However, an engineering report conducted by the mission and a toxicology report commissioned from experts in Germany showed that the victims could not have been killed by chlorine gas and that the yellow cylinders that allegedly were dropped by helicopter to deliver the gas were likely placed on the roof and on the bed by hand.
In other words, the engineering and toxicology reports provided evidence that the chemical attack may have been staged by activists linked to the western-backed armed groups fighting the Syrian government and that the 43 victims had been killed in another way, such as by the activists and militants involved in staging the attack.
This is why I’m a hardcore secularist. In no way shape or form should religion have any presence in government. It’s bad enough how some people treat/use religion in their personal lives. It’s actually insane how many sunnis will try to play the victim and invent “crimes” that shias committed. All of the terror organizations are sunnis, all of the Gulf monarchies are sunni, all of the most socially regressive people I know are sunni. It’s actually infuriating, and it makes almost perfect sense why they would rather attack the imagined shia instead of standing with their fellow sunni Palestinian against the entity. They just hate shia for not following the exact hadiths they follow.
I can respect everyone’s faith- and I believe you shouldn’t attack people for having one- but I can’t support it having any relevance in government beyond protecting people’s right to practice (with limitations.)
I find religion often reflects material conditions, so the Catholicism of Cuba looks remarkably different in substance to that of the US or France. I am athiest myself though I was deeply religious in my younger years.
I find that in the West, however, our brand of secularism and the athiesm that resides in the West (1) attempts to obscure ongoing imperialist and settler-colonial relations (2) obscures class relations (3) and is often deeply reactionary compared to many religious folks from the Global South.
I find the West’s athiesm is signficantly represented by the Hitchens, Harris’, and Dawkins’ of this world - I thus often find solidarity easier with religious folks than the patronising empty neutrality of Westerners at large. But I must admit the latter is a disease of being a Westerner and its ongoing genocidal relations with race.
It’s because western atheism is just thinly veiled white supremacy. There’s already a hatred for the people, so naturally it extends to what they believe.