Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Says It

Dec 1st, 2005 10:36 pm | By

Anybody get the Evening Standard? Still got yesterday’s? Hang on to it (and if you feel so inclined, scan an article in it and send it to me). A commenter at Harry’s Place says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote a searing article yesterday.

She relates how a woman in a burqa recognised her…and having followed her home last week, begged for help. She took off her burqa to reveal horrific injuries to her face and body which were inflicted by her father and brothers in their bid to control her desire for independence (She is a chemistry graduate from Bolton). She claimed that the burqa is being forcibly used to cover the injuries of many women she knows, and that her friend

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Time to Re-read ‘On Liberty’

Dec 1st, 2005 10:17 pm | By

Timothy Garton-Ash talked to Ayaan Hirsi Ali last week. He didn’t think ‘Submission’ was a very good film (I know people who agree with him, including people from the Netherlands), but he thinks it makes a necessary point.

However, I have not a shadow of a doubt that Ali’s script is trying to make an important point about the suffering of women oppressed in the name of Islam – suffering that Ali knows at first hand both from her own experience and from acting as an interpreter for other women from Muslim backgrounds in the Netherlands. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is much more than just a voice for the voiceless oppressed. In person, she is a thoughtful, calm, clear, almost

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Samira Munir

Dec 1st, 2005 5:48 pm | By

Here’s a nasty piece of news. One that as far as I can tell has had zero attention in Anglophone newsmedia or blogs.

I’ve written to Azam and Homa and Maryam about it, and to Nick Cohen. Let’s hope it stops being a story in Norway and nowhere else.

Fjordman explains:

Samira Munir, Norwegian politician of Pakistani origins, died two weeks ago. All the details surrounding her death have not been revealed, but the police have hinted that it may have been suicide. It is not impossible that this could be the case, but she had received death threats many times from the Pakistani community in Norway because of her courageous fight for the rights of Muslim immigrant women,

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Just Pay No Attention *

Dec 1st, 2005 | Filed by

Catholics have been perfecting the art of ignoring the Vatican for centuries. … Read the rest



A Conversation With Hubert Dreyfus *

Dec 1st, 2005 | Filed by

If we were disembodied on the Internet, we wouldn’t be able to see what was relevant and not relevant.… Read the rest



Webcast to Honor Einstein *

Dec 1st, 2005 | Filed by

One of many events this year to mark the centenary of Einstein’s theory of relativity. … Read the rest



Chomsky is not Sacred *

Dec 1st, 2005 | Filed by

The left has a tradition of guruising radical thinkers and cracking whips over its articles of faith.… Read the rest



How Did Samira Munir Die? *

Dec 1st, 2005 | Filed by

Norwegian defender of women’s rights received death threats. Was this a ‘train accident’?… Read the rest



Full Text of Lord May’s Speech to Royal Society *

Dec 1st, 2005 | Filed by

Enlightenment science and its consequences; Twilight for the Enlightenment?… Read the rest



Godless States in God Lands: Dilemmas of Secularism in America and India

Dec 1st, 2005 | By Meera Nanda

God and Politics in America and India

This essay tells the tale of two religious nationalisms: Christian nationalism in America that has found a welcome home in the Republican Party and George W. Bush’s two administrations, and Hindu nationalism in India which always had a welcome home in BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), the party that ruled the country, off and on, through the 1990s until 2004. Christian nationalists declare the United States of America to be a Christian nation, its land God’s New Jerusalem, and its destiny to spread liberty around the world. Hindu nationalists, for their part, proclaim India to be a Hindu nation, its land the body of the mother Goddess, and its destiny to spread spiritual enlightenment … Read the rest



Letters for December, 2005

Dec 1st, 2005 | By

Letters for December, 2005.… Read the rest



The Whole Child Learns to Feel

Dec 1st, 2005 12:15 am | By

So, not content with our current level of credulity and vacuity and inability to think or judge or question or analyze or reflect, with, not to put too fine a point on it, our score on the stupidity meter, some parents are going to considerable trouble to do better – so that in a few short years no one at all will any longer be able to see what’s wrong with The World According to Bob Jones University Press ‘textbooks’.

Reporter Suein Hwang interviewed white parents who are pulling their kids out of elite public high schools, schools known for sending graduates to the nation’s top colleges. They are doing this, writes Hwang, because the schools are too academically rigorous,

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Abomination

Dec 1st, 2005 12:14 am | By

Sometimes the contempt and disgust (and dread) just become overwhelming. This California lawsuit by a gaggle of Christian high schools against the state university system for not crediting some of their courses is one of those times.

Among those courses are “Christianity’s Influence in American History” and “Christianity and American Literature,” both of which draw on textbooks published by Bob Jones University of Greenville, S.C., which describes itself as having stood for “the absolute authority of the Bible since 1927.”

‘Textbooks.’ ‘Bob Jones University.’ The ‘absolute authority.’ Of ‘the Bible.’ One doesn’t know where to direct the most rage and hatred, the profoundest disdain and incredulity. So let’s read some passages while we try to figure it out.

“United States

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