Author: Ophelia Benson

From the London School of Economics Student Union Atheist, Secularist, Humanist Society on Wednesday, requesting a name change.

The significant change is supplementary: we would like to include “ex-Muslim” in our name, resulting in our new name: The LSESU Atheist, Secularist, Humanist and Ex-Muslim Society (LSESU ASHES). We are very excited about this, since we believe it to be a highly positive change that has the potential to improve the lives of some of our peers in some small way, as we will explain below.

The status of ex-Muslims in Islam is particularly precarious, and the historical and present-day Islamic response to people who become ex-Muslims is one that justifies our inclusion of the term in our name. We do not ask our members for their beliefs, but we estimate that approximately 20% of our members are ex-Muslim or from a Muslim background and we want to be inclusive and welcoming toward them.

People of a Muslim background face unique difficulties in abandoning their religion, both in predominantly Muslim countries and in Europe. A name that openly represents them will provide a visible support option: a society populated by like-minded people who have survived similar experiences, from whom they can draw support. We feel this is no different to, say, a society for students of a certain country, of which there are dozens. A German student may well find comfort or in the German Society by virtue of the fact that it will count many Germans among its ranks. A society with “ex-Muslims” in the name would attract former Muslims in much the same way.

While it is true that someone may leave Islam for another religion, and that such people may face many of the same difficulties as someone who turns away from organised religion altogether, most Muslims who turn away from Islam do not then join a different religion. Accordingly, we feel that combining outlooks such as atheism, humanism and secularism with ex-Muslim is complementary. Practically speaking, the number of members in an independent ex-Muslim society may prove too low for it to maintain a significant presence on campus. Further, there is a significant overlap of interests and concerns for atheists, humanists, secularists and ex-Muslims. In fact, our scepticism brings us all together into a loosely shared identity. This is underlined by the fact that the name change was approved after a discussion and free vote by our members.

Read the rest.

Yesterday the LSE Student Union told the Student Union Atheist, Secularist, Humanist Society that the name change would not be allowed.

The Activities Committee have decided not to grant the name change that you have requested.

We decided not to grant the name change because given the email that you sent us as why you would like to change the name, we feel that by adding ‘ex-Muslim’ to the society name it will no longer become a safe space for ex-Muslims; in the sense that it may be an indication as to where ex-Muslims can affiliate to. For this reason would you please consider replacing the ‘ex-Muslim’ part of the proposed name change to either ‘Atheist, Secularist, Humanist and ex-religious’ or ‘Atheist, Secularist, Humanist and ex-religion. This will be in order provide the safe space for all students who join your society and potentially increase your society membership.

Alex Gabriel comments at the Heresy Club. Hemant also has a post.

Ha! Soraya pointed this out to me, from the New Yorker: GOP split over whether to emphasize misogyny or racism.

NEW HAMPSHIRE (The Borowitz  Report)—With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, there is a deep  divide among Republican leaders over whether to emphasize misogyny or racism as  the campaign’s closing theme.

In one camp is the Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who says that  his view that God is sometimes O.K. with rape is “gaining real traction with a  key demographic: men who don’t like women very much.”

“I can’t tell you how many misogynists have come up to me at my rallies and  said, ‘Thank you for saying what you said,’ ” he told reporters today. “I  think they’re like, finally, someone’s taking a more nuanced position on  rape.”

Ahahahahahahaha – ain’t it the truth.

But in the other camp is the former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, who  worries that the Republican Party’s emphasis on misogyny is threatening to drown  out its “winning message of racism.”

“I understand the appeal of Mourdock’s anti-woman theme, but I worry that  it’s going to overshadow our core value of racism, which is still our best shot  at winning this thing,” he said. “In politics, you’ve got to dance with the one  who brung you.”

Don’t forget homophobia.

I found some very excellent misogyny on Twitter just now.

 That’s the drill, you know. That’s why we talk about the threats and harassment – they are an opportunity and we are exploiting them. For what? Money! Fame!! Blog hits!!!

