There are many thoughts that inhabit the position of heresy, haraam, etc. in the new secular religious fundamentalism.

At the extreme end of the haraam spectrum is outright bigotry where conceptually it is suggested that some groups are fundamentally superior to others based on biology, and, importantly, therefore society ought to be structured in a way that takes this alleged "fact" into account.

Over time, this religion has expanded the scope of what is considered haraam. There are secret hand gestures, "dog whistles" and, my favourite - unconscious thoughts, that can be used to identify blasphemers. Today, mostly in the west, it is suggested that one must spend time interrogating one's biases, in an L. Ron Hubbard audit kind of way (minus the E-Meters), where seminars and workshops are held to confront one's deep rooted and hidden evils, just as they did in medieval times, when many were thought to have been possessed by the devil, or by evil spirits.

Over the millennia that human civilization has blossomed around the world, many of the forms it has taken are unique and beautiful. As the years passed, many cultural traditions in the fine arts, music, theatre and culinary arts have been lost to time. These practices were not immune to the free market of ideas. If something new comes along which elicits more currency in some form or another, the market tends to be driven towards it. Preserving one's way of life is not necessarily rooted in xenophobia or hatred. To me, this is an important distinction that is often lost in these conversations. This feeling is born out of honoring many of those who came before you, not out of hatred for someone else's way of life. This religion makes no room for this type of distinction. It is devoid of nuance, like all fundamentalism is.

The modern argument against this type of thinking is that there are groups of people whose ancestors are so heinous (or, as the saying goes "deplorable and irredeemable"), with nothing in their legacy that is worthy of preservation. Not even a statue of their likeness deserves to be seen by others. An enforced good and evil binary must come into play by applying a contemporary hierarchy of sin and virtue over historical figures. The enforced narrative is that these people must have necessarily been wholly evil to the core, there is no other explanation that ought to be accepted for their behavior, and, importantly, "therefore" it should follow that their descendants and supporters should atone.

This religion has the hallmarks of all previous religious movements such as witch-hunting, mob justice, inquisition, etc. Religion can be a wonderful inward and spiritual journey that adds balance, structure, community and harmony to people's lives. These aspects of religion which veer into organized political movements that seek to impose change on the rest of society to shape the world in their chosen image, are diabolical. They ought to be universally opposed.

The histories of western countries seem to have transformed into mythological religious epic status. He died on the cross for us, therefore. They enslaved, therefore. They conquered, therefore.

If I am someday killed by a white supremacist for my ethnicity, and it so happens that the white supremacist posts on one of these websites, I would hope that this is not used as an excuse to restrict their speech. I would objectively consider this to be a far worse act. Destroying a good idea like freedom of thought, even to save my own life is absolutely not worth it.