Peter Baldwin commented on 2018-11-23 07:19

Thanks for the comment Yvette, and for your interest in this project. I certainly agree with you that identity politics, insisting as it does that everything – race, gender – you name it, is ‘sociall (article 620873-11435)

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Thanks for the comment Yvette, and for your interest in this project.

I certainly agree with you that identity politics, insisting as it does that everything – race, gender – you name it, is ‘socially constructed’, denies human nature, certainly the scientific understanding of it.

But there is a strange irony in the identarians view of religion. They tend to see religion as an aspect of identity, something you are born with, so that if a religion is granted ‘oppressed’ status, its tenets must be protected from criticism. The result is the re-emergence of de facto blasphemy laws in some European countries to shield Islam. Indeed the European Court of Human Rights recently made a ruling to this effect - see https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/europe-rules-against-free-speech/574369/

In this way identity politics repudiates a key feature of our Enlightenment inheritance: the right to discuss and critique religion, or at least some religions (the Judeo-Christian tradition is fair game).
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