Year: 2010

  • Vatican to clamp down on liberal secular opinion

    And how about those fun-loving guys at the Vatican?

    Vatican investigators to Ireland appointed by Pope Benedict XVI are to clamp down on liberal secular opinion in an intensive drive to re-impose traditional respect for clergy, according to informed sources in the Catholic Church.

    Uh…what? The investigators have been appointed to go to Ireland by the pope to investigate the church’s long history of tormenting children and shielding child-raping priests from the law. Why then do they think the job is to re-impose traditional respect for clergy? And why the fuck do they think the way to do that is to “clamp down” on secular liberal opinion (which frowns on practices like sticking children in prisons and then starving and beating and terrorizing them, also on raping them) and replace it with traditional respect for the very shits who have been doing the tormenting and raping? And why do they think they get to “clamp down” on anything in Ireland anyway? Who do they think they are? What do they think Ireland is? What century do they think this is?

    The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests…

    Which will presumably require explaining away the fact that some of “their priests” used their confessionals as pleasantly secluded spots to rape children in. That could be uphill work.

    A major thrust of the Vatican investigation will be to counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes, which Pope Benedict believes have led many Irish Catholics to ignore church disciplines and become lax in following devotional practices such as going on pilgrimages and doing penance.

    But that’s got nothing to do with anything! Even if you care, even if you think that’s a bad thing, it’s still got nothing to do with anything. It’s not the Irish Catholics who are at fault here, it is the church, the priests, the hierarchy that protected them and did not protect their victims. What the fuck is the pope worrying about the “laxity” of Irish Catholics for when he’s supposed to be, and pretending to be, doing something about the crimes of his employees in Ireland? What is he doing pretending it is the people of Ireland who are at fault? What kind of vile sanctimonious stony-hearted bastard is he?

  • A sharting pot

    Of course – a reasonable sensible even-toned review of Stephen Prothero’s God is Not One which stops the reasonable sensible even-toned bit for the final paragraph in order to say the obligatory:

    Prothero debunks not only the fallacy of religious sameness, but also the “New Atheists” who have, lately, become so pervasive and culturally relevant. Atheism can take on its own religion, one dedicated entirely to disparaging the god-fearing, and, in doing so, become as nasty, hostile and ill-informed as the religious fanatics they so thoroughly condemn.

    Keep it up. The steady relentless malicious othering is just the way to bounce more and more and more people into the “New Atheist” camp.

  • AI on human rights abuses in Iran

    At least six people remain on death row charged with “enmity against God” for their alleged involvement in demonstrations.

  • Shirin Ebadi on rebellious women in Iran

    For 31 years the women’s movement has resided in every Iranian household that cares about human rights.

  • Religion’s regressive hold on animal rights issues

    Religions tend to preserve attitudes that have become obsolete and often are positively harmful.

  • Sholto Byrnes is “rethinking Islamism”

    Oh jeezis – the New Statesman is telling us to love sharia now – at least Sholto Byrnes is on the NS blog, and he wouldn’t be doing that if the NS didn’t approve. If you see an article in the Nation telling us to love Nazism you’re entitled to conclude that the Nation has lost its mind and is endorsing Nazism. Same with sharia – and yes they are pretty similar. They at least share a ballpark.

    But the very concept of sharia has been so oversimplified by scaremongers that in the popular imagination it is inextricably linked with the punishments of beheading, flogging and amputation for crimes such as theft and adultery, and for which Saudi Arabia has long been notorious.

    Yes, that’s right, along with stoning to death, and rules of evidence that mean men accused of rape can just say “I didn’t do it” and get off while the women who make the accusation are then automatically convicted of adultery because after all they have admitted to fornication by accusing the man of rape and the man said he didn’t do it (and the woman forgot to bring along the requisite four men of good character to watch, without whom she has no case), so she must be flogged or perhaps stoned to death. And similar items of limpid justice and fairness.

    Then Byrnes quotes Tariq Ramadan saying it’s all a misunderstanding, then Byrnes says it’s all a misunderstanding some more, without ever actually managing to offer a particular example of sharia being a good thing. He says in Malaysia it’s not so bad because it applies only to Muslims (which is dubious itself), but he still doesn’t say why it’s actually good. Then he concludes with a great burst of powerful argument:

    Of course, there are plenty who will object to any legal system or way of life that has a religious basis, regardless of how it operates. But the one word that is, above all, associated with sharia, stressed by Ramadan in his writings, Mahathir in his interview with me, by Bernard Lewis in his latest book and by countless others, is “justice”. I think we can agree that it is not just Islamists who are in favour of that.

