Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Secularism in Warsaw

    Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland attended the annual OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) human rights meeting in Warsaw in Poland yesterday.

    Ireland and Poland – both priest-ridden countries, to use Joyce’s phrase.

     …we will speak against blasphemy laws, religious oaths and the need for secular education. Atheist Ireland will also host a side meeting to highlight the need to respect the human rights of atheists and nonbelievers.

    We believe that the western world is in danger of crossing a significant line in the historic battle for freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. We are in danger of conceding the step between the state respecting somebody’s right to believe what they want, and the state automatically respecting the content of the belief itself – and insisting by law that citizens do so also.

    The Atheist Ireland delegation at the OSCE meeting is Michael Nugent, Chairperson Atheist Ireland; Prof David Nash, Oxford Brookes University UK, who is an expert on blasphemy laws; and Jane Donnelly, Education Policy Officer Atheist Ireland, who is an expert on secular education.

    Good luck to them.

  • Teach the conflict

    Some interesting comments on Rebecca’s post yesterday on the SCA and Vacula.

    Dale Husband:

     Voice for Men? How about a Voice for White People, a Voice for Christians, and a Voice for the Wealthy? Oh yes, we must always ensure that those who are already privileged in society get to yell louder then their opponents, to maintain the status quo in society, even if they are abusive and dishonest.

    To which nymchimpsky replies:

    What about the straight people?  WHY DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT THEM?

    *weeps for the straight people*

    Of course there are equivalents of Voices for white people, rich people, Christians, and straight people…But they don’t call themselves A Voice for. (The one for rich people pretty much calls itself the US government, frankly.)

    Bjarte Foshaug makes a good point (as he so often does) –

    …when the haters, and hyperskeptics and false-equivalence-spouting bothsiders go on about keeping politics/ideology out of atheism/skepticism, we should not let them get away with framing the most conservative and outright reactionary views imaginable as the “unpolitical”, “non ideological” position.

    Nor should we buy into the “let bygones be bygones” view when nothing has changed.

     

     

  • Reading material

    I have to rush off – Josh Spokesgay is in town! – but here for your reading enjoyment is Rebecca on the SCA and Vacula.

    As I was traveling to the conference Friday, a story broke that I found astounding: Men’s Rights Activist Justin Vacula was appointed co-chair of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Secular Coalition for America, the organization that recently came under fire for hiring Republican lobbyist Edwina Rogers.

    In case you’re not familiar with him, Vacula has written about the “feminist lies” of Surly Amy for A Voice For Men (the same site where Paul Elam wrote a short novella on what a “stupid, lying whore” I am, and some pseudonymous grandfather called me a “bitch”).

    He participated in the gleeful bullying of Jen McCreight, who was driven off her blog last month by trolls

    Read on.

  • Protect all the sentiments

    What goes around comes around department.

    Pakistan’s blasphemy laws may be used to punish Muslims suspected of ransacking a Hindu temple, an intriguing twist for a country where harsh laws governing religious insults are primarily used against supposed offenses to Islam, not minority faiths.

    And where the whole point of the country itself has always been that it’s not Hindu. That was the point of partition. India was secular but also majority-Hindu, so Pakistan was to be the opposite. How sad to see its laws used to protect Hindu “religious sentiments.”

    Police officer Mohammad Hanif said Sunday the anti-Hindu attack took place Sept. 21. The government had declared that day a national holiday — a “Day of Love for the Prophet” — and called for peaceful demonstrations against an anti-Islam film made in the U.S. that has sparked protests throughout the Muslim world. Those rallies took a violent turn in Pakistan, and more than 20 people were killed.

    Hanif said dozens of Muslims led by a cleric converged on the outskirts of Karachi in a Hindu neighborhood commonly known as Hindu Goth. The protesters attacked the Sri Krishna Ram temple, broke religious statues, tore up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, and beat up the temple’s caretaker, Sindha Maharaj.

    Nostalgia for 1947 was it?

    One wonders why the people in question couldn’t just be charged with vandalism and assault.

  • Pakistan: Muslims charged with “blasphemy”

    Protesters attacked the Sri Krishna Ram temple, broke religious statues, tore up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, and beat up the temple’s caretaker.

  • Airbrush those whorey women out of the pictures

    Ikea did, for the version of its catalogue that goes to Saudi Arabia.

