Ideology, be it sacred or secular, is the problem

Taking her cue from Charlie Hebdo’s style of risque ridicule, Suzanne Harrington (Irish Examiner, January 16) offensively characterises all religions as abusive in their public manifestations, even though she contradicts herself by allowing that there are also moderates, albeit moderates who do not speak against the excesses of their co-religionists.

She conveniently ignores the fact that ideology per se, whether sacred or secular, is the problem. The purges of totalitarian, atheistic states, such as Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, lead the way in the sad narrative of man’s intolerance and cruelty.

Harrington rightly denounces the killing of abortion-clinic workers. How many of them? One, two? But she has no problem with millions of unborn lives being aborted. Does she have a problem with peaceful protests outside abortion clinics? She does not say, but her basic premise, that religious beliefs, ‘like penises’, should be a purely private affair suggests that she does.