No actually that’s not why. We talk about them because they’re there, and they’re continuing. We think they’re bad, and should stop. That’s a normal, understood, accepted reason to talk about bad things.

Boy, that Mourdock fella is a real prize. He’s got his career plans wrong though. He wants to be a bishop, not a legislator.

He had a chat with some newspaper people in southern Indiana Wednesday, and there he elaborated on his thoughts about god and rape.

The wide ranging interview covered all topics, but the highlight came when a reporter asked if he believed God intended women to be raped:

“Personally I think that the closer you are to God, the less likely you are to run into something like that,” Mourdock responded, “Some of these women – if they had been more faithful to the Lord, if they had just prayed a little harder – then they wouldn’t have found themselves in that situation.”

So………in other words, “God” allowed them to be raped because they hadn’t been “faithful” enough and hadn’t prayed hard enough. They were slutting around on God and neglecting to tell him how great he is.

“I’ve seen marriages break up and friendships drift apart because someone wasn’t right with the Lord. I think the same is true in any situation. With Jesus Christ on your side, only good things will come.”

He then went on to propose a unique anti-rape measure:

“And in the case of rape Christ has a specific remedy. Studies have shown that if you pray for at least 20 minutes before any big date, your partner is 93% less likely to rape you.

“Scientists say prayer can create a ‘rape halo’ around a woman’s body which instantly renders a potential rapist impotent. I’m not sure how it works exactly. I think its pheromones.

“So I don’t think God wants a woman to get raped. He offers her a choice. The rape halo is only a prayer away. If she’s too lazy to get on her knees and ask for it, that’s her fault.”

Wait. Seriously?

No! It’s a satire. But it’s pretty convincing until you get to the halo.

Soraya Chemaly presents 50 facts about rape.

Republican Representative Richard Mourdock’s recen “misspeaking”  is unexceptional. Despite what he may have meant when he said “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape that… is something God intended to happen,” he is unexceptional.  He’s not an outlier. Not a radical. In no substantive way different from his conservative peers in this regard (see below if you disagree).  Indeed, he and others, like Todd Akin and Paul Ryan, are part of an age-old tradition of men with power defining when women are raped.

Yes I see a lot of that, also men with or without power defining when women are threatened, when women are harassed, when women are cyberstalked…I see that a lot.

The 50 facts are interesting.

Some people are offended by frank conversation about violence, especially sexualized violence.  I’m offended by tolerance for these assaults, scientific denialism, entertainment at the expense of people’s safety and bodily integrity, and shame-infused legislation that hurts children and women and is based on the belief that all men are animals at heart.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has agreed to hear an appeal challenging a state law mandating the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools.

The plaintiffs claim daily classroom affirmation that the nation is “under God” violates state constitutional prohibitions against religious discrimination.

Which it is. It absolutely is. It’s revolting. It not only shouldn’t be mandated, it shouldn’t be allowed. Forcing children to make a daily god-assertion in public schools is outrageously coercive.

The plaintiffs brought the case through the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center. The SJC on Thursday approved the petition for direct appellate review of the case, which means a lower court will not have to first consider the appeal.

“Public schools are defining patriotism and loyalty on a daily basis by exalting one religious group and stigmatizing humanists and other non-theists. Of course that’s discrimination,” said American Humanist Association Executive Director Roy Speckhardt. “We feel confident that a fair hearing will result in a finding that the state law requiring this discriminatory practice violates the state’s equal rights amendment.”

Public schools are also telling students that the US is “under god,” which is a nonsensical, impertinent, intrusive thing for schools – especially but not exclusively public schools – to tell children. The US isn’t “under god.” There is no god for the US to be under, and if there were a god, who is to say we should agree to be under it? What if the god is evil?

And then, announcing that the US is “under god” risks implying that other countries are not. This is the “god is on our side” idea and it’s a bad, dangerous one.

