#the population is muslim-coded

[furious-blueberry0]

Theret

This is a place that was originally in a personal project of mine that I abandoned, but that I decided to bring back to life by putting it into star wars! I don't have the strenght to draw it, so for now I'll just use images to illustrate hoe this planet looks. Enjoy!

Theret is the birth place of Baheera Lee (OC), this is a planet located in the Mid Rim Territories, and is part of the Chommel sector. It's also part of the Republic, and is represented in the Senate by Senator and Princess, Madiha Akel.

It's an incredibly brightly colored planet, whose mountains, grass lands and beaches are composed by a multitude of natural colours.

Because of this biome, the human population of the planet also enjoys to surround themselves of these colors in their clothing and cities.

The cities and villages are, in fact, made of the same rocks as the mountains, and the glass of the windows are made from the colored sand, creating stunning rainbow cities that can effortlessly blend themselves with the landscape.

The people here also wear clothing and veils dyed with the natural colours of the planet, and their Tanneries are the most famous and proficient of the whole Sector.

In fact the most expensives gowns are often dyed here, like the clothing of various senators, politicians, rich merchants and even some of the gowns of the various Queens of Naboo.

Their homes are full of art of any form. From the stained glass of the windows, to the colored bricks of the walls, from the rainbow baskets to the painted vases, from the intricate embroidery of the veils to the jewelry that decorate their hands, necks and heads.

It's a planet full of joy and life, whose people are considered to be some of the happiest of the galaxy.

The planet suffered an huge attack during the Clone Wars, but the people managed to fight back and have a series of victories even before the Republic could intervene to help them.

A Battalion was then stationed there for the remain of the war, and they collaborated with the already existing, but small, military of the planet, to protect the population from the various attacks the CIS made even after their defeat.

The majority of the clones of the Battalion, by being in such close contact with the people of Theret, started to adopt their colorful lifestyle, by painting their armors in far more colors than any other clones in the whole GAR, which also had the advantage of helping them camouflage themselves on the battlefield.

[metamatar]

im asking this out of pure ignorance but I've always wondered how does hinduism handle people who are not hindu? i know Christianity is essentially 'be the right kind of christian or go to hell' (so much as to beleive that Jewish people are literally devils, for example) but i was wondering how hinduism deals w people who are in proximity but not of the same religion. also if a dalit or lower caste person converts from hinduism to another religion, how does that affect thier life and how they're treated? appreciate your answer if u feel like explaining ^__^

it depends, in some parts of the country the non hindu has the same status as the lower caste dalit by default – so exclusion but in most places its a detente where religious and caste endogamy is strictly maintained. housing and employment discrimination is v common. its actually much harder to marry under the special mariage act and violence against interfaith and intercaste couples by their own families is common. in 2023, the muslim is the designated enemy of the state. the christian was fooled by the british and/or money to give up their culture or is literally a foreign agent. if you're looking for a textual answer, the equivalent of the "infidel," there isn’t really one because the streamlining of the canonical religious texts and construction of the hindu is recent. hinduism has aimed to appropriate instead of convert.

in modern india, legally anyone who is not a christian or a muslim is treated as a hindu. you are hindu by default in india to the state, governed by hindu codes for marriage and inheritance. for indigenous tribals it is a matter of coercing their children to feel shame at the (state sponsored but outsourced to private religious groups, love privatisation!!!) residential schools about their animist practices and making them worship the proper gods. for sikhs, jains and buddhists their is marginally more toleration. but they are basically seen as wayward hindu sects. this does change when they're in conflict with the majority in a way that resists "national cohesion" – see sikh pogroms in 1984 and the recent moves against sikhism due to the invocation of khalistan in the farmers protests. when dalits convert to buddhism many right wingers will invoke the spectre of predatory conversions.

since you are supposed to be hindu by default, christians and muslims are then seen as invasive outsiders and conversions are regulated very strictly by many states. it is historically true that christian missionaries brought christianity as part of a broader civilising mission, but imo it says something really depressing about hinduism that its epithets for christians is 'ricebag converts' bc people apparently converted for a bag of rice. islam's foothold in the continent is older, accompanying immigration from the west as well as the sultanate and the mughals. returning these christians and muslims to the fold, or "ghar wapsi" is a major project of the hindutva right. note that india is home to one of the world's largest populations of muslims (~200mil).

lower caste dalits have long converted to christianity and islam but caste violence follows them there anyway. caste may have textual origins in religion and focus on ritual purity but it is a socioeconomic form of subjugation. this means that while still subject to caste violence, dalit christians and muslims will be denied redressal through state protections like legislations against anti caste violence or reservations because those are restricted to hindu dalits.

[littlestpersimmon]

My friend asked me to draw them on their wedding day (bc I drew Chintan and Jamil).

Some oc ranting for my own comfort.. Their names are Lihay and Panganoron. In my wip, there is a dominion called Sasaban.. and its in danger of occupation by its neighbor (called Janalila, which is a rajahnate and extremely powerful.). Sasaban's population is mostly coded Muslim.. and it is a sultanate- Panganoron is the heir, their crown prince under a regent, and he is mostly shunned by his people. Mainly because he follows a different religion from his state religion (like imagine if the sultan of Brunei's son was a Buddhist.) . And Panganoron is seen as "weak".. he is very gentle, soft-spoken, academia inclined rather than cunning and war-like as the rest of his predecessors. (His father followed the state religion, his mother was indigenous). Panganoron is keen on proving himself worthy of being sultan, but he had a tendency of being distracted by socioeconomics rather than warding off forces and marching off into the battlefronts- Panganoron built soup kitchens and schools rather than amassing armies, and he is staunchly anti war and anti caste systems- but because of the looming occupation, Panganoron has no real power or resources to challenge the harmful pre-existing hierarchies in Sasaban. Anyways. Panganoron was offered a way out of war with the neighboring country of Janalila, if he married a princess from a different dominion- a theocracy called Kalantiaw, the oldest and the most noble dominion in their world; The princess' name was Maitreyi. If he married her, not even Janalila would dare make enemies of Sasaban and Kalantiaw both.

Panganoron was game, but since all the borders and ports were tightly guarded, Panganoron would have to make his way to Kalantiaw in disguise, with a skeleton crew, and through old , forgotten passageways, and roads that are called "witherways", magical, and only existing within certain, precisely calculated timeframes, of which only certain groups of indigenous people could do.

Lihay is. Well. He is an "uripon"- the lowest of the low in their social classes- indentured to servitude for the rest of his life, very sick from working in the mines.. in my world building, primordial dragons were so large, their hollowed out bones were mined for thousands and thousands of years for coal that burned for decades, so hot it could cremate a cadaver in minutes- working in such mines was very dangerous- guaranteed anyone who spent more than a couple of hours in it would suffer a tamer version of radiation poisoning- but many miners become disfigured, with their skin melting and rotting. Sasaban deals with this by only making lepers and the lowliest uripon mine- Lihay had lived all his life in the dragon-mines, but he was also indigenous- and he knew his way around the witherways.. so.

Lihay is very shy. He is trans, autistic and mute, and he has an enormous crush on Panganoron; Lihay agrees to be their guide, in exchange for his freedom from the mines, freedom from being an uripon, to a maharlika (freeman, I borrowed it from tagalog for my worldbuilding. In the real world, Timawa would be more appropriate)..

Either way. Lihay and Panganoron, traveling together with Panganoron's small entourage, fall in love, which is Very Bad for Panganoron, when the fate of his kingdom rely on him marrying Maitreyi of Kalantiaw- and Very Very Bad when the person he falls in love with is someone like Lihay.

Btw, Panganoron's name means "the clouds that gather at the mountaintop" in Tagalog. (And Bicol), while Lihay's name (Dalihayang) is from a made up language, and it means "twenty four.). But later, Panganoron gives him the name "Hininwon", which means "cherished one" ! ! :')

Ps ps.

Panganoron's eyes are supposed to look like wayang kulit akdksk

[birdsareblooming]

im so tired of having to defend myself on both sides

like. ok. i'm queer right. bi, demigender, aro, etc. also you know a girl, demi or not. all the time i have to defend myself from american christians who via mistranslations and misinterpretations spread by horrible leaders for generations have been led into a cult-like hierarchy that tells them to hate me when hate for us isn't in their book or supposed to be in their ways.

i'm also "christian". i hesitate to use the full term because of how bad american christianity has gotten. but i believe in the same god nontheless. every day i feel i have to defend myself from queer people as well

like. i so get it. as i have just established american and european christianity has gotten so fucked up and literally off-script that i'm shocked we haven't gotten another 95 thesis and a completely new branch. it's awful horrible and people who believe in such ideas should not be in power. to the point where calling myself a christian feels wrong. at least in america.

i need ya'll to have some nuance.

firstly the understanding that those who hate queer people, non-white people in any form, women, whatever else. isn't even in the text they follow. people have misused it since it was written. preaching just the verse saying wives should care for their husbands and not the one right after saying husbands should love their wives. taking out verses referring to god's "womb." about adam might not even being a man, as in, more likely nonbinary, the verse about david getting an errection when hugging johnathan. changing verses about cleanliness into women and men not wearing the same cloths. changing verses about cultural codes and allowing a world where people have to resort to prositution into verses condemning homosexuality. [X]

like. you know the matrix. was written as a trans metaphor. then a bunch of alpha sigma grindset rich white boys took it and appropriated it, misinterpreted it, used it to boost themselves and hurt women. it's like that. those people don't make the matrix a bad movie, they just don't know it's a trans metaphor. and trans people who enjoy the matrix are like. normal and cool.

as you can see i am passionate about this. i have all this stuff memorized not only to defend my queerness but my christianity as im doing now.

there are queer christians. there are certainly poc christians as right now, south america and south africa have the highest christian populations, to the point where they're sending missionaries to america.

again i'm asking for some nuance. when i see posts basically saying "the christian god is dumb" or "satan was right actually" and blantent misinformation about what the bible says. like those kind of posts hurt my heart. my god made me queer and loves me for it, i believe in a kind god, most good christians do. i feel like other religions don't get this treatment and it's just to spiritually piss off your catholic parents.

speaking of, in doing so you seem to forget about other abrahamic religions.

i once saw a post criticizing something directly from the old testament, out of context of course. saying god was cruel and the belives were flawed and all this due to one verse. people tend to forget, or not know, that the "old testament" is the tenoch. slightly different book order, same writings.

christians, muslims, jewish people, worship the same god. different names for god, some god, same base. if you make jokes about christianty willy-nilly, you're going to accidentally hit someone else. and even if you don't, you may hurt someone still.

it doesn't hurt because i think it's "sacrilegious" or i think you're going to hell. it hurts because my community doesn't care. my community doesn't see the nuance in people and decided a specific religion is the enemy. a specific group of people is the enemy. ive been marked as the enemy

it's casual jokes to you, to me it's making fun of my god

listen, by all means make fun of the assholes. i make fun of them every day. millionaires who use privet jets than preach and love to overlook the many verses condemning the rich and saying rich people don't go to heaven. people saying that as a woman of god you shouldn't enjoy sex. weirdos online and irl that seem to think patorizing random people will get them to church. dumb white people. it's great. fuckn. mormons and jehovah's witness leaders who are straight up running a cult based on a thread of the original intention. and it's funny because they're the assholes.

but don't attack the base religion itself. understand that the religion isn't inherently harmful, certain branches, beliefs, misinterpretations, and leaders certainly are. but please be kind to the people who are normal

before you make a post saying you're gonna. i dont know 'kill the uncaring god' that you're hurting people like me, any abrahamic religion, anyone who believes in a god possibly. also that's basically my parent, it's like you're insulting my awesome mom to my face bc my older sibling sucks. like thats just mean to her for no reason.

i'm just. tired. im stuck in the middle and i hate that i have to make this post because like. this is my home and my people and im tired of seeing this shit from my peers and family. just. have nuance. care about people. don't just say shit about a religion if you don't know its true.

im tired.

[allhailthe70shousewife]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/12/southern-strategy-kevin-phillips-republican-party-trump/

Opinion The GOP’s ‘southern strategy’ mastermind just died. Here’s his legacy.

Greg Sargent

“The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”

That insight was the brainchild of Kevin Phillips, the longtime political analyst who passed away this week at 82 years old. Phillips’s 1969 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” provided the blueprint for the “southern strategy” that the Republican Party adopted for decades to win over White voters who were alienated by the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in the 1960s.

Phillips advised Republicans to exploit the racial anxieties of White voters, linking them directly to issues such as crime, federal spending and voting rights. The strategy, beginning with Richard M. Nixon’s landslide victory in the 1972 presidential race, helped produce GOP majorities for decades.

Though Phillips later reconsidered his fealty to the GOP, updated versions of the “southern strategy” live on in today’s Republican Party, shaping the political world we inhabit today. So I asked historians and political theorists to weigh in on Phillips’s legacy. Their responses have been edited for style and brevity.

Kevin Kruse, historian at Princeton University and co-editor of “Myth America”: Kevin Phillips was a prophet of today’s polarization. He drew a blueprint for a major realignment of American politics that is still with us. For much of the 20th century, Democrats dominated the national scene, because of the reliable support of the “Solid South.”

But the “Negro problem” of the 1960s, Phillips argued, presented Republicans an opportunity to take the South and Southwest, too, a new region he anointed “the Sun Belt.” All they had to do was appeal to the hatreds of White voters there, through racially coded “law and order” appeals.

Phillips, of course, proved correct about the regional realignment. Republicans won every single state in the South in the 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Today, Republicans dominate the region partly because they still employ Phillips’s polarizing politics of resentment and reaction, from complaints about Black Lives Matter to panics about “woke” education. Donald Trump’s continued dominance of the GOP shows that the underlying instinct to exploit division and inflame hatred remains.

Nicole Hemmer, author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries who Remade American Politics in the 1990s”: Phillips helped shape how the Republican Party navigated the last 50 years of U.S. politics. His big contribution was the idea that White southerners could be potential voters for the GOP, because the solid Democratic South had become newly fractured after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Phillips argued that the Republican Party needed to change the way it conducted politics to reach out to disaffected White southerners. For Nixon, that was “law and order,” something Ronald Reagan used to great effect along with stories about “welfare queens.” George H.W. Bush’s campaign ran the “Willie Horton” ad, which played up fears of Black criminality.

Trump picked up this rhetoric. He launched his campaign on the ideas of Mexican migrant and Muslim criminality — that all these minority populations needed to be under much stricter surveillance.

The strategy that Phillips helped popularize worked just as well with some northern White voters as it did with southern White voters. It helped solidify the Republican Party’s base as almost exclusively White even as the nation has grown more diverse.

Bill Kristol, a former Republican turned Never Trump conservative: It was happening already in 1968, but Phillips’s book and his subsequent promotion of the southern strategy did have the effect of making that reaction to the civil rights movement more coherent. It gave politicians a way to think about shaping that reaction politically.

Newt Gingrich, who defeated lots of Democrats in southern House seats in the 1994 midterms, was in spirit a Phillips protégé. That culminated in 2010, when Democrats got obliterated, and in the red state-blue state divide today.

From Phillips to Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, there is a through line. DeSantis, Abbott and others are operating in a world anticipated and partly created by Phillips. The reaction of much of the White working class and Republican politicians to Black Lives Matter and “cosmopolitan elites” is a close cousin of what Phillips predicted and helped shape.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner: I think Phillips was noticing what was happening rather than causing it to happen. Dwight D. Eisenhower got 49 to 50 percent of the popular vote in the South in 1952 and 1956; Nixon got nearly that much in 1960. When the national Democratic Party became more dovish, circa 1967, reacting against the Vietnam escalations of its own presidents, Southern Whites — always the most hawkish voters — turned away from national Democrats not so much because of civil rights but because of dovishness. It’s what Tom Eagleton later told Robert Novak: “acid, amnesty, and abortion.”

Corey Robin, political theorist and author of “The Reactionary Mind”: Phillips understood that the old Republican Party establishment could not begin to take on the New Deal and Great Society until it developed a mass popular base. He saw that the White working class — not just in the South, but in the North — was growing disaffected with the New Deal on economic and racist grounds, and that Republicans could turn that dissatisfaction into governing majorities.

Beginning in 1972 with the reelection of Nixon, Republicans built this majority in the spirit of what Phillips imagined. George W. Bush, the last Republican president to get a popular majority, was the last spasm of that vision. The irony is that, under Phillips, the idea was to expand the Republican Party into a permanent governing majority.

But once the White working class diminished, the electoral return of that resentment dramatically dwindled. As a result, instead of relying on robust electoral majorities, the Republican Party, to win power, relies on the electoral college and the malapportioned Senate. Phillips’s blueprint made the heyday of Republican power — and ultimately unmade it.

[humphul]

I have to say your phrasing was rather odd in a recent post. You refer to every Israeli citizen as a Jew but not every Palestinian citizen as a Muslim. There are non-Jewish citizens of Israel; however you conflate one guilty state with the innocence of its dominant religion while noticeably not treating the other two the same way.

You’ve also utterly failed to hide that you’re valuing Israeli lives greater than Palestinians. You’d rather there be 33,000 deaths on one side than a single on the other? It’s also Hamas and Hamas’s fault alone that Israel made a decision to obliterate a civilian hospital? Israel is completely innocent in every war decision it makes because ‘Hamas started it’?

Nothing in this debate should be about antisemitism—and before you go off on me by conflating criticism of a nation with hatred of a religion, I am half jewish—it is about one sovereign state leveling another that has been oppressed by its neighbors for decades. Nothing in this conflict should be about the religions of those fighting it, yet you insist that those on Israel’s side are innocent Jews while those on the other are evil Palestinians.

Lastly, “I don’t have an answer to that” I do. It’s 0. Saying even a single death is justified if it’s a Palestinian one instead of an Israeli one is xenophobic and vile. Acting as if the world’s only options are one genocide or another is depressing, and acting as if it’s just going to stop at 33,000 is downright ignorant; it’s not “33k preventing 4.8m or 7m” it’s “the first 33k.” You criticized the asker for saying their solution was for Israel to lay down in its grave, and then you turn around and demand Palestine do exactly the same.

Netanyahu’s regime, no matter what flag they fly or god they believe in, is not going to stop until that 4.8 million is reduced to ashes in the soil of Gaza and the disbelieving stares of our grandchildren.

"You refer to every Israeli citizen as a Jew but not every Palestinian citizen as a Muslim."

No I didn't.

"however you conflate one guilty state with the innocence of its dominant religion"

No I didn't.

"You’d rather there be 33,000 deaths on one side than a single on the other?"

I literally did not say that.

"Israel is completely innocent in every war decision it makes because ‘Hamas started it’?"

I didn't say that either.

"Israel made a decision to obliterate a civilian hospital"

They didn't.

"and before you go off on me by conflating criticism of a nation with hatred of a religion"

I wasn't going to. 90% of your issues are poor reading comprehension.

"I am half Jewish"

Most Jews will tell you there's no such thing as half Jewish. Either way, having a Jewish parent doesn't make you right.

"it is about one sovereign state leveling another"

Neither Palestine nor Gaza is a sovereign state.

"Nothing in this conflict should be about the religions of those fighting it."

Well, it is. The conflict has many causes but you can't pretend religion isn't a factor.

"you insist that those on Israel’s side are innocent Jews while those on the other are evil Palestinians."

I didn't say that. I said "Most of Israel's 7 million Jews would die". Israel's population including non-Jews is 9.5 million. I only mentioned the Jews because it's the Jews who would be primarily targeted by Hamas and/or other radical groups in a final Intifada that topples Israel. Arab Muslims have a place in the Islamist utopia, Jews don't.

"Saying even a single death is justified if it’s a Palestinian one instead of an Israeli one"

I didn't say that. I never compared the value of one Palestinian life to one Israeli life.

"'I don’t have an answer to that' I do. It’s 0."

Your moral code is bunk if you think "zero" is always the right answer. Your philosophy falls apart when you're faced with the kind of impossible situations of 21st century international politics.

If you had 1 life on one hand, and 1,000 lives on the other, which would you choose? You can't abstain. Abstaining defaults to letting 1,000 die. If you choose "zero" then you've de facto chosen the higher number.

Another example is school shooters. Do you think it's justified to kill a school shooter if it's the only way to stop him massacring 30 children? (and no, I'm not comparing Palestinian civilians to school shooters. This is an exercise in moral philosophy.)

I'd encourage you to read The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Gelderloos. "Zero" is not always an option you can choose, and pretending it is often leads to violence.

"Acting as if the world’s only options are one genocide or another is depressing"

Yes. Global politics is depressing. It would be nice if we all lived in a world where something being depressing meant it wasn't a reality, but here we are.

In this case, though, it isn't a reality: my entire fucking post was about how a two-state solution means neither genocide needs to happen. Not sure how you missed the point so dramatically.

"acting as if it’s just going to stop at 33,000 is downright ignorant"

I don't even know how to receive this kind of comment. You're wrong. If Hamas surrenders and returns the hostages, the war will end. Did you forget there was relative peace on October 6th?

"You criticized the asker for saying their solution was for Israel to lay down in its grave, and then you turn around and demand Palestine do exactly the same."

No I fucking didn't.

You're reading so far between the lines, the lines aren't even visible anymore. You're inventing things to get mad it.

"is not going to stop until that 4.8 million is reduced to ashes"

Why haven't they done that already, then?

The big evil war machine funded by billions of U.S. dollars with endless missiles at their disposal, and they can't wipe out a few kilometers of land?

It's been 6 months and only 1.5% of the Gazan population has been killed. Do you think they're trying to flatten Gaza and are just... really bad at it?

"in the soil of Gaza and the disbelieving stares of our grandchildren"

Always nice to sign off you rant with an emotive image of a child staring teary-eyed in disbelief of the horrible world before them.

Now do one about Israeli children on October 7th.

[mademoiselle-cookie]

Bariss as a terrorist is not problematic just because a good and kind character get assasinated to prop up the MC without any preparation, or bc we lost a good example of a good Master-Padawan relationship, hence giving ammunition to anti-jedi. It’s also, and mostly, because of racism. 

The Mirialans are Muslim-coded, they are all women who wear the veil. It doesn't come out of nowhere if fans think that. In the West, if we think “veiled women”, we think Muslims. If the news talks about the problem of the veil, they are talking about the Muslim veil, not the Hindu veil, not the Amish veil, not the Christian veil, and no one hearing them will think for a second that they are talking about things other than the veil Muslim. The veil is a very characteristic element of Muslims for an average person.

(In the movies, Luminara and Bariss aren't even played by white actresses, so we can't say it's 'just a veil, nothing deeper behind'.)

The West has a history with Muslims and terrorism. 9/11 still has an impact today, even more so during the making of TCW. So using a veiled woman as a terrorist is clumsy at best, and not having bad intentions doesn’t erase the impact this representation has. 

This reinforces the stereotype of the Muslim terrorist used to harass and oppress members of this religion. I don’t make this “shortcut” between Bariss Muslim-coded and terrorism because I think all Muslims are terrorists. I do it because I live in a country where the veil is considered a symbol of evil, where women who wear it are insulted and attacked, where laws are created to prohibit them from displaying their religion and/or culture.

The fact that the writers chose Bariss to play this role is certainly intellectual laziness, but they could, and should, have thought about what that entailed. “Think before you act” is not a lesson that only applies to Jedi.

Never heard of ‘queer-coded villains’? This is when authors attribute traits associated with queer people to bad guys, hence demonizing these traits. Did these authors think their villains were queer? In the vast majority of cases, no. They simply used traits often associated with villains to emphasize the evil side of theirs without thinking more than that. The absence of bad intentions does not cancel out the damage it causes.

And all this reflection is based on the principle that the parallel between the Mirialans and the Muslims is involuntary. I haven't seen a quote from LucasFilm saying anything, but I find it hard to believe. The Jedi were created to be extremely diverse, in direct opposition to the Empire made up of mostly old white human men, and this is not the first time that Lucas has drawn inspiration from cultures and religions existing in our world, especially Arab populations. There is no reason to think that he did not intentionally use Muslims to create Bariss and Luminara.

The most absurd thing is to think that LucasFilm is incapable of being racist. These are the same people who whitewashed the clones, who used Arab populations as very clear inspiration for a group of violent slavers who communicate only through pig squeals and will be massacred by a white man without any real consequences. The same people who, after being acquired by Disney, will replace a black character with his white neo-Nazi abuser in his role as main character/love interest, who will whitewash an already animated character, who will create clones superior to the others who are incidentally more white, who will cast a white actress for a character who clearly had Arab features in animation.

So no, we don’t have a problem with Bariss being Muslim-coded bc we think Muslims are terrorists, but bc the stereotype of Muslims being terrorists exists and is extremely harmful to the Muslim community. 

If you can’t see that, check your own bias and bigotry. 

[phoenixyfriend]

Time to analyze my interpretation and writing of a character that's controversial across fandom for her culturally insensitive/questionable treatment by canon.

Does my writing of Barriss fall in to that questionable territory?

I have a preference for cynical characters struggling with the intersection of their ideals and the difficult grey spaces of their lives, when there are no good choices and they have to struggle against those parts of themselves that are trying to react to pain with selfish self-preservation and lashing out and trying to make sense of the darker parts of the world as it presses in on them. This is evident in my writing of characters like Anakin, Ventress, Jango, post-66 Obi-Wan, post-66 Ahsoka, Bo-Katan... this is a pattern!

Within the context of my other writing, post-fall/recovering Barriss is not an anomaly. Bitter-but-trying, slightly bitchy, cynical Barriss who is struggling with the knowledge that she can never be that sweet, innocent girl she used to be... that falls into my brand. Within the context of me, she makes sense, and if we looked at her solely in the context of my own writing, where I frequently contrast her to similarly-coded Luminara and thus have that deliberate focus on "there are other characters of other backgrounds who Fall, and there are other character that are Muslim-coded that don't Fall," I generally don't feel conflicted about focusing on Barriss who struggles with her faith, her role, and even her mental stability.

But within the context of canon, where one of very few Muslim-coded characters was painted as a terrorist who bombed a religious building in the middle of a densely populated city, where canon authors have been heavily criticized for their commentary on what's Best for her post-66... that, I'm not so sure about. Writing Barriss as I enjoy her in that context is a bit more complicated.

[mariacallous]

Hatred is stalking the women of Afghanistan, pushing them further into darkness as world leaders appear to be ignoring the terrible truth that the Taliban’s efforts to disappear half the population are central to their hold on power. Taliban leaders say their misogynistic policies are steeped in religion, tradition, and respect for women. They tell Western officials that the prison-like restrictions will soon be eased, only then to tighten them further. For women who are isolated, brutalized, and desperate, Afghanistan has become that place where nobody can hear them scream.

The U.N.’s special rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, issued another devastating report on Friday and again called on the Taliban to honor obligations to protect human rights, and for U.N. member states to ensure the “situation of human rights of women and girls in Afghanistan is central to all policy decisions and engagement” with the Taliban. Human rights organizations have reported extensively on Taliban atrocities, describing the anti-woman practices as “crimes against humanity,” “gender apartheid,” “a war on women,” and “femicide.”

Afghan women don’t use the jargon. They tell of gang rapes and being beaten on their breasts and genitals so they cannot display their injuries. They tell how their rapists urinated in their faces, and of much, much worse. They tell of relatives kidnapped into sex slavery to serve as Taliban “wives,” or murdered by the “vice and virtue police” for resisting, their bodies found by roadsides or hanging in trees. In interviews with Foreign Policy, women said that revealing their identities would be a death sentence.

Inequality and misogyny are hardly exclusive to Afghanistan, or to many fundamentalist religions more broadly, but the Taliban are plumbing depths few outside the country can comprehend. The question is why misogyny is so central to the Taliban worldview. The Taliban were already notoriously brutal toward women during their first rule, between 1996 and 2001. In their second incarnation, they’ve only gotten worse.

They seem to have deftly manipulated religious conservatism, which was consistent across most of Afghanistan’s ethnic and religious groups, into an elemental expression of what it means to be a “good” Muslim. The privations of war, beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1979, arguably led to the emasculation of Afghanistan’s men, who juxtaposed their masculinity against a weaker position for women. With the arrival in 2001 of the United States and billions of dollars in programs to educate and emancipate women, the notion of feminism could then be easily portrayed as another attack on the natural order of the country’s culture and religion, in which men were dominant.

Rights activists and academics said the Taliban have used their rhetorical and physical violence against women to secure support from conservative and religious communities. Those are mostly, though not exclusively, Sunni Pashtuns who predominate in southern Afghanistan and live according to a mythologized life code that extends warm hospitality, even to al Qaeda and other terrorists, and sequesters women from nearly all spheres of public life. The Taliban refined and intensified that ideology as they fought the so-called infidel U.S.-led forces and members of what they saw as a puppet government during their ultimately successful 20-year insurgency to win back control of the country.

“From 2001 to 2021, I think they evolved in a way that made their abusive views on women and girls even more central to their cause. So it makes sense that they won’t budge on those issues, after that ideology arguably led them to victory,” said Heather Barr, the associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.

Part of the reason that misogyny became so central to the new Taliban was because of the way the group propagated itself, by brainwashing millions of boys in religious schools, or madrassas, in the mountainous border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were the Taliban’s future, then their cannon fodder, and now are their enforcers. The male-only madrassas that taught Taliban fighters Quran recitation and bomb-making—and where many were victims of sexual violence—also deprived them of family.

“They were always isolated from the other half of the population,” former Deputy Education Minister Marjan Mateen said. “If you have respectful relationships with the women in your family, you will have respect for women. The madrassa system deprived them of this.”

Keeping women uneducated was also a central plank of the Taliban’s construction of their new state, she said. The repression of women is “deeply rooted in traditional notions of patriarchy, but which they try to justify with recourse to Islam and culture,” she said, and an educated woman threatens that power base. “It is strategic to deprive women of education and agency, as this keeps the entire household ignorant,” she said.

Now back in charge, the Taliban cannot build an economy or create jobs. All they can offer to millions of young, uneducated, and unemployed men are women. “Being the king of their home and having total control of ‘their women’ may be all the power and recognition they get,” Barr said.

Afghan Witness, a British nongovernmental organization, has collected data on more than 140 reports of women being “individually killed, often in circumstances of extreme violence and brutality,” team leader David Osborn said. That is probably an undercount given the limits of open-source data, he noted. With laws of the previous government canceled in favor of an unspecified interpretation of Sharia law, “justice for the victims and families left behind has rarely resulted,” he said. “From our analysis, the picture is clear: There is a culture of impunity for femicide in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan was no paradise for women even before the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, regularly rated the worst place in the world to be born as a woman. Their lack of rights under the Taliban’s first regime was used as one of the justifications for the 2001 U.S.-led invasion after the Sept. 11 terror attacks: In a radio address supporting the military retaliation against the Taliban for colluding with al Qaeda, then-first lady Laura Bush called out the Taliban’s “brutality against women and children.” With the removal of the Taliban “terrorists,” she said, “women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment.”

Soon after, a new constitution guaranteed women’s rights, and there was incremental, if slow, progress. The patriarchal culture that privileges men over women by social norms started to break down as the benefits of laws to protect women’s rights started to be felt beyond the cities. Women began to see education and development as pathways to peace. It was a multigenerational project, but with millions of girls going to school—up from nearly zero under the Taliban—and many getting degrees, working, running businesses, and traveling abroad, things were demonstrably better.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s exit deal with the Taliban in 2020 threw it all into reverse, and President Joe Biden’s decision to stick with the U.S. withdrawal has taken Afghanistan back to the dark ages of the Taliban 1.0. Women are again banned from school, university, most work, travel, going to parks and gyms, playing sports, and in most cases, leaving their homes alone. The Taliban have banned charities, including U.N. agencies, from employing women to deliver aid to women. This cuts them off from essentials such as food, medicine, and clothing, making them vulnerable to sexual exploitation and violence. Some non-U.N. organizations have found ways around the ban, though many believe the Taliban are moving toward strict enforcement.

At the highest levels of powerful world bodies, the reality of the Taliban is slow to sink in. Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, spoke for many when he met with Taliban leaders after they issued the charity ban in December and barred women from university. He emerged from meetings to say he had received “encouraging responses” from Taliban leaders that new “guidelines” on how women live and work would soon be issued, only to be humiliated within hours when the Taliban instead issued further restrictions. This month, senior Taliban figure Suhail Shaheen, in a clear reference to women’s rights, said the world is “slowly accepting the realities” that the “conditions of the international community are not acceptable” to the terrorist-led group.

The Taliban do not have formal recognition from any country, yet there is an insidious and subtle form of engagement nonetheless that is entrenching the Taliban’s worst behaviors. Some countries, such as China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey, maintain embassies in Kabul and accept Taliban figures in the former Republic of Afghanistan’s overseas embassies. This low-key engagement is undermining “shared values” such as rule of law, nondiscrimination, freedom of thought, and respect for both women’s rights and human rights more broadly, said former Afghan national security agency official Ahmad Shuja Jamal. “This creeping increase in diplomatic engagement short of recognition,” he said, enables the Taliban “to establish gender apartheid by completely banning women from public participation.”

Jamal said that the governments and multilateral organizations that deal with the Taliban—including the United States, Russia, China, and the U.N.—“are contributing to a breakdown of those values, which is currently harming the Afghan people most directly, but that degradation is going to affect every person all over the world in the long term.”

[heavenlyyshecomes]

[...] elections are a season of murder, lynching and dog-whistling—the most dangerous time for India’s minorities, Muslims and Christians in particular. It is no longer just our leaders we must fear, but a whole section of the population. The banality of evil, the normalisation of evil is now manifest in our streets, in our classrooms, in very many public spaces. The mainstream press, the hundreds of 24-hour news channels have been harnessed to the cause of fascist majoritarianism. India’s Constitution has been effectively set aside. The Indian Penal Code is being rewritten. If the current regime wins a majority in 2024, it is very likely that we will see a new Constitution.

[beardedmrbean]

LUCKNOW, India (AP) — An Indian state has approved an unprecedented uniform code for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance for Hindus, Muslims and other religious communities under new legislation that also requires couples that live together to register with the government or face punishment.

Northern Uttarakhand state lawmakers passed the legislation on Wednesday and its approval by the state governor and the Indian president is seen as a formality before it becomes law in the state. Muslim leaders and others oppose the Uniform Civil Code initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu Nationalist party saying it interferes with their own laws and customs on such issues.

India, the world’s most populous nation with more than 1.4 billion people, is comprised of around 80% Hindus and about 14% Muslims. Muslims accuse Modi’s right-wing nationalist party of pursuing a Hindu agenda that discriminates against them and directly imposes laws interfering with their faith.

“This is a nefarious political design to drive a wedge in the society on religious lines,” said Yashpal Arya, an opposition Congress party lawmaker.

Pushkar Singh Dhami, the top elected official in Uttarakhand state, said: “The new legislation is not against any religion or community, but will bring uniformity in the society."

Other states ruled by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party are expected to introduce similar legislation. If the BJP wins national elections expected in April or May, it may bring such legislation at the federal level.

The new law bans polygamy and sets a uniform age for marriage for men and women — 21 and 18, respectively — across all religions and also includes a uniform process for divorce.

Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other minority groups in India currently follow their own laws and customs for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance.

Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, said the legislation is merely a Hindu code that applies to all.

"I have a right to practice my religion and culture. This bill forces me to follow a different religion and culture. In our religion, inheritance and marriage are part of religious practice," he said on X, formerly Twitter.

S.Q.R. Ilyas, the spokesperson for the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, said: “The bill is unnecessary, and goes against the principle of diversity. Its primary target appears to be Muslims, especially since even (some Indigenous tribes) have been exempted."

A significant feature of the bill is the introduction of stringent measures that require the registration of live-in relationships. Couples failing to register their live-in status with district officials could face up to six months in prison or a fine of 25,000 rupees ($305) or both, said Manoj Singh Tamta, a state government official. He said the bill explicitly states that children born out of such relationships will be considered legitimate offspring of the couple, inheriting all legal rights available to those born within a traditional marriage.

Sanjay Agnihotri, a consultant with a non-government organization that works in micro-financing, said he and his girlfriend belong to different castes and their families oppose the idea of them marrying. They relocated to another city and started living as partners without formalizing their relationship through marriage.

"However, the new legislation mandates us to register our relationship, which could potentially subject us to unwarranted police scrutiny,” said Agnihotri.

Uttarakhand became the first Indian state after it won independence from British colonialists in 1947 to adopt legislation on marriage, divorce, land, property and inheritance for all citizens, irrespective of their religion, a key part of the BJP's agenda for decades.

[shivology]

RE my last repost ... the reason why white liberals tend to romanticize islam and judaism comes down to two things methinks

a. STILL not seeing muslim and jewish communities as human beings. making sweeping assumptions about a group of people is always stupid even if these sweeping assumptions are "positive". like, we are human beings lol. sometimes we are shitty! respecting someone's inherent personhood doesn't mean they're always good people. and it's still dehumanizing, it's just dehumanizingly making you feel like you're doing something lol. it also allows shitty muslims and shitty jewish people to get away with shitty things. overcorrecting because you don't want to seem like a bigot is fucking... stupid, lmao. motherfuckers will say shit like "omg u guys we can't ask muslims to not hate gay people, its disrespectful to them :/" like, what, are we so stupid and barbaric that we cannot possibly be asked to adhere to your Regular People moral code? do you think you have to hold my hand into not hatecriming a dude? boo fucking hooooo. also no offense (full offense) if someone believes their religion allows them to oppress other people, like, if THIS is what they take away from their holy text, then maybe... they are simply just a shitty person? they are a shitty person who also shouldn't live in fear of some fucking white supremacist cunt yanking their hijab off their head like???

b. inherent misunderstanding of power dynamics and how they function in society. muslims and jewish people in europe and the us/canada are a religious minority and often though not always are racialized -> ie they're an oppressed group. people have used religion to oppress minorities since like ever since they created the concept of religion lol. this is neither new nor special. but as it so happens, antisemitism and islamophobia is deeply rooted in western society in a way that affects the lives of jewish ppl and muslims every day. However! in muslim majority countries, for example, muslims are the oppressor. in ways identical to how christians are the oppressor in the west lol. like, in egypt, for example, like 15% of the population is christian. every one else is Presumed to be muslim. (egyptian jews are SO badly persecuted that they have to say they're muslim or christian on their ID because they might actually get fucking hatecrimed OR KILLED for being jewish !! and if you say you're atheist you may literally get fucking killed lol 🤩) and you'll find this shit in nearly every muslim majority country just as you find it in fuckass islamphobic racist america! does this mean ALL muslims are antisemitic bigoted pieces of shit? No but SOME sure fucking are! it just so happens, that in this specific region, the people who are in power, the people who have the resources and social power to oppress others, are muslim. it is so insanely eurocentric to think that muslims are always uwu victims uwu. and you know what's fucking funny? christian minorities in the SWANA region are nothing like, i don't know, catholics in france. diaspora muslims are nothing like the fucking taliban. you don't tend to see verses about christian supremacy in SWANA christians, just as you don't tend to see bigoted verses repeated by diaspora muslims. religion tends to manifest in peaceful "wholesome" ways when you're disenfranchised as a survival tactic because you gotta be on your best behavior baby you can't oppress people here! you cannot afford to alienate (looks at scrambled writing on hand) women or gay people. people have and will use religion as a tool and weapon to be relevant and stay in power but context is fucking keyyyyyy

[country-corner]

So you still want a National Divorce or Big Split...

So you still want a National Divorce. Please answer a few questions based on statements I have heard from both Liberal and Conservatives who are calling for a National Divorce or Big Split.

How would you divide the Country? North to South? East to West?

