Religion should be a private affair and should not be allowed to divide us. Trade unions and socialist organisations should recognise the right of their members to adopt any religion or none.
We support the rights of our people to hold their religious beliefs, to express such beliefs, to associate in order to promote such beliefs, and to organise to achieve such beliefs. But we do not think it appropriate for prayers of any particular religion to be held during socialist or trade union meetings.
Similarly, we do not think that any religions should have a role in the affairs of the state, government or public services. We do not support either an Islamic State nor a Christian State (like those of the US and Britain). Schools should not promote any particular religion and religious services should not be held in schools. Children should be taught about a range of religions including African traditional religions, Islam and Christianity without giving preference to any particular religion.
We believe that all children should be required to attend public schools and no schools should be run by any religious organisations or religions.
We do not think that governments should be allowed to impose the religious views of their members on society. So governments and states should not ban alcohol nor should they ban abortion. Individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions on such matters, guided, as appropriate by their chosen beliefs.
We also believe that socialist states and governments should not ban religious practices. Churches, mosques and other religious organisations should be allowed to operate as private institutions without state aid. We do not think that states or governments should financially support its citizens to take part in religious events within or outside the country. We are against financial support for individuals to undertake the Hajj or to undertake Christian or other pilgrimages. Similarly, we do not support state support for any religious institution including tax exemptions.
We condemn the suppression of the right to practice any religion. Religion was not banned in the early years of Russian socialism after 1917. However, religion was removed from the school curricula. The hierarchy of the main religion, the Russian Orthodox Church, generally organised against socialism during the civil war and some priests were killed as a result. It was a vicious war and many people, religious or not, died on both sides.
It was only with the rise of Stalinism in Russia, that formal bans against the Church were introduced. The number of churches fell from almost 30,000 in 1927 to only 500 by 1940.
Marx’s famous quote on religion was, “Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.” Often it is only the first sentence that is quoted to try and argue that Marxists and socialists are against religion.
We believe that there are progressive and reactionary aspects and members of all religions. Liberation theology is an influential current in the Christian church, especially in South America:
“When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.” Dom Helder Camara – Brazilian Catholic Archbishop and Christian Liberation theologist.
There are many pastors in Nigeria that support the ideas of liberation theology. However, the hierarchy of many churches tend to be reactionary. Many churches in Nigeria are run as businesses and their leaders become very rich on the financial and other support of their members.
Similarly with Islam. Some mosques are progressive, others are more reactionary. Islam stresses that the rich should have to pay a 2.5 percent Islamic tax (the zakat) for the relief of the poor, that rulers have to govern in a just way, that husbands must not mistreat their wives. But it also treats the expropriation of the rich by the poor as theft, insists disobedience to a “just” government is a crime to be punished with all the vigour of the law and provides women with fewer rights than men within marriage, over inheritance, or over the children in the event of divorce.
The holy books of the Bible and the Quran are open to interpretation. Some Christians will emphasise the quote of Jesus that his followers should “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. Others will refer to the idea that “it is harder for rich people to enter heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle”.
Similarly different mosques or churches will take a more liberal or more reactionary view on abortion or women’s rights. Some mosques and churches allow women to lead prayers or become priests, others do not. These and other differences have led to major and minor splits within all major religions, for example Shia/Sunni Muslims and Protestant/Catholic Churches.
This means it is wrong simply to refer to all Islamists as “reactionary”, or to equate “Islamic fundamentalism” as a whole with the sort of Christian fundamentalism which is the bastion of the right wing of the Republican Party in the US.
We encourage our members to read what the Quran or the Bible actually says on certain issues. For example, neither the Bible nor the Quran explicitly bans abortion. Hence there are different religious schools of thought on this subject.
We are sensitive to peoples’ religious beliefs and respect them. But we are critical of mosques and churches when they support reactionary ideas.
We are not against religion, but work hard to ensure that it is not used to manipulate the people or divide trade unions and the wider working peoples.