Religious Oppression (Research Paper Sample)

Topic: Psychology and Education
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Psychology and Education
Introduction
Religious oppression is the subordination of one religious group by another normally from the dominant group against the minority group (Blumenfeld, 2013). The subordination is termed as a product of 0historical tradition of the majority hegemony and unequal power relations between the two groups. In most countries, religious oppression is encouraged by individual’s behavior, the social institutions and the societal norms and values linked to the dominant religious group. Religious oppression can happen to any religion and this leads to alienation, persecution and in extreme cases leads to civil wars between communities following the different religions.
A memorable experience with religious oppression happened when I was only 12 years old when an old friend paid me a visit. This friend happened to be a Muslim and hence among the religious minority. The neighborhood comprised of Christians as the majority while Hindus and Muslims made-up the minority groups. There is the stereotype that Muslims are terrorists. Being used to them, I had no problem living with them. After all, we had grown together and attended the same school before I transferred to another school. This is after we moved to a new estate that was almost 90% Christians. My friend passed by our place and to me this was normal. Having grown up seeing him around, nothing even reminded me that he was a Muslim. However, this was different from the reception that the rest of the community gave him. There looks and behavior suggested terror. They were a little bit uncomfortable with him around. A peculiar thing was how my friends treated him. They started avoiding me and could not talk to me while he was around. When I tried to convince them that religion is simply a belief that one takes and that it does not change who we are, they disagreed. They could not believe that I was comfortable sharing my things with a Muslim friend. To me, this results to religious oppression as people from the minority group are denied the freedom of expression by the dominant group (Blumenfeld, 2013).
The best way to change what I had witnessed in the society would to let the society know that religion came after humans. This means that we should treat each other as brothers first before judging from the perspective of religious basis. The teaching in most religions is that friendship to be extended to everyone. It even becomes easier to convert one from one religion to the one that one thinks is the right one. If there should be a war between two religions, then it would be in terms of competition on which will win more people and this can only be done by accommodating and tolerating different religions. By showing my friends and the rest of the community, my friend would not have been ill treated and would have enjoyed his stay.
A story of religious disadvantage would be the execution of people from the minority religious groups. In many parts of the world, the minority groups are ill treated with some of them being persecuted on char...