Author: Ophelia Benson

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.

Say hello to a new arrival at FTB: Avicenna.

He tells us a little about himself.

I am Avicenna (named after the islamic golden age Doctor) and I am terrifyingly weird and am a giant nerd. I am a british indian medical student doing my clinical rotations in India. I basically qualify in a year and a bit and then I plan to continue to work for charity here before I go back home and have a career. However to keep sane I started blogging. And it kind of got out of hand…

I am (naturally) an Atheist (otherwise me joining here would probably win the “biggest misunderstanding” award) but Hinduism is the religion I don’t believe in. All my old gods are crazy as fuck. Good for stories or inspiration for metal bands but not so good for normal life.

This is going to be good.

Catching up. From Sense About Science a few days ago –

Dear Friends

We told you yesterday that the Libel Reform Campaign would be meeting with the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, with Simon Singh, performer Dara Ó Briain and representatives from Index on Censorship, Sense About Science and English PEN.

Ed Miliband told us: “The key to a healthy democracy is the right to free speech. But to defend this we need a modernised defamation law that protects citizens and honest discussion from the stifling threat of legal action. That’s why it’s so important that we grasp this once in a generation opportunity to update our defamation laws. I commend the work of the Libel Reform Campaign who are fighting so hard for the reform of our outdated defamation laws and it’s crucial the government heeds their concerns. There’s still time to mould this into a successful Bill – and that includes a new public interest defence – otherwise this opportunity risks being wasted”

Ed Miliband also said more needed to be done to stop corporations suing individuals for libel and asked his Justice Team in the House of Lords to investigate this.

Your support has helped us achieve this. It’s now for the government to listen to the increasingly important voices calling for a strengthened public interest defence, and act.

You can see photos from the meeting on our Flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/53777693@N04/sets/72157631792324529/

Thank you to the more than 500 of you who generously donated following Simon Singh’s appeal and helped us reach our target. This and all further donations make a huge difference to what we can do at this crucial point for libel reform. Please do still donate if you haven’t yet: http://www.justgiving.com/libelreform2012

Best wishes

Mike and Sile

Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear – there’s an excerpt from Chris Stedman’s much-dreaded new memoir Faitheist at Salon, and it’s as maddening as I’d expected, if not more so.

The excerpt is, of course, on the ever-popular subject of The Awfulness of atheists. That’s not what’s so skin-crawling about it though. What I really, really can’t stand is his shameless style of self-presentation – his unbearable self-regard and self-display. It’s worse because it’s dressed up as its own opposite – it’s all about how humble and shy he is. I want to say that doesn’t work, but sadly I know from experience that it will work all too well: lots of people will take him as he presents himself, and be hugely impressed and touched. They’ll think what a sweet awkward shy boy from the provinces, with a heart as big as all outdoors, trying so hard to wring a little compassion from the cold hard prosperous atheists.

Here’s how he does it.

I had never heard the word “faitheist” before, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment.

I blushed and ran my hands through my short hair — a nervous habit — and cleared my throat, asking if it was intended to be an insult.

“Yes,” he said without inflection. “There’s nothing worse than a ‘faitheist.’”

It was my first experience with the atheist movement, and for at least a moment I thought it might be my last.

See? He blushed. He was nervous. The other guy wasn’t, and he spoke without inflection (ew, weird cold heartless dude!), and he ground poor shy blushing nervous Stedman into the floor.

The brusque brush-off occurred at a reception following a public discussion organized by a nonreligious group…I had gone with optimism and excitement…I pictured myself saying with a well-meaning grin, “Hey, I work with religious people every day and my atheism is stronger than ever!” I hoped I might even serve as a bridge between two communities that are so often pitted against one another, to offer my insights as a nonreligious person working in an interfaith environment.

Aw the poor kid. He meant so well, he was all excited – and he got a brusque brush-off! Those atheist bastards!

It’s also interesting that he admits that he pictures himself saying things with a well-meaning grin. I knew he did, because he would, but it’s funny that he admits it.

That aspiration was quickly curtailed. Throughout the program, religion — and religious people — were roundly mocked, decried, and denied. I’d arrived hoping to find a community bound by ethical and humanitarian ideals. Instead, I felt isolated and sorely discouraged.

I don’t believe it. I smell a Tom Johnson. I don’t believe that religious people were mocked, decried, and denied throughout the program. I don’t believe it because that’s not how it goes. Actions, institutions, people in leadership positions, yes, but just plain “religious people” as such, no – not throughout the program and not roundly.

Though I was disheartened by the event, I went to the post-panel reception, held at one of the panelists’ apartments…Also, as a thrifty graduate student, free dinner and drinks were hard to pass up!

…I scanned the crowd; I was easily the youngest person there and unfashionably underdressed (nothing new there). Looking down at my feet, I noticed there was a hole in each of my socks.

I sat down on the couch, carefully balancing a mint julep in one hand and a plate of hors d’oeuvres I couldn’t name in the other, intensely aware of how out of place I must have seemed.

The “carefully balancing” bit is clever. It extorts sympathy.

Next to me on the couch were a woman in her mid-40s with a shimmering peacock brooch and a man in his late 30s wearing a denim shirt and a tan corduroy vest. I introduced myself and asked what they’d thought of the panel. They raved: “Wasn’t it wonderful how intelligent the panelists were and how wickedly they’d exposed the frauds of religion? Weren’t they right that we must all focus our energy on bringing about the demise of religious myths?”