Massachusetts law requires public school teachers to begin each day with a classroom recitation of the Pledge. The suit claims that daily affirmation that the nation is “under God” in the context of an exercise designed to promote national loyalty “directly contradicts the religious beliefs and principles of the plaintiffs” and effectively defines patriotism in terms of God-belief, thereby marginalizing plaintiffs and contributing to existing prejudices against nonbelievers.

Forcibly promoting national loyalty is a crappy idea anyway. The loyalty should be reasoned and freely adopted, not instilled via daily forced repetition.

Religious interest groups have intervened in the case to defend the daily “under God” recitation. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents the Knights of Columbus and a family that supports the “under God” wording.

For religious liberty? How do they have the face? Liberty is the very opposite of what this is. It’s mandated. That’s not liberty. How can it be a matter of religious liberty to have the state forcing students to say “under God” every day?

It can’t.

Wow. I’ve been checking the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for updates on Malala every day, and the update has always said just that she continues to make progress. It now seems that they were understating it a little. She’s been able to talk since Wednesday, and they seem much more confident now that there’s no brain damage. All signs of infection are gone, she’s walking with very little help, and her short term memory is fine. Dr Dave Rosser talks to the press:

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

Her parents and brothers arrived in Birmingham today, and her father also talks to the press:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81td5xRv0s

Shehrbano Taseer – daughter of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was shot to death by his own bodyguard because he supported a Christian woman accused of blasphemy – on Malala Yousafzai.

(By the way the daily update from the hospital says what it’s said every day for a week – she continues to make progress.)

For months a team of Taliban sharpshooters studied the daily route that Malala took to school, and, once the attack was done, the Tehrik-e-Taliban in Pakistan gleefully claimed responsibility, saying Malala was an American spy who idolized the “black devil Obama.” She had spoken against the Taliban, they falsely said, and vowed to shoot her again, should she survive.

I don’t think it is falsely – didn’t she say she liked to fantasize about being challenged by them and responding by smacking them in the faces with her sandal? – and her doing so is what makes her so heroic. If anybody deserves to be spoken against, it’s the Taliban. The Taliban is evil.

And what’s with the black devil nonsense? They dislike Obama’s race on top of everything else?

The power of ignorance is frightening. My father, Salmaan Taseer, was murdered last January after he stood up for Aasia Noreen, a voiceless, forgotten Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for allegedly committing blasphemy. My father, the governor of Punjab province at the time, believed that our country’s blasphemy laws had been misused; that far too frequently, they were taken advantage of to settle scores and personal vendettas.

In the days before my father’s murder, fanatics had called for a fatwa against him and had burned him in effigy at large demonstrations. His confessed shooter, a 26-year-old man named Mumtaz Qadri, said he had been encouraged to kill my father after hearing a sermon by a cleric, who, frothing at the mouth, screeched to 150 swaying men to kill my father, the “blasphemer.” Qadri, a police guard, had been assigned to protect my father. Instead, on the afternoon of Jan. 4, my brother Shehryar’s 25th birthday, he killed my father, firing 27 bullets into his back as he walked home.

In another part of the forest – weirdness at Wikipedia. Susan Gerbic has been monitoring Paul Kurtz’s Wikipedia page since his death was announced, and sure enough, there has been weirdness.

So when I learned about Paul Kurtz’s death yesterday I went over to his Wikipedia page to make sure there was no vandalism, and to make sure it was in great shape so that when the media started to access the page to find out more about this amazing man, they would find something worth looking at.  In the back of my mind I was worried about someone with a agenda saying that he had converted to XYZ religion on his deathbed, then the media picking up on that and the next thing you know it is on the front page of some newspaper. 

First thing I noticed was that two people had spent a couple hours taking up a big chunk of the page to showcase his last project, The Institute for Secular Human Values.  Personally I don’t think that an organization that has only existed for 2 years should get more prominence on the page than CSICOP which has been around for 30+ years.

