Attacks on HRW’s credibility make rational discussion increasingly difficult.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Fareena Alam on the Veil on Radio 4
Oct 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDepressing stuff.… Read the rest
Salma Yaqoob is Annoyed at White Feminists
Oct 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBecause we will keep wondering why men don’t wear the niqab.… Read the rest
Inayat Bunglawala is Annoyed at Ruth Kelly
Oct 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBecause the MCB is not quite flavour of the month any more. Sad.… Read the rest
Sunny Hundal Says No Thanks to ‘Representation’
Oct 14th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReligious organisations compete with race-based organisations for money, credibility and power. … Read the rest
We do not now have the understanding
Oct 13th, 2006 8:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonSorry – a couple of people have reproached me for linking to Nagel on Dawkins when it’s subscription. Sorry. I got access via bugmenot (which will probably now be taken away) a long time ago, so I forget that it’s subscription. I thought it might be on the Dawkins site but it isn’t, at least not yet. Try bugmenot – it doesn’t always work, but it sometimes does. It’s cheating, but then again, one can read magazines at libraries, and that’s not cheating.
It’s worth the effort (no surprise there).
… Read the restOne of Dawkins’s aims is to overturn the convention of respect toward religion that belongs to the etiquette of modern civilization. He does this by persistently violating the convention, and
Then again
Oct 13th, 2006 4:37 pm | By Ophelia BensonOne the other hand – to be fair – Lakoff disputes Pinker’s review and says it says he says the opposite of what he says.… Read the rest
We been framed
Oct 13th, 2006 4:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonSteven Pinker gets off some good zingers at George Lakoff.
… Read the restIf Lakoff is right, his theory can do everything from overturning millennia of misguided thinking in the Western intellectual tradition to putting a Democrat in the White House…Conceptual metaphor, according to Lakoff, shows that all thought is based on unconscious physical metaphors, with beliefs determined by the metaphors in which ideas are framed. Cognitive science has also shown that thinking depends on emotion, and that a person’s rationality is bounded by limitations of attention and memory. Together these discoveries undermine, in Lakoff’s view, the Western ideal of conscious, universal, and dispassionate reason based on logic, facts, and a fit to reality. Philosophy, then, is not an extended debate about
Steven Pinker on George Lakoff
Oct 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe ubiquity of metaphor in language does not imply that all thinking is concrete.… Read the rest
Thomas Nagel: the Problem with Atheism
Oct 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOne of Dawkins’s aims is to overturn the convention of respect toward religion.… Read the rest
Women on the Niqab
Oct 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonJoan Smith urges Garton Ash to catch up on his feminist reading.… Read the rest
Johann Hari Talks to Salman Rushdie
Oct 13th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe mass uprooting he celebrated helped to create the Islamist pining for a fictitious lost purity.… Read the rest
UK Government Withdraws Support From MCB
Oct 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonKelly said in future she would fund organisations representing young Muslims and Muslim women.… Read the rest
Busted for Criticizing Cheney to His Face
Oct 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSecret Service arrests guy for telling Cheney ‘Your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.’… Read the rest
Orhan Pamuk Wins Nobel for Literature
Oct 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe has faced prosecution for talking about the murder of Armenians and Kurds.… Read the rest
To Tell the Truth – Scott McLemee on I F Stone
Oct 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHoover’s agents despaired of ever establishing a connection between Stone and the CPUSA.… Read the rest
Scott McLemee on I F Stone
Oct 12th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonStone tells Soviet citizens that the “thaw” will mean nothing if they don’t acquire the right of habeas corpus. … Read the rest
Picking and choosing
Oct 12th, 2006 12:28 am | By Ophelia BensonBut David Edgar sees things differently. He sees them strangely, too.
For most of the past 30 years, being in favour of free speech meant being in favour of good things (notably honesty about sexuality) and against denial and repression…Now we are having to defend things we disapprove of, such as the glorification of terrorism or, indeed, calls for censorship. The conundrum that one of the things liberals have to tolerate is intolerance hasn’t needed to be at the forefront of debates on free expression before. It is now, and it should be.
‘One of the things liberals have to tolerate is intolerance.’ No it isn’t. I don’t subscribe to any principle that requires me to tolerate intolerance or to … Read the rest
Houzan Mahmoud
Oct 11th, 2006 11:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonHouzan Mahmoud says it clearly enough.
The veil is not merely a piece of “cloth”, but a sign of the oppression of women, control over their sexuality, submissiveness to the will of God or a man. The veil is a banner of political Islam used to segregate women born by historical accident in the so-called “Islamic World” from other women in the rest of the world.
She’s surprised to find herself agreeing with Jack Straw, but also thinks he’s a bit late.
… Read the restJack Straw’s government has always been proud of its “multicultural society”, in which all kinds of backward and anti-human cultures are respected and given space by the state. Women from an Islamic background will be among the
Everything Must Be Tolerated, David Edgar Says
Oct 11th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Sorry, but we can’t just pick and choose what to tolerate.’ Interesting notion.… Read the rest