Taslima is wasting no time. “What should women do?” she asks. “They should take off their burqas and burn them.”
That’s telling them!
So is her opening observation.
My mother used to wear a burqa with a net over her face. It reminded me of the meat safes in my grandmother’s house. Meat safe’s net was made of metal, my mother’s net was made of linen. But the objective was the same: keeping the meat safe.
Thwack.
The girl was sold to an agency by her uncle. She was paid nothing; the couple barely fed her and beat her if her work did not meet expectations.
Interesting post of PZ’s on being “good without god” and whether that’s a goal or slogan worth having.
The implication of “good” is thorough conformity. Has challenging an authority figure ever fit the definition of being good? When abolitionists broke the law by smuggling slaves into Canada, when suffragettes picketed to demand the vote, when Stonewall erupted and Martin Luther King marched, when students protested the war in Viet Nam, were they being “good” in the general public’s understanding of the term? I don’t think so. They were being very, very naughty. Which was good. See what I mean? It’s an empty word that offers nothing but vague reassurances.
Yes I guess so. I admit I have been thinking all along that what “good” meant in that context was: not selfish, not ruthless, not brutal or predatory or greedy. I’ve been thinking it meant altruistic and generous as opposed to their opposites.
Now that PZ mentions it I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking that. It’s not self-evident, certainly. I suppose I’ve been assuming that what Christians in general mean by “good” is generous and altruistic…but is it? Am I just assuming that because I’m infected with the same anachronistic illusions that Karen Armstrong is? Am I assuming that because I’ve bought into modern goddy propaganda that religion simply equals compassion and related other-regarding virtues?
Well, but if there is modern goddy propaganda that religion simply equals compassion etc then Christians will have bought into it too, so I could still be right that that’s what they mean by the word.
I think they do, really – that’s my guess. For Quiverfull types and all the other flavors of lunatic it probably does mean obedience; it does for Mormons; but for more average Christians I think it means some variation on Charity, as in 1 Corinthians 13 type charity.
And that’s part of the appeal, for some, perhaps for many. That’s not really conformist. It’s not friendly to capitalism, for one thing. It doesn’t look with complacency on all social arrangements, because so many of them have not a damn thing to do with Charity or altruism or generosity.
One of the few persuasive things I’ve ever heard Karen Armstrong say – I think she’s the one who said it – was that real generosity is irrational, and that’s why religion is good at it. I think there’s something to that.
The two are not unconnected though. Challenging authority figures can partake of the same kind of irrational generosity. And then when you go that way you do find yourself flatly denying other people’s ideas of what is “good.” The pope and his friends for instance think the way to be extra special good and different from the selfish secular world is to be insanely concerned about human fetuses at the expense of adult female human beings. That’s the urge to be irrationally caring and generous run completely amok.
Update: Maryam reports that it’s not reliable.
there have been some reports that 23 year old Hamza Kashgariwho faces execution in Saudi Arabia for his Tweets about Mohammad is now out of danger and is to be released imminently or that he is only being held ‘for his own safety’. But these reports are not true.
I just got two messages from a family member and a friend. One message said:
That’s not true, nothing has been confirmed so far, everything still foggy and in a gray area. We hear from him from one time to time informing us that he’s ok and that’s it.
So everything below is wrong or at least unconfirmed.
Via the Free Hamza Kashgari Facebook page. I can’t be sure how reliable it is, but for what it’s worth (and given the non-existence of any other sources): one of the admins of the page reported yesterday, just about 24 hours ago, that he had news via people close to Kashgari.
The sharia court accepted his explanation and his life is no longer in any danger. But they can not release him at the current time due to the great danger he is facing from the general public. His mother is allowed to visit him and under the circumstances Hamza is doing well. It is impossible at this time to predict how long they have to keep him there – he is now locked up for his own safety, not because he said what he said.
This is from a source close to Hamza and his family.
