Right to Offend Religion

Offending other religion has always been deemed as a bad thing because people are too scared that it will only create chaos among society. People are afraid to criticize the values adopted by other religion because such critics can be interpreted as different messages by the community of that religion. The values in the religion are very inherited to the community of the religion because people believe that those religious values are the embodiment of their body, mind, and soul. Any offenses may create psychological harm to the followers of God because the values are too private. To some extents, the offences may also harm the physical condition of the religious community because many of them are willing to die or sacrifice for the sake of their religion.

Despite the dangers of the offences to religion, most people often forget that offences to religion are actually necessary for the improvement of the religion itself. Religion is not a rigid entity. It has to evolve and keep up with the current era and the values people are adopting in that era. The only way to send message to the religious community to keep adapting with the current era is through offences to them. Most of the time, soft ways can not work because they do not listen. However, hard ways such as offences are more effective because they will give strong message that the values are outdated and need to be fixed. That is why most Christian community today starts accepting LGBT that was previously condemned by Christian community. LGBT has conveyed many offences to Christian community about how outdated and discriminating the values Christians have adopted. Now, even Pope Francis starts to acknowledge the acceptance to LGBT. From that example, it is obvious that the evolution of religion is particularly affected by the offences to the religion itself.

Society have rights to offend the religion because religion itself has been offending the society for centuries. Religion has shaped certain social construction that allows their followers to judge other people that do not follow certain values religion has taught. Religious community has deemed other people for doing sinful actions. They have been judging how people act or behave in society when they do not perform the values of their religion. The offenses from religion to society are one way and it is unfair to only have one way from the religion to society. That is why society should have right to offend the religion to make two ways of communication so that the communication will be fair.

Offences to other religion are subjective. People can not assess whether or not they are good. People can not assess whether or not they are politically correct. There is no best ideology within each religion. If Christian offends Hindu and Hindu offends Moslem, there should be no problem with that because none of the values of those religions are better than the other. People can not assess when or how the offences started, too. Therefore, people should have the right to offend other religion as the result of its subjectivity.

Offending religion is also good because such action will push people to have more research about religion itself. Most of the time, offences are most captivating way to grab the attention of society about what is actually happening in status quo. For instance, the case about Charlie Hebdo’s caricature of Prophet Muhammad has made people from across the global to find out about it. Such offensive case is the starting point for people to dig deeper the information regarding why such action should not be done and what value of Moslem that should be respected in that context. The research is good for the people because that is the start where people can understand the religion and be tolerant with it.

In conclusion, people should have the right to offend religion. Offending other religion may be atrocious and harmful but such action is necessary and justified to be done in the first place based on the reasons above. There may be costs to be paid for offending the religion. Yet, the costs are worth to pay because offending religion is somehow the only way to push religious community to make progress in terms of evolving the values of the religion itself so that people can also accept the religion in society.

Reference : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxJrg6YAQ70
Source of Image: http://ieet.org/archive/religion-dm-500-789995.jpg