Author: Ophelia Benson

Exciting news for all us clowns who thought the CFI Women in Secularism conference in DC next May seemed like a good idea – Abbie is going to tell is why it’s not.

Tommy– I will probably start some shit again this weekend re: the ridiculousness of the CFI conference.

There are lols on at the CFI blog.  Not lulz, just lols.  Maybe some *facepalms*.

Posted by: ERV | August  5, 2011 11:22 PM

That should be good for another few thousand cuntstwatsfuckingbitchessmellysnatches. Will Russell comment to say “Naughty Abbie!” again? Will Miranda comment to say what she finds condescending about two comments at B&W again? Will Jeremy do a post to say that calling a defense of the use of twat as an epithet “misogynist” is the antithesis of anything that could be considered free inquiry again?

Should we start placing bets?

Update: I didn’t realize Miranda had already commented on the subject – as poisonously as you like.

And I’d hate to know that I was invited to a conference simply because I have the appropriate genitalia. I want to be recognized for whatever merit there may be in the things I do/write, not how oppressed and/or under-represented I supposedly am.

Flattering to Susan Jacoby, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Margaret Downey, Sikivu Hutchinson, Wafa Sultan, and the rest. Yes they were all invited simply because they have the appropriate genitalia. What a reasonable, generous, fair-minded claim.

Godalmighty.

It’s hard to tell if the BBC is being sarcastic or not. Maybe the answer is that it’s being both. Sarcastic for the non-crazy and solemn for the barking. It’s rather irresponsible to be so opaque (at best).

Why do exorcists and their clients think that demonic possession is on the
increase? Exorcists point to an alleged increase in interest in the occult,
together with risky behaviour such as practising yoga, reading horoscopes, and an increase in new age forms of spiritualism. One Anglican bishop has said that clues to the presence of an evil spirit include “repeated choice of black, for example in clothing or colour of car”.

Because………..?

The American Association of Exorcists runs a correspondence course, and one evangelical pastor based in Britain runs his own distance learning course using the internet. Most exorcists agree however, that there is no substitute for hands on mentoring with an experienced practitioner.

Because……….what? The hands-on mentoring with an experienced practitioner actually makes the demons go away? Or because they can charge more for it.

Who knows. Meanwhile, be afraid.

Another pretty story.

Shaher Bano Shahdady was just 21, a young mother who wanted to live her Canadian life as a free Canadian woman. And for that, she was strangled to death in front of her toddler.From the Baloch region of Pakistan, she came to Toronto as a little girl. [When she was] 14, her father, Mullah Abdul Ghafoor, sent her back to Pakistan to study at a religious fundamentalist madrassa and a few years later she was forced into an arranged marriage with her first cousin.

That would be a forced marriage, not an arranged marriage. If she’s forced into it it’s forced, not arranged.

She was able to get back to Canada though, and she had hopes for her life.

She’d registered at the Adult Learning Centre to work on her high school diploma this fall and was hoping to one day realize her dream of becoming a doctor…

But she had to sponsor her husband here and his arrival in May forced her back into the cage she had struggled so long to escape. He wanted her to wear a burka, to stay away from Facebook, to put aside any plans she had of resuming a secular education.

“She rebelled,” explains Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress. “With the help of social services, she got an apartment for herself and her son. She was leaving her husband and asking for a divorce. How dare she? It would dishonour everyone.”

She and her son moved out July 1. After just three weeks of freedom, she was dead.

Strangled. In front of her child, age 3 – who was alone with her body for 15 hours.

Her estranged husband Abdul Malik Rustam, 27, turned himself in to police the next morning. He’s been charged with first-degree murder.

“Absolutely, it was an honour killing,” contends Fatah. “This is the fundamental issue here that no one wants to address. Nobody wants to tell Muslim men that women are not their possessions. It’s about women’s sexuality and men who say they own the franchise to it.”

Tarek says that a reporter from the Toronto Star called him today “and spoke like a true apologist for those who say using the term ‘Honour killing’ is akin to being racist against Muslims. If this is how low the Taliban Star has sunk in efforts to appease Islamists, shame on them. I have never net or spoken to a more biased and unprofessional journalist.”

Newsflash: some people in the Netherlands go to church but don’t take goddy beliefs altogether seriously.

The Rev Klaas Hendrikse…[doesn’t] believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

“When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that’s where it can happen. God is not a being at all… it’s a word for experience, or human experience.”

No it isn’t, actually. It may be a word that Hendrikse is using to mean that, Humpty Dumpty fashion, but it’s not a word for that, any more than “Anna Karenina” is a word for borscht, or mulligatawny. “God” is a word for a supernatural agent with omni-properties.

Not to say that I think Hendrikse should be more literalist in his preaching, just that it seems to be a bit silly to cling to the word while changing the meaning by fiat.

Professor Hijme Stoeffels of the Free University in Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion.

“In our society it’s called ‘somethingism’,” he says. “There must be ‘something’ between heaven and earth, but to call it ‘God’, and even ‘a personal God’, for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.”

“Somethingism.” Now that’s a good name for it.

I mentioned this in a comment but in case you didn’t see that: CFI is doing a Women and Secularism conference in Washington DC next May 18-20.

Speakers will include (in alphabetical order) Ophelia Benson, Jamila Bey, Greta Christina, Elisabeth Cornwell, Margaret Downey, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Sikivu Hutchinson, Susan Jacoby, Jennifer McCreight, Wafa Sultan, and Rebecca Watson.

Be there.

Perhaps I will do a talk on sexist epithets…

No good. Bad. Islamists are having success in Egypt.

It is already clear that the liberal-minded parties that have been the focus of
much Western media attention are not doing well as the competition hots up…

When a protest was called in Tahrir Square late last week, it was known the
Islamists would dominate it. But the numbers brought in by the Salafists far
exceeded even those the Muslim Brotherhood could muster.

The Salafists favour an Islamic state, with Sharia law, as soon as possible,
whereas the Brotherhood has emphasised the separation of state and religion – at least for the time being.

Hundreds of thousands of Salafists came to the square – many waving the flag of Al Nour or “The Light”, the party they have established to contest the
elections.

Oh, shit.

One Westernised Cairo woman who was shocked by this show of strength said to me “I think I will have to leave Egypt”.

Bad.