    So the familiar catalogue that shows a familiar world of people using furniture becomes a bizarro catalogue that shows a bizarro world that shows not people using furniture but just men and boys.

    The removal of women from the pages of the Saudi edition, including a young girl who was pictured studying at her desk, has prompted a strong response from Swedes, who pride themselves on egalitarian policies and a narrow gender gap.

    “You can’t remove or airbrush women out of reality. If Saudi Arabia does not allow women to be seen or heard, or to work, they are letting half their intellectual capital go to waste,” Ewa Bjoerling, the trade minister, said in a statement.

    Her sentiment was echoed by Swedish European Union minister Birgitta Ohlsson, who branded the incident “medieval” on social networking site Twitter.

    Well you know how it is. Furniture includes beds. You do the math.

  • Diplomacy and respect

    Kelly Damerow answers questions after her talk. The first question you hear is from Rebecca; the last two or three are from EllenBeth.

    I don’t want to beat up on her personally. It’s an exposed position, standing there with the camera trained on you. The problem is with some of the organization’s decisions.

    But having said that, her reply to Rebecca is strange. It’s that the SCA puts an emphasis on diplomacy and respect. Right; so why Justin Vacula? Is it diplomacy and respect to tweet

    So, Jen’s allegedly finished blogging…and this time it’s not her boyfriend who kicked her off the internet.

    when Jen McCreight reports that the constant harassment has triggered her longstanding depression?

    You tell me.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQL8ndi7ONY

  • Combating Exorcism-related Abuses

    Four family members in the UK have been jailed for life for murdering a pregnant woman, Naila Mumtaz, 21. They believed she was possessed by a Djinn or evil spirit. Muhammed Mumtaz, 25, husband, was sentenced by a British court along with his parents, Zia Ul-Haq and Salma, both 51, and brother-in-law Hammad Hassan. Mrs Mumtaz’s in-laws thought she was possessed by a Djinn and killed her in the course of driving out the harmful spirit. The ‘Djinn spirit’was believed to have been sent from Pakistan. This ruling should serve as a wake-up call to authorities across the world to ‘evil spirit’-related abuses in our communities. The belief in demonic forces -the devil and Satan – is very strong and often drives people to commit atrocities.
    These abuses are widespread in religious and spiritual families but nothing is being done to address them due to entrenched religious privilege. A very dangerous layer of the belief in evil spirits is the notion that human beings can be possessed by these demonic spirits. It is not clear how this possession takes place or can be confirmed.
    Generally evil spirit possession is associated with certain traits, particularly strange and abnormal behaviors. Believing folks associate spirit possession with psychological or psychiatric maladies. These associations are often rooted in or reinforced by sacred texts or religious indoctrination. Some self-styled god men and women have gone to the extent of stating specific behavioural patterns associated with evil spirit possession.
    For instance, one of Nigeria’s self-acclaimed witch exorcists, Helen Ukpabio, wrote in one of her books, Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft, that “If a child under the age of two screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.” Such thoughtless pronouncements often cause believers to demonize and stigmatize persons who exhibit such traits. But the belief in evil spirits does not end with mere demonization of individuals. It is linked with the practice of exorcism. To exorcize means to force an evil spirit to leave a person through prayer or magic. Exorcism is informed by the mistaken idea that demons can be driven out of the possessed.  Exorcism is taken to be a form of healing – spiritual healing, a process of expelling the evil spirits from the bodies of possessed persons. The process of exorcism ranges from prayers uttered or recited to expel the demons, to psychological and physical torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of the ‘possessed’. In the name of exorcism, those believed to be possessed by evil spirits are chained, beaten, starved and forced to take health-damaging concoctions. Due to the fact that exorcism is taken to be a form of ‘treatment’ or ‘healing’, these abuses are largely ignored and perpetrators are not brought to justice.
    I hope the case of Mrs Mumtaz will help draw the attention of authorities to evil spirit-related abuses taking place in our families and communities. This has become necessary because those often targeted by exorcists are vulnerable members of the population – women, children and persons living with disabilities. There is need to monitor what goes on in ‘faith clinics’, spiritual homes and at deliverance sessions. These are spaces where serious violations are sanctioned and sanctified.
    But we must note that faith related abuses cannot be  addressed by legislation alone. These abuses are often a result of intense  brainwashing and indoctrination at homes, schools and worship centers, so there is an urgent need for public enlightenment and reorientation. We need to educate the  public to understand that belief in evil spirits is superstition. The belief is informed by fear and ignorance, and lacks a basis in reason, science and  common sense. Evil spirits do not exist except in the minds of believers. They  are creations of human imagination. Evil spirits are fantasies, not facts.  There is no evidence at all that any human being can be possessed by a spirit, good or evil. Spirit possession is a mistaken assumption invented at the infancy of  the human race, and then codified and handed down in the form of tradition, dogma and religion. Torturing people believed to be possessed by evil spirits is immoral and criminal. Members of the public must be made aware that the so-called exorcists who claim to have powers of delivering persons possessed by evil spirits are charlatans – and criminals – mining and exploiting popular fears, ignorance, anxieties and gullibility.

