Category: Articles

The insistence, if only implicitly, on a choiceless singularity of human identity not only diminishes us all, it also makes the world much more flammable. The alternative to the divisiveness of one pre-eminent categorization is not any unreal claim that we are all much the same. Rather, the main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted. Our shared humanity gets savagely challenged when our differences are narrowed into one devised system of uniquely powerful categorization.

— Amartya Sen. What Clash of Civilizations? Why religious identity isn’t destiny. Slate, March 29, 2006.

This message from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is at once serious, wrong, and dangerous. It is serious because the messenger is an acclaimed scholar, well regarded by thinkers and policy makers alike, and known to choose his words carefully. It is wrong because Sen’s admonition derives from an ill-defined and vacuous concept of identity. It is dangerous because the message is an implicit appeal to desist from identifying and subjecting to criticism, the adherents to a religion that is fundamentally antithetical to the ideals of liberty, one law for all, and secularism. Witness how the media and the polity religiously avoid the use of the words “Muslim” and “Islam” in any context which may be seen as even remotely critical of these artifacts.

Several years ago, I visited a village in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, on behalf of a business group in Chennai. The group’s owners hailed from this village, and wanted to distribute a large tract of fallow land in their possession to the landless laborers of the village. I was sent to assess the feasibility of the project and develop a mechanism for the distribution.

When I arrived in the village, the landowners wanted to meet me separately to express their views on the matter, and I obliged. In the meeting, they made clear their strong reservations about distributing land to the landless laborers in the village. Quite clearly, it was in their interest to do so, but I pressed them anyway for the reasons for their objection. Their contention was that the landless laborers belonged to the Valaiyar community which was a denotified tribe, and therefore were criminals who could not be trusted. I didn’t understand why the Valaiyars were identified as a denotified tribe, or the connection between that identity and the alleged criminality of the members.

After I got back to Chennai, I did a little bit of research into the matter. In the colonial days, the British had identified several communities in the then Madras Province (and elsewhere, I am sure) — the Valaiyars among them — as thugs, and issued a gazette (official) notification to that effect. All the affected communities were collectively known as “Notified Tribes”, an ignominious identity, signifying criminal habits.

After independence, the Government of India decided to rectify this unfair stereotyping of entire communities. It issued a new gazette notification, declaring that the said communities have been denotified as criminal tribes. Thereafter, they were identified as “Denotified Tribes”. Their identity was officially changed but they were stuck with the ignominy nonetheless. So much for the concept of identity!

Lest you should dismiss this as an unrelated and frivolous anecdote, consider this. Professor Sen notes in a essay on “Secularism and Discontent” from his book, The Argumentative Indian, that “…India has, at this time, a Muslim President, a Sikh Prime Minister and a Christian head of the ruling party” [ibid. fn, p.302]. Sen proudly identifies Dr. Abdul Kalam, then President of India, as a Muslim. Yet, late Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, a well regarded Islamic scholar and former Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, someone whom Sen respected enough to write a forward to his book, “Communal Rage in Secular India”, would not recognize Dr. Kalam as a Muslim! In an article that originally appeared in the Asian Age and hastily withdrawn, Dr. Zakaria wrote,

…But because [Dr. Kalam] was born a Muslim and bears a Muslim name, he should not be put in the same category as the two former Muslim Presidents, Dr Zakir Husain and Mr Fakruddin Ali Ahmed. Both of them were as great a patriot and Indian to the core as Dr Kalam. But they were also Muslims in the real sense of the word; they believed in the tenets of the Quran and faithfully followed the traditions of the Prophet…But for God’s sake, don’t describe [Dr. Kalam] as a Muslim President and take credit for having obliged the Muslims for giving them this great honour.

Dr. Zakaria then goes through a litany of reasons why Dr. Kalam should not be considered a Muslim. Amongst them are his refusal of an invitation to visit the Anjuman-i-Islam “to deliver the famous Seerut lecture to pay homage to the Prophet”, his enchantment with Gita, and an anecdote that he was a vegetarian! I don’t care if Dr. Kalam was or was not a Muslim “in the real sense of the word”, whatever that means, but it is less than satisfying to note that two eminent scholars such as Dr. Sen and Dr. Zakaria could not agree on an identity seemingly as simple as that of a Muslim.

Without clearly defining identity, Sen sets up a couple of strawmen to shoot down. First, Sen questions “the presumption that we must have a single identity – at least a principal and dominant” [ibid. p.350]. I have no such presumption. It’s quite obvious to me, and I am reasonably certain, to millions of my fellow bloggers, that we have at least two identities — that of a blogger and that of a son or a daughter! Yet, Sen belabors the existence of multiple identities in presentation after presentation, by tirelessly gushing through a list of identities that a person may have —

The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theatre lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view that there are intelligent beings in outer space with whom it is extremely urgent to talk (preferably in English).

— Amartya Sen. Identity and Violence, 2006.

Well, of course, but each one of these identities can be refined into several finer identities — for example, a vegetarian can be a lacto-vegetarian, a vegan, or a fruitarian, or aggregated into coarser identities — for example, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew can be aggregated into an Abrahamic, a monotheist, and a theist. What we end up with is a selection from a hierarchy of innumerable identities.

Although we may have multiple identities, most are irrelevant in a given context. As Sen himself concedes [ibid. p.350],

…the priorities over these [multiple] identities must be relative to the issue at hand (for example,the vegetarian identity may be more important when going to dinner rather than to to a Consulate, whereas the French citizenship may be more telling when going to a Consulate rather than attending a dinner.

Omar Sheikh is an alumnus of the London School of Economics, a chess buff, a cricket fan, and also a male (alphabetically ordered list to be super pc), but none of these identities has any relevance to the fact that he had masterminded the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl. That Mr. Sheikh was a devout Muslim, however, was relevant to Mr. Pearl’s murder. Why?

Before I answer the question, let’s take a closer look at Sen’s second strawman. After questioning the presumption of a singular identity, Sen proceeds to challenge “the supposition that we “discover” our identity, with no room for any choice” [ibid., p.350]. I agree that we don’t “discover” our identities by some mysterious, metaphysical process. However, we don’t “choose” our identities either.

What we choose are ideas — our ideals, values, and theories. The range of ideas, values, and theories that we choose from is infinite. An American national identity masks variations in one’s adherence to the constitutional provisions of the United States. The California physician and atheist, Michael Newdow, who sued against the reference to god in the pledge of alliance, is very much an American when it comes to the rest of the pledge.

To make matters worse, our behavior is not only the product of the ideas that we choose to subscribe to, but also how passionate we are about them. The suicide bomber who decides to destroy not only the unbelievers’ lives but also his own, is far more deeply and dangerously committed to his beliefs than someone who may share those beliefs, but also respect the lives of others with different beliefs.

Identity is a statistical fiction, an artifact of data reduction and clustering. It masks the underlying variability and complexity of the ideas held by an individual. The devil, as they say, is in the details. In analyzing the causes of violence, it’s the ideas that we need to focus on.

It is not because the likes of Omar Sheikh are identified as Muslims that they kill the likes of Daniel Pearl. It is because of the higher propensity of Muslims to commit violence, when confronted by any situation that they perceive as inimical to their ideas, that the likes of Omar Sheikh are identified as Muslims. As Abdel Rahman al-Rashed wrote in this article that first appeared in the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, “It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims”. Why does a Muslim have a higher propensity to commit terrorism? What does religion have anything to do with this, if at all?

A religion is a collection of ideas, in some instances written down in scriptures eons ago, and in others, communicated orally across generations. Some ideas in this collection can be dangerous, and if left unchallenged or glossed over, will make “the world much more flammable” to use Sen’s own words. The idea of untouchability, the idea that woman is a temptress and inferior to man, and the idea that homosexuality is a mortal sin that is punishable by death, are not benign private beliefs. Nor is the idea that apostates, blasphemers, and unbelievers can, and should be, put to death and their property confiscated or destroyed.

In the interest of human civilization and progress, ideas must be subjected to logical and empirical scrutiny. They must be challenged and rejected when warranted. Deeming an idea as above criticism and rejection because it’s a god’s last word, communicated through his last and only true prophet, is a dangerous idea in itself, no matter how many billions of people buy into the lie. With an incredible number of blind-reviewed publications to his credit, Professor Sen should know!

Liberals and secularists who obfuscate inherently dangerous ideas by characterizing them as misinterpretations of religion, or seek justification for the actions that follow from such ideas elsewhere — as Sen does in what he calls the “solitarist approach” to identity — are simply dishonest. Intellectual honesty demands that they should explicitly and unequivocally reject those ideas and throw them into “the ash heap of history”, to use President Reagan’s words.

It’s undoubtably wrong if Michael Enright had confused a singular identity of Ahmed Sharif as a Muslim with the ideas and beliefs held by other Muslims he might have encountered in Afghanistan, and then proceeded to assault him. It is equally wrong, however, to conflate a criticism of irrational and deadly ideas into a criticism of an identity, and then brand it as divisive or hateful. Such attempts risk the eventual domination and entrenchment of those ideas that can be dislodged only at an enormous cost, both to human lives and property. If you have any doubt, read the history of the Holocaust and the Second World War.

The Mississippi is a mess. I live in the agricultural, rural upper midwest, and one of the nasty surprises lurking beneath the rich green fields is that the rivers are ugly stews of fertilizers and herbicides and pesticides from agricultural runoff. We have data that it hurts people, too: premature births and birth defects show seasonal fluctuations that peak for children conceived in the spring and summer, when the chemicals are being sprayed into the air and are dribbling into the streams. The villains are agribusiness and overproduction and the corn ethanol boondoggle and horrors like the fecal lakes associated with swine farms. Louisiana’s environmental problems are partly the product of Minnesota’s toxic largesse.

It needs to be known. The Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota has been producing a documentary called Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story for the past several years, and it was supposed to have its premiere in October.

The documentary has been indefinitely postponed. Somebody doesn’t want you to see it.

Who, you might wonder, could have shut down the UM’s movie? It was the university itself. They claim it was for further scientific review, but by all accounts, this movie has been rigorously vetted throughout, and that explanation just doesn’t hold up. The other disturbing fact is that the source of the pressure seems to have been University Relations, a department not known for its attention to scientific rigor, but with a mission of responding to community interests. We’re a land-grant university, by the way, in an agricultural state.

Karen Himle is Vice President of University Relations, which is the office that determined the film needed “scientific review.” She is married to John Himle, president of Himle Horner, a public relations firm that represents the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council. The Council is a strong proponent of ethanol and industrial farming, both of which are critiqued in the film. John Himle was also president of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council from 1978 to 1982 and his organization currently serves as a “member” of the Council.

The University’s “conflict of interest” policy was called into question last year by the Minnesota Daily, which also cited Karen Himle’s summary of her outside sources of income as including Himle Horner and Nebraska farmland crops.
While Himle Horner’s client records are not public (something that has drawn the ire of some in the community as former co-owner Tom Horner is running for governor), Himle Horner was still representing the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council as recently as this summer.

So who is calling the shots at the University of Minnesota? Academics and scientists with some intellectual integrity, or lackeys of big business who care most about short-term profit, no matter the cost to the environment and public health?

Don’t bother answering, I know what the answer will be.

Ordinarily, not much is heard about Malawi -a country that was ruled for so many years by the late dictator, Kamuzu Banda. Apart from the recent case of a gay couple convicted and later pardoned by President Mutharika who is also the current Chair of the African Union, Malawi is hardly in the news.

But that does not mean that all is well with this country. No, all is not well with ‘Nyasaland’. Malawi like many other African countries is trapped in the vicious circle of poverty, ignorance, superstition and religious fanaticism. Independence has not brought this nation emergence and prosperity. Education has not resulted in emancipation, civilization and enlightenment. The different religious groups in the country are living together in peace; they are not fighting or killing each other as is the case in Nigeria. But many Malawians are suffering and dying due to crazy religious notions, superstitious and irrational beliefs. Unfortunately nothing is being done by the government to address this ugly situation. Instead the politicians are busy travelling overseas or are engaged in political infighting and scheming to win or influence the next election.

