Why Aren't Atheists A Protected Group Like Muslims?

Islamophobia: when you hate Muslims. Even at times considered racist.

Poll conducted: if a presidential candidate was perfect but was X, would you still vote for them?

Black: 94% yes
Women: 92% yes
Gay: 75% yes
Muslim: 61% yes
Atheist....45% yes

Atheists are the most hated group in the US.

Look how people alienate atheists by having "one nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance, In God We Trust on the money, and saying "God Bless America" in speeches at party conventions. Presidential candidates at some point have to talk about their faith.

That's not really the point though, seeing as the US is majority Christian.

What of the bigotry and hatred directed at atheists?

Steve Harvey the comedian said that atheists are idiots, that if he met one he would walk off, and that women shouldn't date atheist men because atheists don't have morals. Imagine if he said that about Muslims. Yet he has three top rated shows, a best selling book, and hosted Ms. Universe.

Black and Jews are protected. (For some reason, women aren't). That's because of the history. But what's Muslim history, particularly in the US?

Why are Muslims protected? Is it intimidation? Because they're seen as Arab?

Should atheists coin the term atheo-phobia?

 

I dont really get the question, especially since you are American. Things look rather different from the outside

Muslims are protected are they?

Its not videos of cops shooting Atheists thats caused recent troubles

 

Well, in Iraq atheists are provided with full rights and government protection. Even the Yazidi (Serpant & Fire worshipers...or Satan worshipers as some call them) have full rights and government protection. In mostly Muslim Iraq, Yazidism is considered a state religion, meaning more than full rights. Their members get full government benefits and are allowed to serve in the military, just like Christians. Women in Iraq also have full rights. Since 1933 they can drive a car, can vote; and, they are paid equal to men. Muslim women in Iraq got the right to vote and equal pay long before women in America. In fact, women in America still have no equal pay laws to protect them. Hillary was talking about it just the other day. So, to answer your question, yes atheists should coin the term atheo-phodia, because America is riddled by right wing extremists who hate any group of people that is different than them. Right wing extremists in America will kill others who disagree with them, as in the case of the white man who killed balck people in a church, as in the case of the Oklahoma City bomber, and the white men who killed a black man Jasper Texas by dragging him behind a truck.

 

If you have to go back 11 years to find something to prove a point, not much of a point

 

Where in the law of civil dialog did you find that law? People on HF go back 1400 years to cherry pick tid-bits so they can badmouth today's Muslims, don't they?

 

What do you mean by "protected"? In the U.S., Muslims, like atheists and women, are legally protected as "persons" under the U.S. Constitution against deprivation of their life, liberty or property without due process, and against being discriminated against by government. Although none of the groups are specifically mentioned, they are also protected against discrimination in employment and public accommodations by the Civil Rights Statutes prohibiting discrimination by private individuals on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, alienage, gender, and/or age. Non-theistic beliefs count under religion if they're sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views and concern "ultimate ideas” about life, purpose, and death. Of course, legal protection goes only so far. Atheists can be and are despised by a majority of the population, and comedians can make them the brunt of jokes. It's a free country, with freedom of speech. Any Fox News watchers or participants in these Forums are aware that Muslims are also not protected from such things. If any group has a beef where legal protection is concerned, it's the LGBT community, which may be protected locally but doesn't enjoy the protection of national laws.

 

I don't mean legally protected only, nor do I mean immune from all criticism i.e. here. I mean socially protected from being insulted.

 

Hey Okie, don't forget the part in the US constitution that says some folks are only three fifiths of a human being. The constitution is very clear where it states only congress has the authority to deal with the Indian tribes. It says white men have full rights. It says women do not have rights...that's where they fall under the term husbandry, as in animal husbandry...reduced to being property of their husband. In America's constitution there are clauses about the responsibility of honoring and enforcing of business contracts. So, it has been generally accepted by historians and constitutional scholars that the three fifths of a human rule was intended for the negro slaves, and contracts being enforced to reclaim slave property by the rightful white owner. And all that is a lot more recent than 1400 Islamic years ago!

 

The 3/5 rule had to do with counting slaves for purposes of determining the number of seats a state had in the House of Representatives. The slaves themselves didn't have any rights at all. The original constitution gave no voting rights to women, but the courts recognized their status as persons under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Indian tribes were and are considered semi-sovereign entities. Native Americans, themselves, are U.S. citizens with full rights, and also retain special rights on such matters as hunting and fishing, water use, and gaming operations. In Reed v. Reed (1971), the U.S. Supreme Court held that women have full rights as "persons" under Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause and they were accorded full voting rights and the right to hold public office by the 19th Amendment in 1920. I'm afraid the 1400 year record of non-slavery in Islam is fiction. "The legality of slavery in Islam, together with the example of the Prophet Muhammad who himself bought, sold, captured, and owned slaves, may explain why slavery persisted until the 19th century in many places (and later still in some countries). The impetus for the abolition of slavery came largely from colonial powers, although some Muslim thinkers argued strongly for abolition." (BBC, "Slavery in Islam" , 9/7/2009) http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_1.shtml

 

Thank you so much for all that. I will point out that all the jibberish about the fith and fourteenth amendmends and all the other hunky dory stuff you sugar coat America with is meaningless to me and all my black friends. We get no equal treatment under the law...at all. The three fifths of a human being was used to describe black guy...black guys in chains. I think America stinks when it come to human rights and equal treatment under the law. Civil rights in America is only the fake image used for advertising on the floor of the UN General Assembly floor. I can come up with cases just like all you right wing guys do. How about Giddion v Wainwright, and how about Dred Scott. I took time to read the full Miranda ruling; unfortunately, the white American cops don't give a rat's ass about it. They just use the riot batton on colored guys and sometimes they kick their teeth in...sometimes give them a rough ride in the wagon...so rough that they die.

