Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Have you ever studied any world history?

    Salman Rushdie thinks it’s funny, Russell Banks thinks it’s funny; I think it’s funny too. (So that means I’m as cool as Salman Rushdie and Russell Banks, right? Sure.)

    Anyway. I thought this particular bit would speak to us today.

    And he asks, “Kelly, have you ever studied any world history?,” and I’m, like, “Excuse me, but I happen to be wearing an imported Italian cashmere sweater.”
    I’m totally stealing that.

  • Paul Rudnick: “I was Gandhi’s boyfriend”

    And I say, “If someone punched me, I would throw my drink at them. I mean, maybe you should try that with the British.”

  • UK bus ad campaign to tackle “Islamophobia”

    The Ahmadiyya Muslim Association is behind the campaign. Yes really.

  • Eman al-Obeidy was pressured to change her story

    She told Anderson Cooper she was placed before state television cameras with several guns pointing at her from just off camera.

  • Eman al-Obeidi speaks to the media

    She said that she was pressured to recant the rape claims on Libyan state television. She refused.

  • High school atheist club

    Or to put it another way, as the Times does, “teenagers speak up for lack of faith.”

  • What is this, High Noon?

    I was going to ignore it, but no one else is, so I’ll just say…I too dissent. I disagree with most of Bloody Fools.

    Especially items like

    As to Myers, despite the development of a blasphemy fan club and admiration for the cowardly use of free expression rights in the safe haven of Morris, Minnesota, the only serious “threat” came from Catholic League president Bill Donahue.

    The cowardly use of free expression rights? I can’t even begin to make sense of that. I must do the same thing myself every day, nearly every hour. I’m not likely to be murdered for saying what I think here in Seattle, so I’m cowardly for saying it?

    No; I don’t understand, and what I do understand I don’t like. I don’t like the theme of atheist-bashing.

    PZ comments.

    Jerry comments.

    Eric comments.

    All cowards are they? No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we have to be under a death threat to earn the right to say what we think without being called cowards.

  • “Protecting faith and freedom”

    Oh no you don’t.

    I’ve already said I think Rev Jones is a bad man. He’s no ally or comrade of mine. In his world I would be a lifelong domestic servant with no vote no voice no views no rights, so even without his dramatic performances, he would be no comrade of mine.

    But that’s my reasoned choice; it’s not the law of the land. “Interfaith Alliance” please note.

    Washington, DC – Interfaith alliance President Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy issues the following statement in response to the killings of UN Workers in Afghanistan.

    …this violence is a response, unacceptable as it may be, to the burning of a Qur’an in Florida last month by a local pastor. The disrespect he has shown for the Muslim faith has now reflected on the rest of us and has led to the worst possible outcome.

    We as a nation must do more to make clear that bigoted rhetoric and action against the Muslim faith will not be tolerated and does not represent what is in the hearts and minds of the majority of Americans.

    Oh no we must not. We must do no such thing. What Gaddy chooses to call “bigoted rhetoric” against Islam is protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution, and even “interfaith alliances” don’t get to suppress it. We are allowed to criticize Islam, even harshly, and no interfaith boffin gets to stop us.

  • Interfaith Alliance declares 1st Amendment null and void

    “We as a nation must do more to make clear that bigoted rhetoric and action against the Muslim faith will not be tolerated.”

  • PZ on shades of grey

    Don’t even try to pull out a scale and toss a copy of the Koran on one side and the life of a single human being on the other.

  • Assisted suicide for those not terminally ill

    Nan Maitland was 84 and had agonizing arthritis. Her life consisted of more pain than pleasure, and she was relieved to be able to choose to end it.

  • BBC wonders what to think about Grayling’s book

    So it asks Giles Fraser and Mark Vernon.

  • Decca Aitkenhead talks to Anthony Grayling

    “The charges of militancy and fundamentalism of course come from our opponents, the theists. When the boot was on their foot they burned us at the stake.”

  • Andrew Copson on Shelley and atheist aesthetics

    Atheists today are too often castigated as materialistic calculators whose lack of spirituality sucks their universe empty of all beauty.

  • Offending culture, religion, traditions=murder

    Staffan de Mistura is nuts. He’s barking.

    …the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama), Staffan de Mistura, said during a visit to Mazar-e Sharif that the only person who could be blamed for the violence was the American pastor.

    “I don’t think we should be blaming any Afghan. We should be blaming the person who produced the news – the one who burned the Koran. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offending culture, religion, traditions.”

    The only person who could be blamed. Not the people who did the actual killing, with guns; only the guy who made a point of pissing them off.

    Please.

  • The Tantamounts

    Isn’t there a literary character, or family, called Tantamount? Did I imagine that?

    I’m thinking it’s from someone like Aldous Huxley or Evelyn Waugh. Anthony Powell? Mervyn Peake?

    It started when Paula Kirby said on Facebook yesterday that some BBC presenter had said something was of “tantamount importance.” Groans all around. But then I started getting this itch inside the head…Margot Tantamount? Charles Tantamount? Tantamount Hall?

    Google has been no help, so maybe I did imagine it. Anyone?

  • Does god hate women?

    These guys certainly think so.

    A student at an Islamic school in Bangladesh has been shot dead and at least 30 others injured during a demonstration against women’s rights.

    The protesters were marching through the south-western town of Jessore against moves by the government to ensure equal property rights for women…

    Under Bangladeshi law, a woman normally inherits half as much as her brother.

    Because god wants it that way, which we know, because god said so in this book we are holding aloft while screaming in rage.

  • Bangladesh: demonstration against women’s rights

    The protesters marched against moves by the government to ensure equal property rights for women.

  • More Koran rage in Afghanistan

    Hundreds of demonstrators marched to protest not the murder of uninvolved UN workers and compatriots but the burning of one copy of a book.

  • UN official blames Jones, and Jones alone

    “I don’t think we should be blaming any Afghan. We should be blaming the person who produced the news – the one who burned the Koran.”