Palpable misery, despair, stagnation, resignation and alienation prevail in the land.

I arrived in Malawi two days ago to address meetings at Chancellor College in Zomba and in Blantyre. A local humanist group, the Association of Secular Humanism in Malawi, is organizing the events. One of the issues in the news here is the tragic story of five children, Lamace, Etta, Annie, Petro and Maria who threw themselves into fire at night after prayers in a bizzare case of mass suicide. Three of them died on the spot but two, Petro and Maria were rescued and  taken to a local hospital. Photos of the fire and the bodies of the three that roasted to death appeared on the front page of the dailies. I was shocked to see the graphic images and to read about this horrifying incident. I was more shocked by the way the government had handled the matter.

The father of the children told a local newspaper that he recently noticed the children’s strange behaviours and complained to local authorities. It appears they did nothing to call the children to order. According to him, the children established a ‘strange church’ in his house and commenced their prayers around 10 pm each day. He tried stopping them without success. And on this fateful night, the children, in the course of praying, made fire with some household items which they soaked with petrol. At the end, they took off their clothes and jumped into the fire holding copies of the Bible. Three of them who died on the spot have since been buried.

No one knew exactly what led the children into acting in such a ‘strange’ way. But some of the witnesses interviewed by a local newspaper said the children acted on the advice of a local pastor who told them that their parents were responsible for their joblessness and not getting married. He advised them to burn the items in their home because that was where the parents hid their magic. The village head, Matope, blamed the churches which he said were misleading the people for this horrible incident. He promised to summon the religious leaders in the area so that ‘they could explain what type of worshipping this is’. This kind of bizarre religious experience is not new to Malawi.

Last year, police rescued some women who locked themselves up in a hut in one of the country’s remote villages. They were reading their Bible, fasting and praying for weeks expecting some revelations from God. Poverty, ignorance, hopelessness and bad governance have driven many Africans to religious insanity, absurdity and extremism. Africa is literally in a dark age. There is a proliferation of churches, mosques and worship centers. Blind faith, thoughtlessnes and spiritual mumbo jumbo direct people’s lives. Many Africans spend a lot of their time praying, fasting and keeping vigil at their homes, in churches, on the hills (also known as holy mountains) and in valleys, besides rivers and streams. There are few countries  that promote and encourage critical thinking, scientific temper and technological intelligence. Many Africans devote much of their time to all sorts of crazy, useless and meaningless spiritual nonsense. And this is the time they could have used productively to acquire relevant skills and lift themselves out of poverty by working to generate income for themselves. Instead of developing their potentials, most Africans have embraced this fashionable nonsense of blaming others – one’s parents, grandparents, witches and wizards, the West, colonialism and imperialism for all the problems and difficulties they encounter in life.

Unfortunately, the local authorities are doing nothing to tackle religious nonsense and its discontent among Africans. Instead,  African states are sponsoring, aiding and abetting the spread of religious absurdities including the misleading messages of priests, pastors, imams and witch doctors. The educational system in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa has virtually collapsed. Most industries have been shut down or taken over by foreigners because Africans lack the required skills – the scientific and technological skills to manage these companies efficiently and profitably.

The police and jusice system is corrupt and inept. African governments are not creating institutions to fight religious indoctrination and promote reason and critical thinking. There are no programs to combat the negative influence of churches, mosques and traditional belief systems and liberate Africans from mental slavery and religious stupor.

Surely, humanists in Africa are in for an uphill task.

Leo Igwe wrote from Malawi.

The behaviour of dictators like Ahmadinejad, Ghadafi, Idi Amin etc., is not solely a funny subject for people, a witty personage for media, and a caricature for satirists; such behaviour has the potential of catastrophes for a whole nation. They represent an Islamic, authoritarian or even totalitarian regime which is morally bankrupt and thus can commit any wrongdoing.
While many psychopaths are incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals and penal institutions, it has been recognised that a few of them were clever enough to enter the history of mankind, creating catastrophes. All these misfits need to rule is an insane ideology or belief system through which they surround themselves with mad people, devoted followers and blind killers who are equally clueless about what it means to be a feeling human being.
Psychopath as Leaders

Though it was in the nineteenth century that doctors began to elucidate the nature of that disturbing category of human beings that we now call psychopaths, history shows that they have always been with us. A mad leader can be mad about an ideology, religion, or cult, as Hitler is a symbol of Nazism, Stalin irreparably degraded communism, and Khomeini actualised political Islam. Megalomania is a common character for any dictator; no wonder we had Hitler as “Führer”, Nero who exalted himself to a god and Stalin who became father of Russians. All of them used their intelligence in the service of their immoral drives (belief, aggression, power). They use lofty words and emotional speech — an easy thing for a fairly intelligent psychopath — but there is no genuine content to them. Being fairly bright, they learn how to imitate emotional expressions suggestive of some higher emotions (compassion, sympathy, sociability, patriotism and morality), through which they fool the grassroots. However, they hardly fool any intellectual observer because they ring hollow as there is no truth and authenticity in their words. Their fraudulent but emotional speeches distinguish them from sane leaders.

Fear

 
It is nothing new or surprising, a dictator in uniform or suit, also in a robe and turban, would never abandon the idea that he is above all. He would consider himself a God’s handpicked leader. Therefore, lasting compromises with him are impossible and thus he would refuse to allow other ideas to cramp his authority. The guiding principles and policies they use are based on fear. Fear has always been used to silence people and groups in a population. Fear is widespread in all dictatorial systems. Fear is a powerful motivator in enforcing tolerance, obedience, and making people submit to authority, it is a pillar of religious and totalitarian systems. Fear from god or State has always been tangibly present in all totalitarian, religious, and cult systems, such as Italy under Mussolini, Nazi Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, the Soviet Union under Stalin, and Iran under the Islamic regime. The threat of punishment, torture and being killed is widely dispersed enough to cause fear. Fear has systematically been spread by state and religious institutions throughout history.
 
The psychopathic Signs

 
According to psychologists, dictators are the individuals whose narcissism is so extreme and grandiose that they exist in a kind of splendid isolation in which the creation of the grandiose self takes precedence over legal, moral or interpersonal commitments. While the psychopath gives no real affection, he is quite capable of inspiring affection of sometimes fanatical degree in others. Indeed, he has no genuine human qualities, but opportunistically adapts himself to any situation. This is not a normal type of behavior we need to adjust ourselves to, but purely an opportunistic trick.
Psychopaths have no human feelings

 
Psychopaths have no feeling of guilt or remorse no matter what happens. A good example is the famous Khomeini’s response when he was asked about his feeling in his flight to Iran after 15 years in exile, when he surprised a whole nation by saying: “I have no feeling on my return to Iran!“ His spontaneous, unscripted and unadvised reaction to a simple obvious question that would require him to express either empathy or caring and compassion for others, including the millions of his followers waiting enthusiastically for his arrival, shows his real side and his lack of human feelings. Although this little statement in itself was very revealing, it was not seriously taken in consideration at the time. Khomeini’s fumbling with statements and phraseology was not a proof that he was merely unintelligent in the conventional sense, but also showed a typical apathy, no sense of concern for his people.
 

Psychopathic dictators are not alone

 It seems that a dictator is often a product of a whole system. So, a mad dictator is not alone in the arena, his mad followers and supporters are the most reliable helps for him. A dictator would not win without his followers’ help.
A dictator’s subordinate has to be a devoted followers and blindly obedient. Without them Khomeini, Pol Pot, Stalin etc. would not succeed in forming  their dictatorship and sacrificing millions of lives. Devotees are there to cheer, identify, arrest, torture, and kill innumerable individuals as a sign of their loyalty to their leader. In other words, the more devoted they are, the more dictatorial the leader will be, and the more cold-blooded. Even though some of the devoted followers can be the future pathetic victims of the beloved leader, some remain so mesmerised that their last words before execution can be “Heil Hitler!” or “Long live Stalin!” — Hitler’s and Stalin’s purges of his communist comrades showed that depth of devotion.
In reality, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot were not born despotic, but became, at least for a period, heroes of people. People, especially powerless and politically underdeveloped members, rally around their “heroes”, seeing in them both a reflection of themselves and a promise of a “victory” that would release their fears and frustrations, and avenge their sorry and hopeless fate. Of course what they do not realise is that their leaders would not care about people’s fate. To such fanatical leaders, people are an echo chamber for their words and cannon fodder for their beliefs.
 
Religious leaders

 
Normally, political or cult leaders have an outstanding ability to charm and win over followers. They are good at rhetoric and present plausible solutions for any problem. They beguile and seduce through certain logic, but this is not the case for all leaders. Khomeini did not have such an intellectual ability. He was not even able to properly speak Farsi. His success at garnering attention was due to a fatal lack of honesty —many doubted his credentials but did not dare to say so. This is another odd subject to see how a character like Khomeini could seduce his followers. Even later, when Khomeini learnt to answer questions on advice of his advisors who reminded him to be sensitive, he could hardly express his sympathy for his people. Amazingly, this lack of emotion was rarely a problem for his followers. The devotees never expected Khomeini to be assimilated to their genuine problems or even to their Iranian identity.
 
Islamic leadership

All religions share, to one degree or another, a denial of the modern and civilised world. All “true” believers subscribe to a belief in delightful ideals of their archaic thoughts. Religious fanatics believe in a selective class of elite believers (Mullahs /priests /rabbis etc ). They eliminate the possibility of any critical thought. While all these aspects are true for most religions, they are particularly flagrant in Islam and practiced in its political form. The Islamic regime as a recent example of a political Islam characterises the dark period of the Inquisition in a time that the civilised world had already many centuries far from the effects of the Inquisition. However, the difference between these two archaic systems is the danger of religious ideology, which not only is found in mentalities as before but also in methodologies of Islamism. Islam as today practiced, denies the civilised world and forces an unhealthy backwardness of society. In its paranoid and naive fashion, it develops its own perverse ideology of a new “Dar-al-Islam” (territory of Islam), pushing the methods of divine violence into an extreme and dangerous level of a jihadist strategy.

When a dictator is enthroned 

It is in the realm of politics that the psychopath is at his worst. While seemingly in full possession of his political ability, the psychopathic leader demonstrates an inability to comprehend the meaning and significance of his own faults. This is why he never tries to remedy the faults; instead he punishes critics. The psychopath dictator is often astounded to find that people are upset by his exploits, as acknowledged by some enthroned despots. Although he knows intellectually what punishment is decreed for certain crimes, when caught for the same crimes, he puts up elaborate rationalisations and defences, and seems surprised when he is actually punished, as seen in Saddam’s process.

Our psychopathic dictator needs obedient followers. Such devotees are free of remorse. They can be under rare circumstances a national hero, war hero, symbol of pride, but mostly are traitors to their people. Some will ultimately find out that they can lose the head if they desert the camp of leadership; otherwise they remain symbols of shame. If a psychopathic follower becomes a hero of the system, who is very rarely acceptable for his fellow country people, then his “bravery” helps him to win the affection of his fellow followers, but he knows that people one day do not accord him a status of hero; he can be disillusioned by his subsequent comprehension, as shown by many deserters of totalitarian regimes including many ex-Islamists or ex-collaborators of the Islamic regime.
Royal psychopaths
 Another aspect of the thoughtlessness is the obliviousness of the psychopath to punishment. Not only does the threat of future punishment have no power to deter him, but actual punishment does not reform him. All historical experience and most psychiatrists consider such psychopaths untreatable. It is historically proved that there is no way to handle psychopaths when they possess political power. Tragically, as a nation, we will remain in the dark ages as long as some of our people keep choosing or tolerating psychopaths as their leaders.