 

Yes, unfortunately what the law says and what reality is are not always the same. Laws are only as good as the people who enforce them. In my part of the country, there was legal segregation until the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and it took decades of further litigation to get rid of that. There's still a lot of informal racism, especially in law enforcement. Dred Scott goes back about 160 years to the time of slavery, but the reaction against it is often cited as a contributing cause of the Civil War. ending slavery and ushering in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that provided the legal framework for protecting African-American rights. But it took decades and favorable judges to translate the words on paper into tangible gains. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) wasn't so much about African-Americans, but it did interpret the right to counsel to include legal representation for anyone too poor to afford a lawyer. We need to get rid of deadlock in Congress by voting in progressives and electing a President who can appoint some decent judges. That's the precondition for real progress in race relations in this country. It won't happen by electing more Republicans or Donald Trump.

 

Thank you. That was a civil reply. My Constitutional Law Prof in my undergrad Criminal Justice and Poli Sci program said that Gideon was a black man and he had written his appeal to the Supra on the back of a grocery sack in his own handwriting. They have the original at the Supreme Court in a glass display. During the Jim Crow days many Black Men were unjustly imprisoned. Today's Rambo Style cops are a different breed, most intent on dominating minorities, racial, political. religious, enviromentalist, and so on.

 

Actually, Clarence Gideon was white, but assuredly Black men were/are unjustly imprisoned. The Scottsboro trial back in the early 1930s involved a group of African-American young men who were accused of raping two white women on a train. The defendants were rushed to trial in a mob atmosphere, tried without effective counsel before all whit juries, and eight of them sentenced to death. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, in a landmark case (Powell v. Alabama) holding that the defendants had effectively been denied right to counsel. The rash of killings of African-Americans by cops is alarming, but I think technology (cell phone videos) has introduced a new factor into the mix that has the potential of making a difference in the long run.

 

I remember Powell v Alabama from school. Keep in mind it has been a few years since I was in school. As for cell phones as a deterrent to police misconduct, I hope they work better than they have, meaning get us some convictions. Cops still get away with murder as in the case of Tamir Rice of Cleveland. The kid was eleven and only had a toy gun. Any grown man would have known that. I saw the video. The cops pulled up to him in their cruiser, and killed him in under two seconds. He did point the toy gun at them; but, they could have stayed back fifty feet and talked to him for a few more seconds. There have been a bunch of Muslims killed unjustly, in Texas a jury let a white man go after he had killed an unarmed Muslim in a traffic incident. In Indiana, our illustrious governor Mike Pence got on the news to say that three Muslims who had been killed inside a house and the matter was not a hate crime; but, to this day the crime has not been solved. The cops have done little or nothing about it.

 

That was my understanding as well. It's really not that smart to be open about being an atheist there, except maybe among friends and people you know.

Interestingly Malasya is also among the worst countries for atheists! News to me.

Also interesting in regards to the OP:

A lot of atheists will be dismayed that only a few countries are considered to be “free and equal.” The top countries include Belgium, The Netherlands, and Estonia. Even the United States which takes pride in being the “land of the free” was only classified as “mostly satisfactory”. Additionally, the U.K. ranks lower at “systematic discrimination”

This was not really news to me as it is wellknown keeping your christian affiliation that people gotten from birth is rewarding in american society, even if you're an atheist, muslim or whatever at heart... So here Stormmountanman also has a point. Not sure why he thought Iraq is a pleasant country to be openly atheist. Would be interested to hear!

 

BBC gave Dawkins his own TV series. We also get Brian Cox on TV all the time (not that I watch him as he makes me want to cringe) Long way from discrimination. I'd say that being on TV with your own series may encourage insults if the series is crap, but otherwise there's no issue with atheists being insulted in the UK in general.

 

LMFAO! There isn't even equality between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq for fuck sakes. Ever fucking hear of ISIS or ISIL? The second I is for Iraq. They're in fucking three tier civil war right now.

 

ISIS is not the iraqi government or the official justice system there though. It's an extremist organisation fighting it. You're right about the inequality between shias and sunnis: leaders affiliated with one of those oppressing the others is a key issue in middle eastern unrest.
If the shia governments that came after Hussain acted fair to all iraqi citizens, or at least tried to, ISIS would have far less supporters and members there (although most seem to come from other countries), and the same can be said for the civil war in Syria (that started without any kind of jihad or islamic extremists): Assads government discriminated sunnis for decades.
That a civil war started there is not thanks to some 1400 old conflict, or that they really disagree a lot with the other kind of islam (which they do), it broke out mainly because Assad's own dubious practices. It was not until after the shit hit the fan there when demonstrations (from displeased citizens mind you, not jihadi nutcases) were violently oppressed and civil war started, that several kinds of islamic factions began joining that conflict and fucked up the whole country even more.

 

Because it isn't enforceable. Muslims aren't "socially" protected by law, but there are a lot of people who choose to speak up in their defense.

And there are also a lot of people who out there who say some really xenophobic things about Muslims, so they're not really protected either are they?

Atheists /agnostics are definitely a minority and I agree it can be a pain in the ass at times

But at the same time, Donald Trump hasn't spoken out against us at a rally yet so that's good, right?