negation of faith described. Non-believers and non-religious can experience discrimination partly because they do not belong to a certain religious community or especially because of their open denial of a belief. Their recognition varies widely around the world. In parts of the world, these groups of people are persecuted , with punishment in some Islamic states ranging up to the death penalty .

State religion as possible discrimination

State religions, also known as state churches in Europe , signify official recognition and preference for a religion. Some states or constitutions state the main religious affiliation of the population. In countries with Christian Orthodox national churches there is a high level of identification between society and the local churches that has evolved over time. This results in factually close relationships and support from the state. A low level is given if the state institutionally prefers a religion, but at the same time guarantees unrestricted individual religious freedom. Examples of this are currently England and Denmark in particular , Sweden up to 2000 and Norway up to 2012 . In these states, the Anglican or Lutheran Church is / was part of the state and was also controlled by the state.

The Queen of Great Britain is also head of the Anglican Church of England (" Fidei defensor "), the most important bishops are represented as Lords Spiritual in the Upper House of Parliament . The Queen of Denmark is also head of the Lutheran Church of Denmark, until the middle of the 19th century membership of the Lutheran Church was also a prerequisite for citizenship in various Scandinavian countries. Conversely, internal church decisions are made in the form of state laws, the churches are part of the state to grant z. B. bound by freedom of belief.

In some Islamic countries, the connection between the state and religion is more extensive, in that the basis of the community is the religious rules of a current of Islam . Examples of this are Yemen and, in particular, Saudi Arabia . The state also has the task of protecting and preserving the “true” religion and, according to this view, thus ensuring the cohesion of society and domestic political stability. In these countries, avowed atheists face severe persecution.

Situation in different countries

Federal Republic of Germany

Examples are often the inadequate provision of non-church-sponsored day-care centers , disadvantages on the labor market due to privileges and quasi-monopoly positions of church bodies, a lack of alternatives to religious education in schools from the first year of school and a lack of involvement in the control bodies of public broadcasting cited.

In September 2015, the Humanist Association of Germany published the report Glass walls on the disadvantage of non-religious people in Germany. The report describes “in which areas citizens without religious beliefs are disadvantaged and refers to current areas of conflict. In addition, the report explains the political and legal background to the status quo and names case studies. The presentations are supplemented by suggestions on how politics could reduce disadvantages. ”The publication was taken up in numerous media.

In 2016, the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency dedicated a theme year to discrimination based on religion or (non-religious) belief . In a representative survey published on the occasion, two thirds of those questioned described the discrimination against non-denominational workers by the “church clause ” in the General Equal Treatment Act as “unjust”.

With a memorandum published on May 17, 2016, the Ethics Association presented an analysis of the situation of ethical and moral teaching subjects in German schools. In the memorandum, the professional association came to the conclusion that the disadvantages of non-denominational and non-religious students in the area of ​​school-based value formation are sometimes absurd. Many pupils and their parents are deprived of “basic educational goods that are acquired in the teaching of ethics subjects ” because of the many disadvantages in this area , according to the association.

Russia and Greece

In Russia and Greece , the Orthodox Church is strictly protected from criticism and has a place of honor at state celebrations, according to a study by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).

United States

The motto In God we trust can be read on the back of the one-dollar bill .

In the USA a state church is constitutionally excluded. Regardless of this, In God we trust has been a central motto of the United States and the US state of Florida since 1956 .

This motto is controversial in the United States. In the opinion of the critics, the reference to God in this slogan represents a violation of the right to negative freedom of belief. Criticism is also expressed from the religious side. A number of biblical passages (e.g. Ex 20.7  EU ), including the second and third biblical commandments , prohibit calling on God's name for little things.

The school prayer , which has long been customary and deeply anchored in the USA , was however by the US Supreme Court in several decisions, including a. Angel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), forbidden as discriminatory. The decision was circumvented in many schools and on official occasions by demonstrative minutes of silence , which were intended to provide a legally permissible opportunity to pray.

Islamic world

Currently, atheists and converts face the death penalty in Afghanistan , Iran , the Maldives , Mauritania , Pakistan , Saudi Arabia and Sudan . Although there are currently no official death sentences for religious reasons, other charges would be brought forward, according to the IHEU study. In these and other countries such as Bangladesh , Egypt , Indonesia , Kuwait and Jordan , the publication of atheistic or humanistic writings is prohibited or severely restricted by “ blasphemy ” laws.

A special form of restriction of opinion also affects the Internet. In 2012, more than a dozen people in ten countries were convicted of blasphemous statements on Facebook or Twitter . In 2007, a blogger in Egypt was sentenced to four years imprisonment for allegedly insulting then President Hosni Mubarak and the Islamic al-Azhar University on his blog . As a result, other Egyptian bloggers and internet activists were convicted and imprisoned in recent years. Facebook users Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji were sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in Tunisia in March 2012. You are said to have posted blasphemous pictures on Facebook. Also in 2012, a Facebook user in Indonesia was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment for “blasphemy” because he professed atheism and insulted the Islamic prophet Mohammed. Amnesty International sharply criticized the verdict, calling it a "serious setback for freedom of expression in Indonesia".

