Author: Ophelia Benson

  • The Most Potent Voice for Liberalism and Change

    Bhutto’s assassination a defining act of the politics of murder – a phenomenon that we see from Lebanon to Iraq to Pakistan.

  • Grand Opening of London Center for Inquiry

    Paul Kurtz, Joseph Hoffmann, Julian Baggini, Stephen Law, Nigel Warburton, Polly Toynbee, Ibn Warraq, etc.

  • McGinn Did Not Like Honderich’s Book

    But was his tone wrong? Philosophers and others discuss.

  • Where Did the Laws of Nature Come From?

    Cosmology meets philosophy.

  • Anthony Gottlieb Reviews Antony Flew

    Or rather a book purporting to be by Flew.

  • Bad, bad, very bad

    So…I was driving around in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, I had dropped Jeremy and Cheryl at the SF airport and then gone on into the city to have fun looking around for a couple of hours until it was time for me to go back to the airport. I turned the radio on and found some okay music and drove up 19th and through the park and through the Avenues a little and over to Arguello, and then the music changed so I looked for another station and hit a news one – and then I found myself repeatedly shouting a bad word as loudly as I could possibly shout it, and kind of thrashing back and forth in rage. It took me awhile to calm down, and all I calmed down into was despair and only slightly quieter rage. I was upset, and I went on being upset all afternoon.

    Because…well, perfect. Great. There’s a glimmer of hope that Pakistan might get to be able to have a secular democracy after all, and thus be an example to other majority Muslim countries; and one with a woman at the head of it besides, and thus even more of an example; well of course we can’t have that, so Bang. And I admired Bhutto, while being unsure how justified the corruption charges were or were not. And – you know how it is – I hate it when women who get some power, whether political or intellectual, are killed because they got some power. I hate it. It makes me feel threatened and furious. I hate being reminded that people can prevent each other from doing things any time they feel like it, just by finding a gun or a bomb, and that lots of people do feel like it. It’s the truth, it’s reality, and it stinks.

  • Pakistanis React

    ‘She was a liberal force, a hope for a Pakistan overrun by militancy. Now there is a great vacuum.’

  • Reactions to Bhutto Assassination

    People are upset.

  • Malaysia: Only Muslims Can Say ‘Allah’

    Christians not allowed to use the word.

  • ‘Repressed Memory’ as Cultural Phenomenon

    Romanticism created fertile soil for the idea that the mind could expunge a trauma from consciousness.

  • McGinn Reviews Honderich; Sparks Fly

    ‘This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad.’

  • Rights Here, Rights Now

    It’s no good waiting until after the revolution.

  • Human Rights Are Geographically Relative

    ‘What one western culture deems a gross violation is not so in another culture.’

  • Benazir, Daughter of destiny

    Thirty years ago I watched my mum cry when Zulfiqar Bhutto was executed, today I cried for the daughter of Pakistan’s destiny.

    Benazir Bhutto was a more than a beacon of light for mobilising Pakistanis against Islamism and instilling Pakistan’s democracy. She had the same fire, passion, commitment that her father had for his country, and for the tenets of democracy. In 1986 after years in jails and then exile, she left the safety of England to return to Pakistan and took on dictatorship, she bravely ignored death threats and achieved her ambitions to become Pakistan’s first woman Prime Minister.

    In her autobiography Daughter of Destiny in 1988, she was the first to identify the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan and the reversed
    rights and freedoms of Pakistani women under President Zia who engaged with Islamists in the 80s. She was a threat to Islamists and Jihadists who deploy an anti-democracy propaganda with violent terror, and yet she returned from exile again, knowing she faced death threats, only to be assassinated in a barbaric Jihadist’s attack. She was a threat to Islamists and Pakistan’s only glimmer of hope of restoring full democracy.
    She gave her life for Pakistan and was self determined in her quest to establish democracy again, as she once did on the first of December 1988.

    I hope she now becomes the inspiration that British Pakistani women aspire to, so that we too can fight the extremism
    in Britain that Jihadists have embedded into our communities; I hope that British Pakistani women stand up for the tenets of democracy that we live in. I hope that British Pakistani women take off the black headscarves and veils to adapt the true Pakistani style and dress that represents Pakistani culture as she did and oppose the cult Jihadism represents. I hope we can collectively oppose the ‘ideology’ that she alone as a woman opposed without fear. I hope we break our silence now to honour her memory and aspirations.

    Benazir is an inspiration and Icon for Pakistani men and women. Jihadism opposes democracies, opposes women
    leaders, reverses the equality and the freedom of muslim women. I hope British Pakistani women stand up with the same passion and bravery that Benazir demonstrated, against an extreme global ideology. Islam hasn’t just been hijacked, it has been blacklisted by Jihadists and Islamists…who aim to destroy democracies and people who want to live in a civilised world. I hope British Pakistani women in Britain take the first lead against the suicide human bombs created by Jihadists and their mentors.

    I hope for a lot, but more than anything I hope Benazir becomes our symbol of inspiration, never to be forgotten.

    Pakistan has lost a daughter, a sister, a mother, but she will remain forever in our hearts…as there won’t be a Pakistani woman
    of her calibre and class to inspire British Pakistani women or people again.

    27th December 2007 will be remembered as the saddest day in the history of Pakistan for generations to come.

    She will always be our hero.

    Gina Khan, Birmingham

  • Location

    Merry Xmas. (No war on Christmas here.)

    As may be obvious, I’m away for a few days. I’m on the Monterey peninsula doing my day job, and Jeremy and Cheryl are here for a visit. We went to Point Lobos yesterday, on a brilliant beautiful windy day, with pelicans flying back and forth in front of us. Jeremy took a few thousand photographs (he’s a professional you know) and he says he will post some here when he gets back. Normal broadcasting will resume on Friday.

  • Niger – Where Girlhood Ends on the Marriage Bed

    In many countries what happened to Hadjo would be called paedophilia and the male attacker would be imprisoned.

  • AC Grayling on Nick Clegg and Not-God

    Keep religion out of politics and out of the mouths of politicians.

  • Ali Eteraz on One-eyed Ideology

    Neocons seized the human rights narrative, but that doesn’t mean the left should abandon it.

  • Andrew Anthony on Wishful Thinking and Evasion

    Far-right hate speech bad, hate speech in a mosque – er – um –

  • Moses Tells Jesus and Mo About Otherness

    ‘We in the west have no privileged place from which to judge other cultures and traditions.’