Good that his life is not in danger from the authorities, but horrendous that his life is in danger from maniacs in his country and that he has to stay in prison to be safe from them. Horrendous and infuriating that the Saudis didn’t just let him leave the country, but had to drag him back so that he would be in danger from maniacs.
The wonderfulness of Sharia councils.
After fleeing a forced marriage characterised by rape and physical violence, Nasrin applied for an Islamic divorce from a Sharia council; that was almost 10 years ago now. Despite countless emails, letters and telephone calls to the Sharia council as well as joint mediation and reconciliation meetings, the Sharia council refuse to provide Nasrin with an Islamic divorce. Why? Because of Nasrin’s sex. An Imam at the Sharia council told Nasrin that her gender prevents her from unilaterally divorcing her husband, instead the Imam told her to return to her husband, perform her wifely duties and maintain the abusive marriage that she was forced into.
Charlotte Rachael Proudman has represented Muslim women pro bono at Sharia law councils in theUKto obtain Islamic divorces, so she knows how shitty they are for women.
I am all too aware of the gender discriminatory experience many Muslim women suffer at some Sharia councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (‘Sharia law bodies’). Unfortunately their experiences have not been highlighted by the media. Instead some Sharia law bodies have been misrepresented by the media as being transparent, voluntary and operating in accordance with human rights and equality legislation. This is not the case.
As we know, via Maryam and others. Lots of people don’t know, though.
the cost of an Islamic divorce is £400 for a woman compared to £200 for a man at the Islamic Sharia Council inEast London; this is an example of blatant gender discrimination which is incompatible with the Equality Act 2010.
With over 85 Sharia law bodies operating in theUK, the majority of which charge vulnerable and impoverished Muslim women astronomical fees, Sharia law bodies have become successful and lucrative businesses…
Diana Nammi, founder of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation[,] explained that “Sharia law bodies are money-spinning businesses because they afford men more rights than women unlikeUKlaw which is underpinned by a fundamental principle of ‘equality for all’. In most cases women do not receive any practical advice or assistance to help them exit abusive marriages, and instead face further discrimination perpetrated by Sharia ‘judges’”.
And the arrangement is punitive, not to say downright spiteful.
By protracting the time it takes for women to obtain Islamic divorces, Sharia law bodies are punishing women for their failure to maintain miserable marriages, and in Nasrin’s case an abusive forced marriage which was flawed from its incept[ion]. Rather than freeing Muslim women from the shackles of unhappy marriages they are kept in limbo and are expected to mourn their destructive marriages and to reflect on their failures as wives and mothers. Worryingly some Sharia law bodies are growing cynical business enterprises, which use their position of power to maintain unequal gender relations while profiteering on the misery of Muslim women.
Anne-Marie Waters, Spokesperson for One Law for All[,] commented – “the very process employed by Sharia law bodies is gender discriminatory, flawed and incompatible withUKlegislation”. For instance, unlike male divorce applicants, women are requested to bring along two Muslim, male witnesses to corroborate their testimony. I have yet to represent a Muslim woman who is able to comply with this gender discriminatory requirement…
Gender discriminatory and insane – as if marital abuse (or any other abuse) reliably happens in front of witnesses!
I hope a lot of people have read this article.
Speaking of Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll…That article in the Stranger is interesting.
To become a “member” at Mars Hill Church requires more than attending church. Becoming a full-fledged member—a process highly encouraged, and sometimes thunderously demanded, in Pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermons—requires months of classes and a careful study of Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, Driscoll’s 463-page Mars Hill textbook. To seal the deal, the prospective member must formally agree to submit to the “authority” of the Mars Hill leadership.
Driscoll, the church’s cofounder and public face, has made a name for himself with his strutting, macho interpretation of Christianity, one in which men are unquestioned heads of their households and “chick-ified church boys,” as he calls them, need not apply. He rails against mainstream Christians who imagine a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ… a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy.” Instead, he has molded a doctrine based on manliness, sexual purity, and submission to authority: wives to husbands, husbands to pastors, and everyone to God.
