After several right-wing organisations opposed the event, alleging it was “separatist,” Symbiosis University has postponed its seminar, ‘Voices of Kashmir’, indefinitely.… Read the rest
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Oslo: Motoon terrorists found guilty
Jan 31st, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTwo of the three had – in liaison with al-Qaida – planned to use explosives against the offices of Jyllands-Posten and to murder Kurt Westergaard.… Read the rest
Some women have a hell of a nerve
Jan 30th, 2012 5:44 pm | By Ophelia BensonJust in case you missed this – Afghan woman is killed ‘for giving birth to a girl’:
… Read the restA woman in north-eastern Afghanistan has been arrested for allegedly strangling her daughter-in-law for giving birth to a third daughter.
The murdered woman’s husband, a member of a local militia, is also suspected of involvement but he has since fled.
…
Senior officials told the BBC that the mother-in-law, known as Wali Hazrata, tied the feet of the 22-year old woman, who was known as Stori, while Stori’s husband strangled her.
He is thought to be a fighter with an illegal armed militia which is is believed to have some political support. Local villagers say that Stori often urged her husband to
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Too Westernized, secular and progressive to be authentic
Jan 30th, 2012 4:33 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is an outstanding observation from Kenan Malik’s talk at Conway Hall:
… Read the restIn recent decades, faith has, in other words, transformed itself into the religious wing of identity politics. Religion has, ironically, become secularised, driven less by a search for piety and holiness than for identity and belongingness. The rise of identity politics has transformed the meaning not just of religion but of blasphemy too. Blasphemy used to be regarded as a sin against God. These days it is felt as a sin against the individual believer, an offence against the self and one’s identity. That is why for Sardar, ‘Every word [of The Satanic Verses] was directed at me and I took everything personally’, why he imagined
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Trots fight back
Jan 30th, 2012 12:53 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis just in, from LSE ASH at Facebook – a poster from the Socialist Workers Student Society advertising an event on Thursday. It reads:
Religious discrimination is irrefutably on the rise at LSE. Both the Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims, and the ‘Nazi themed’ drinking games serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism.
What does really lie behind the claim that religious communities cannot be the target of racists?
Is atheism the road to social progress?
Why do Marxists defend religion?
Great god almighty. A Nazi-themed drinking game is religious discrimination?! And then, if it is, why the “festering undercurrent of racism”? They don’t seem to be able to … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The believer’s inner needs
Jan 30th, 2012 12:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonRecognized.
I’m reading Kenan Malik’s talk at the Conway Hall conference on blasphemy, and it corroborates what I was just saying about contemporary religion (that it’s contemporary religion that is seen as “fulfilling people’s needs” and that it’s reading backward to think religion has always been seen that way).
… Read the restThis intensely personal, deeply emotional response marks a shift in the way that believers understood their relationship to belief. Faith has always had an emotional components and for some faiths such emotional spirituality has been central to their outlook. Nevertheless there has been a fundamental shift in the character of religious belief in recent decades. Sociologists talk of the rise of the ‘therapy culture’ to describe the growing emotionalism of
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Sunil D’Monte on victim blaming in action
Jan 30th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhere the “spotlight” of discussion and the “burden of change” are placed on the victim instead of the perpetrator.… Read the rest
It wasn’t like that
Jan 30th, 2012 11:40 am | By Ophelia BensonA couple of ”Really? Is that actually true? Do you really know what you just asserted?” items from a review of three books on god, meaning, what to do without god, emotional needs, and the intersections between them all.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution…
The fundamental tension, however, remained unresolved: between, on the one hand, the views of an expanding educated class who saw the many holes in Christian doctrine, and on the other, the people’s need for guidance and meaning that the Church had long fulfilled.
It had? Really?
I don’t think so. I think Stephen Cave is reading backward, from the way people view religion now, and assuming that’s the way they viewed it then. … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Windsor Muslim women react to Shafia verdict
Jan 30th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReem Khan and Miriam Issa are speaking out against so-called honour killings.… Read the rest
Turkey: man, 25, impregnates girl, 11; they are “married”
Jan 30th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonTurkish feminists warn that under the three AKP administrations, long-controversial patriarchal habits have once again become the norm.… Read the rest
Gideon Levy says God rules all in 2012 Israel
Jan 30th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt can no longer be claimed that the secular majority has acquiesced to the religious minority; there is no secular majority, only a negligible minority.… Read the rest
Afghan woman killed for giving birth to a girl
Jan 30th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSome women in Afghanistan are abused if they fail to give birth to boys. This is the latest in a series of high-profile crimes against women in the country.… Read the rest
Fox News “investigates” Rock Beyond Belief
Jan 30th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonQuotemine quotemine quotemine. I really appreciate you giving us a call.… Read the rest
Like so much garbage
Jan 29th, 2012 4:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe National Post has a collection of pictures of the Safias – of Rona and Mohammed on their wedding day 30 years ago, of Rona and Mohammed and Yahya on the wedding day of the latter two in 1988, of Sahar, Geeti, Zainab, Rona in 2009. Especially wrenching, there are pictures of all four taken days before they were murdered, retrieved from cell phones that were in the car at the bottom of Kingston Lock.
It’s interesting that there aren’t any Rage Boys shouting about this. It’s interesting that Rage Boys get contorted in the face because Salman Rushdie is scheduled to appear at a literary festival, yet they remain entirely calm when members of their “community” murder their daughters … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Death threats for Dutch satirist’s burqa song
Jan 29th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJohan Vlemmix has stopped performing the song onstage and cancelled the option to order the shirts via his website.… Read the rest
Shafias found guilty
Jan 29th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAll three found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder of Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13, and Rona Amir Mohammad, 52.… Read the rest
Shafia family guilty in ‘honourless’ murders
Jan 29th, 2012 2:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonMohammad Shafia, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and their son Hamed were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in the drowning deaths of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13, and Mohammad Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 52.
… Read the rest“It’s difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime,” said the judge.
“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honour, a notion of honour founded upon the domination and control of women. A sick notion of honour that has no place in any civilized society.”
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Second-guessing subjective experiences
Jan 29th, 2012 12:12 pm | By Ophelia BensonMark Vernon wrote a response to Julian’s Heathen’s Progress series. It’s got to do with the fact that cognition is embodied, which Vernon somehow takes to mean that subjective convictions are trustworthy, or something along those lines.
… Read the rest…the modern sceptic is suspicious of subjective convictions. They fixate on the many ways in which individuals can be self-deluded, and forget that they can also be wonderfully discerning. They miss truths that can only be known by acquaintance, which is to say, by letting them in.
Alternatively, the modern atheist may admit that going to church can be tremendous and saying prayers valuable to cultivate thanks. But they will ensure that these activities remain contained – quarantined, you might say –
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Pour rire
Jan 29th, 2012 11:33 am | By Ophelia BensonEvery now and then people spot a search term in their stats that is too funny (and puzzling) not to share.
At last I have one.
soxs with sandles over them for dogs
All the odder because I don’t know any dogs who wear soxs, or sandles either…let alone both at once.… Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Mark Vernon says the materialist world view must go
Jan 29th, 2012 | Filed by Ophelia BensonScience an act of faith? Science a belief system? But then how else to explain the grip of the mechanistic, physicalist, purposeless cosmology?… Read the rest