Mr Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook Headquarters
156 University Avenue
Palo Alto
California 94301-1605

Dear Mr Zuckerberg,

I am writing to ask that you reinstate the Facebook accounts of Maryam Namazie and Mina Ahadi as a matter of urgency. Their accounts were disabled without warning on Monday 13 September 2010. As well as reinstating these accounts, we ask that an explanation is provided as to why they were disabled.

Maryam Namazie and Mina Ahadi are well known human rights campaigners who have worked globally to end the barbaric practice of stoning, as well as other human rights abuses. Both have been awarded Secularist of the Year by the National Secular Society (UK) and named in the top 45 ‘women of the year’ by Elle magazine in Canada.

Ms Namazie and Ms Ahadi’s campaign to save the life of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani – an Iranian woman recently sentenced to death by stoning for adultery – has undoubtedly contributed to the prevention of her execution. Therefore, it is vital that their Facebook accounts be reinstated and their campaigns allowed to continue unfettered; Facebook provides them with an important communications tool and method of increasing support for their work.

Not only were these accounts disabled without warning, but without reason. At present therefore, we have little choice but to assume that their Facebook accounts have disabled for political reasons.

Please clarify the reasons for these accounts being disabled, and whether or not Facebook respects the rights of human rights campaigners to work freely and without prejudice on your website.

We look forward to your immediate response.

Anne Marie Waters, Spokesperson, One Law for All, UK
Terry Sanderson, President, National Secular Society, UK
Ophelia Benson, Editor, Butterflies and Wheels, USA
Hassan Radwan, Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, UK
Joan Smith, Journalist, UK
Professor A. C. Grayling, Philosopher, UK
Fariborz Pooya, Iranian Secular Society, UK
Mahin Alipour, Equal Rights Now, Sweden
Annie Sugier, President, Ligue du Droit Internaitonal des Femmes, France
Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Human Rights Activist and President, Stop Child Executions, Canada
Maria Hagberg, Chair person of the Network Against Honour Related Violence, Sweden
Issam Shukri, Organization to Defend Secularism and Civil Rights in Iraq, Canada
Sonja Eggerickx, President, International Humanist and Ethical Union, Belgium

An opening address delivered by Leo Igwe at the 2nd Annual conference of the Free Society Institute of South Africa, co-hosted  by the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Date: September 11 2010 Venue Cape Milner Hotel, Cape Town South Africa

Once again the FSI has demonstrated its commitment to the mission of promoting free thought and free speech in South Africa. Last year we all met in this hall for the first conference of this Institute co-hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union. And I must say that last year’s event remains one of the best humanist programs I have attended in Africa. I was deeply impressed by the quality of the presentations, debates, and discussions. I was inspired by the curiosity for ideas, search for truth, hunger for knowledge, the spirit of inquiry, critical thinking and openmindedness expressed by the participants. I left South Africa deeply convinced that this nation has got in the FSI a befitting humanist group. So I urge you not to relent in your efforts, commitment and support for the FSI and its mission of promoting free thought and free speech in South Africa. I hope that very soon your organisation will be reckoned one of the most active and vibrant humanist groups on this continent and in the world.

The emergence of humanist groups in Africa opens a new, exciting and promising chapter in the history of African emancipation and enlightenment. The struggle to promote humanism marks another phase in the struggle by Africans for independence and liberation. It opens another chapter in the quest by Africans for emancipation from mental slavery and other forms of slavery. It marks another defining moment in the struggle by African people for intellectual liberation and mental freedom, for true renaissance and enlightenment.

There are few countries on this continent where active humanist groups like this exist. There are few places in Africa where humanists and free thinkers can meet openly to discuss, interact and express themselves without fear. Even in my own country, Nigeria, there are states(in Northern Nigeria) where events like this will be met with death and destruction. Millions of Africans still live in societies or under conditions where they fear to speak their minds or to express their thoughts freely. That tells us how important this meeting is and why we should take this message of hope and renewal beyond Cape Town, to all states in South Africa. That tells you how significant  the work you are doing at the FSI is and the potentials in terms of change, transformation and civilization. I hope the FSI will continue to lead the way in terms of promoting free thought and free speech in South Africa and in Africa as a whole. I hope this Institute will continue to champion the cause of realizing a free society in this country. It is only when a society is free that it can fully realize its potential.

This conference is taking place on a crucial day and date in the history of the world – September 11. Nine years ago some terrorists hijacked planes and caused the death of at least 3000 people in the US. Similar attacks have been planned and executed in other parts of the world.

We are meeting here at a time when the forces of religious fanaticism are ravaging the globe, causing suicide bombing, death and destruction, conflicts and instability in many countries. We are gathered here at a time when millions of people around the world are living in fear for their lives, safety and security – in the air, on the land and on the seas – due to threats posed by religious fanatics. We are meeting here at a time when a new dark age looms around the globe; at a time theocratic governments have taken their jihads and crusades to the United Nations. This conference is taking place at a time people in most countries are confused – or are being confused – as to what constitutes the best moral guide.  

The issue of what should be the best  guide to moral clarity for humanity stares the world in the face. And we need an atmosphere of free thought and free speech to consider, tackle and resolve it. We need an atmosphere that is free from threats from fanatics, terrorists, suicide bombers, jihadists, religious mercenaries and other armies of God to chart out a moral path and discuss, debate, and decide what is best for ourselves.

To the question that brought us here today – is a secular viewpoint our best guide to moral clarity? – my answer is yes. The secular, not religious, outlook provides us a reliable framework for the expression and realization of moral excellence. The secular viewpoint is based on evidence, reason, science, common sense and human beneficence. The secular outlook is open to revision and improvement. Secular morality is a morality for this world and of this world, not for the next; it is a morality for our happiness and well being in the here and now, not in the hereafter. It is a morality for this temporary life not for an eternal afterlife in an imaginary paradise. Secular morality is a morality by us, from us and for us, not a moral decree of God from God and for us ‘wretched’ humans. Secular morality is informed by the quest to be good and to do good for goodness’ sake, not the quest to be good and to do good for God’s sake or for heaven’s sake or to avoid going to Hell.

Simply put, secular morality is a common sense morality. The secular viewpoint puts human moral destiny in human hands, not in the hands of god or clerics. But we must note that both secular and religious outlooks are human creations. They are human viewpoints with human limitations, but advocates of religious outlooks continue to cause confusion by denying this fact.They have done humanity a great disservice by refusing to tell the world the truth and by claiming that the religious moral norms are decrees and commandments handed down as an eternal and unchangeable guide for humanity ages ago. And it is this dogmatic lie and others told in the name of God or Allah by the self-proclaimed prophets and messengers of the ‘most high’ that are responsible for the lack of moral clarity in the religious viewpoint. It is these sacred myths, falsehoods and misconceptions  peddled by the supernatural faiths that morally disqualify religions as the best guide for humanity.

A brief analysis of the September 11 attack – what could have motivated the Islamist attackers – may help us shed some light on the confusion and contradictions embedded in the religious moral outlook – the dangers that religion’s lack of moral clarity poses to the future and survival of humanity, and the risks we human beings run by allowing moral norms guided by supernaturalism, blind faith, primitive superstitions and dogmas to guide society.

No doubt those who planned and carried out the September 11 attacks must have judged their mission to be morally right – yes morally upright by their own standards and by the standards of religious morality.

I dont think the terrorists were really anomic individuals, unaware of the pain, agony, death and destruction their actions could cause. The September 11 attackers were not really bereft of conscience, compassion and fellow feeling. Instead I think the terrorists considered doing such grevious harm to their fellow human beings as consistent with their sacred sense of what is good or right; what ought to be done. The religous outlook actually thrives on sacrificing the natural or the human on the altar of the supernatural and the superhuman. Remember the story of the Biblical Abraham whose horrifying attempt to sacrifice the son was reckoned as a demonstration of faith. So we must understand this warped sense of morality  or sanctity if we are to tackle and eradicate religion and faith-based terrorism in the world. We must strive to rid our minds of these blood-sucking gods that undermine the moral health of our society.

The terrorists believed that their actions were pleasing to Allah who would reward them abundantly for their deeds in the hereafter. Take note of that, reward in the hereafter – whatever that is – 72 virgins and a palatial home in paradise is the driving force of religious morality.

For the Septmber 11 attackers and those who uphold a religous moral viewpoint, what is deemed morally good is what is pleasing to Allah or better what is judged or considered (by whom?) to be pleasing to Allah; what ought to be done is what Allah says, directs and commands – sometimes through the prophets, priests and sheikhs. These commandments and norms are codified in the sacred texts – Torah, Bible, Quran – and traditions, which everyone is expected to read, believe and follow without question as regards the author, source or authenticity. Thus, on hearing that hackneyed expression, ‘In Jesus name’ ‘Thus says the Lord or Allah’, Or ‘In the name of Allah, the most gracious and most merciful’, one should be ready to swing into action without minding the consequences to oneself or to others. The religious moral viewpoint is insensitive to our feelings, to human feelings. Because the ‘words’ (or rather, supposed words) of God or Allah are ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ and should be obeyed without question, hesitation or examination.

Because Allah – an entity from nowhere, somebody that is nobody – is taken to be the best moral guide for everyone including those who do not believe in him or her. So whatever s/he says or is believed to have said – no matter how stupid it is – holds or must hold everywhere and for everybody in secula seculorum (forever and ever). It is believed that Allah had charted the moral path, even when there is no consensus among the religious as to what this moral path is. Our duty as human beings is to follow, obey and abide by this recieved moral code. That reminds me of a hymn that is sung in many christian churches. It goes this way:

Trust and obey. For there’s no other way.

To be happy in Jesus. But to trust and obey….

And the question is this – Trust and obey whom? An imaginary entity?

Why should I trust and obey him or her or it? Trust and obey what? Texts from questionable sources written centuries ago by ignorant people? Should I trust and obey somebody who should not be trusted? Should I just obey orders that are stupid and harmful?

As I noted above, the religious moral viewpoint is mired in vagueness and lack of moral clarity. It has caused many people to abandon doing good, and trying to be good. Instead most people spend (I actually mean waste) much of this short life obeying God or trying to please God. Human beings will continue to wallow in moral confusion and darkness until the advocates of religious viewpoints stop peddling those ‘revealed lies and falsehoods’.

In conclusion, human beings can be good without believing in God. We can be moral without the pretensions of primitive religions. There is no doubt about it. In fact the whole idea of god came about in the attempt by primitive humans to promote and enforce what they concieved to be good -good life and good behaviour. So the religious moral outlook is largely outdated. God is actually a corruption of the good, not the author and dictator of what is good. God has no moral capacity. It does not have the capacity to judge, reward or recognize what is good or evil. Those who think otherwise are greatly mistaken. And it is this mistake that is at the root of religions’ lack of moral clarity. Human beings created God and invested it with all the human and moral attributes in their quest for some order, stability and ‘sanity’ in primitive times. And religions have blindly adopted this primitive idea of organizing and understanding the world and society. Unfortunately many people across the world want these outdated myths and misconceptions to be the basis of our laws, policies, educational and justice systems in this 21st century. They want the world to continue to wallow in moral vagueness, obscurity and darkness. Humanity needs the best moral guide to make the best of this one life we have. And I hope that with programs like this we can initiate the much needed process of enlightening and morally reawakening people around the globe to realize that the secular viewpoint presents us with the best guide to moral clarity.

I wish you all very fruitful deliberations.

As an atheist, I am often told that I shouldn’t criticise religion, as it offers comfort to people in difficult situations. When you suffer every day, the faithful tell me, you need the hope and meaning that religion gives you – the implication of course being that atheism is a luxury, something that only privileged, comfortable, healthy, able-bodied people can indulge in.

These same people are often surprised to learn that I have a debilitating chronic medical condition, and in fact I do suffer every day. And yet, I have still not turned to god. I still do not believe in an afterlife, despite the fact that in my Earthly life, I will probably never feel truly healthy or ‘normal’ again. Among the community of the chronically ill and disabled, I’m by no means alone in my atheism, but I am in a minority.

