Suhaib Hasan, a judge with the UK’s ‘Islamic Sharia Council,’ explains about sharia.

[T]he overwhelming majority of our work is divorce…Under the Islamic system, the man may end the marriage if he thinks it right…When a woman applies, the process is called a khula divorce. If the husband agrees, the matter is settled, but if not, we invite both for an interview, and we do emphasise reconciliation.

Clear? The man may end the marriage, period, no questions asked. The woman not so much. The man may end the marriage period no questions asked even if the wife doesn’t agree; the woman may not end the marriage period no questions asked even if the husband does not agree. He can; … Read the rest

It may be that some of what people mean, when they talk about other ways of knowing and how different they are from science, is that there is a whole range of subjects that are interesting to talk about and think about that are inherently fuzzy – that are not yes or no issues – that are not purely factual – that are not helped or enhanced by experiment or testing (though data may be relevant); and that all that matters because it’s where we live. Stories (or ‘literature’) are about that stuff: they perform, illustrate, enact the iffy quality, the uncertainties, the ambiguities, the negative capability.

None of that is really knowledge – but it rests on a vast … Read the rest

Oh dear god, oh jeezis, oh hell.

She told me she had given birth in a country convent at Roscrea in County Tipperary on 5 July 1952. She was 18 when she met a young man who bought her a toffee apple on a warm autumn evening at the county fair. “I had just left convent school,” she said with an air of wistful regret. “I went in there when my mother died, when I was six and a half, and I left at 18 not knowing a thing about the facts of life. I didn’t know where babies came from … ” When her pregnancy became obvious, her family had Philomena “put away” with the nuns.

But after … Read the rest