Tag: sectarianism

Police prevent Copts from repairing church

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AFP…

Police used violence earlier this month to prevent villagers from repairing the only church in their area, a rights group said on Monday, warning of a rise in sectarian tension as a result.

On Aug. 17, “a policeman assigned to guard the Archangel Michael Church in Deshasha (Beni Sweif province south of Cairo) hit three women while they were taking sand into the church to fix the floor which was cracked as a result of water collection underneath,” the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said in a statement.

After the incident rumors spread in the village that Copts had locked up the policeman inside the church, beat him up and tore his clothes, leading to the brief arrests of several Copts and to threats of retaliation from Muslim villagers, the group said.

“The worrying rise in sectarian tension that we have seen in Deshasha is a direct result of violations committed by the police,” EIPR director Hossam Bahgat said.

“This incident must be investigated and those responsible held accountable.”

Bolshevism and religion

Posted on By 3arabawy

Lenin on The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion:

The proletariat in a particular region… is divided, let us assume, into an advanced section of fairly class conscious Social Democrats [the name used by socialist groups in Russia], who are of course atheists, and rather backward workers…who believe in god, go to church, or are even under the direct influence of the local priest… Let us assume furthermore that the economic struggle in this locality has resulted in a strike. It is the duty of a Marxist to place the success of the strike movement above everything else, vigorously to counteract the division of the workers in this struggle into atheists and Christians, vigorously to oppose any such division. Atheist propaganda in such circumstances may be both unnecessary and harmful—not from the philistine fear of scaring away the backward sections, of losing a seat in the elections, and so on, but out of consideration for the real progress of the class struggle, which in the conditions of modern capitalist society will convert Christian workers to Social Democracy and to atheism a hundred times better than bald atheist propaganda.
We must not only admit workers who preserve their belief in God into the Social Democratic party, but must deliberately set out to recruit them; we are absolutely opposed to giving the slightest offense to their religious convictions, but we recruit them in order to educate them in the spirit of our program, and not in order to permit an active struggle against it.

Bolshevism and religion

Posted on By 3arabawy

By John Molyneux:

[T]here is the question of the relationship of the revolutionary party to religious workers. Any such party operating in a country where religion remains strong among the mass of the population, which is much of the world, must reckon with, indeed count on, the fact that the revolution will be made by workers of whom many will still be religious. The vast mass of workers will be liberated from their religious illusions not by arguments, pamphlets or books, but by participation in the revolutionary struggle, and beyond, in the building of socialism. In such a situation it is incumbent on the party to ensure that religious differences, or differences between the religious and the non-religious, do not obstruct the unity of working class struggle. Moreover, insofar as the party becomes a truly mass party, leading the class in its workplaces and communities, it will inevitably find in its ranks a layer of workers who remain religious or semi-religious. To reject such workers because of their religious illusions would be sectarian and non-materialist. It would be to share the religious/idealist mistake of regarding religion as the most important element in consciousness and consciousness as more important than practice. At the same time, the party must not become a religious party, or party whose policy, strategy or tactics are shaped by religious considerations. Revolutionary victory requires that the party should be guided by the theory that expresses the collective interests and struggle of the working class, namely Marxism. Therefore the party must ensure that on this matter it educates and influences its religious members rather than vice versa.