The vast majority of people with my medical condition are religious, as evidenced by messages on the internet support group of which I am a member. There are hundreds of members, and messages with religious content are a daily occurrence. Often, sufferers require surgery – when this happens, emails whip round asking for ‘surgery prayers’.  When an operation is successful, god gets part or all of the credit: on one occasion, a woman wrote that she knew the surgeons had done their bit, but the real reason she survived and benefited from the surgery was that god had been watching over her.

Of course, when things go wrong, it’s a pretty safe bet that god doesn’t get the blame. As though the deity were a favourite child who can do no wrong, there is no end to people’s willingness to let god off the hook. When someone dies of the condition (deaths are thankfully rare), god is praised for taking them up to heaven to be with him. When surgery fails to help a person and they continue to suffer, again god is thanked and praised for not making things any worse. When things do get worse, it is presumed that god has a mysterious reason for allowing this, and the prayers continue to be solicited, the thanks still given. One woman wrote thanking god that she could hear the children playing outside while she was ill in bed; presumably it didn’t occur to her to blame god for the fact she was bed-bound in the first place. And so it goes.

I do not find these types of messages either comforting or inspiring, and nor have they convinced me that I must turn to god in my hour of need. I find these views irrational and distasteful, and reading them has galvanised my atheism. In fact, I have found that being an unbeliever actually helps when coming to terms with chronic illness.

If one believes in an all-powerful deity, it follows that this deity must have caused or allowed one’s illness. It follows that your suffering could be relieved, but isn’t for some reason. This raises a multitude of questions: why would god do that, have I sinned, am I a bad person, is it a test, and so on. The search for ‘why’ is made so much more complicated and anxiety-provoking if you posit a supposedly compassionate god. Whereas, I am comforted by the explanation that one of my genes is faulty, that this was a random event, and there is no further ‘why’ to be investigated. I am not being punished or tested – I have just been unlucky. Bad things do happen to good people.

One of the ways in which the religious chronically ill seem to reconcile their faith in an all-powerful, compassionate god with their own medical conditions is to subscribe to the view that their suffering is somehow beautiful or meaningful. I have a self-help book written for the chronically ill, which mostly fulfils its stated function as helpful, except for when it comes to how to find meaning in one’s condition. Then it lapses into a bit of vague blather about Jesus on the cross (surely the most potent symbol of how Christianity can fetishise suffering), before quoting a woman in very ill health, described as “a model for us of graceful endurance”, who cheerfully opined: “God never gives us more than we can bear.” [1] Which raises the question, what kind of deity is this who knows how much each individual can bear, and decides to cause or allow suffering up to that limit but only for certain people? A sadistic one? A contrary one? A psychotic one? I can’t decide, it’s just too bizarre. Likewise, why is it good to endure pain and other symptoms ‘gracefully’? What’s wrong with being pissed off? How is denying reality and real feelings supposed to help people cope?

There is perhaps one Christian figure who has done more damage than most in the ‘suffering is beautiful’ vein: Mother Theresa, who called suffering ‘a gift from God’. Many atheists, particularly Christopher Hitchens, have written extensively criticising her. Her acolytes, however, continue to spread her poisonous message: only a few months ago, on the UK television programme The Big Questions, one such acolyte spoke earnestly about Mother Theresa’s vision, how she saw meaning and beauty in the suffering of those in her care. Perhaps she was unaware that Mother Theresa also denied them medication and a proper bed to sleep in [2].

My response to this is simple: suffering is not beautiful. When you feel like crap, it is not an amazing spiritual experience: you just feel like crap, and you want the feeling to go away. The idea that there is anything positive about suffering at all is profoundly insulting, and as though it weren’t bad enough on its own, there is also the knock-on implication that if people fail to find their suffering anything other than an ultimately uplifting experience, they are somehow a deficient person (Barbara Ehrenreich confronts this issue in her book about breast cancer, Smile Or Die). Essentially, ‘suffering is beautiful/meaningful’ meme is just a dodge whereby the religious ignore the inherent contradiction in the idea of a compassionate, illness-causing deity.

So how do I find meaning in my own suffering? Basically, I don’t. My view is that meaning is essentially a human concept, so we can choose to find meaning in whatever we like, and not everything in our lives has to have it. For me, my medical conditions don’t have any meaning, they’re just there. My suffering doesn’t have any meaning, it just happens, and I would prefer that it didn’t. My life as a whole has meaning though, in that it means something to me, regardless of my medical status.

As for mentally coping with a lifetime of ill health, there are many psychological techniques that can help a chronically ill person, which do not involve maintaining an unreasonable hope that there will be an afterlife in which the pain and other symptoms will magically disappear, or the delusion that one is somehow getting brownie points from god by enduring one’s suffering ‘gracefully’. In not holding out for eternity, I direct my attention to things which give me pleasure and distract me from my illness in the here and now – my partner, my family and friends, my garden, a good film, music, and so on. When things get very difficult, I go for counselling to help work through emotions such as anger, frustration and anxiety – emotions that I am allowed to feel and express, seeing as I’m under no obligation to be grateful for my ‘gift’. It works – and there is no need to believe in anything supernatural.

Some people may argue, what if all you have is god? What if there’s no partner, no family or friends, no garden, no counsellor etc… just suffering? My response to that is, you may as well ask what if you’re stranded on a desert island and all you have for company is a volleyball with a face drawn on it? An imaginary friend is an imaginary friend, whether it’s Wilson from Castaway or Jesus, and just because comfort is derived from them when a person is desperate, it doesn’t mean that they must therefore really exist, and, more importantly, it doesn’t mean that the belief in their actual existence should be coddled and supported at the expense of real help.

Surprising as it may seem, I don’t actually blame people for grasping at straws when they are suffering chronic illness: when my first symptoms began several years ago, I did this myself by indulging in some alternative medicine. (It’s not something I would do now.) We also live in a society that encourages belief in the supernatural, that tells us faith is a virtue, that approves of the false and contradictory ‘comfort’ of religious practice. Perhaps, with more emphasis on reason in our society, people would react to and cope with their illnesses more effectively, as they realised that they weren’t being punished, or tested, or expected to find their suffering meaningful.

These days, having been accurately diagnosed, I am lucky enough to receive the help and support of excellent trained medical professionals; sadly, several years of illness have taught me that medicine is a woefully underfunded discipline, as is social care, which provides assistance for those living with ill health and disability. Real help for chronically ill people does not involve prayer and false hope, it involves money being made available for training of new doctors, for research into conditions and development of new treatments, for the provision of disability aids, for the financial support of sick people and their carers. Whenever a new research paper is published about my condition, I get a real, true sense of hope and comfort from the knowledge that people are working to help me and others like me. It is a wonderful feeling that no god could ever give me. Conversely, I get pissed off whenever I read about the church’s ‘charitable’ tax-exempt status, or the newest faith school opening, funded by public money: because religious institutions are draining money away from real-world, scientifically proven ways to help people.

It is ironic, furthermore, that in order to get to the clinic of one of my specialist consultants at UCLH in London, I have to go past the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, where patients are given publicly-funded vials of water as placebos for their ailments. Enough said, really.

Religion, and indeed anything supernatural, is not truly a comfort in hard times: in the long run it actually makes hard times harder, and often more complicated and confusing. This, added to the fact that I refuse to compromise my reason, is why I have never turned to god in all the years I’ve been ill, and I never will.  Atheism and skepticism are not luxuries: they are necessities.

[1] Paul J Donoghue & Mary E Siegel, Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired (2000), pp xvii-xviii

[2] Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position (1995), pp 39-42

In a 2003 essay for Daedalus, Christopher Hitchens wrote that, “religious absolutism makes a good match with tribal feelings and with sexual repression—two of the base ingredients of the fascistic style.”

There’s no doubt that repressed sexuality is a feature of most religions, and the cause of many an unhappy union made under god’s banner. But less often discussed is religion’s facilitative role to sexual perversions. The more fundamentalist the dogma, the sicker the stuff taking place in between the sheets.

Take the bacha baz of Afghanistan for instance. The bacha baz are men who take boys as lovers, or more accurately, as repeated rape victims. Over the years I’ve worked in Afghanistan, there has always been hushed gossip in dark corners about prominent, powerful men who keep boys, whom they literally own, as their personal sex slaves, some as young as nine years old. Or there are the late-night dancing parties where boys dressed as girls, smeared with make-up and bells jangling from their ankles, perform before their male-only audience before then being raped by one or more of the adults. The dancing boys of Afghanistan were the subject of a recent PBS documentary, which marks one of the first and only times the practice has been exposed candidly, or internationally.

Older men sleeping with younger boys is not an isolated occurrence, but an epidemic stretching so far back in time that it’s considered a widely accepted cultural practice. Joel Brinkley of The San Francisco Chronicle, in asking, “how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?” reported recently that, “some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz”.

It is not a coincidence that the systemic sexual abuse of boys is most widespread in Afghanistan’s most religiously conservative areas, where contact between unrelated men and women is extremely restricted. Brinkley notes, “sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law.”

Women and girls are put strictly off limits to unrelated men until they are good and married- usually when they are still technically children (the average marriage age for girls in Afghanistan is 15 years), while the men are usually well into adulthood. In this waiting period, sexual activity nonetheless inevitably occurs among the bachelors, including sex with other men, incest, rape and abuse, visits to prostitutes and according to popular anecdote, bestiality.

An interpreter of mine once laughingly told me about his bed-ridden friend who was kicked in the shins by an annoyed donkey while in mid-zoophile coitus. He told the women of his family he had been in a car accident, but admitted to his close friends, unembarrassed, what had really happened. They all had a good laugh over it.

Let me pre-empt those who will accuse me of making Afghans out to be primitive and backward. This doesn’t only happen in Afghanistan, though it is happening there and let’s face that instead of being polite about it. Of course, not all or even most Afghans partake in such behaviour, nor sanction it. In any culture or place where you have excessive and bizarre rules dictating the kinds of relationships that humans can have with each other, you will find perversions beneath the thin front of sexual purity. You will find people acting out sexually in the cramped, seedy spaces left to them by the excessive rules of their culture.

The defenders of such systems will say that their society is organized in such a way as to protect women, to keep the society “pure”; or to stop the spread of sinful behaviour, defined as sexual relations outside of marriage.

This is nonsense. The systems exist for the sexual gratification of the abuser. The statutory rape of under-age girls in ‘celestial’ marriages in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for instance, allows aging men to do as they please to their child victims. Their church sanctions their behaviour, which would otherwise be considered abusive and abnormal. The Catholic Church, for all its blind obsession with sin and sexuality, gave clerics utter impunity for centuries to molest and rape children. And in many of Pakistan’s madrassahs, religious seminary boarding schools which served as dumping grounds for children from hungry, poverty-stricken families, boys were kept deprived of any female contact while they memorized a religious text in a language they didn’t understand, learned how to use small arms and rockets, and were routinely raped. All of this amounts to a very effective machine for churning out violent, unstable young killers. Cheryl Benard, in her 2001 book Veiled Courage, wrote of the devastating impact on these young rape victims whose untreated trauma and rage was easily channeled into the violence they were then sent out to commit as jihadists.

An environment overrun by religious extremism helps sanctions forms of sexual abuse like bacha baz. Sex is taboo, so victims find nowhere to turn after their traumatic experience. The dictates of the religious establishment keep the adherents strictly divided into grossly unequal categories of the hunter and the prey. Sexual violence spreads from generation to generation, as a whole society becomes complicit in the rot, by the silence that surrounds, and ultimately endorses it. It all amounts to a dynasty created and managed by perverts, whereby they’ve ingeniously preserved the unchallenged right to act out their every wacko fantasy on the otherwise unwilling, all under the guise of something sanctioned by god. Decrepit, horny men need not earn the attraction of their object of desire; they can simply take it.