I’m reminded of Kingsley Amis, reading a novel he hated, constantly saying as he read, “No she didn’t, no they weren’t, no he didn’t, no it wasn’t like that.” I don’t believe a word of that paragraph. I don’t believe he remembers any brooch or tan corduroy vest – or their ages – or what they said – and certainly not that they said what he quotes.

I paused, debating whether I should say anything. My “Minnesota Nice” inclination warned me to let it be, but I had to say something. So I started small, asking them to consider that diversity of thought and background fosters an environment where discourse thrives, where ideas are exchanged, and where we learn from one another.

On the one hand, he’s such a nice kid. On the other hand, he knows everything and is there to gently lead these ignorant older people out of their deluded ways.

I was stonewalled: “We have the superior perspective; everyone else is lost,” said the woman with a flick of her hand that suggested she was swatting at an invisible mosquito.

No she didn’t. No you don’t remember that.

I mean – get real! He’s trying to tell us someone actually said to him, in all seriousness,  “We have the superior perspective; everyone else is lost”!

Our conversation continued, and I offered up petitions that the positive contributions of religious people be considered with equal weight alongside the negative.

“I understand what you’re saying,” I said, trying to weigh my words carefully, “but how can we discount the role religious beliefs played in motivating the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi?”

So young, so shy, and yet so patronizing.

“Oh, I get it,” the man jumped in with a sneer. “You’re one of those atheists.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but it didn’t sound like a good thing. I shifted my weight from one side to another — another nervous habit — and picked at an hors d’oeuvre that I thought might be some kind of cheese.

Oh oh oh the poor little mite! The man sneered at him; he was nervous again; he was all at sea with these elitist hors d’oeuvre thingies.

“What do you mean, ‘one of those atheists?’”

“You’re not a real atheist. We’ve got a name for people like you. You’re a ‘faitheist.’”

No he didn’t. People don’t say things like that – not face to face, in real life. People don’t say “We’ve got a name for people like you.” That didn’t happen.

Not a real atheist. I’d heard words like that before — in my youth, when I was told I couldn’t be a real Christian because I was gay. Once again I didn’t fit the prescribed model, and I was not-so-gently shown the door.

Now, atheism is a bit different from Christianity in that atheism isn’t a belief system. It’s an identification marker that unifies a minority of Americans who do not believe in God. But the implication was clear: you’re at the wrong party, kid.

He must mean he was metaphorically shown the door, and yet we’re probably left half-thinking he really was shown the door, by the cold evil atheist snobs who tell the kid he’s at the wrong party.

Later in the piece, he recycles yet again his accusation that [gasp] PZ Myers once said this one thing.

Stereotypes that are bolstered when prominent antitheists (individuals who are not merely nonreligious but outwardly antireligious — I’ll return to this distinction later in this book) such as PZ Myers say things like, “Come on, Islam … It’s bad enough to be the religion of hate, but to be the religion of cowardice ought to leave you feeling ashamed.” It is no wonder that many in the organized atheist community follow suit, lumping all religious believers together and shaming them as a uniformly condemnable bloc.

How many times has he repeated that now? The latest was just a few weeks ago, in the Huffington Post, but I’d seen it more than once before that. It’s not so outrageous that it merits that level of hostile attention.

In a culture that increasingly asks us to check our religious and nonreligious identities at the door — to silence the values and stories we hold most dear — the “New Atheist” brand of secularism isn’t helping.

It’s Tom Johnson again!

Well – you know what will happen. It will sell like hotcakes.

PZ has a post. So does Larry Moran.

A familiar problem. A 15-year-old girl sends an entry to the Everyday Sexism project; it’s about the way looks trump everything else for girls (and, as she’ll find out, for women).

I always feel like if I don’t look a certain way, if boys don’t think I’m ‘sexy’ or ‘hot’ then I’ve failed and it doesn’t even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I’ll still feel like nothing…successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won’t be. What if my boobs don’t grow? What if I don’t have the perfect body? What if my hips don’t widen and give me a little waist? If none of that happens I feel like [sic] there’s no point in doing anything because I’ll just be the ‘fat ugly girl’ regardless of whether I do become a doctor or not.

And she’s right. She’s right, at least, that if the future is like the present there will always be people who will see her and all women in those terms.

Laura Bates sums up:

From the advertising industry and its narrow media ideal of female beauty to the normalised objectification of Page 3; from articles that deconstruct the outfits of female politicians to the programs teaching girls how to nip, tuck, change and disguise their bodies; these messages are everywhere, everyday. The pressure on women and young girls to conform to such stereotypes is overwhelming, and until it is tackled, it will continue to undermine attempts to convince young women like this teenager that she really can “be whatever I want to be”.

She forgot to mention mobs of bullies, stalkers, harassers, and wannabe shock jocks who spend much of their free time telling women and girls how ugly and repulsive they are.

The student union at Reading University has informed the RU Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society that it has come to the conclusion that the Society acted in breach of the behavioural policy. Its decision is that the Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society should be referred to a disciplinary panel.

You remember what this is about, I trust. The RU Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society had a table at the student fair; on the table it had a pineapple with the label “Mohammed.” Some students said it was offensive. The Society members were ejected from the fair.