Talk:Religious attitudes to racism

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If others are interested in helping out too, I'd gladly help fix up the article, though right now I feel the need to instead address some of the statements in it and clear the water before diving in:

Today, almost all Christians reject racism. Historically, however, many Christians were racist.

Avoid generalisms whenever possible. Historically, countless people from every religion were racist and nationalist. Lack of xenophobia is a very recent innovation.

However, at the same time, many of the great movements against racism (e.g. Martin Luther King) were inspired by Christianity.

Ridiculous. "Inspired"? Are you saying that if Christianity didn't exist, MLK wouldn't have opposed racism? What parts of Christianity specifically oppose or criticize racism? The fact that many important civil rights leaders have been Christian in no way suggests that Christianity leads to racial equality. The large-scale movements you're looking for that helped lead to ideas like MLK's are ones like humanism, which is compatible with Christianity, but not a form of it.

However Islamic fundamentalists consider anyone of white skin inferior.

This is nonsense. To the contrary, the hadith narrated by Anas bin Malik (Volume 1, Book 3, Number 63) explicitly identifies the Prophet as a "white man". And other ahadith contain derogatory references to Black slaves. The contributor is possibly thinking of the Nation of Islam, an American concoction which has virtually no connection with actual Islam.

However Islamic fundamentalists consider anyone of white skin inferior.

This simply is not true. This is not wiki-worthy. 1st, the term “fundamentalism” should only be applied to the early 20th century Christian movement in the USA and its ideological descendants. We call Muslims of this nature extremist. 2nd. not all Muslim extremists (or fundamentalists if we must insist on lack-luster pseudo scholarship) hold that white skinned people are inferior. Most do not. Christian fundamentalism is, to many in the USA and in the world, synonymous with racism yet in the article it has been isolated to the Christian extremists in spite of the fact them many Christian Fundamentalist Groups in the US professed doctrinal racism. Way off, really.

Although Judaism teaches that Jews are God's chosen people, it is a distortion to present this as some sort of doctrine of racial superiority.

No it isn't. That's the definition of a "doctrine of racial superiority" in religion. "God's chosen people" is shorthand for "you're the important race; everyone else is an afterthought".

The Jewish belief is not that they are superior to other groups, but that they have been chosen by God for a special spiritual task.

So if that's not superiority, what would you call it? I don't remember any other "special spiritual tasks" ever being assigned to anyone not of Jewish descent in Judaism; if each race got its own unique task, that would be different. In fact, a lot of the Tanakh seems to consider all non-Jews in the area either evil tyrants or obstacles to be raped, pillaged, murdered, and enslaved. Not a lot of racial equality or tolerance in the Old Testament, no sir.

In particular, this task is not to annihilate, exterminate or subjugate other ethnic groups,

What? Then why did God tell them to annihilate, extermine and subjugate the peoples of Canaan? I won't dispute that most Jews today are much more progressive and tolerant, but you seem to be trying to use revisionist mythology to obscure beliefs of racial superiority going back thousands of years. Why? That a people's historic beliefs are bigoted does not necessitate that their current beliefs are.

but to bring God's truth to the world so that all the nations of the world live in harmony.

Sounds less like the historical Jewish view of "Jews are God's chosen people and are perfectly justified in slaughtering anyone who tries to stop them from claiming their holy land" and slightly more like the historical Christian view of "Christians are God's chosen people and anyone who won't convert to Christianity must be compelled to do so even if it kills them". Conversion has never been a major aspect of Judaism; it's barely even existed until very recently, and only in a limited way even now. Judaism is infinitely more concerned with following God's laws than with spreading them. That's why the massacres described in the Old Testament are so different from events like the Inquisitions; genocide was the intent, not absorption.

Furthermore, although there is certaintly a lot of common ancestry among Jews, Jews are not a racial group, but rather a religious nation:

Utterly wrong. They're both. And the two have been more or less synonymous until very recently.

There are Jews with all sorts of physical features, including the Black Jews of Ethiopia.

Again, that's something that's true for every religion, yet is mentioned for only one. Like the Christian statement of being "historically racist, but not so much anymore", this will mislead people more than inform them.

Buddhists believe in the peaceful coexistence of all humans, and therefore there are few, if any, racists who claim to be Buddhists.

If you'd just said "and therefore there are few racists who claim to be Buddhists", I'd have blasted you for the "believe in the peaceful coexistence of all humans" part chiefly, due to the direct and clear implication that all the other religions listed on the page don't believe in the peaceful coexistence of all humans! Terrible. But since you added ", if any," bit, I can't even let you off the hook for the second half of the line; are you actually making the claim that there may possibly be zero racists who claim to be Buddhists in the entire world?! Good grief.

Most Hindus are from the country of India, and most of them are not racists.

Most Peruvians are not bald. How do general statements like this inform anyone of anything?