Religious fundamentalists are not god-fearing, devoted or sacrosanct. They’re just perverts.

Here are a few statistics you may or may not be familiar with. The 2002 Arab Human Development Report estimated that the Arab world translates around 330 books annually, one fifth of the number translated by Greece. Taking the long view, the authors also estimated that the Arab world had translated 100,000 books since the Caliph Ma’mun in the ninth century. This is just under the average number translated by Spain in a year. How many books are actually produced? We don’t really know. While they admitted that there were ‘no reliable figures’, the researchers indicated that ‘many indicators suggest a severe shortage of writing; a large share of the market consists of religious books and educational publications that are limited in their creative content.

The Arab world was a civilisation of great literature and creativity before it got hijacked by an absurd and stupid religion. Like all Arab independent voices, Joumana Haddad lives under the constant thread of murder and acid attack. Yet a muscle unused won’t always atrophy and something that’s choked won’t always die. There are sentences and paragraphs in Haddad’s book of which no British intellectual is capable. One of the many reactions to read I Killed Scheherazade is a kind of embarrassment at the poverty of Western liberal thought. There’s more insight and poetry in these 160 pages of Haddad, than there is in a pulped rainforest’s worth of Armstrong, Eagleton, Gray, and all the other quacking equivocal voices on the op-ed pages and panel shows.

I Killed Scheherazade is mainly about the hypocrisy and ugliness of separation. The theocratic world incorporates the most extreme kind of puritanism in its scripture and policy, yet allows its male citizens to carry out appalling acts of sexual degeneracy that would never be tolerated in the decadent and godless West. As Haddad puts it, Islamic governments will burn copies of Lolita but won’t prohibit child brides. The theocratic world denies sexuality yet also magnifies it to a degree far beyond the Western supermodel and billboard culture. Its clerics claim to be above base desire, and yet their laws on vice and virtue are detailed to a prurient and ludicrous degree (the Iranian artist Marjane Satrapi remembers being told off by the Revolutionary Guards for running in the street; the officers were concerned that the pistoning motions of Satrapi’s buttocks could arouse passing males). Haddad quotes an old Lebanese saying: ‘We want something and we spit on it.’

Sexual schizophrenia stretches far beyond Islam, of course. We portray ourselves as strong, high-minded men and women, and never betray the amount of imagination and thought devoted to the beast with two backs. Sex is something that most people think about a great deal, yet culturally it’s left to the admen and the stand-ups. In Arab poetry and prose, Haddad says, sex is described mainly in geographic or botanical metaphor (flower of paradise, bud of heaven, etc) and she recalls her father’s distress when Haddad, then in her mid twenties, used the word ‘penis’ in a poem. ‘How can you write such an atrocity, and publish it under your own name?’ he cried. ‘Couldn’t you have used the word ‘column’ instead?’

Haddad went on to set up an erotic magazine, Jasad, with the aim ‘not to help men ejaculate when masturbating, rather to inquire intellectually into the consciousness of the body, and its unconsciousness.’ She questions the Christian separation of body and soul: ‘Life, to me, is a physiological, physical, instinctual, sensory experience, in as much as it is also an emotional, psychological and intellectual one.’ Contra the poet, you are not a soul strapped to an animal: the animal is the soul. And it’s because we are made of matter that we can experience the great rushing moments that we call spirituality.

Many feminists hold on to the convention that vanity is a sin: think Germaine Greer, denouncing the British journalist Suzanne Moore for her ‘fuck-me shoes and three fat inches of cleavage.’ There’s an impression in Western liberalism that you can be beautiful and intellectual but not both. For Haddad, the symbol of powerful feminity is ‘the Sonia Rykiel boutique in the St Germain neighbourhood in Paris: extremely beautiful, stylish and seductive dresses can be seen side-by-side with selections of books and new releases by novelists, thinkers, poets and philosophers.’ Yet feminists in the West tend to downplay sexuality, seeing it as contaminated by males. This attitude only reinforces the stud/slut double standard that endures to this day: ‘If a woman writes of sex among other things, she is described as a daring ‘erotic writer’… If a man writes of the same subject, it is just a topic among another, completely normal.’

In I Killed Schehezerade such lazy assumptions fall like blasted ducks. To those who claim that religious dress is liberating: ‘isn’t the defeminisation of women an act of surrendering par excellence to men’s blackmail and their shallow view of the female entity as a sum of thighs, tits, asses, lips, and so on and so forth?’ To those who believe that progress only comes through diplomacy: ‘The person who courts consensus has no colour, no taste, no smell. We shouldn’t need an obsequious court to feel safe. We shouldn’t need to please ALL the others to feel pleased about ourselves.’ To those who encourage people to believe in an afterlife:

What could paradise be other than a wonderful illusion invented by a few geniuses (sometimes they are called prophets, other times saints and mystics, depending on the cultural and social contexts) in order to control the masses, promising them a reward that they will never be able to grant?… Do you really want to bet your life, and principles, and behaviour, and choices, on THAT? Wouldn’t it be healthier, and more rewarding, to set for yourself an earthly life ethic and morality, based on decency, respect and universal humanistic values?

To read Joumana Haddad is to lose your illusions and discover your dreams.

I Killed Scheherezade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman, Joumana Haddad, Saqi 2010

Nepal is the youngest secular country in the world. With the interim constitution moving farther away from the nitty-gritty of constitution making, the so-called secular Nepal lingers farther away on the horizon. The politicians are busy manifesting the new but failed doctrine in the name of national consensus to make the national government, merely for the sake of power. Paradoxically, the pro-Hindu faction keeps on demonstrating and chanting against the abolition of the Hindu kingdom, the religious icon of Nepal.  There are hundreds of ethnic groups based on particular religions. Ethnic diversity prevails along with the geographic diversity of Nepal. The society is inevitably polarizing in terms of caste, region and religion.  Is this the notion of the new secular Nepal? The Nepalese are totally in the doldrums. Democrats, Republicans and progressive communists are busy showing their insane parade in the lust for power. But above all, it’s the politics that rules and it’s the people who are ruled. Nevertheless, the change that we accept with the peaceful revolt should be sustainable and institutionalized. It must be build upon the solid foundation of democratic and modern society.

Changing Nepal from the Hindu kingdom to the federal republic was not only a political saga. It was a transformation of people’s mind and thoughts for the revived aspirations for sustainable social change. It was one of the extraordinary political achievements of our time, with peaceful political demonstration historically abolishing 200 years old kingdom and shifting to a secular federal Nepal.  It was all about transformation of the whole country, the society from the ill-fated kingdom to completely a new paradigm, the democratic republic and secular Nepal, the huge shift in political equation.

But what has been achieved so far?  Are we institutionalizing the notion of a secular country to the people’s aspiration? Are we empowering the local community? Are we making the classless society in terms of religion? Are religious gaps widening or narrowing?  Are we making the constitution? As human right activists are busy writing reports about human rights violations everyday, there will be another incident that’s already happening in the other corner of the society. It’s most of the time about witchcraft, dowry, and religious riots that not only create social disharmony but also polarize society. 

Penalizing the violators could be a sort of post-action that is necessary; in many cases the recommendations get piled up in the state cabin with dust and the government is simply apathetic to penalize the perpetrators. Impunity has been the common issue every government is facing and the right activists are always asking the government to be bold. On the contrary, neither the government nor the human rights organization does any comprehensive research on these issues to come up with preventive measures to keep a multifaceted society in harmony.

Making a secular country is a huge challenge for the politicians in Nepal yet we must applaud them for taking such a bold step on transforming the entire political system to the aspiration of common Nepalese people. However, in the country where more than one hundred different dialects are spoken, the caste-system prevails, and Hinduism rules, the multi-layered aspect of society in terms of socio-economic and cultural aspects looms. Writing a word “secular” in a constitution is merely a political drama for political gain.  All political parties must revamp their ideologies to address the common people of Nepal and to bridge the social, economic and religious gap among them. The aspiration of common peoples is classless societies, gender equity, and religious harmony. The need of the hour is not only to institutionalize the notion of being secular but also to strengthen the achievement of a sustainable secular state to create a wonderful history.

A great deal of confusion surrounds the burqa and the issue of its being worn in Western countries. A traditional religious garment, the burqa covers a woman’s face and body so completely that only a small slit for the eyes remains to allow the sight of the person behind it.[1] Earlier in the year French legislators passed a vote deploring the apparel, and the lower house recently passed a bill 335-1 which would see it made illegal to wear in public, a vote quickly condemned by Amnesty International as threatening to freedom of expression and religion. While the bill will move to the Senate later in the year, should France actually enact a ban it would not stand out as all that remarkable. Turkey, notable in this context for the fact that it is a predominantly Muslim country, has long had legislation in place preventing public sector employees and university students from wearing even just the hijab (the Muslim headscarf, which in contrast to the Burqa only covers the hair and not the face of a woman) in their place of work or on campus.

Many who oppose the burqa do so because they see it as an oppressive item of clothing which symbolises and reinforces the inferior social status of women. For them it represents an assault on the dignity and equality of women, a regard for them as property, and a concern for them that they be sexually controlled and limited. Despite such negative views an inner twinge of apprehension can rise up at the thought of legislatively outlawing its being worn. Self-consciously we may ask ourselves: to where will this road lead us? Is it not a mark of intolerance to impose the values of the majority over a minority, and in this case a culturally insensitive form of intolerance as well? We don’t want to begin telling people what they can and can’t wear, do we?  The fact is though that this is already quite commonly done, but in the inverse: many western countries have laws against public nudity in areas outside of those which are specially set aside for it; you can’t just walk around naked in public wherever and whenever you would like to, though you are entitled to be as naked as you please in the privacy of your own home.

As a judgment about the meaning of the burqa the outlined view certainly does not go without a challenge. One line of defence proceeds by arguing that as a mere symbol it has many possible meanings, and not simply the negative ones assigned to it by westerners. A second claim often attached to this is that if we want to ask what the face veil really means then we need to ask those who actually wear it – that is, Muslim women. Reza Aslan is one who appears to take this view. In his book No God but God (Arrow Books, 2006) Aslan argues that the veil is symbolic, that any non-Muslim non-female approach to specifying its meaning is flawed by that very fact, and that questions of its meaning must accordingly be answered by Muslim women.[2]

There are I think two different ways of trying to understand these claims. On the first we are to understand that by the fact of their actually wearing (or potentially wearing) the burqa, Muslim women are simply more capable of achieving insight into its meaning than men or non-Muslim women. A second way to understand them is as founded upon an assumption that because Muslim women deal so much more personally with the burqa than others do, that what meanings they attach to it have a natural right-of-way over the interpretations of others. After all, they are the ones which actually live beneath it, so shouldn’t their thoughts count for more on the matter?

If the first approach is the best way of understanding what is being said here then it should be noted that the position is simply incoherent. If we take seriously the claim that the burqa is no more than a symbol then it literally cannot have any intrinsic or innate meaning that one could potentially get closer to by the fact of being a Muslim woman. If we are better to understand things in the second way, it is not clear to me exactly why Muslim women should be privileged in that way. When it comes to matters of symbolism surely anyone’s interpretation is as legitimate as anyone else’s – why would actually wearing a symbol entitle a person to the kind of privilege of interpretation being readily assumed as proper?

Of course it is quite true that for many of its wearers the burqa isn’t anything like a symbol of subservience to men. For many Muslim women the burqa and the headscarf are symbols of femininity, of personal religious commitment, and potentially even a rejection of the hypersexualisation of women in the West. But is the burqa just a symbol? It is not. The burqa is an object in the world alongside all others; it has mass, density, and opaqueness. If I beat you to death with an iron swastika it will do me little good in going before the judge to exclaim ‘but your honour, it was only a symbol!’ It was indeed a symbol – over that there can be little doubt – but it wasn’t just a symbol. It is dangerously misguided to point to the symbolic nature of the Islamic burqa, a dimension it surely does possess, and argue therefore that it does no harm outside of the symbolic meanings we supply to it.

The fact is that we are all creatures of a particular cognitive stripe, and we get a mass of social information by being able to see and read other people’s faces. We retrieve from them clues about emotional and intentional states, and from that, their likely conduct in interactions with us. This is part of the reason why someone could feel unsettled or apprehensive in passing a hooded or masked figure in a dark alley way at night. Whether intended to provide that function or not, a hood which hides the face prohibits us from gauging the mental state and intent of the wearer, and that is a matter highly relevant to assessments of our own personal safety and security in the social world.

Psychologists, for their part, make good use of identity-concealing hoods in order to tease out the effect that anonymity has on behaviour. The results of such experiments are not particularly uplifting: being hooded tends to make people deliver more powerful electric shocks to others than if their faces were openly visible. It seems in such circumstances that being physically anonymous erodes the sense of ourselves as morally responsible and accountable agents, and accordingly less concerned to treat others in morally appreciable ways. Being in a large crowd can induce that same sense of loss of moral identity, a fact which helps explains phenomenon like soccer-hooliganism. Executioners too know well about the effectiveness of the hood. If you need to kill someone it is simply easier to psychologically manage if you first depersonalise them by placing a hood over their head. If we can’t see the object before us as a person, or them as fully as a person, then it simply becomes easier to treat them like any other object. By hiding from their sight the time-worn wrinkles or the desperation and fear in the eyes of the condemned, executioners allow themselves to more easily put their personal status out of mind.

The effect of the burqa is not dissimilar, and no less real. By obscuring the face of a woman to the sight of others it depersonalises the wearer, limiting the social perception of personal depth. Accordingly, it really does strike a non-imagined blow against women’s rights and equality with men. It is not simply that the burqa is a symbol of female oppression, but that it is an instrument of it. The hijab, which leaves the face open to the view of others, would not seem to suffer this same fate equally.

Of course it is true that some of the personal information that the burqa hides will be of a specifically sexual and superficial nature. How physically attractive is that woman standing over there? How young? How beautiful? Does she look approachable? Questions of this kind can hardly be answered from behind a veil, and so for the purpose of stopping women being treated like sexual objects (by men other than the husband at least) the burqa really will achieve much of what it nominally sets out to do. You just can’t lust or long after a woman based on how she looks if you can’t actually see the way in which she looks in the first place. That though is clearly not the only neutralising effect that the burqa brings with it.

Interestingly enough, there is not a single verse to be found in the Quran which requires women to wear the burqa. The closest that Islamic revelation comes to this is demanding that women must dress modestly in public, that they not reveal any cleavage or stamp their feet (why not? They might accidentally reveal their ankles to surrounding male eyes), and save the sight of their bodies for their husbands (33:59, 24:31). We can rightfully think of this as quite terrible coming from god, but it does not – in any obvious way – require a woman to cocoon herself in cloth just to venture into public. Mohammed’s wives were a recognised special case however. The Quran records that god sent down a special revelation from heaven through Mohammed requiring them to talk to male strangers only from behind a curtain in their home (33:53), and it appears that they were required to wear some kind of a head covering.

While use of the hijab is widespread, only a tiny fraction of Muslim women in France actually do wear the burqa (according to one estimate, perhaps less than one half of one percent). So it can be argued, why ban something that so few women actually adorn themselves with? This is a very strange objection however. To see why we need only note that only a tiny fraction of any population may practice something like necrophilia, but that surely does not constitute any reason in itself to forgo laws which would make it illegal. If it should be illegal, the fact that very few people will actually be directly affected by it means little.

What drives this objection I suspect is a concern on the part of some that the motivation behind calls for a ban has more to do with politics than with a genuine concern for the welfare of women. This is not insensible, for as much as the burqa possesses a symbolic dimension, so too do the denouncements and ban proposals. That is, they serve just as much to reassert the incompatibility of certain mainstream Islamic values (like sexual chastity, modesty, and the secondary status of women) with mainstream Western values over the same territory, and the superiority of the Western values in that regard, as they do to safeguard the freedom of women from subordination.

But would a ban really be the most optimal way towards reaffirming the equal status and autonomous liberty of women, and protecting that against religious erosion? It is practically unquestionably true that Muslim women should not be forced to wear the burqa – whether that be in a public space or not is quite irrelevant – but is it equally true that Muslim women who choose to wear the burqa of their own free accord should be legally prohibited from doing so? I cannot see as easily as others apparently can that the answer here should be yes.

It is possible to lament a life spent in devotion to nothing but watching infomercials on TV, and at the expense of the cultivation of loving relationships and good friendships with others, without at the same time thinking that the best way towards combating such a life-choice is to legislate against it. Similarly, I can lament the fact that some people think god requires them to live their public life in sheath of cloth least any non-familial male eyes fall upon their naked skin, without at the same time thinking that the best method towards protecting them and others from that is to prohibit all women from wearing the burqa. It is simply possible to both loath and permit something; as an idea this lies at the heart of liberal democracy. Proponents of the ban need to ask themselves whether enacting restrictions – including on the freedom to make choices for one’s own life that others regard as very poor – is really worth it in order to protect women from the negative consequences of Islamic dress codes.

This is especially so given that there are other ways of going about tackling the burqa which can be explored. One way is simply to engage those who wear it, and those who support its being worn, with argumentative criticism. It can be pointed out that there is no explicit support in revelation for the requirement of the burqa, that it really does undermine the status of women (for reasons outlined), that the idea that a special revelation came to protect Mohammed’s wives from the sight of other men looks awfully convenient (and is probably not something worth following as a fashion), that there are less problematic symbols of femininity and religiosity available, and that it would be simply rather silly and costly to protest the objectification of women in the West by anonymising oneself in public life. Other than a blanket ban, legal options include limiting those who can wear it to over 18 years of age, just as occurs with the right to vote, have sex, or consume alcohol. It could also be required that women who wish to wear it to sign an affidavit indicating that they fully understand they are under no obligation to wear the burqa, and declaring that it is a free and uncoerced choice on their part. This would not be any solution to the residual issue that some women may have little option but to wear it due to pressure from their family and community, but it would do something to slake the conscience of the state on the general matter.

Legislation banning the wearing of the burqa in public is clearly not the only option on the table, and it may not be the best one either. 

[1] The burqa is technically distinguishable from the niqab as face veils. While the niqab involves a slit for the eyes to see through, the burqa places a mesh of cloth over the eyes so that even their sight is obscured from outward view. I take it that the difference between them holds little relevance from a moral point of view, and use ‘burqa’ as a covering word for both (however strictly inaccurate that may be).

[2] Aslan (2006), p. 73.

The recent attack on my family which led to my father’s loss of one eye was an unfortunate development. It was yet another attempt to intimidate us and undermine our campaign for justice.

 To any intelligent observer of the trends in Nigeria, this incident would not have come as a surprise. Because Nigeria has practically been taken over by thugs, hoodlums, kidnappers and bandits.

Nigeria is held hostage by forces of dark age and barbarism. Anything that appears to be civil or enlightened about Nigeria is mainly on the surface. Since independence Nigeria has been descending gradually into anomie, anarchy and criminality. Nigeria has derailed and deteriorated due to misrule, bad governance, collective irresponsibility and insensitivity, lack of vision and thoughtfulness, selfishness, greed, ignorance, hypocrisy and self deceit. Nigeria has failed to put in place institutions that treat the people in a fair, just and dignified manner. Nigeria has failed to adopt effective mechanisms to reward those who want to live honest, decent, diligent and dignified lives. Nigeria has failed to cultivate and institutionalize those values that make a nation great, relevant and prosperous. At best, Nigeria pays lip service to these values. The government is irresponsive and irresponsible. The educational system is in shambles. The justice system is nothing to write home about. The value system has collapsed. The greatest tragedy is that most Nigerians have resigned themselves to this ‘fate’. They think that nothing can be done to change or improve the situation; that no radical or reasonable change can be realized. Most Nigerians have given up hope – hope of realizing a decent and dignified life; hope for justice and fairness for all; hope for recognition and respect for their rights. Fear, despair, gloom, pessimism and cynicism loom throughout the country.

 The public institutions are used to oppress and exploit the public. The power of the people is used to abuse, enslave and maltreat the people.

For instance the police system is established to fight and prevent crimes. But in Nigeria, the police foster and perpetrate crimes with impunity. Police stations across Nigeria are extortion and torture chambers. The justice system is there to protect only the interest of the rich and powerful. Justice is for sale and goes to the highest bidder. The government lacks the political will to reform the system and move against those who have vested interest in the status quo 

So no one should be surprised that it is taking so long to bring criminals to justice. No one should be surprised that those campaigning for justice and human rights suffer vicious attacks, harassment and intimidation.

Should we then abandon the cause of justice because of the risks involved? Should we then stop speaking out for human rights and the rule of civilized law because of the dangers we face or could face? My answer to these questions is unequivocally no! Indeed we run more risks and face more dangers when we turn a blind eye to the oppression and unjust treatment of fellow human beings. We tacitly endorse injustice when we fail to speak out against it. According to the Nigerian Humanist Wole Soyinka, the man dies in himself who keeps silent in the face of tyranny. What we are facing in Nigeria today is worse than tyranny. So I urge all people of conscience to speak out against this tragic situation.

And on my own part, I will, in spite of the attacks, persecution, prosecution and harassment which I and my family members have suffered in the past years, continue to speak out against injustices and human rights abuses. I will continue to use all civilized means to challenge and tackle unjust and oppressive institutions. I will continue to work and campaign for social change and progress, for human rights and dignified life, for civilization, emancipation and enlightenment.

Around midnight on Wednesday August  4 2010,two gunmen invaded my family house in Mbaise in Imo state in Southern Nigeria. They shot twice in the air and my mother fainted. They later descended on my aging father and started beating him. They blindfolded him with a piece of cloth and hit him several times with stones.

He later fainted and the hoodlums ransacked the whole house and made away with whatever they found valuable. My father  bled from the right eye, nose and mouth. He had bruises on his head, hands, legs and chest. After the attack, some neighbours came and rushed him to a nearby hospital. From there, I moved him to an eye hospital in Lagos where the doctor confirmed that he had extensive injuries in the right eye and recommended that it be removed. Yesterday, August 11, 2010, he underwent a surgery and the right eye was removed. He is currently recuperating at the hospital. I called the police to inform them, and they said I should send a formal petition.

This attack is the latest in the vicious campaign of harassment and intimidation of me and my family members by state and non-state actors for our efforts to bring to justice a 50 year old man, Edward Uwa, who raped a 10 year old girl, Daberechi, in my community. Since 2007, Edward and his associate, Ethelbert Ugwu, have brought several police and court actions against me, my family members and our witnesses including Daberechi’s father. They have brought many fictitious allegations against us. In January, they brought police officers and soldiers and arrested me and my father for murder. In 2008 Ethelbert Ugwu brought some soldiers who arrested, brutalized and detained my two brother at a local police station in Ahiazu.

Unfortunately, the authorities in Nigeria are not helping matters. They have refused to take appropriate actions against Edward and Ethelbert. The police and judicial systems are corrupt, inept and ineffective. Police officers are only interested in making money from petitions, not in fighting or preventing crimes. And the court system is slow and expensive. So in Nigeria police and court actions are used by criminally minded people to harass and intimidate others, and block access to justice particularly for the poor and less privileged.