  • Couldn’t the UN just put a stop to it?

    Katha Pollitt on blasphemy. She starts with a public radio chat in which John Hockenberry said to BBC chief Jeremy Bowen:

    Hockenberry: I’m wondering if it’s possible for the United Nations to create an initiative that would talk about some sort of global convention on blasphemy, that would create a cooperative enterprise to control these kinds of incidents, not to interfere into anybody’s free speech rights but to basically recognize that there is a global interest in keeping people from going off the rails over a perceived sense of slight by enforcing a convention of human rights, only in this particular case it would be anti-blasphemy?

    So he wants a global convention to enforce an anti-blasphemy convention of human rights…not (of course) to interfere into anybody’s free speech rights, but to –

    Well how would you enforce an anti-blasphemy convention without interfering with free speech rights?

    So the only thing preventing some sort of international convention against “blasphemy” is that people can’t agree about what it is? Perhaps the UN could ask Vladimir Putin, who was eager to send three members of Pussy Riot to prison for appearing at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior to perform an anti-Putin “punk prayer” to the Virgin Mary. Their crime: “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The rise of the Russian Orthodox church in the former Soviet Union, and its connections to a corrupt authoritarian regime, shows that Islam has no monopoly on religious freakouts or their exploitation for political purposes.

    Quite. We also know that the only reason the Vatican doesn’t do the same thing is because it can’t. When it could, it did. It didn’t stop because it got nicer; it stopped because that wouldn’t fly any more.

    Sorry, John and Jeremy, there is just no way to “control these kinds of incidents” without suppressing free speech, because the very concept of “blasphemy” entails powerful clerics deciding what a religion “really” says, and what questions about that are legitimate. And why shouldn’t religion be fair game for rude remarks, mockery and humor, to say nothing of bold challenges and open expressions of disbelief? Ethnic attacks like Geller’s ad are disgusting—calling Muslims savages is like calling Jews subhuman—but I’d say on the whole “blasphemy” has been a force for good in human history. It is part of the process by which millions of people have come to reject theocracy and think for themselves.

    When it comes to ideas—and religions are, among other things, ideas—there is no right not to be offended.

    Happy blasphemy day.

  • A less cheerful observation of Blasphemy Day

    In which protesters in Bangladesh torch at least four Buddhist temples and fifteen Buddhist dwellings, “after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam, police and residents said.”

    What did he say? Islam wears army boots? Islam has bad breath? Islam repeated the second grade four times?

    Muslims took to the streets in the area late on Saturday to protest against what they said was a photograph posted on Facebook that insulted Islam.

    The protesters said the picture had been posted by a Buddhist and they marched to Buddhist villages and set fire to temples and houses.

    Very sensible. One Buddhist allegedly did something (something trivial), and protesters set fire to temples and houses. Not the one Buddhist’s temples and houses, just…some temples and houses. Buddhist ones.

    Sohel Sarwar Kajal, the Muslim head of the council in the area where the arson took place, said he was trying to restore communal peace.

    “We are doing everything possible to quell tension and restore peace between the communities,” he told reporters.

    Good luck. Seriously.

  • Katha Pollitt notes that blasphemy is good for you

    The rise of the Russian Orthodox church in the former Soviet Union shows that Islam has no monopoly on religious freakouts or their exploitation for political purposes.

  • Protesters torch Buddhist temples over FB photo

    Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam.

  • More blasphemy

    From The Rational Fool, reposted with permission.

