Hicham El Ouahabi | Non-religious people too are oppressed - why does it remain silent?
Oppression, we usually associate with religious or sexual minorities, ethnic groups and political dissidents. Not with people who are not religious. Yet this group is increasingly at risk of persecution, writes columnist Hicham El Ouahabi.
You wouldn’t immediately think it, but those who do not follow a religion are increasingly at risk of persecution worldwide. This is shown in the annual Freedom of Thought Report, which sharply documents how atheists, humanists and other non-believers are discriminated against, threatened and even persecuted in various countries. In almost all 196 countries surveyed, this occurs to varying degrees.
Yet the position of non-believers is rarely a topic of conversation. Even in academic circles, where people are usually fond of discussing and talking about oppression and discrimination, this remains a blind spot.
I challenge you: walk onto any university campus and ask about the persecution of non-believers. Chances are you will be stared at as if you have just asked where best to stable your horse. Or try: “Atheists are among the most persecuted groups in the world.” Bet your interlocutor will look at you as if you have just claimed that peanut butter is a vegetable?
Oppression, we usually associate with religious or sexual minorities, ethnic groups and political dissidents. But people who abstain from religion? Those don’t fit the usual narrative.
Of course, in the Netherlands being non-religious is not a risk factor, at least not from the government’s point of view. Moreover, being non-religion is the norm rather than the exception here. Hence the issue of oppression of the non-religious is not considered relevant, I suspect.
But there is, I think, more at play. The stereotype of an atheist or humanist is that of a rational, confident thinker, someone who does find his way. An intellectual like Richard Dawkins, monologuing about the folly of religion with a glass of Chardonnay in hand. Not that of a vulnerable underdog. When in reality, these are ordinary people, who already have a lot to endure, because, for instance, they cannot apply for a passport, are excluded or have a death sentence hanging over their heads.
On top of that, non-believers have no visible features and do not form a community based on a shared ethnic or cultural identity. No headscarf, no skullcap, no specific skin colour, no flag. And what is invisible goes unnoticed. That makes them doubly vulnerable. And that is precisely why they deserve twice as much attention.
If there is one place where this issue should get the attention it deserves, it is in academic circles. There, where oppression and social justice are daily topics of study and debate, there should be plenty of attention to the reality that millions of people are persecuted because of their “unbelief”. All the more painful that it is precisely in those circles that hardly any attention is paid to it.
Because no, it is not a competition about who suffers the most or the least. But as long as this group is systematically ignored, our picture of oppression is incomplete. Time, then, for non-religious people to be systematically seen as an oppressed group and take a larger role in the narrative of oppression and discrimination.
