Religious discrimination

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Religious discrimination is valuing a person or group lower because of their religion, or treating someone differently because of what they do or don't believe. While many religious and secular authorities nowadays tend to stress that religion is something personal, the highly social nature of most religions makes conflicts between religious groups, and thus discrimination, still very probable.

1 History of Religious Discrimination
2 Modern Religious Discrimination
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History of Religious Discrimination

Religious persecution
By persecuting group: Christians Jews Muslims Revolutionary France Anti-Clericals in Mexico Soviet Union People's Republic of China
By strategy: Forced conversion Holy war Religious discrimination Religious fascism Religious intolerance Religious police Religious terrorism Religious violence Spiritual abuse
By targeted group: African religions Ancient Greek religion Ancient Roman religion Atheists Bahá'ís Buddhists Cathars Christians Germanic Pagans Hindus Jews Mormons Muslims Pagans Rastafari Roman religion Sikhs Wiccans Zoroastrians
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In (Western) societies before about 2006, religious discrimination was very standard. More 'enlightened' governments, like the Dutch Republic in the 17th century would not persecute, but still prohibited any public display of catholicism and excluded members of different faiths from public office.

[edit] Modern Religious Discrimination

This article or section deals primarily with the United States and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject.
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Charges of religious discrimination have been applied to governmental, social, and educational policies in modern times as well. For example, the Eagle Feather Law, which governs the possession and religious use of eagle feathers, was officially written to protect then dwindling eagle populations while still protecting traditional Native American spiritual and religious customs, of which the use of eagles are central. The Eagle Feather Law later met charges of promoting racial and religious discrimination due to the law’s provision authorizing the possession of eagle feathers to members of only one ethnic group, Native Americans, and forbidding Native Americans from including non-Native Americans in indigenous customs involving eagle feathers—a common modern practice dating back to the early 1500s.

Charges of religious and racial discrimination have also been found in the education system. In a recent example, the dormitory policies at Boston University and The University of South Dakota were charged with racial and religious discrimination when they forbade a university dormitory resident from smudging while praying. The policy at The University of South Dakota was later changed to permit students to pray while living in the university dorms.

Religious organizations such as the Seventh Day Adventist Church make it clear in their univerisity catalog that they have the right to discriminate on the basis of religion.They discriminate against non-Adventists in hiring practices,disciplinary action, and promotions. The Seventh Day Adventist Church has made many anti-Catholic statements attacking the Pope as being the Anti-Christ.

Under pressure from the Roman Catholic church, the government of Quebec withheld the vote from women until the mid 1940s. During 1995-1998 Newfoundland had only Christian schools (four of them, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, and inter-denominational (Anglican, Salvation Army and United Church)). The right to organize publicly supported religious schools was only given to certain Christian denominations, thus tax money used to support a selected group of Christian denominations. The denominational schools could also refuse admission of a student or the hiring of a qualified teacher on purely religious grounds. Quebec has used two school systems, one Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, but it seems this system will be replaced with two secular school systems: one French and the other English.^[1]

In Greece since the independence from the Muslim Ottomans rule in the 1800's, the Greek Orthodox church has been given privileged status and only the Greek Orthodox church, Roman Catholic, some Protestant churches, Judaism and Islam are recognized religions. The Muslim minority alleges that Greece persistently and systematically discriminates against Muslims. ^[2]^[3]

According to a Human Rights Practices report by the U.S. State Department on Mexico note that "some local officials infringe on religious freedom, especially in the south". There is conflict between Catholic/Mayan syncretists and Protestant evangelicals in the Chiapas region. ^[4]^[5]^[6]

In some U.S. jurisdictions legal restrictions exist which require a religious test as a qualification for holding public office, for instance in Texas an official may be "excluded from holding office" if he/she does not "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being." (i.e. God) ^[7] thus atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, most Satanists, some Unitarian Universalists and New Age followers, who do not believe in a supreme being would be excluded from public office.