    Reasoning with Ramayana – Canto I

    Ever since my granddaughter was born, I have been dreading the day when I will have to start fulfilling my paramount duty as a grandfather. Yes, I am talking about bedtime stories. Right now, she’ll go to sleep on my shoulder happily, when I sing to her something like “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” in my preferred singing style — out of tune. I know that the day is not too far, though, when she’ll pop the question, “Grandpa, will you tell me a story, please?”. It’s not that I don’t have too many stories to tell, but like grandpa, like granddaughter, you know. What if she asked troubling questions? Here’s how I think it will go with the first part of Ramayana, a story from the subcontinent.

     

    Putrakameshti Yajna by King Dashratha

    Once upon a time, long, long, ago, there was a king called Dasaratha, who ruled the kingdom of Ayodhya. He had three wives, Kausalya, Sumitra …

    But, grandpa, daddy has only one. Why?

    Well, my dear, for one thing, your mommy is going to get very, very angry, if he had three. Besides, Dasaratha was a king, and your daddy is not, okay. Now, let’s get back to Dasaratha and his three wives, Kausalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi.

    Just a minute, grandpa, did queens have many husbands, too? Back then?

    Absolutely not, queens could have only one husband…

    But, that’s not fair, grandpa, I don’t like this story!

    Bear with me, kiddo. I promise you it’ll get better. Now, the king and his three wives didn’t have a baby for a long time.

    My friend, Tony, said that his uncle and aunt couldn’t have a baby, too. So, they went to see this doctor, you know, psychologist or something …

    Gynecologist.

    Yeah, that’s it … and he gave them twins. Did Dasaratha and his wives go to a doctor?

    You are getting ahead of me and the story, Amy. No, there were no doctors then, and so they went to a priest…

    Priest? Like the Pope? Can the Pope give them twins, too?

    May be, may be not, but this priest asked them to offer a prayer to the gods …

    But, grandpa, you always say there’s no god…

    Yes, Amy, there isn’t, but in those days they thought there was one… er… many gods. It’s just a story, Amy, so don’t ask too many questions, okay. Otherwise, I’ll stop here …

    No, please don’t, grandpa. I promise I won’t ask too many questions, only a few. Is that okay?

    Okay. With his wives beside him, King Dasaratha offered a special prayer to the gods, so he’d have sons.

    Sons? Why not daughters? Didn’t he like girl babies? [pouting] Did you and daddy want a boy, too, grandpa?

    Oh, no, honey, we were very, very happy when you and mommy were born. We love you soooooo… much, pumpkin. We won’t trade you for a million sons!

    Then, why didn’t this king ask for… hm… three wives and he didn’t ask for even one daughter! Why, grandpa?

    Because, he was a dumb fool, Amy, that’s why.

    And, he was a king?

    Yup. As Dasaratha prayed … er… how do I describe this … there was this genie that emerged from the fireplace…

    A genie? like the genie in Aladdin?

    Yes, like the genie in Aladdin.

    From the fireplace? Like Santa Claus? Grandpa, why does Santa Claus always come through the chimney and fireplace? Why doesn’t he use the front door like everyone else?

    That, too, is just a story, Amy. There is no Santa Claus, like there are no genies or gods, but that story is for another night. So, moving on, this genie gave Dasaratha a cup of pudding for his wives to eat. He promised him that they’d have babies, if they did.

    Pudding? Like the one that grandma makes? I love pudding. Will I also have a baby if I eat pudding, grandpa? I am sort of getting bored with these dolls now!

    Sorry, sweetheart, you won’t. As I have told you several times already, this is just another story like Aladdin and his Magic Lamp.

    Oh! It was a magic pudding…

    Yes, now, let’s get on with the story. Dasaratha’s wives shared the pudding, and lo and behold, in nine months Kausalya and Kaikeyi each had a baby, and Sumitra, twins.

    Wow, four babies! All at once? The gods in these stories must be better than Tony’s psychologist. Do they also make a lot of money like him? Tony says his psychologist does.

    Gynecologist. And, they named them Rama, Bharatha, Lakshmana, and Shatruguna …

    Zzzzz…

    I kissed her goodnight, and heaved a sigh of relief. Oughf, that wasn’t so bad, was it?

     

  • Happy blasphemy day – Toonophobia

    From the Syrian Atheists.

    H/t Stewart.

  • Why?

    EllenBeth Wachs and Rebecca Watson were at the Humanists of Florida Association conference this weekend, and so was Kelly Damerow of the Secular Coalition for America. They both separately chatted with her face to face about the appointment of Justin Vacula as co-director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the SCA. They also asked questions during the q&a after her talk.