The local police stations in Ahiazu and Umuahia have refused to arraign Edward and Ethelbert for misinforming the police. The police in Zone 9 have yet to publish the outcome of the investigation of the murder charge brought by Ethelbert Ugwu and Edward Uwa for which they arrested me in January. Right now the prosecution of Edward for indecent assault is stalled because the Assistant Inspector General of Police in Umuahia, Abubakar Ringim, has refused to release the case file to Imo state prosecutor despite several applications to that respect. The state prosecutor decided to take over the prosecution after Ethelbert Ugwu got a fraudulent fiat through a local lawyer to take over the case. The police prosecutor is no longer coming to the court and the local magistrate has threatened to strike out the case in October. Ethelbert and Edward have filed five civil suits against me, my family members and witnesses. In March, the court ruled against us in one of the suits brought by Edward for police harassment because the police did not appear in court. We are currently appealing the ruling. Since 2007 members of my family and other innocent people in my community have suffered and endured attacks, harassment and intimidation by Edward,  Ethelbert and their police, soldiers and thugs.

And the state authorities have done little or nothing to address the situation.

What we can do

These issues must be raised with the Nigerian authorities at the highest level. They should be kept on the front burner of international relations and human rights advocacy until the Nigerian authorities take appropriate actions. The Nigerian government must be made to understand that the international community is aware of the facts of this case, and that the world is outraged at the way they are handling it. The human rights community should join hands with the IHEU in bringing this disturbing trend to the attention of the world.

At a lecture I was giving in a large West Coast university in the Spring of 2008, the female students talked extensively about how much they preferred to have a completely waxed pubic area as it made them feel “clean,” “hot” and “well groomed.”  As they excitedly insisted that they themselves chose to have a Brazilian wax, one student let slip that her boyfriend had complained when she decided to give up on waxing. Then there was silence. I asked the student to say more about her boyfriend’s preferences and how she felt about his criticism. As she started to speak other students joined in, only now the conversation took a very different turn. The excitement in the room gave way to a subdued discussion on how some boyfriends had even refused to have sex with non-waxed girlfriends as they “looked gross.”  One student told the group how her boyfriend bought her a waxing kit for Valentine’s Day, while yet another sent out an email to his friends joking about his girlfriend’s “hairy beaver.” No, she did not break up with him, she got waxed instead.

Two weeks after the waxing discussion, I was at an East Coast Ivy League school where some female students became increasingly angry. They accused me of denying them free choice in their embrace of our hypersexualized porn culture. As the next generation’s elite women, this idea was especially repugnant because they saw no limits or constraints on them as women. Literally two minutes later, one of the students made a joke about the “trick” that many of them employ as a way to avoid hookup sex. What is this trick? These women purposely don’t shave or wax as they are getting ready to go out that night, so they will feel too embarrassed to participate in hookup sex. As she spoke, I watched as others nodded their heads in agreement. When I asked why they couldn’t just say no to sex, they informed me that once you have a few drinks in you, and are at a party or a bar, it is too hard to say no. I was speechless, not least because they had just been arguing that I had denied them agency in my discussion of porn culture, and yet they saw no contradiction in telling me that they didn’t have the agency to say no to sex. The next day I flew to Utah to give a lecture in a small college, which although not a religious college, had a good percentage of Mormons and Catholics. I told them about the lecture the previous night and asked them if they knew what the trick was. It turns out that trick is everywhere, including Utah.

I tell this story because, on many levels, it neatly captures how the porn culture is affecting young women’s lives. The reality is that women don’t need to look at porn to be profoundly affected by it because images, representations, and messages of porn are now delivered to women via pop culture. Women today are still not major consumers of hard-core porn; they are, however, whether they know or it or not, internalizing porn ideology, an ideology that often masquerades as advice on how to be hot, rebellious, and cool in order to attract and  keep a man. An excellent example is genital waxing, which first became popular in porn (not least because it makes the women look pre-pubescent) and then filtered down into women’s media such as Cosmopolitan, a magazine that regularly features stories and tips on what “grooming” methods women should adopt to attract a man. Sex and the City, that hugely successful show with an almost cult following, also used waxing as a storyline. For instance, in the movie, Miranda is chastised by Samantha for “letting herself go” by having pubic hair.

….The Stepford Wife image that drove previous generations of women crazy with their sparkling floors and perfectly orchestrated meals has all but disappeared, and in its place we now have the Stepford Slut; a hypersexualized, young, thin, toned, hairless, technologically, and in many cases surgically-enhanced, woman with a come-hither look on her face. We all recognize the look: slightly parted glossy lips, head tilted to the side, inviting eyes, and a body contorted to give the (presumed male) viewer maximum gazing rights to her body.   Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver have morphed into Britney, Rhianna, Beyonce, Paris, Lindsay and so on. They represent images of contemporary idealized femininity – in a word, hot – that are held up for women, especially young women, to emulate. Women today are still held captive by images that ultimately tell lies about women. The biggest lie is that conforming to this hypersexualized image will give women real power in the world, since in a porn culture, our power lies, we are told, not in our ability to shape the institutions that determine our life chances, but in having a hot body that men desire and women envy.

In today’s image-based culture, there is no escaping the image and no respite from its power when it is relentless in its visibility. If you think that I am exaggerating, then flip through a magazine at the supermarket checkout, channel surf, take a drive to look at billboards or watch TV ads. Many of these images are of celebrities – women who have fast become the role models of today. As they grace the pages of People, US Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair, they seem to effortlessly pull together the hot look as they walk the red carpet, stroll the aisles of the supermarket or hit the nightclubs of New York and Cannes. With their wealth, designer clothes, expensive homes and flashy lifestyles, these women do seem enviable to girls and young women since they appear to embody a type of power that demands attention and visibility.

… People not immersed in pop culture tend to assume that what we see today is just more of the same stuff that previous generations grew up on. After all, every generation has had its hot and sultry stars who led expensive and wild lives compared to the rest of us. But what is different about today is not only the hypersexualization of the image, but also the degree to which such images have overwhelmed and crowded out any alternative images of being female. Today’s tidal wave of soft-core porn images has normalized the porn star look in everyday culture to such a degree that anything less looks dowdy, prim and downright boring. Today a girl or young woman looking for an alternative to the Britney, Paris, Lindsay look will soon come to the grim realization that the only alternative to looking fuckable is to be invisible.

This is an excerpt from chapter 6 of Gail Dines’s new book, Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality, published by permission.

It is said that rejection is just the things you say to yourself everyday, except said by someone else. To a failed writer, this balance of rejection is firmly in the court of the rejecting editors encountered to date at this stage, but the maxim is similar in the world of Web 2.0. Blogs, comments, forums, social networking, it’s the stuff you say in your head, except communicated as text, but the difference is it’s unlikely you would say them to anyone’s face (at least not sober).

However, this caveat is often used to somehow dampen the impact of the internet. It’s just the internet; no one takes it seriously do they? Well, do they? As the print media will attest, we’ve changed forever how we get our news and opinion. As technology like smart phones and the new generation of iPads become inseparable from our hands, so the internet becomes the basis for our information. Those who scorn blogs for their highly agenda driven information ignore that the traditional media has had to mirror this to survive. That is the greatest proof of just how important Web 2.0 has become in shaping and influencing society.

With the advent of blogs as a news source, if not the main news source for many, journalists can no longer look at their blogs and features as a “hobby”. The old view of “it’s just the internet” is no longer a valid argument for relaxed journalistic standards. While a journalist has many competitors out there and the instantaneous nature of social networking mean a “scoop” is a brittle thing where weeks and months of work can be scooped by some tool on twitter, if the revolution is to be lasting and worthwhile, those standards of journalism (built on 400 years of print media) must be transferred over into all writings.

When Chris Mooney, an individual of significant journalistic experience, let confirmation bias corrupt every journalistic ethic and promoted a fabricated anecdote as the smoking gun in his whole theory of New Atheist Battle Royal, do we say: “it’s just a blog” or “it’s just the internet”? The problem in the case of Mooney (and other online journalists) is that they want their blogs to be read and they want their blogs to be viewed with a sense of respectability and credibility. This isn’t a blog about the daily habits of his dog, this is a blog on a scientific webzine written by a science journalist purporting to present factual information.

It’s always easy to judge with 20/20 hindsight, but there are grievous sins a journalist should avoid (or at least not get caught doing) and if journalists wish their online writing to be as respected and credible as their print, then they must apply the same ethics to their blogs as to their copy.

 “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth, its essence is in the discipline or verification” (Kovach and Rosenstiel.)

The greatest failing of most online journalists operating today is the failure to remember or even know this core belief, largely because it is counterproductive to their own writings to do so. What’s the point in having a view, promulgating that view and selling that view when the truth ends up contradicting something you wrote with passion only hours before? The first obligation of a journalist has become the first obligatory disposable principle of Web 2.0. Like changing a diaper, the truth is necessary and essential, but it’s preferable if someone else is lumbered with the dirty work.

However, the real virtue of this principle is that you have to exercise all due care to verify the truth. It’s a cliché, but early on in every journalist’s training is the statement “if your mother tells you she loves you, you’re sceptical”. Everything written and everything stated should be the truth (or as close as thorough prudent checking will allow).

Parallels are drawn between this case and other such journalistic failures. Putting it simply: there is no comparison. Even the much more controversial Breitbart case isn’t comparable. While the content and the context of the Breitbart case are more emotive, Breitbart was approached by someone with a story and he decided to run with it without any verification. Mooney’s failure is an even greater breach of these principles. He wasn’t approached; there was no flower pot on the balcony and meetings in car parks. Mooney took what is the written version of a vox pop and elevated one individual comment to a story and categorically stated it was the truth.

As was very quickly shown, Breitbart could have verified his “story”, but Mooney didn’t have a story to verify; there was no story until he decided one person’s comments were more worthy of elevation than any other. That’s not journalism, that’s not even on a par with celebrity gossip, it’s taking the equivalent of a conversation overheard on a bus, making a story out of it and presenting it as the truth.

Mooney claimed the anecdote was “Exhibit A”, the smoking gun; by that virtue he owed it to everyone who read his work and those implicated by the anecdote to verify it is true. By his own admission he didn’t.

It was only after others expressed concern at the anecdote that he did some checking. By then, the damage was done.

The Egg Shell Skull Rule

Whatever is at the heart of Mooney’s general reasoning and whether you agree or disagree, what is implied in his “Exhibit A” is that journalists, authors and commentators are responsible for what people, their followers, do or are influenced to do with their words. This point can’t be argued with and there have been serious concerns with some media agencies regarding “incitement”. However, how far does this extend in Mooney’s case? While it may be true that his tea and cake approach to atheism isn’t likely to cause riots, the use of Exhibit A was to state that there was an actual example of people being harassed by the supporters of Dawkins, Myers et al. Why run with that repeated lie if it wasn’t to confirm his views that Dawkins and Myers should be somehow accountable for their follower’s actions?

Yet, Mooney is very quick to play the Pontius Pilate when it comes to his own words. Whoever the origin of the lie is, Mooney has effectively discharged the exact same responsibility he expects other commentators to be held to by claiming, falsely, that he was hoaxed. Being somewhat generous with English and admitting that Dawkins and Myers can be a little “forthright in their views”, Mooney elevated one person’s lie to be the sole feature of that post, then went on to publically “thank” the individual in a separate post for their “story”. What responsibility does Mooney take for elevating this individual’s story and all that followed?

It’s not an open and shut case just how far journalists are responsible and even though the potential for an incitement charge exists, it is extremely rare. For example, a much worse case of media incitement happened in the UK when the News of the World whipped up paedophilia paranoia by publishing the details of known “sex offenders” and like something from the Simpsons, the good people of England (in this case) went on to carrying pitchforks and attacking the home of a “paediatrician” (based upon all paedophiles have brass plaques on their doors stating what they are).

Hardly comparable to promoting one small lie as Mooney did, but that’s not the point here, it’s the consistency in Mooney’s argument. The reason for “Exhibit A” was that it confirmed his view that getting hot under the collar in a book or a blog will incite the readers of that to go out and cause mayhem in the parish church hall. The reason for his unquestionable belief in “Exhibit A” was that he believed it backed up his notion that Dawkins and Myers must take responsibility for the words they produce. Yet when it comes to his words, no such responsibility is forthcoming and that’s the point: you can’t argue for one and refuse to accept your own responsibility when it happens to you. Well you can, but you have to be a politician to get away with it.