Patriarchal, in short. Like Quiverfull religion; like Mormonism and the FLDS; like Catholicism; like Islam; like all the monotheisms except the most liberal branches.
One guy, given the pseudonym “Lance” in the article, was an enthusiastic Mars Hill member until he disagreed with a pastor about a building safety issue
and the disagreement metastasized into a weeks-long debate—not about the safety issue, per se, but about whether Lance was being “insubordinate” and refusing to properly “submit.”
“I began to question their authority,” Lance says, “and their ability to make good decisions.”
In the midst of this, Lance had begun a long-distance relationship with a young woman in Colorado. Lance says that his pastor instructed him to end the relationship, even though their relationship was not yet physical and nothing improper had happened. Lance balked, but his pastor insisted: “I’m the authority over you,” the pastor said, according to Lance. “You agreed when you became a member that I am your authority, and you have to obey us.” Lance was torn—on one hand, he had signed that membership contract.
On the other hand, this was ridiculous.
In a final, tense meeting, Lance got fed up with the leadership’s harping about submission and authority. “How is this not a Jim Jones theology?” Lance remembers asking.
So he was thrown out – and then they started hounding him. Other people have had similar experiences. The phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” turns up and is clearly not altogether metaphoric.
At a service in January –
After the band played two indie-rock hymns, Pastor Driscoll appeared on a live video feed from his Ballard church. His “Men and Marriage” sermon was relatively tame: A husband should be the firm and responsible head of his household, the leader of a “little flock called home and family.” He should think of his wife as “a garden” and himself as “the gardener.” If you look at your garden and don’t like how it looks, Driscoll preaches, just remember: “You are the gardener.”
Tame? That’s tame? Saying a woman is a fucking garden and the man she’s married to is the gardener? That’s not tame! The reporter’s a guy, so maybe he didn’t think about it hard enough. That’s NOT tame. One, it makes the woman a thing and the man a person; two, it makes the woman a thing that has to be dug and otherwise battered and the man the person who does the digging and other battering; three, it makes the woman’s appearance something that it is the man’s job to alter to suit his liking; four, it’s basically permission for a man to use force and violence on “his” wife along with refusal of permission for the woman to refuse or resist. It’s not the least bit tame. It’s disgusting.
The thing his sermon didn’t address—the thing I came hoping to hear about—was when submission to human authority goes too far.
Well yes it did; the garden claim is decidedly a matter of when submission to human authority goes too far.
Meanwhile – why does the Washington Post include Mark Driscoll on its On Faith blog? I wonder if the Washington Post would include a cleric who talked about black people as gardens and white people as the gardeners. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t. Why is stark overt male dominationism more socially acceptable than stark racism? I would love to know.
Mark Driscoll, of Seattle’s Mars Hill church fame, has an Easter post on the Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog. (Are we faithy enough yet?)
It’s beautiful.
…for most people in our culture, Easter is more synonymous with fluffy bunnies, brightly painted eggs, kids hopped up on chocolate and a great meal with family and friends.
And while many Christians happily and freely celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter today, they don’t know exactly how to approach the whole Easter Bunny thing. So, I thought I’d take a moment to share how we do at the Driscoll house.
Just like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is a hallmark of American culture. So, unless you live in a commune, you can’t pretend it doesn’t exist and that it’s not a significant part of our cultural observance of the holiday.
My wife, Grace, and I choose to tell our five kids that the Easter Bunny, while fun, isn’t a real, magical bunny that hops from house to house laying colored eggs, candies, and toys on Easter morning. That’s a make-believe story, and we have no objections to fun and imagination so long as the kids also know that the Resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact and not a fanciful myth.
Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Don’t you love it when they do that?
The Easter bunny is a story, but the Resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact.
And Mark Driscoll knows that…how?
Catholic clerics and superclerics don’t seem to know when they have it good, do they. They seem to think Christianity is “marginalized” when something under 100% of the population dances to their tune.
Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic Church cleric has called for Christians to wear a cross every day.
In his Easter Sunday sermon, Cardinal Keith O’Brien will tell worshippers to “wear proudly a symbol of the cross of Christ” each day of their lives.
The leader of the Church in Scotland, he will voice concern at the growing “marginalisation” of religion.
What marginalization? What growing marginalization?
Look at all the ink he gets. Look at all the ink he gets in this very story in which he bleats about marginalization. Look at the way the powerful flopped down on the floor and groveled when the pope came for a visit. Look at the job he has. Look at the House of Lords. Look at the BBC, look at Andrew Brown. How is religion marginalized in the UK?
I heard a horrible discussion of this cross-wearing wheeze on the BBC a couple of hours ago with a woman from the Christian Legal Centre and a man from some other Christian Pestering Group. Nobody else, mind you, apart from the reporter, so there wasn’t a whole lot of conflict, in fact there wasn’t any. There was just a lot of chat about what a great thing it is to wear a cross and how wonderful Jesus is.
That’s what it is to be marginalized. I wish the BBC would marginalize Maryam Namazie and Taslima Nasreen that way!
Says look, the pope was just here and he said religion is a good thing not a bad thing, so it must be true. Wear a cross every day.
According to the council, residents living near the church have been complaining about the noise levels for four years.
Justin Griffith has a very important post on why it matters (a lot) that atheists in the military should come out of the closet. (Yes, Brendan O’Neill, the closet.)
This is why:
Here is the debate-ending argument against NO-REL-PREF:
For all of those who still don’t see why this is a big deal:
- Silence reinforces the culture of shame and fear.
- We are banned from meeting on posts.
- We are forced to take spiritual fitness tests (and mandatory remedial training).
- Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on converting you and your families to Christianity.
- Many chaplain-endorsing agencies have an official proselytizing policy: “We reserve the right to evangelize the un-churched.”
This list is not even close to exhausting the problems our community faces, yet it represents active discrimination on a massive scale. If nobody calls them on it, the situation festers. You can help at the local level. Stop turning the other cheek. We love the military. It’s our responsibility to make it better. It’s our duty to report violations of law and ethics. Identifying as an atheist and standing up for your rights simply makes the military a better military.
Justin says please spread it around. I say the same.
The Vatican at its loveliest – shutting up a priest because he has reasonable, valuable criticisms of the Vatican itself.
Fascists.
Father Tony Flannery, a Catholic priest who has been outspoken in his criticism of the abuse crisis in Ireland, has found himself under investigation by the Vatican for his liberal views.
Founder of the Association of Irish Priests, Father Flannery told TheJournal.ie that the Vatican has contacted him to inform him of the investigation.
The effect of the investigation was immediate. This week The Irish Catholic newspaper reports that Father Flannery had to cease writing his monthly column in the Redemptorist Reality magazine in response to news of the investigation.
It’s helpful of them, in a way, to be so clear about it – “liberal views” are a matter for investigation, and meanwhile, stfu.
The Irish Catholic writer Michael Kelly reported that, “It is understood that while Fr Flannery has the support of his superiors in the Redemptorist Order, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome has expressed disquiet about some of his articles and publications.
“It is believed that the views which have come under most scrutiny are Fr Flannery’s opposition to the Church’s ban on artificial birth control and his support for the ordination of women.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of Male Authority, is what it should be called.
The crackdown comes on the heels of the Vatican ordered Apostolic Visitation, which found evidence of what it called a ‘certain tendency’ for Irish priests to hold opinions that conflict with those of the orthodox Magisterium, the Catholic Church’s teaching authority.
In a sign of hardening attitudes, the Visitation participants underlined that any dissent from the formal teachings of the Church were ‘not the authentic path towards renewal.’
Under the current circumstances, Father Flannery has been effectively silenced, with no indication of how long it will last.
On Holy Thursday Pope Benedict issued a very direct statement which slammed those priests who refuse to conform to church teachings.
Fascists.
At last at last I can say it in public – I’ve been dropping hints for weeks, and I’ve told people off the record, but now I can say it out in the open –
Taslima Nasreen has joined Freethought Blogs.
Here’s a brief bio –
Taslima Nasreen, an award-wining writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list. Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing from the age of 13. Her writings also won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992 and 2000. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France. She became Humanist Laureate from International Academy for Humanism,USA, She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., Erwin Fischer Award from IBKA,Germany, Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar of Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009. Taslima has written 35 books, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in twenty Indian and European languages.Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideals she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been living in exile for more than 17 years.
The excitement around here is Big.
“When I am referred to as the ‘Female Rushdie’, these days I ask back, why aren’t you calling Salman Rushdie the ‘Male Nasreen’ instead?”
Justin Griffith explains why this is a big, big deal.
Hayley Stevens is one of the bloggers at The Heresy Club. I met her at QED – well sort of met; we were across the table from each other at the farewell dinner, though we never actually had the “Hi I’m __” moment. I saw her at QED, then, but I didn’t realize she’s the person who made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority about ‘Healing on the Streets of Bath’ who were claiming to heal illnesses with prayer. I’m impressed! Young People Today eh…When I was Young People Today I wasn’t doing anything as productive as that.
She’s now being called a meany atheist because the ASA ruled against HOTS (and because three MPs are making an issue of it), but she points out that her atheism had nothing to do with the complaint.
…it wasn’t the religion of the HOTS members that was the cause of the complaint – just as it wasn’t me being an atheist that made make the complaint. It was the spurious health claims they were making that led to the complaint being made – just like the time I made a complaint about a ‘psychic surgeon’ who claimed to heal cancer and a whole list of other illnesses, the homeopath who was promoting her services with misleading claims on her website, or the people selling necklaces they claimed would boost your immune system.
I made those complaints – just as with the HOTS one – because the health related claims being made were misleading and potentially harmful, just as any non-evidence based claim is when it comes to the care for those with serious illnesses. It wasn’t because the homeopath, psychic, or the necklace seller was a certain religion, it wasn’t because the HOTS people were Christians, it was because in my opinion the claims being advertised were not evidence based.
Ah but you see it’s only atheists who think claims should be evidence based. Riiight.
Skeptics don’t worry about spurious health claims because they’re big meanies.
Do today’s freethinkers even stand a chance in correcting the courses of their regressing nations?
Father Tony Flannery, a Catholic priest who has been outspoken in his criticism of the abuse crisis in Ireland, has found himself under investigation by the Vatican for his liberal views.
A cheery news item from Tunisia:
A Tunisian court has sentenced two young men to seven years in prison for publishing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, the justice ministry said Thursday.
“They were sentenced, one of them in absentia, to seven years in prison, for transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order,” ministry spokesman Chokri Nefti said, adding that the sentence was handed down late last month.
Defamation…of someone who lived 14 centuries ago.
On March 28, a primary court in the coastal city of Mahdia, sentenced the two men, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji, both in their late twenties. to seven years in prison and a fine of 1200 Tunisian Dinars (around USD $800) each over the use of social networks to publish content deemed blasphemous.
Mejri and Beji were put on trial following a complaint filed by a group of residents in Mahdia.
The League of Tunisian Humanists condemned the sentence and complained about the “unclear circumstances that surrounded the trial.”
Beji wrote a book called “the Illusion of Islam”, discussing his views about Islam and religion. Mejri, also wrote a book. “Dark Land”, where he “cursed the government, Islamists, and expressed his hatred towards Arabs.”
…
In an interview with Tunisia Live, Beji, who describes himself as an atheist, said: “After the Revolution, in March 2011, I said to myself Tunisia is a free and democratic country now and I should try to publish my book. I contacted several book publishers in Mahdia but they all refused to publish it. So I opted to upload it online.”
Not a free country then. Possibly democratic, but not free.