In many countries, including Malaysia , citizens are also forced to register as members of a religious community. Only a few religions are accepted - besides the Islamic, the Christian and the Jewish. This would force atheists, non-religious people or members of other religions to lie, for example to obtain an identity card . Without official documents, however, they are not allowed to travel , drive a car, attend university or get access to medical care, the report says. In Indonesia, according to the Pancasila and the principle of the All-One Divine Rule contained therein, every citizen is obliged to belong to one of five world religions, whereby Judaism is not recognized.

Recognition of atheists in leadership positions

  • States where after 1945 openly atheist heads of government were elected or appointed at the national or state level

  • States and countries in which openly atheistic heads of government are legally excluded

  • States and countries in which an openly atheist head of government would be possible but was not elected after 1945

  • States and countries without free elections since 1945
  • In the US, denominational and ethnic associations play an important role in elections. Traditionally, presidents are recruited from the WASPs , the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Eisenhower and Hoover were exceptions of German descent, John F. Kennedy the first Catholic. In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election in the United States , in which an African-American candidate stood for the first time, the polling institute Gallup conducted a survey on the willingness of the American population to vote. According to the poll, 95% of those polled were willing to elect a Catholic as president, 92% said they would vote for a Jewish candidate, and 72% said they would choose a Mormon . The latter was a critical issue in the 2012 US presidential election because of Mitt Romney's Mormon creed . There was also support for African American candidates (92%), women (88%) and Hispanics (87%). The least willingness to vote was reported for atheist candidates. 45% of respondents said they would elect an atheist to be president.

    In a representative survey from 2008, 41% of the participating atheists stated that they had experienced discrimination in the past five years. The forms of discrimination reported included insults and social exclusion as well as refusal to provide services and hate crimes .

    Seven US states ( Texas , Maryland , Arkansas , Mississippi , Tennessee , North Carolina, and South Carolina ) have regulations that make it difficult for non-believers to work in the public service or to run for public office. In the US state of Arkansas, atheists are also prohibited from testifying in court. In practice, however, these regulations are of no significance, as the Supreme Court has classified them as unconstitutional .

    Background and history

    In ancient Greece, the term Asebie was used to punish “godlessness”, “outrage against the gods” or “infidelity” as a criminal offense in rare individual cases. In Plato's nomoi , the preservation of piety is an important task of the legislature of the ideal utopian state. Individual philosophers, such as Theodoros of Cyrene , were called "atheists". The continuity to today's concept of atheism, which was partly established in the Enlightenment, is by no means secured.

    The Roman Empire basically accepted foreign religions without prejudice and assimilated foreign gods with the local world of gods. Nevertheless, in individual cases, magical magic spells and mystery religions of the Middle East that were perceived as detrimental to morality , including the newly founded Christianity , which rejected the imperial cult , were fought by the state under the concept of superstitio . Under individual emperors, Christians were sentenced to death to varying degrees . With the rise of Christianity to the state religion in late antiquity , non-Christian confessions were again restricted or prohibited under the term superstitio . The two most important Roman law collections of late antiquity, in Western Europe in particular the Codex Theodosianus , influenced medieval law or were still valid. Christian authors and officials criticized philosophies that contradict Christianity, as well as people who had fallen away from Christianity, such as Emperor Julian , sometimes under the term of atheism, but the people and views concerned have not fundamentally excluded the existence of gods.

    The rediscovery of the Nomoi and other classical scripts did not take place in Western Europe until the early modern period . Winfried Schröder understands the term atheism in the early modern times as a dirty word for religious deviants, a creed of the non-existence of God was not a serious philosophy at that time. Atheism became more virulent as a fighting term in the modern debates about Spinoza's pantheism .

    Movements that were sometimes referred to as “atheists”, such as the free thinkers and monists , came to fruition in the 19th century; at their core they were agnostic and often split off from the regular churches. The biologist Ernst Haeckel , as the monist pope, postulated the full integration of man into nature. Atheism, such as pantheism, partly with reference to Spinoza, equating nature and God, were quite synonymous; the renunciation of any belief in revelation or miracles separated these currents from Catholic doctrine in particular. It was only from 1847 that leaving the church was practically possible in Germany . Systematic discrimination on the basis of atheism per se is difficult to identify due to the different, politically by no means uniform classifications. The various free religious, monistic and unitarian currents united under the umbrella organization of free ideological communities played a role in religiously distant social democrats. Among the atheist associations, the Federation for Freedom of the Spirit and the Federation of Free Religious Communities in Germany are recognized as a corporation under public law analogous to the religious communities. Like other smaller religious communities, they are publicly funded, but the right to speak for all non-denominational groups is not recognized.

