Moroccan campaigning to change law against eating in public during Ramadan says he got 100 death threats.… Read the rest
Christian Legal Centre Making Trouble
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe CLC claims that Lord Phillips allowed his personal views to colour his judgement in the Purdy case.… Read the rest
Mo Has Been Reading Tariq Ramadan
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe executes the steps gracefully.… Read the rest
Iran: Mannequins Must Wear Hijab
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNext stop, the twilight zone.… Read the rest
UN Says ‘Witch’ Killings Are on the Rise
Sep 24th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMurder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is spreading globally.… Read the rest
Tariq Ramadan dances a minuet
Sep 24th, 2009 11:41 am | By Ophelia BensonTariq Ramadan explains things.
My position on homosexuality is quite clear…Islam, as Christianity, as Judaism, as even the Dalai Lama…[are] not accepting of homosexuality, saying that this is forbidden according to the principles of our religion…My position, with homosexuals, is to say, “We don’t agree with what you are doing, but we respect who you are,” which I think is the only true liberal position that you can have.
Why no, actually, that’s not the only true liberal position you can have. On the contrary. The true liberal position would be to look carefully at those ‘principles of our religion’ and ask whether they are good principles or not, in secular, human, this-world terms. The true liberal position would … Read the rest
Who needs to see objects that far away?!
Sep 23rd, 2009 5:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonOkay, so life is shit for women in Poland.
When Alicja Tysiac became pregnant in February 2000, three eye specialists told her having another baby could put her eyesight at serious risk. But neither the specialists nor her GP would authorise an abortion. After giving birth later that year, Ms Tysiac suffered a retinal haemorrhage and feared she [might] go blind. She now wears glasses with thick powerful lenses but she cannot see objects more than a metre and a half (5ft) away.
Yeah, so? If she didn’t want to go blind she shouldn’t have gotten pregnant! Not in Poland anyway.… Read the rest
Habits
Sep 23rd, 2009 5:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonSusan Haack makes a very interesting point in ‘Irreconcilable Differences? The Troubled Marriage of Science and Law. She makes many such points, but one in particular grabbed my attention.
… Read the restBecause of its adversarial character, the legal system tends to draw in as
witnesses scientists who are in a sense marginal – more willing than most of their
colleagues to give an opinion on the basis of less-than-overwhelming evidence;
moreover, the more often he serves as an expert witness, the more unbudgeably
confident a scientist may become in his opinion. An attorney obligated to make
the best possible case for his client will have an incentive to call on those
scientists who are ready to accept an answer to some
Doctors Told Her She Would Lose Her Eyesight
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe sought an abortion, but she was refused, and a Catholic magazine compared her to a child killer.… Read the rest
BBC Looks Into Far-right Extremism
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonQuotes Edmund Standing, author of The BNP and The Online Fascist Network. … Read the rest
Loser Condemns UNESCO Vote
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonZionists, north and south, politicized, Jewish pressure, newspapers.… Read the rest
Irina Bokova Voted New Head of UNESCO
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFaruq Hosni not.… Read the rest
Amnesty’s Sierra Leone Blog
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Irene asked the crowd to raise their hands if they had lost a woman to maternal mortality and there was a sea of hands.’… Read the rest
Ahmedinejad, Lion of Islam, Gives a Squeak
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe scolded Bush over Guantanamo, but Iran’s prisons are not a beacon of justice.… Read the rest
Education Based Only on Reason is Incomplete
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSays the archbishop. ‘When theologians said that God was rational, they meant that he was consistent with himself.’… Read the rest
Amnesty on Women in Sierra Leone
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘This is a country where girls are forced into early marriage, excluded from schools and face sexual violence.’… Read the rest
Human Rights Emergency in Sierra Leone
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonUnder half of deliveries are attended by a skilled birth attendant; under 1 in 5 are carried out in health facilities.… Read the rest
Sierre Leone: High Rate of Maternal Mortality
Sep 23rd, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThousands of women bleed to death after giving birth. Most die in their homes. Some die on the way to hospital.… Read the rest
Heeeeeeeere’s Rowan!
Sep 23rd, 2009 11:37 am | By Ophelia BensonThe archbishop of Canterbury has (not for the first time) joined hands with people like Madeleine Bunting by telling the world how despicable reason is.
We understand ‘reason’ as a way of arguing and testing propositions – usually so as to become better at manipulating the world round us. Because religious faith is not a matter of argument in this way, it is then easy to conclude that faith and reason are enemies, or at least operating in different territory.
See that? The way he casually informs us that reason is usually understood as a way ‘to become better at manipulating the world’? It looks as if he’s been studying his feminist epistemology – science and reason are just … Read the rest
Splendour in the whatsit
Sep 22nd, 2009 5:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonAndrew Sullivan justifies the ways of god to human beings (though decidedly not to other animals) – by which I mean he says things about the ways of god to human beings (but definitely not to animals).
… Read the restFor me, the unique human capacity to somehow rise above such suffering, while experiencing it as vividly as any animal, is evidence of God’s love for us (and the divine spark within us), while it cannot, of course, resolve the ultimate mystery of why we are here at all in a fallen, mortal world. This Christian response to suffering merely offers a way in which to transcend this veil of tears a little. No one is saying this is easy or should not