It really pisses me off when I’m being blamed for ‘hatred’.

Try to criticize religion, especially the Middle-Eastern ones. Soon you’ll find yourself as the target of various accusations, which may start with ‘hatred’ and end with ‘Anti-Semitism’ and ‘Islamofobia’. Religions are not very tolerant of criticism, and that is an understatement.

The issue has two different aspects. One of them pertains especially to Orthodox Judaism. While extreme Islam simply tells you to fight the heretics, there are several ancient Jewish rules that tell you to hate them. You are explicitly told to hate those of your own people who do not follow divine orders. You are supposed to hate those who do not ‘believe in God’, and so on. In fact, since the verb ‘to hate’ is so often mentioned, it gets a whole new interpretation, more associated with behavior than with feelings.

The other aspect even looks more important to me. I have many love ones with whom I sometimes argue. Show me one person who doesn’t. When we do argue, we often do so because of some occasional ‘hatred’, so to speak, to something someone just did or said. Some of my love ones also possess certain long-lasting qualities that I specifically hate. On the other hand, there are a few people I really hate, literally. For all that, I can put my finger on specific qualities associated with them that I actually like.

To sum it all up, there is a clear distinction between people and their specific behaviors. Between the actual persons and the contents. My criticism of religions is rarely of the people themselves, it is much more of the religious contents. I hereby declare I truly hate some of these contents. There are some I also love, I admit not too many.

But please do me a favor: Don’t blame me for things I don’t do!