Will critiquing religion run afoul of this Act?

Invisibilising and demeaning ancestral traditions so as to dehumanise the subjected is a main characteristic of colonial rule. So the need to guard against acts of prejudice against diverse religious, political views and sexual orientation is essential.

But since a lot of the problems and challenges we are confronting emanated from ideas of racial/ cultural superiority wrapped in a cloak of science and, more so, religion, we need to robustly deconstruct all the institutions and ideas that were imposed on us.

This is vital if we are to develop the self-confidence that is needed to make it through the challenges ahead. There is no avoiding it (though many of us really try to).

True we have had our calypsonians and the satirical ole mas traditions, but it must be done on all fronts and so the academic fields also have their role.

I am saying all this because when I listen to the advertisement of the Equal Opportunities Commission, I’m not sure that the framers of the Act itself thought things all the way through.

For all the good religion can do, it also can be very dangerous and right now we are living in extremely dangerous times. Much of the current conflicts and threats to the environment stem from fundamentalist (and/or hubristic) interpretations of religious dictates that are just secular cultural ideas given a veneer of divine authority.

Far too many important, critical decisions are being made; too many progressive public policies are being held hostage because of the continued influence of de-contextualised, mistranslated myths peddled as the divine instructions of some other-worldly entity. Witness the recent spectacle of the US presidential election and the way Christians and Muslims voted on both sides, believing that either the Democratic or Republican parties represented the values they want projected.

In TT we inherited a culture of unquestioning conformity to authority that was elitist, bigoted, self-serving and often incompetent.

Religion was the principal institution that ensured this conformity through ideas of natural inferiority and worthlessness that largely European and North American missionaries transmitted.

However, many religious leaders from Islam and Hinduism have been just as culpable even as they provided much-needed counter-narratives. So we clearly need to have robust probing conversations that deconstruct these teachings. However, it will not be pleasant; there has to be a certain degree of confrontation that will include language considered disrespectful to religious sensibilities.

Did the framers of the Equal Opportunities Act, who I am sure had the noblest of intentions, think about this? Or is it that religion cannot to be touched and atheists, agnostics and free-thinkers like myself are unfit to contribute to a more cohesive society?

COREY GILKES La Romaine