    Lots of people say sharia has something to do with “justice,” therefore…

    Oh, god. It’s too depressing.

  • LA Times reviews Stephen Prothero on religion

    And of course ends with the obligatory swipe at “New” atheists.

  • Sholto Byrnes says why sharia is nice

    In the New Statesman blog!

  • Vatican to invade Ireland and re-impose theocracy

    No more secularism for you, orders pope.

  • Street censorship

    Imagine being a writer, or a reader, in Egypt.

    More recently, the literary magazine Ibdaa (“Creativity”) had its license revoked over the publication, in 2007, of a poem by the renowned poet Helmy Salem, deemed blasphemous because it personified God with lines such as: “The Lord isn’t a policeman/who catches criminals by the scruff of their necks”…Before Ibdaa was shut down, Salem had already been forced to return a State Award for Achievement in the Arts, honoring his entire body of work. The court that rescinded the award found that “The sin that he committed … against God and against society, challenging its traditions and religious beliefs should fail the sum total of his work, rendering him ineligible for any state honor or prize.”

    We need Nicholas Kristof about now, to tell us that yes Islam does crush women and hate gays and forbid people to leave and fuck up literature and art and thought but hey the calligraphy is pretty.

    Salem was the victim of a hisba case — what has become the legal weapon of choice in the arsenal of would-be censors. These are cases — based on a principle in Islamic law — in which an individual may sue another on behalf of society, alleging some grave harm has been done it. Several Islamist lawyers specialize in hisba lawsuits and use them with alarming frequency against writers, intellectuals, and professors whose opinions they deem to have denigrated Islam. Egypt’s minority Christian Coptic population also has its self-appointed moral guardians, eager to take novelists to court. And while charges against a book, author, or publisher are being investigated, the book is usually confiscated from the market.

    Can you imagine anything more nightmarish? A situation in which any ignorant benighted mindless godbothering fool can take you to court for writing something it doesn’t like, and win? There are a lot of ignorant benighted mindless fools out there, godbotherers and non-godbotherers. Imagine knowing they could shut you down any time they felt like it.

    [A]ny one book or film may find itself the center of a public scandal, singled out on the basis of a few lines. The arbitrariness of censorship in Egypt makes publishers (especially the government-run ones) afraid to take risks and leads writers to second-guess themselves. “In Egypt we’re born and we live in a state of constant self-censorship,” the writer Khaled Al Khamissi, whose book Taxi has been an international hit, once told me.

    That’s what I mean. Nightmare.

    Update: On the other hand – a bit of good news for a change – the last comment on the article linked to a news flash: the prosecutor threw out the case.

    Prosecutor Abdel Megid Mahmud threw out the case, saying the epic tales had been published for centuries without problems, and had been an inspiration to countless artists.

    Yessss!

  • Jesus and Mo on the unity among religions

    They all hate atheists.

  • Jesus and Mo tell the barmaid about NOMA

    Science and religion are totally different, so religion has to keep science on a short leash.

  • Egypt: Islamist lawyers go after 1001 Nights

    Books are subject to “street censorship” when the media and religious groups rouse public indignation and the authorities intervene.

  • Respect is being redefined as agreement

    Salman Rushdie knows a thing or two about free speech and the other thing.

    “We are in danger of losing the battle for freedom of speech,” Mr. Rushdie said. It is being recast as a Western imposition, not a universal human right. Respect is being redefined as agreement, and censorship disguised as a virtuous defence of diversity…Freedom of expression and imagination “is now very much back in question, and is strongly under attack by religious authorities and religious armies of different sorts, and not only Islam,” Mr. Rushdie said.

    And religious newspaper columnists are doing their bit, too.

  • Salman Rushdie on the threat to free speech

    Respect is being redefined as agreement, and censorship disguised as a virtuous defence of diversity.

  • Catholic church finally dealing with Ireland!

    They’re cracking down on liberals.

  • Islam is not homophobic

    Or maybe it is but so are we, or maybe we’re not but we were a few minutes ago, and besides, Islamophobia.

  • Get ‘inspired by Islam’

    Oh look, a poster saying Mo thought just what I think. I’m convinced!

  • Mohammed the fan of women’s rights

    UK campaign to make everyone love Islam via posters saying Mo was lovely.

  • Telegraph reports its own hatred and parochialism

    Media reporter informs us of fury of Odone at C4 documentary on pope.