The Hoax to End all Hoaxes

Except that it wasn’t a hoax at all. In the same way that if I heard someone on the bus chattering away about some libellous gossip and I pass that on (note: I always pass on libellous gossip overheard on the bus), if I’m caught in passing on a lie, I cannot claim to be hoaxed. Here’s how hoaxes work: generally someone comes up to you with an unbelievable scoop, chance in a lifetime, Pulitzer Prize stuff, you listen to them and go back to your editor. After some general whoops and pats on the back, some checks are made as to the veracity of what is being claimed as quietly as possible. You feel happy enough, hand over the money, run the story, get caught out within a few hours, you get sacked, the editor resigns and the newspaper is forever tarnished with the reputation of the hoax.

How hoaxes don’t work: you read a comment on your own blog among the hundreds of other blogs. Think to yourself, that’s exactly what I said would happen! Viking New Atheists, raping and pillaging their way through small community religious meetings. I must run with this. Then a few hours from filing the story and after hearing a few people saying it sounds a bit dodgy, you check up on who the individual was (though not their story). Happy that when the person confirms to you they are actually a person with a name a couple of legs and a head, you sit back, job done. When it’s all shown to be a lie, you deny the lie for a while, say that even though the individual is a bit of a cad, it could be true somewhere in the world, but just not in this case. Then when it really becomes obvious that you really did fail as a journalist, say you were hoaxed.

There was no hoax. To say it was a hoax is to put all the blame on the individual’s anecdote Mooney identified and quoted all by himself. Mooney is transferring full responsibility onto the person he’s having the good grace to protect below.

Like Woodward and Bernstein I’ll take the name of the source with me to the grave

Some honourable journalists have chosen a prison sentence rather than name a source. And rightly so; the source may have come forward with news that, if they were identified, could put their livelihoods and lives in danger. In order to protect them and all future sources, journalists are told to keep their mouths closed at all costs. Those who don’t, those who confess all, are ostracised from the journalism community.

So on paper, it’s an honourable thing Mooney is doing. He’s sticking by his man and for the sake of the poor soul, he’ll keep his name away from publication. But, “he” isn’t a source and it is another attempt to legitimise and defend the egregious failure of “Exhibit A”. By calling him a source, Mooney is trying to pretend he was approached with the story: that’s what sources do, they come to you. But by Mooney’s admission that never happened, Mooney quoted a lie without even a single effort to verify the claim. 

There are other aspects preventing Mooney from naming the individual, like internet privacy, but they’re a legal matter and nothing to do with ethics. It’s perhaps even more galling that an attempt is being made to hide behind journalistic ethics despite the obvious and blatant disregard for all the other ethical aspects of journalism.

The name of the source isn’t important. How likely his story was to be true isn’t important. The fact is it wasn’t true; that’s the end of the matter. Even if it was true, that’s irrelevant because Mooney ran the story without even checking if it were. How many other posts of his have suffered from this same lack of checking? How many other blogs on Discovery are subject to the same lack of editorial standards? How many other bloggers on Discovery are permitted to publically admit they ignored the first tenet of journalism without apology and retain their status within the magazine?

Forget the smokescreen of who the individual was who recounted the anecdote. Forget what he then went on to do with this sudden and public confirmation of his position in society. The fundamental failure, the first failure was on Mooney; everything that followed came from that single solitary lack of consideration and responsibility that is with anyone purporting to be a journalist.

International Campaign Against Shari’a Court in Canada

Conference on

Effect of globalization of political Islam on Women’s Rights, in connection with
Polygamy, Neqab and Honor Killing

The problem of legal pluralism and cultural relativism with respect to women’s Rights

Discussion on separation of religion from state

Confirmed Speakers:

Social and political activist, founder of the Organization for Women’s Liberation – Iran, founder of  Mansoor Hekmat foundation, producer and host of several TV programs in Farsi and English on New Channel TV, a satellite TV broadcasting into Iran under the name of  No to Political Islam, co-founder of  the Center for Women and Socialism, editor of Medusa, the director of Radio International, a radio station broadcasting into Iran.

Azar Majedie

Tarek Fatah                “Political activist, author, newspaper, columnist and radio commentator, Fatah is the founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. An advocate for the separation of religion and state, he has fought against Islamism for over 40 years. His book chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, was shortlisted for the Donner Prize. His next book, The Jew is Not My Enemy will be on bookshelves in October this year.”

Homa Arjomand:       political and social activist, strong advocator of secularism, advocator of women’s, children’s and gay and lesbian rights, founder of, Children First Now, co-ordinator of the International Campaign against Sharia Court in Canada www.nosharia.com , Campaign against polygamy, Campaign against Honor killing, actively participated in One School System Network in Ontario, Spokesperson of Women’s liberation.

Conference MC

Sheila Ayala: Active participant in the Canadian humanist movement, author of several articles published in the Humanist in Canada (now Humanist Perspectives), the International Humanist News and the Canadian Freethinker, took an active part on the campaign to prevent Islamic Sharia law being implemented in Ontario

Hosted by:

Women’s Liberation

The International Campaign against Sharia Court in Canada

Campaign against Honor Killing

Campaign against Polygamy

The International Campaign to close down Iranian Embassies

When: Friday August 13, 2010

Time: 6:30PM-9:30PM

Where: North York Civic Centre,

5100 Yong Street, Toronto

For more information contact:

Jalil Behroozi: 416-737-9500

Mahmoud Ahmadi: 416-953-9750

On July 15, Aruna Papp, author of a recently released report, “Culturally-driven violence against women: A growing problem in Canada’s immigrant communities” published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s study, wrote in an editorial in the Vancouver Sun:

Problematically, most advocates and activists for female victims of abuse shy away from challenging the immigrant communities to examine their own traditions and cultural values in explaining the violence in their homes.

The ideology of multiculturalism, even among the most well-meaning advocates for female equality, tends to preclude any discussion of cultural values and traditions. Such advocates are afraid of being seen as “colonialist” and try to avoid a perceived “racialization” of an entire ethnic community.

Papp writes in the aftermath of the sentencing last month to life imprisonment of Muhammad Parvez and Waqas Parvez, for the murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez in Mississauga, Ontario. Aqsa was killed on December 10, 2007 – Human Rights Day incidentally for a sad twist of irony – by her father and brother, who strangled her to death in her bedroom early one morning, after grabbing her from the bus stop where she waited to go to school. Their motive? Aqsa didn’t want to wear a veil, wanted to wear jeans, to have a part-time job, and the freedom to have a social life outside her family.

Papp ventured into dangerous territory and put a name to a problem we more often prefer to leave unnamed. She emphasized the danger of culturally-sanctioned abuse against women, its prevalence in Canada, and its tacit acceptance among many women and men in South Asian immigrant communities. In the light of the tragedy and the injustice of Aqsa’s honour killing, and all the warning signs that preceded it, these trends warrant serious and open examination.

Yet in Canada, we are gripped in fear of offending other cultures and so we carefully tiptoe around confronting the cultural or tribal roots of injustices, like the brutal murder of the teenage Aqsa. It is to the great detriment of true justice in our society, and it fails the victims of these crimes, which find religious and cultural sanction. It is this characteristic – religious or cultural sanction – that makes us plead silence, and Papp rightly makes the association with the fear of being perceived as colonialist should we dare to criticize the harmful practices of minorities.

This fear is something that has deep roots in Canadian culture, perpetuated through academic institutions, the media, even the peace movement. It has long been fashionable in the halls of western arts faculties to view all the world through the lens of post-colonialism. In classrooms across the country students of political science, anthropology, literature and other disciplines learn to see the developing world as unflinchingly hostile to foreign interference, as the wounds of conquest by imperial powers continue to heal. Through this lens, universal values do not exist. Young Canadians are taught to challenge their own western perceptions and to be culturally sensitive. Buzzwords like “ethnocentrism” abound, and all kinds of activities take on the metaphor of colonialism, whether international development projects or scientific research.

There is nothing wrong with seeking intercultural competence, except when our desire to be tolerant erodes our instincts that tell us when something is simply wrong. In romanticizing societies outside our own, we can more easily pretend that poverty, inequity and a denial of basic human rights are quaint tribal characteristics that make the world a more colourful place, as opposed to blatant human rights abuses. Anthropologists, for instance, have made the case that abusive practices against women such as female genital mutilation or widow burning (‘sati’) are cultural rituals that have their rightful, “contextually appropriate” place in those societies

In reflecting on differences between our culture and others, we often drown out the voices from those cultures that tell us, inconveniently, ‘I want the very same things as you do’. This was Aqsa’s voice – she had wanted freedom of mobility, of dress, of work. By not speaking out against her murder, and more importantly, against the reason for her murder, we are hearing only the voices of those who – like her murderers – tell us to mind our business, that culture is inviolable, sacred and relative.

As a Canadian activist who has worked to defend the rights of Afghan women over the past 14 years, I’ve heard those words, “mind your own business”, more times than I can count. But a pattern in who speaks them was rapidly apparent: it was never Afghan women who said this to me – it was usually Canadians. Very often it was white men, like the man who told me during a workshop about Canada in Afghanistan last year at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre in downtown Vancouver: “it’s none of our business how they choose to treat their women.” He was referring to the Taliban and why Canada should “stay out” of Afghanistan. It’s a notion prevalent in the anti-war movement, which has come to stand for pacifism at any cost, and which has forgotten that there once was a time when people who called themselves peace activists actually stood against totalitarianism, the denial of human rights anywhere in the world, and the terrorism of innocents by regimes bent on seeing the spread of fascism.

Today, culture trumps the idea of universal rights. But not in the minds of many of the women we as Canadians have belittled by listening too seriously to the claim that abuses and misogyny in other cultures are somehow acceptable. In April 2009, an Afghan woman wrote an editorial in the Globe & Mail that said:

When I came to Canada, I found freedom, and perhaps more importantly, hope. I was free to pursue an education, free to plan and dream. I adjusted to my new home. But I still have not adjusted to the support I have found among Canadians for the Taliban state of mind. It made me sad to see that in a free and modern society, there remain those who excuse an ideology based on the hatred of women, by citing multiculturalism. And they are not Afghans, or even immigrants, but those born in Canada who somehow think that the abuse of women and a fundamentalist view of the world, are acceptable among Afghans, and so no intervention is required. But remember that among Afghans, women can also be found. Have you remembered to ask whether the Taliban represent their culture?

She wrote under a pseudonym, for her own protection from attacks from her ethnic community. She lives not in Kandahar or Tehran, but in a suburb of Vancouver, in western Canada.

We can duly recognize the legacy of colonialism without it disabling any kind of intervention to protect the basic human rights we are all entitled to, wherever we come from. We can similarly celebrate the multitude of cultures in the world while acknowledging that they are all united by the genetic coding all humans have to reject pain and suffering, and to mourn the pain and suffering of others – even when we deny that we do.

We must do a better job of listening to that human instinct within us that makes our stomachs churn when we pick up a newspaper article and read of how a young woman gave her last breaths of air, blood dripping down her nose, when police found her on her bed after her brother pushed down on her neck, making sure she would die within a few hours of her suffering. Rather than push aside the disgust we feel in reaction and veil it with some thinly disguised cultural relativism, or excuse it away as just another case of “ordinary” domestic violence, we must question, criticize and speak out against the tribal, cultural or religious sanction of any crime.

Aqsa’s family buried her in unmarked grave, refusing donations for a headstone. Let the end of her life, at least, be marked by the beginnings of a turning point in Canadian culture, where we shed our reluctance to offend cultural communities that perpetuate the hatred and subjugation of women and girls. If speaking the truth is offensive, so let us offend.