2) If divided ideologically by Conservative States (C-States) and Liberal States (L-States), which would put C-States pretty much, up the middle and L-States on East and West coasts. The L-States would most likely insist on a connecting corridor. Where would you put it

a) Tell them to suck it and not allow a corridor? Creating, basically 3 new Nations and which could lead to a Civil War, is this, your true intent?

b) Alone the Canadian Boarder? Which would provide a staging area for illegals coming from the North. (Yes, there are illegals entering from Canada and not just Mexico but the media isn’t covering it).

c) Along the Mexican Border and Gulf Coast? That would cut the C-States from deep water ports.

d) Across the middle of the C-States? Which again would create 3 new Nations and could lead again to a Civil War.

3) What would you do with States like Washington, Oregon, Illinois and many other States where half or more of the State is more Conservative, but the more Liberal side/portion of the State has a larger population and controls the politics (or vice versa)? Do you allow them to split off and join their respective sides? Or tell them screw off, you don’t deserve to leave the “Hell Hole of a State?”

4) Do you take the current Constitution as is?

a) Take the Constitution, but only as original written and ratified?

b) Have a Constitutional Convention to add/remove portions that you want/don’t like respectively?

c) Have a Constitutional Convention to write an entirely new Constitution?

5) Would you build a wall along the C-States/L-States border(s)? Something I have heard from both sides, to keep out “refugees” from the other new Nation, because there are those on both sides who think the other side will collapse in a few years at most.

6) What would you do with known/admitted Conservatives/Libertarians refusing to leave the L-States or known/admitted Communists/Liberals refusing to leave the C-States?

a) Nothing?

b) Make them take a public loyalty oath?

c) Have the Government keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t teach or talk about their wrong/controversial/treasonous (whatever word you want to use) ideology to others?

d) Deport them?

7) Speaking of Loyalty Oaths, I’ve heard pundits from both sides calling for a yearly, mandatory, public declaration of a Loyalty Oath after the split.

a)Are you against an Oath?

b) For an Oath? If for is there a penalty for not making the oath.

1)Monetary?

2) Loss of Rights?

3) Jail?

4) Deportation?

5) No Penalties (then what’s the use of the mandatory oath)?

8) What Religion/Faith/Belief would you allow or not allow (whichever is the shorter list)? I have heard everything from: Every belief allowed; to Banning Christianity and Judaism only; to Allowing only Christianity and Judaism; to Allowing only one particular Denomination of Christianity and banning everything else including other Denominations of Christianity; to Everything allowed except any Abrahamic Religion (Christianity, Judaism, Muslim); to Ban all of them.

9) How would you compensate farmers/ranchers/business owners who would lose generational owned land/business upon moving to the new ideological compatible Nation and can’t get enough land or start the same business in the new Nation? Or just tell them screw you, learn coding?

10) What would you do with the current Military Personnel? Equipment, including the nuclear weapons? Bases (Domestic and Foreign)?

11) Finally does it: Delight? Bother? No opinion? Never thought about it? That the balkanization of the USA, due to a National Divorce or Big Split, would fulfill the wet dreams of Mid-20th century Communists?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

These questions, again, come from statements, one way or the other, I have heard from people on both ends of the political spectrum regarding a National Divorce or Big Split. But, the majority I hear talk about a National Divorce or Big Split never gives any detail on how it will work, they just calls for the Divorce or Split and leave it at that. While calling people who are against a National Divorce or Big Split a puppet, a paid mouth pieces, jerks, useful idiots or just an asshole from the other political party or ideology.

If you hear someone calling for a National Divorce or Big Split, ask them these questions. Pay close attention to how they answer or don’t answer the questions. And if they answer in such a way as to try make you feel like a foolish child for even asking or call you names for questioning, then question the motivation behind their call for a National Divorce or Big Split. Do your own research, educate yourself on the issue, who is backing or against it, and how the Divorce/Split would work. Then make your own decision.

[madamlaydebug]

{Egypt}...

Capital

and largest city Cairo

30°2′N 31°13′E Official languages Arabic[a]National language Egyptian Arabic Demonym Egyptian Government Unitary semi-presidential

republic - President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi - Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab Legislature Legislation by presidential decree(Temporarily until the House of Representatives is elected) Establishment - Unification of Upper

and Lower Egypt[1][2][c]c. 3150 BC - Muhammad Ali Dynasty inaugurated 9 July 1805[3] - Independence from

the United Kingdom 28 February 1922 - Republic declared 18 June 1953 - Revolution Day 23 July 1952 - Current Constitution18 January 2014 Area - Total1,010,407.87 [4] km2(30th)

387,048 sq mi - Water (%)0.632 Population - 2015 estimate 89,121,000[5] (15th) - 2006 census 72,798,000[6] - Density 84/km2 (126th)

218/sq mi GDP (PPP)2015 estimate - Total $989.886 billion[7] (24th) - Per capital $11,194[7] (100th) GDP (nominal) 2015 estimate - Total $324.267 billion[8] (34th) - Per capital $3,724[8] (115th)Gini (2008)30.8[9]

medium HDI (2013) 0.682[10]

medium · 110th Currency Egyptian pound (EGP)Time zone EET (UTC+2) - Summer (DST)EEST (UTC+3[b])Drives on the right Calling code+20ISO 3166 code EG Internet TLD

.egمصر.

a.^ Literary Arabic is the sole official language.[11] Egyptian Arabic is the national spoken language. Other dialects and minority languages are spoken regionally.b.^ Summer time is often used.c."Among the peoples of the ancient Near East, only the Egyptians have stayed where they were and remained what they were, although they have changed their language once and their religion twice. In a sense, they constitute the world's oldest nation".[12][13] Arthur Goldschmidt Jr.

Egypt (i/ˈiːdʒɪpt/; Arabic: مِصر Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: مَصر Maṣr), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental countryspanning the northeast corner of Africa andsouthwest corner of Asia, via a land bridgeformed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is the world's only contiguous Eurafrasian nation and most of Egypt's territory of 1,010,408 square kilometres (390,000 sq mi) lies within the Nile Valley. It is a Mediterranean countryand is bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israelto the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.

With over 89 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab World, the third-most populous in Africa (after Nigeria and Ethiopia), and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypt's territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo,Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.

Egypt has one of the longest histories of any modern country, arising in the tenth millennium BCE as one of the world's firstnation states.[14] Considered a cradle of civilization, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government in history. Iconic monuments such as the Giza Necropolis and its Great Sphinx, as well the ruins ofMemphis, Thebes, Karnak, and the Valley of the Kings, reflect this legacy and remain a significant focus of archaeological study and popular interest worldwide. Egypt's rich cultural heritage is an integral part of its national identity, having endured and at times assimilated various foreign influences, including Greek, Persian, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and European.

Modern Egypt is considered to be a regionaland middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world.[15] Its economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, with sectors such as tourism, agriculture, industry and services at almost equal production levels. In 2011, longtime President Hosni Mubarak stepped down amid mass protests. Later elections saw the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was ousted by the army a year later amid mass protests.