    Constitutional law experts like Martin Heckel see state discrimination against non-religious people as well, if state institutions treat them alone according to the stipulations of a religious community; equal treatment would then be discriminatory. In state church law, according to Heckel, such discrimination took place through equal treatment in the course of denominational divisions, in particular the Reformation, such as the cultural battles of the 19th and the church battles of the 20th; they by no means only affected atheists. With the introduction of civil marriage , a very substantial form of discrimination against dissidents and atheists was eliminated in the 19th century, because the state stopped treating it according to canon law. Associations of free thinkers and atheists in Germany see religious policy in Germany and the European Union, and in particular German state church law, as a form of discrimination. However, the current state church law interpretation, namely Heckel, sees no reason to treat the churches in reverse according to atheistic guidelines. The German constitution is by no means in line with the demand to ignore and level the religious and one is far from seeing atheism as the sole model of the constitution. The state is also not obliged to create equality of success.

    According to canon lawyer Axel Freiherr von Campenhausen , the denominational split of the Reformation formed the starting point for modern state church law, insofar as a denominationally neutral secular framework was created that guarantees competing religious communities equal protection and development. According to Campenhausen, the German separation of church and state is less defensive or exclusive than in France and emphasizes the equality of consideration and support. The defense against discrimination, including against atheists, and the safeguarding of individual freedom are achieved through the neutral provision of legal areas such as marriage, school, social welfare, monument protection and the like. a. m., which does not force the citizen under the principles of a foreign denomination.

    See also

    literature

    Individual evidence

    1. Final report of the “Weltanschauungen, Religionsgemeinschaften und Staat” commission of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen , accessed on April 13, 2016
    2. DNB entry on the report Glass walls
    3. ^ Website for the report Gläserne Walls , accessed on April 13, 2016
    4. Press review on the report Gläserne Walls
    5. Website for the theme year 2016 of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.glaube-haben-recht.de  
    6. Acceptance of religious and ideological diversity in Germany: results of a representative survey , accessed on April 13, 2016
    7. Two thirds of Germans against “church clause” , report from diesseits.de, accessed on April 13, 2016
    8. Memorandum on Ethics Lessons - Between Success and Discrimination , accessed on May 20, 2016
    9. Professional association ethics sees serious disadvantages , report on diesseits.de, accessed on May 20, 2016
    10. Atheists exposed to persecution in many countries . Retrieved January 4, 2013 (In: Der Standard , December 10, 2012).
    11. Thomas Pany: The universe can do without God ... Retrieved on January 4, 2013 (In: Heise online , December 11, 2012).
    12. A. Jikhareva and A. Frommeyer: blasphemy 2.0 . Retrieved on January 4, 2013 (In: Die Tageszeitung , December 10, 2012).
    13. Atheist has to go to prison after outing on Facebook . Retrieved January 5, 2013 (In: Stern . June 15, 2012).
    14. Atheists exposed to persecution in many countries . Retrieved January 4, 2013 (In: Der Standard , December 10, 2012).
    15. Jeffrey M. Jones: Some Americans Reluctant to Vote for Mormon, 72-Year-Old Presidential Candidates . On: Gallup.com , February 20, 2007.
    16. ^ Will M. Gervais: Finding the Faithless: Perceived Atheist Prevalence Reduces Anti-Atheist Prejudice . In: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin . 37, No. 4, April 2011, pp. 543-556. doi : 10.1177 / 0146167211399583 .
    17. JH Hammer, RT Cragun, K Hwang and JM Smith: Forms, Frequency, and Correlates of Perceived Anti-Atheist Discrimination . In: Secularism and Nonreligion . 1, 2012, pp. 43-67. doi : 10.5334 / snr.ad .
    18. Atheists exposed to persecution in many countries . Retrieved January 4, 2013 (In: Der Standard , December 10, 2012).
    19. ^ Atheist appeal in New York . Retrieved January 4, 2013 (In: Der Spiegel , December 12, 2012).
    20. Peter Mühlbauer : American Humanist Association criticizes the ban on office and mandate for atheists in seven US states . Retrieved on January 4, 2013 (In: Heise online , June 4, 2012).
    21. Richard Faber, Susanne Lanwerd (Ed.): Atheism: Ideology, Philosophy or Mentality? Königshausen & Neumann, 2006 to be consulted
    22. See OF Robinson: Penal Practice and Penal Policy in Ancient Rome , London 2007
    23. ^ R. Browning: The Emperor Julian , Berkeley 1976, p. 137
    24. quoted in Faber / Lanwerd 2006, p 37: Winfried Schroeder origins of atheism. Investigations into the metaphysical and religious criticism of the 17th and 18th centuries. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1998, ISBN 3-7728-1918-4 ; 2 with a new afterword and bibliographically updated edition, ibid. 2012, ISBN 978-3-7728-2608-5 , p. 64 ff according to Faber
    25. Martin Heckel: Equality or Privileges? The general and the special equality principle in state church law. Mohr Siebeck, 1993, and a. Pp. 45 and 82.
    26. Equality or Privilege? Pp. 45, 63 and 87.
    27. a b Axel Freiherr von Campenhausen, article in Humboldt Forum Recht (2008): State and religion according to the Basic Law (pdf, 5 pages)