Anyway, I don't mean any offense with any of these comments; if I come across as sounding a bit harsh, I apologize. I'm just trying to convey what I found wrong with the article on a quick read-through; if you disagree on any of these points, let's discuss them first so we don't get into an edit war. If you don't disagree, I'll do my best to try and make the article more rounded. -Silence 00:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Propose this article be moved from Religious attitudes to racism to the simpler, broader, and just plain better Religion and racism, which is the format of every other article on Wikipedia of this type. -Silence 02:49, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Propose removing the article. As is, it clearly doesn't fill the criteria of being verifiable and neutral point of view is questionable as well. - Guest

Not sure where to ask this; but where exactly does it say that "other ahadith contain derogatory references to Black slaves"? Fuzzbuzz 15:48, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I suggest this article be removed, it has too many factual inaccuracies and is very biased. The 'evidence' doesn't even provide anything to support that most religions do/don't practice racism in scripture. Also, racism in each of these religions is adressed in each individual article. Mishy dishy 20:03, 31 May 2006

[edit] Hinduism and Racism

The caste system in Hindu society was alleged by some European Christian authors in the late nineteenth century to be racially motivated, with the different castes being different races. But this baseless and racist allegation has been rubbished by several Hindu authors over the 20th and 21st centuries[1]See: (Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi). In fact great Hindu leaders and saints of modern times have denounced racism. All through its history and even today Hinduism remains a tolerant multi-racial religion with no racial overtones at all. Much like Buddhism, few racist Hindus exist, if any at all.

This whole paragraph is just simply bizarre. The caste system is racist. The untouchables are exclusively dravidian in nature, while the upper castes are almost exclusively aryan. Saying that things like Europeans alleged the caste system to be racist and this baseless and racist allegation also does not conform to the NPOV. To say that there is not even a hint of racism in the caste system is outrageous. It is almost universally accepted that the caste system is racist and that is why it was outlawed in the first place. Whoever wrote this, Wikipedia is not the place for this kind of propaganda. Paragraph needs to be totally rewritten. Lesliestng 07:15, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

To denounce the caste system as racist is a typical smear campaign of Eurocentric racism (in on itself). These are the same people who denounce Zionism as racism. It is made either by the ignorant or (more usually) the deliberately malicious anti-Hindu cabal. It is merely a carefully constructed lie to delegitimize the right of Hindus to exist as a people and a way to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Hindu people. The caste system is an anachronism at worst. There is no racism impled in it, since the concept of 'race' was invented in 19th century Europe (the word did not even exist in that sense before that).(66.68.106.162 12:14, 28 June 2006 (UTC))

Hey, Lesliestng! Just because something is bad doesn't make it racist. I'm inclined to agree with you, but there is a strong tradition in the western world of deciding that the sins of other people must be the same as the sins of the western world. Because Europe is racist, so India must be racist. In fact, the caste system might have its own problems, defined by its own society, which might or might not bear any relationship to the European problem of "racism." I think the person who wrote the above paragraph might have been trying to get at this distinction, albeit, quite poorly. I think it is really quite annoying when people decide that since the Nazis used some idea or another (or since Europeans used some idea or another) to further one of their own negative and morally wrong ideologies, that the people who originated the idea are also wrong and negative in the same way. 151.197.219.81 04:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)Louisa

Um, Zionism is a few different things. It would not be, per se, rascism for a group to want their own government (Utah?), but, if the means to accomplish this include creating Apartheid-like divisions (see Israeli West Bank barrier) and establishing immigration policies that favor certain ethnicities or religions (see Law of Return), then Zionism certainly, at a minimum, is associated with racial, ethnic, AND religious bias. I don't intend to be "deliberately malicious anti-Hindu", but caste discrimination seems, by definition (The word caste is derived from the Portuguese word casta, meaning "lineage"), to be rascist, or, at a minimum ethnist (it's a fine line sometimes, no? ) I suspect that this is why caste discrimination is illegal in India today. Either way, it doesn't sound very friendly, by "international standards", to promote a system of exclusion based on factors beyond one's choice, whether they be race, ethnicity, gender, birthplace (or, although some would argue, sexual orientation). Religion, it could be argued, would be the one factor that can be chosen, and would thus not receive the same protections by this definition- although, diplomatically, it tends to, anyway. - Eric 01:48, 12 August 2006 (UTC) (Get an account!)

Removed all the rubbish and nonsense posted here by a nut job. Equating Hindus with Nazis (wonder why Israel sold Indians all those weapons, or why israeli tourism to India has trebled since 1993)? Debunking evolution (what the hell does that have to do with THIS ARTICLE??)? No BS propaganda on wikipedia, please.(Netaji 12:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Bold rewrite

Okay, I tried my best to do a consensus rewrite. Please list your greivances, or just be bold and fix them. Please don't be mean. I assure you my intentions are good. Oh, and any help with citations would be greatly appreciated.

I believe some of the previous discontent was caused by a poor understanding of the Indian caste system by westerners, that might not understand that there's a difference between "Caste" and "Caste discrimination", just as there's a difference between "ethnicity" and "ethnic discrimination". Let's try to keep in the wiki spirit of NPOV and show both sides of various arguments, and cite (although I admit that my own effort is still poorly developed in this area).

- Eric 02:57, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This article is terrible.

Little to no sources, a ton of speculation and obviously biased attitudes concerning each religion. Needs a complete rewrite by experts.

68.53.121.170 18:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I doubt there is an expert on how each religion struggles with racism internally and externally, but some searching with an certain eye might advance the topic fairly. At least I hope so....--Smkolins 16:38, 16 September 2006 (UTC)