Another objection, on the Talk page, is that the ISHV is just a website. It’s a notional sort of institute, as opposed to a bricks and mortar one.

The second thing that concerned me was this sentence.  “Upon being forced out of the Center for Inquiry, by the board and management for power and control of the vast network and holdings he had envisioned, developed, managed and maintained for decades, he launched the Institute for Science and Human Values as a separate entity.”

Jim Lippard commented on that.

While this sentence is essentially true, it is somewhat tendentious and incomplete in its description of the facts. The “forced out” part was a democratic process, for example, and the person left in charge as Kurtz’s successor, Ron Lindsay, is someone Kurtz had supported to be his successor.

What a world, what a world.

Life in a remote corner of Pakistan. Two women killed in “honor” killings.

On the condition of anonymity, one villager confirmed the news that the girl was attacked by her brother and killed – the brother believed that his sister had developed an illicit relation with another man, and the brother caught them in an ‘objectionable situation’. With anger, he killed his sister while the man succeeded in running away.

…

In a second incident of honor killing in another remote location of same Kachho area – Taluka Johi, district Dadu, an uncle (Mama) killed his niece in the pretext of [h]onor killing. Sources closed to victim family revealed this story but never shared name of the woman. They described the woman as married and alleged that she was also caught in an ‘objectionable stiuation’.

Well there you go. Two sluts, both found in an ‘objectionable stiuation,’ both killed by heroic male relatives; honor restored. That’s that then.

Popehat has definitely decided not to take Mo the Rutabaga to the UK. It’s sad for Mo, but it just wouldn’t be safe, not under present conditions.

Here’s the pusillanimous and unprincipled attitude of the RUSU and its sad ilk, offered in their own words:  modern university students should not do anything to give offense, and if anyone claims offense, they should stop whatever they are doing immediately.

Kara Swift, Kath Davey, Richard Silcock, and Ceri Jones are heir to great ideas forged in mighty minds.  They are heirs to Shaw:  “all great truths begin as blasphemies.”  They are heirs to Burke: “The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”  They are heirs to Orwell:  “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.”  But they reject that inheritance, choosing instead a life of petty bureaucratism and insipid, infantilizing “civility.”  Offered an opportunity to treat both speakers and listeners as adults, they treat them as children instead — children whose words must be curtailed until they do not offend even the most intolerant and overly sensitive child in the class.

A nation run by the Swifts, Daveys, Silcocks,and Joneses of the world will be weak and dull-witted and crabbed and pointless.  Such people exist in every place; it’s up to us whether we will put up with them or call them out.  I prefer calling them out.  So write about things like this.

Yes do!

Remember I’ve been dropping all those tantalizing hints about the new blogger in our future?

Well allow me to introduce –

Non Stamp Collector

Booyah!

Rebecca has an article in Slate about misogyny among the skeptics. That should blow some windows out.

When I first got involved with the skeptics, I thought I had found my people—a community that enjoyed educating the public about science and critical thinking. The sense of belonging I felt was akin, I imagine, to what other people feel at church. (I wouldn’t exactly know—like most skeptics, I’m an atheist.) I felt we were doing important work: making a better, more rational world and protecting people from being taken advantage of. At conventions, skeptic speakers and the audience were mostly male, but I figured that was something we could balance out with a bit of hard work and good PR.

Then women started telling me stories about sexism at skeptic events, experiences that made them uncomfortable enough to never return. At first, I wasn’t able to fully understand their feelings as I had never had a problem existing in male-dominated spaces. But after a few years of blogging, podcasting, and speaking at skeptics’ conferences, I began to get emails from strangers who detailed their sexual fantasies about me. I was occasionally grabbed and groped without consent at events. And then I made the grave mistake of responding to a fellow skeptic’s YouTube video in which he stated that male circumcision was just as harmful as female genital mutilation (FGM). I replied to say that while I personally am opposed to any non-medical genital mutilation, FGM is often much, much more damaging than male circumcision.

The response from male atheists was overwhelming.