So, this is a question about the person who was talking about religious endorsement of slavery. To be fair I should preface this by saying that I’m an agnostic who was raised with no particular religion (which in the United States means I’m at least somewhat culturally Christian). I read over the posts twice, and while it certainly seemed like they were trying to dunk on someone, it didn’t seem like they were targeting Jews? But I could certainly have missed it, if you’d be willing to expand?
okay third time’s the charm I hope. SO. The post in question, for those following at home, is here.
So with the caveat that I am not Jewish - I’m converting, as slow and rocky and painstaking as that process has been for me for reasons I’m not discussing here - I did not notice any specifically antisemitic dogwhistles per se. That said, I don’t know all of them and don’t always recognize them. I’m working on it but it’s a work in progress. So I’m partially posting these for my Jewish followers and mutuals to chime in on if they desire.
The main issues I had with the OP of that post were:
a) they claim to not be approaching the situation from a culturally Christian perspective even though they very very clearly are - you don’t have to be christian or even be raised christian to be culturally christian, but in America and most of the “western world” (ie europe and associated countries), unless you’re specifically raised by a community (not just your parents, generally) in a non-christian culture, even if you’re not religious and your parents weren’t religious, you are going to be culturally christian, because our entire SOCIETY is built upon cultural christianity, which is why it’s so hard for, say, jewish people to get their important holidays off work or school when easter and christmas are assumed you get (or should get) off.
that sort of mindset - that they’re not culturally christian bc they weren’t raised christian - is... not only wrong but also really really harmful when we’re talking about christian hegemony and applying christian mindsets to the interpretation of other cultural practices, beliefs, and texts. So, strike one for being unwilling to consider that maybe they’re approaching the texts they were quoting from the wrong perspective
b) they were doing the ever-so-traditionally antisemitic trick of pulling stuff out of context (both textural and, as Christianity has done with the entire old testament, cultural) from the Christian translation of the Torah (their “old testament”) to make their point because look at this bad violent outdated blah blah blah, let’s mock it. It’s the same problem as when people argue against the whole “do not lie with a man as with another man” bit that Christians use to be homophobic by saying “oh i guess we can’t eat shrimp now, or wear poly-cotton blends!” because like... 1) if you actually researched the Jewish interpretations and context and stuff, you’d find a lot of Jewish scholars saying stuff that has nothing to do with it being about homosexuality, and 2) there are... people? actual living people? Who don’t eat shrimp or wear poly-cotton blends bc this is their religion? So it’s really shitty and antisemitic to use them as a punchline.
(edit: as proof of how much I don’t know everything and shouldn’t be considered an authority on Judaism for so many reasons: It’s been brought to my attention by @animatedamerican that “mixed fabrics” is really a mistranslation and the prohibition was against blending linen and wool specifically. This is still practiced by many observant Jewish people. No one has an issue with poly-cotton blends or ever has, aside from people who are cotton purists I guess.)
and this goes for the muslim texts, too. They’re removed from their textural and cultural contexts, and this guy clearly doesn’t have the background knowledge or desire to actually analyze any of them, or the Torah scriptures.
c) he’s ignoring that the kind of slavery he’s discussion - the trans-atlantic slave trade and the generational slavery that came with it - was basically UNHEARD OF prior to the development of that particular institution. Slavery wasn’t great, but your children were not slaves simply because you were. And, as some of those very Torah quotes show in context, there was a limiting factor, time wise. It was better described as “indentured servitude to repay large debts”. And the laws were to provide protection and required levels of decent treatment for those indentured servants.
Is it something that is culturally acceptable in the west today? Officially no, tho I have thoughts about things like poverty and prison labor and such, but that’s not the point. But the context was still different than the slavery that we had in this country, regardless of if those verses were used by racist slaveholders to justify their actions. And the OP refused to acknowledge that.
....I don’t have the post available in front of me so I can’t remember if there was anything else I would comment on, but... yeah. it was a very very shitty, islamophobic and antisemitic take, rather than actually dragging christians like they apparently intended. They definitely were intentionally islamophobic tho that was... yeah.
Does this make sense/answer your question? i’ve been awake way too long for it to only be 10am and i’m on class 2 of the day already XD.
