Originally Posted by zambizzi
I can entirely respect your distaste for topics like this here on DW now, Bernhard. I am guilty of starting politically-charged threads myself, in the past, and they usually end on a bad note.
I still think things like this can be discussed calmly, rationally, and respectfully but this thread wasn't started with those intentions.
I go back to the polite company comment - we're polite company here and some things just don't belong here, IMHO.
The farther we get from Western music, the more we will stumble into the religious and spiritual aspects of music. From that perspecitve, limiting discussion of religion would limit discussion of music.
For example, there are recognized genres of Christian, Klezmer, Indian, Chinese, Afro-Cuban, Indonesian, Middle Eastern music, etc, that all have strong religious underpinnings. If you had a thread about "Playing in church" or "How to best play 'Shnirele Perle'" (klezmer classic song about the Jewish longing for the messianic age) you could not help but refer to the religious context and there have been such threads around here already. The Chinese concept of chi permeates their music, martial arts, medicine, architecture and religion, among other things.
Respect, understanding and avoiding pushing beliefs on anyone is key in any conversation, whether you're talking religion, politics or Beanie Baby collecting.