[adhdnojutsu]

But Hanukkah isn't any holiday, its specifically about resistance against government persecution, censorship, and repression. The cognitive dissonance to not think about the repression being allegedly done in service of the Jewish people (as israel claims) during Hanukkah should prompt some reflection. Jewish Currents has a really lovely article reflecting on Hanukkah I suggest you read. I think also any turn away from consumerism is good, we don't need white Christians to try and commodify our holidays as some kind of "Jewish version of Christmas"

It's still Jewish, so telling Jews to make a Jewish thing connected to our own oppression, about Palestine is like telling Muslims to make Ramadan about fighting ISIS/Hamas.

I have no issue with the idea to reject consumerism, but Jews are never, ever, to be held responsible for the Israeli government unless they elected it (just being born somewhere doesn't equal complicity with or responsibility for the administration - something perfectly accepted in the case of Palestinians and Hamas, who won by popular vote unlike Netanyahu).

If white people in France aren't responsible for what white America does, diaspora Jews aren't responsible for Israel. So if the French (and non-Indigenous Americans) can celebrate Christmas without being told to make it about Indigenous issues and reparations, I don't think the MidEast situation has a place in Hanukkah, beyond taking time to heal from our collective trauma of nearly 1400 Jews, mostly civilians, being brutally murdered for their zip code/BIRTHPLACE, many after being r*ped so brutally their pelvises were shattered, and from being gaslit and dehumanised by slobbering Goy spectators who seem to think an Israeli life is inherently sinful and less precious ("resistance" by gang-r*ping little girls to death GTFO, they know where to find government officials but went door to door looking for women and children, bunch of cowards and sadists).

It's really amazing how Jews are the only oppressed minority who is constantly told to hold space for or even cetre other groups' issues. We are 0.2% of the world population. I think we get to put ourselves first, don't you?

[whatmakesagod]

Creating a Fantasy Religion

First things first:

What do you want your religion to be? Deism? Polytheism or monotheism? Is there a messiah in this world? Or messiahs? Prophets?

What about animism? Or shamanism?

It's better to have multiple faiths running around, but you can have the same faith with multiple sects as well.

Christianity, for example, has who knows how many different sects all over the world, from Roman Catholic to Greek Orthodox to American Evangelical to Japanese Hidden Christians, there are a variety of interpretations of the Bible and the words of Christ.

I'd highly suggest looking into different sects of Buddhism and Judaism to get a feel for how culture and faith can influence each other as a starting place. Islam, Shintoism, Hinduism, and a variety of pagan faiths are also great to look into.

What is religion going to influence?

The short answer is everything. Absolutely everything can be touched by faith.

Many faiths (umbrella term without getting into sects) has different rules regarding food. More traditional Catholics eat fish on Fridays instead of meat. Hindus do not eat beef and Muslims and Jewish people not only do not eat pork, but have some strict rules for the foods they can and cannot eat (halal and kosher, respectively).

What about clothes? Islam has a dress code regarding modesty and facial hair. Judaism has rules regarding certain textiles.

Government? Historically, popes crowned kings. In Japan, it is custom for the new king to spend a night alone in a private ceremony with the sun kami Amaterasu, which no one else may witness (whether or not this is religion is a tricky question, but it did start when Shintoism was more viewed as a faith. Please look up the aftermath of WWII on Shintoism for more information). In Denmark, their flag is so old that it's believed it was given to them by God.

OK, what about holidays?

Here's the fun thing: not all holidays (holy-days) have to come from faith. Japan has a holiday that's Respect for the Aged Day and summer vacation in America is as long as it is because of farming and children needing time to help their parents. But winter vacation is because of Christmas and spring break is due to Easter. If you take Christianity away, these were taken from Norse pagan traditions.

And what about days off? Sunday is the day of rest for Christians and that is reflected in the work week in Christian cultures, same with Fridays in many Muslim countries.

One thing to keep in mind is that faith is just as alive and breathing as language is. It can adapt over time or it can remain the same. We can look at it and say 'well, they didn't have X back then, so we need to consider that we have X now' and other faiths may say 'no. We were given everything we need to know centuries ago.' The Catechism of the Catholic Church is, essentially, a bible for the Catholic Church's stance on a variety of topics and the reasoning behind it.

Once you have your faith established, what are the rituals and traditions? What is prayer like? Is it public or private? Is it at a temple, a shrine, a cathedral? Or is it at home? What happens with babies?

How does this relate to your MC?

One thing to consider is whether or not your characters are believers or not. If they aren't believers, why? Many people turn from faith due to a terrible experience and some people never believe. Some people grow up without faith and turn to it as adults. And there's always going to be different reactions.

For instance, say that you have a small island nation that worships an ocean deity. A great tsunami comes and wipes out half of the population. Some of the culture might turn away from faith entirely, because why would the god they worship kill so many of them and is that a god worth believing in? And others might turn further to faith, potentially leading to extremism or new practices being developed to guarantee that it never happens again. And is it just a force of nature and this god doesn't exist or was this an act of a higher power?

Which leads into the next part: does this higher power actually exist if you are using deism?

And, I think that can be up to individual interpretation. You do not have to confirm or deny whether or not the deities exist even if a lot of fantasy does like to do so. It can be up in the air. But it's important to reflect on whether or not you MC(s) own faith changes throughout the narrative and what that means for them.

For animism and shamanism, specifically:

Do your characters believe that all mountains and forests have a spirit or is this regulated to only the oldest trees and the tallest mountains?

What about weather? Or natural phenomena?

What is the role of the shaman in this society?

As an added note, many animism and shamanistic practices come from Indigenous societies, so please be aware of what might be closed practices when doing research and be prepared to get a sensitivity reader if you borrow too heavily from one group's practices just as you would for characters whose sexuality or race you do not share.

If you want a world without faith at all, you will probably need to contend with how religion effects culture in some manner. Every little thing will need to be examined including, but not limited to:

Social taboos, laws, work weeks, swear words, holidays, and more.

It will take a lot of work to go back and consider why certain things exist and whether or you really want to remove it, because, why would everyone just agree that Monday is the day of rest if there is no spiritual reason? Culture? OK, but where does it come from? Why Monday, specifically? The government decided? OK. But how will holidays work with no spiritualism? Will it only be based on the government? Who legitimizes the government? If there is no divine right of kings and no popes and no shamans, how does it work? Even secular states tend to have religious social and cultural structures.

And I do think a completely areligious fantasy world can be done, but it will take a lot of examination of social structures we take for granted for it to be truly areligious.

This is all to get your mind thinking about how faith, spiritualism, religion, etc. no matter which direction you go, can have deep impacts on the world you make. There are few things that are as universal as a form of spiritualism existing around the world. All known societies have religious beliefs and practices, so your fantasy world will feel more alive if you have religion somewhere, breathing, living, even if your MC does not subscribe to it.