Intra-religious Domination

Some people believe religion is merely, in the famous phrase, the 'opium of the masses' — that once everyone's basic material needs are met, religion will simply disappear. This view rests on an exaggerated sense of what human beings can achieve. It is unlikely we will ever fully understand or control the world around us; we may prolong life, but we will never make it immortal; disease can never be entirely eliminated, and accident and loss are part of the human condition. Some of our suffering is man-made and can therefore be reduced, but some is not. Religion, art, and philosophy are all, in their own ways, responses to this kind of suffering. Secularism accepts this too, which is precisely why secularism is not anti-religious.

At the same time, religion carries its own share of deep, long-standing problems. It is hard to find a religion that treats its male and female followers as genuine equals. Within religions such as Hinduism, some sections have faced persistent discrimination — dalits, for example, have historically been barred from entering some temples, and in parts of the country Hindu women have also been kept out. When a religion becomes tightly organised, it is often taken over by its most conservative faction, which tends not to tolerate internal dissent. Religious fundamentalism, visible even in parts of the United States, endangers peace both within a country and beyond its borders. Many religions have also fractured into competing sects, leading to sectarian violence and the persecution of dissenting minorities from within the same faith.

So religious domination cannot be understood only as domination between different religions. It also takes the equally serious form of intra-religious domination — domination within a single religion. Because secularism opposes every kind of institutionalised religious domination, it challenges not just inter-religious but also intra-religious domination. …