All entries by this author

New Law on Domestic Violence in India *

Oct 26th, 2006 | Filed by

Every six hours, a young married woman is burned, beaten to death or driven to commit suicide, officials say.… Read the rest



Cleric Suggests Swaying Women Cause Rape *

Oct 26th, 2006 | Filed by

‘You get a judge without mercy and he gives you 65 years…but the problem all began with who?’… Read the rest



Danish Court Rejects Motoons Defamation Suit *

Oct 26th, 2006 | Filed by

Not enough reason to believe the cartoons were intended to be insulting or harmful to Muslims.… Read the rest



Fury in Australia at ‘Uncovered meat’ Comments *

Oct 26th, 2006 | Filed by

‘I had only intended to protect women’s honour,’ Sheikh Hilali said. Women not much mollified.… Read the rest



Wangari Maathai on ‘Fresh Air’ *

Oct 26th, 2006 | Filed by

Founder of the Green Belt Movement, which has planted over thirty million trees across Kenya.… Read the rest



Australian Cleric Likens Women to ‘Meat’ *

Oct 26th, 2006 | Filed by

‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside and the cats come and eat it, whose fault is it?’… Read the rest



All together now

Oct 25th, 2006 11:41 pm | By

Much of Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts is relevant to all this – not surprisingly: it’s about higher education (and education more broadly), Bhattacharyya’s piece is about higher education (and education more broadly), and Dawkins’s work is partly about higher education (and education more broadly).

He talks in chapter 6 – ‘Postmodernism’ – about the difficulties of grounding moral intuitions, via Lyotard’s disagreement with Habermas about consensus and difference, and via feminist epistemology and local and ‘situated’ knowledge (with a reference to Meera Nanda), and Rorty’s antifoundationalism (about morality rather than epistemology). He quotes (page 256) from an essay of Rorty’s that I’ve always liked, despite disagreeing with much of it, ‘Wild Orchids and Trotsky’:

The

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Inquiry or doctrine

Oct 25th, 2006 7:50 pm | By

Gargi Bhattacharyya considers the relationship between education and religion.

Universities in this country broadly champion secular ideals. Whatever the circumstances of their formation, higher education institutions value their independence from state and church (and temple and mosque and synagogue and gurdwara). This is part of what we think universities are – spaces of free debate and enquiry, free from the strictures of doctrinal thought. According to this view, good education cannot belong to any one tradition. There is no benefit to being taught among people like yourself, in fact this is a disadvantage to the interrogatory processes of higher education…There may be unspoken norms, but broadly, doctrinal thought is frowned upon and is considered insufficient to a proper education.

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Books Do Furnish a Room *

Oct 25th, 2006 | Filed by

Scott McLemee on coffee-table books that are not merely decorative.… Read the rest



Religion is not a Learning Aid *

Oct 25th, 2006 | Filed by

If we think universities should be spaces of free debate and enquiry, why not schools too?… Read the rest



Bradford Council Advises Against Niqab in Schools *

Oct 25th, 2006 | Filed by

Ann Cryer, Trevor Phillips urge Azmi not to take her appeal through courts.… Read the rest



Zanzibar Adopts HIV/AIDS Policy *

Oct 25th, 2006 | Filed by

Parliament rejected conservative Muslim demands to close bars and ban skimpy clothing.… Read the rest



Gills

Oct 25th, 2006 2:29 am | By

Respect and religion, remember? Grayling on respect and religion, Blackburn on respect and religion, and now Dawkins on respect and religion. He got a good reception at McGill.

I am under no illusions that I deserve these enthusiastic receptions personally, or that they reflect the quality of my own performance as a speaker. On the contrary, I am convinced that they represent an overflowing of bottled-up frustration, from masses of decent people pushed to breaking point and heartily sick of the sycophantic ‘respect’ that our society, even secular society, routinely and thoughtlessly accords religious faith. Time after time, people in the signing queues thank me for doing no more than say in public what they have,

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A miniature review

Oct 25th, 2006 2:08 am | By

Hey, Why Truth Matters has a tiny review in the TLS ‘In Brief’ section (October 20 issue). It’s not online. If anybody has an ol’ copy lying around and just longs to send it to me, don’t be shy. (Kind Nick sent one when the Dictionary was there.)… Read the rest



Sensibilities

Oct 24th, 2006 7:57 pm | By

This is great stuff. One quotable line after another.

[T]here is clearly no guarantee that a state arbiter won’t cede to the most unreasonable and extreme demands of religious groups, expressed with adequate fervour and implied threats, especially as we have declared in advance that their ‘sensibilities’, however irrational, are somehow worth regarding. Thus, by abandoning a consistent first principles approach to freedom of expression in favour of some kind of dialectic between reasonable (us) and unreasonable (them) people, we may well find ourselves conceding tactical defeat ad nauseam, to the point where those who do accept the ‘fallibility of human knowledge’ must chafe under the de-facto rule of those who don’t.

Allow me to take stock of

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Kenan Malik on What Muslims Want *

Oct 24th, 2006 | Filed by

Politicians prefer to see them as people who can be politically engaged only by other Muslims.… Read the rest



9/11 Doubter to Leave Post at BYU *

Oct 24th, 2006 | Filed by

Physics instructor belongs to group who believe US orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.… Read the rest



Turkey Struggles to End ‘Honour’ Killings *

Oct 24th, 2006 | Filed by

Issue is complicated by the fact that the murders are associated mainly with the Kurdish minority.… Read the rest



On the Right to Give Offence *

Oct 24th, 2006 | Filed by

Believers in absolute truth revealed by God are unlikely to allow pestiferous notions of freedom of speech.… Read the rest



Jesus and Mo Have a Guest *

Oct 24th, 2006 | Filed by

He made it at last.… Read the rest