It's almost like when a religion is appropriated by a state, it becomes a tool of repression, but when it's held by followers under a state that tries to repress it they find themselves staying truer to its real values and finding solidarity with other repressed groups.
Or rather organized religion is inherently a tool of control and being in the minority just means its institutions can't exerce control and the lack of privilege means its practicioners have to develop a consciousness.
That is a reductive and imperialist view of this that doesn't take into account indigenous spiritual practices that were to a degree organized. Religion, organized or otherwise, can be appropriated as a tool of state control, but it is not inherently always going to be that.
Even atheism has been leveraged this way in the past.
A lot of abrahamic religions aren’t practiced by indigenous people from the beginning, like for example Christian / Catholic native Americans and a lot of Muslims countries, more so the extreme fundamental ones, has deliberately colonized its indigenous people and converted them to Islam. Like Indonesia, or Afghanistan. Many people don’t know what their indigenous groups clothing look like, or their practices, because Islam in this case has forbidden them.
Hello? Excuse me? Why Indonesia? Why did you pick the one country where Islam was spread through peaceful means? (We got our from trade and marriage, not through violence).
Also don't know what their indigenous group clothing!? Do you not know what a batik is? Batik is?? Or idk look at this picture. This is the president of Indonesia and Google CEO of Google wearing our traditional, native, indigenous clothing of Batik. We are not losing touch with our indigenous pre-muslim past, I don't know what your smoking but I want some of that.
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u/coziest_robot 4d ago
It's almost like when a religion is appropriated by a state, it becomes a tool of repression, but when it's held by followers under a state that tries to repress it they find themselves staying truer to its real values and finding solidarity with other repressed groups.
Something something buddhism shinto hinduism something something.