Martha Nussbaum starts her discussion of burqa bans with her version of the justification for the free exercise clause of the US Constitution and freedom of religion in general. It’s a rather sentimental picture.

Let’s start with an assumption that is widely shared: that all human beings are equal bearers of human dignity.  It is widely agreed that government must treat that dignity with equal respect.   But what is it to treat people with equal respect in areas touching on religious belief and observance?

We now add a further premise: that the faculty with which people search for life’s ultimate meaning — frequently called “conscience” ─  is a very important part of people, closely related to their dignity.

The problem … Read the rest

Mona Eltahawy made a compelling point in a discussion of the burqa ban:

What really strikes me is that a lot of people say that they support a woman’s right to choose to wear a burqa because it’s her natural right. But I often tell them that what they’re doing is supporting an ideology that does not believe in a woman’s right to do anything. We’re talking about women who cannot travel alone, cannot drive, cannot even go into a hospital without a man with them. And yet there is basically one right that we are fighting for these women to have, and that is the right to cover their faces. To tell you the truth, I’m really outraged

People are discussing the uses and abuses of irritation, or anger, or zeal, or dickishness, or baying for blood. This is prompted by a talk Phil Plait gave at The Amaz!ng Meeting a couple of weeks ago. He took an informal poll, Matt D tells us:

Let me ask you a question: how many of you here today used to believe in something — used to, past tense — whether it was flying saucers, psychic powers, religion, anything like that?…Not everyone is born a skeptic. A lot of you raised your hand. I’d even say most of you, from what I can tell.

Now let me ask you a second question: how many of you no longer believe in

A Cardiff councillor

 is being investigated for allegedly breaching the code of conduct for local authority members which demands they “show respect and consideration for others”.

How? By calling Scientology stupid on Twitter. So showing respect and consideration for others means one is forbidden to call Scientology stupid? Why?

Are we allowed to call astrology stupid? Is it ok to call homeopathy stupid? Can we say belief in alien abductions is stupid?

In other words, does respect and consideration for others cash out to not calling any ideas or ideologies or religions or pseudo-sciences whatsoever “stupid” on the grounds that some people believe in them?

Mr Dixon said: “I don’t see why the Scientologists should have any greater protection

I’m getting very tired of this kind of crap. Of foam-at-the-mouth reactionaries faking videos for Fox “News” that get people shut down or fired. They did it with that video that was supposed to show an Acorn guy helping a prostitute and a pimp get gummint funding when in fact the uncut video shows him collecting information which he gave to the police as soon as they left. Now they’ve done it with another fake video that’s supposed to show Shirley Sherrod telling a Georgia chapter of the NAACP that she refused to help a farmer because he was white when in fact she did help him. Sherrod got pushed out of her job with the Department of Agriculture … Read the rest

Martha Nussbaum has been explaining why the burqa is not such a bad thing, as well as explaining why it shouldn’t be banned. She said one thing (in a long post. much of which I skimmed) that froze me in astonishment for a second.

Several readers made the comment that the burqa is objectionable because it portrays women as non-persons.    Is this plausible?  Isn’t our poetic tradition full of the trope that eyes are the windows of the soul?  And I think this is just right: contact with another person, as individual to individual, is made primarily through eyes, not nose or mouth.

Seriously? Contact with another person, as individual to individual, is made through the face – not … Read the rest