SOUSA, T.S.; SOUSA, Tayná Saraiva de.
Abstract:
Brazil is a country marked by the diversity of religions, cultures and races. A religious
intolerance is quite visible since the period of its colonization. In their first contacts with the
indigenous people, the Portuguese aimed to re-educate them to the Catholic religion. Until the
slavery period, religious re-education continued and Africans arriving by slave ships were
totally prohibited from worshiping gods that were part of African matrices. Despite being na
old theme, religious intolerance marks Brazilian daily life until the present day, mainly through
social networks. With the Covid-19 pandemic and the health determinations of social isolation,
the consumption of the internet and social networks had a surprising increase during the period,
which further aggravated the occurrence of discriminatory conduct. In view of the reality, the
guiding question of the work comprises understanding the relationship between the practice of
religious intolerance and the pandemic period, seeking to analyze the theme around religious
intolerance since its origin in the colonization of Brazilian lands, to the study of the possible
motivations that lead people to act in a discriminatory manner in relation to other religions and
why such a significant increase in practices occurred during the pandemic. Regarding the
methodology, the work is classified as a qualitative research, since its content is directly
associated with the analysis and interpretation of subjective information. The study comprises
a descriptive research, by analyzing a reality in more depth. The work also comprises a
bibliographic research, so that it performs a collection of relevant information that has been
presented by other authors in research, journals, theses and books already published.It is known
that the fight against religious intolerance in social networks is a long journey, however, the
first steps must be taken, through the elaboration of strategies such as efficient public policies
or even the reanalysis of criminal sanctions for the practices of such conduct. Religious
intolerance directly violates the fundamental right to freedom, regulated from the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to the Brazilian Federal Constitution itself. In such a way, its
occurrence must be inadmissible mainly in a secular country like Brazil. Only in the absence of
discriminatory conduct, especially those linked to religions, will social harmony and civil peace
be possible.