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>Egyptian national IDs contained a "religion" entry, with only "Christian", "Muslim" and "Jewish" being allowed. Atheists fought for the ability to add a fourth
by Jugurtha 5y ago
>Egyptian national IDs contained a "religion" entry, with only "Christian", "Muslim" and "Jewish" being allowed. Atheists fought for the ability to add a fourth possible value, "-".
I'd expect people to fight to remove that entry entirely, whether one has a religion or not. That's creepy at best, perilous at worst.
- inglor_cz 5y agoWe should count our blessings, and one of those blessings is living in a secular country. Some countries which collect individual religious affiliation actually do so to enforce religious laws. For example, I think that a non-Muslim man cannot marry a Muslim woman according to traditional Islamic law, unless he converts to Islam first, and many countries actually enforce this prohibition until today. Of course, to do so reliably, you need a population-wide database of religious affiliation first... Sigh.
- 1cvmask 5y agoThere are different forms of "secularism." In Finland the government collects taxes on behalf of the Protestant church. The government in Germany does the same for different Christian denominations/religions but does not consider others a religion like the Church of Scientology and even targets and surveils them like a terrorist group. So I am not sure if I could call these countries secular. https://www.dw.com/en/scientology-is-still-a-red-flag-in-germany/a-16620384 https://www.dw.com/en/scientology-is-still-a-red-flag-in-ger... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax