Saturday, December 3, 2016
Voltaire loves you! Unless you're Turkish
Voltaire was super ahead of his time when it came to his views on humanity. He believed that all men were created equal, and only their actions should determine their standing in life. He said, "All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free." But, it is widely known that he was skeptical of organized religion as a whole, which is fine. You can disagree with someone's ideas without hating them. And, for the most part, this was true of Voltaire. He respected many of the important people of his time, regardless of their religious affiliation. This, however, did not apply to the Turks. In this case, he said that simply the fact that they were born in the ottoman empire that they were predisposed to believing the superstition that is Islam.
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I agree with luke, that for the most part, Voltaire believed that people should worship freely. However, he hated Islam. He referred to it as a superstition and claimed that the Qu'uran encouraged violence against women. This hatred for Islam may have been an extension of his hatred for the Turks, as the Ottoman Empire mostly followed Islam. Voltaire disagreed with many aspects of the Ottoman Empire, from their treatment of women to their slaves.
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