    Rebecca told Damerow that Vacula had written for the site that called Rebecca a stupid whore and that he had harassed Amy Davis Roth. Damerow was obviously upset by this, but she gave no ground.

    During the q&a Rebecca described Vacula’s activities for the audience, and she reports that there was an audible gasp and then things got very quiet. EllenBeth asked about the percentage of women in leadership positions on their state boards, and Damerow floundered as she admitted only one leader was a woman.

    Do a thought experiment here. Imagine that this is not about women. Imagine that it’s about race. Imagine that Vacula had posted on a notoriously racist site. Then imagine the SCA appointing him co-director of a state chapter.

    It seems incredibly unlikely, don’t you think?

    Well what we keep wondering is – why is sexism so fucking much more acceptable than racism?

     

  • More blasphemy for blasphemy day

    To adapt a line of Kingsley Amis’s, God is a soppy fool with a fase like a pigs bum.

  • Happy international blasphemy day

    Have a little fuck the muthafucka courtesy of Tim Minchin.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHRDfut2Vx0

     

  • The long arm of the law

    Florida’s a scary place. If you ever have the bad luck to be taken hostage there by a guy armed with a gun and a knife, you might find yourself being prosecuted if you survive.

    A Florida woman is being accused of not defending her two children as their father stabbed them in the midst of a SWAT team standoff at an RV park.

    On Monday, Deanna DeJesus pleaded not guilty to aggravated manslaughter and child neglect in the attack that left her 9-year-old son dead, NBC Miami reports. The 7-year-old, along with the defendant herself, were both severely wounded.

    Her husband flipped out, see. He forced the woman and their two kids into the car and drove them all to an RV park, where he shot to death the owner of an RV and settled down in the RV for an afternoon of terrorization.

    William Dejesus stabbed every member of his family before killing himself with the knife. His 9-year-old son, who had autism, died from the attack.

    Now, Deanna DeJesus is facing up to 45 years in prison for not protecting the boys.

    Prosecutors claim that the woman calmly held a child in each arm while her husband asked her which he should kill first. All the mother was able to say in court was that she couldn’t make such a choice, according to the Sun Sentinel.

    Her 7-year-old son told investigators that because his mother wasn’t doing anything, he had grabbed a knife in an attempt to save his brother. However, his father regained control of the knife and stabbed him several times.

    Deanna DeJesus said that she did not fight her husband because she knew she would be hurt if she did, according to WIOD.  Additionally, her attorney noted that after DeJesus’ husband stabbed her in the lung, she was physically unable to defend her children.

    Prosecute that lazy bitch!

  • Woman prosecuted for “letting” her children’s father stab them

    The father stabbed every member of his family before killing himself with the knife.

  • Devastating, passionate and ferocious

    In re-reading Maryam’s talk and the comments on it I saw a link to a post by someone who attended the NSS Conference.

    Nick was good, he says.

    Nick was a fantastically eloquent and inspiring speaker – talking about self-censorship and imploring us to always be free to criticise “divinely inspired bigotry and facism”. His passion for free speech and how we should never be deterred from our right to it even in the face of threats of violence was fabulous, and evocative of Hitch in his refusal to back down to fascist terror threats in his robust rebuttals to religious lunatics. There is no greater compliment I can grant him than that.

    But then there was Maryam…

    Maryam’s talk was the highlight for me, Io, Narwahl and Chris as she delivered a devastating, passionate and ferocious salvo against islamo-fascism and the horrors of sharia law. I can’t do justice to how amazing she was, her presentation was a tour-de-force, and it was truly compelling and educational. I urge you all to read the talk in full right here. Go do it. Now. And only come back here when you are done.

    You know, it was exactly the same at QED. She brought the fuckin house down. Everybody said she was the highlight.

    He quoted a bit of what she said about sharia in Britain.

    Shocking isn’t it? Maryam also urged everyone to stand up to this and to denounce anyone that would dare to call you a racist for questioning and criticizing islamists and sharia law.

    I’m doing my level best.

    There was an amusing bit about Dawkins’s talk.

    Suffice to say it was about 40 minutes of trolling Christianity and it’s most peculiar sub-division, Mormonism. His presentation was typically sharp and witty, with his laying in to Mitt Romney a particular highlight.

    Ah, I’d noticed he’d been tweeting about Mormonism and Romney a lot. Homework!

    So anyway. Secularism, people. It’s not racism. Really, it’s not.