Sexual harassment is nearly universal in Egypt, and always blamed on the woman.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Bad pope
Mar 18th, 2009 10:56 am | By Ophelia BensonBonnie Erbe points out the largest flaw in the pope’s ‘horrifically ignorant statement’:
… Read the restAll the pontiff need do to acquire a more educated view of AIDS in Africa is to read the widespread literature about women and how they acquire the disease. The percentage of female AIDS patients who are prostitutes, or drug addicts, is dwarfed by the percentage who are married women living upstanding lives in their communities. The Pope advised them, according to the Reuters news agency, to exhibit, “correct behavior regarding one’s body.” Very helpful! That advice is completely useless to the typical “woman” in Africa who contracts the disease. Her profile is that of a teenage virgin sold into marriage against her will and “betrothed”
Judge Says: Don’t Call it ‘Honour’
Mar 17th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA woman set fire to her child in attempt to incriminate her brother’s wife, who had escaped.… Read the rest
How Do They Justify This Outrage?
Mar 17th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe bonuses are linked to performance; the performance wrecked the global economy; what bonus is owed?… Read the rest
AIG, Where Taxpayers’ Dollars Go to Die
Mar 17th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe geniuses bet more than double AIG’s value that defaults would not become problematic.… Read the rest
Our Eyes Can Deceive Us
Mar 17th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEyewitness evidence should be treated as trace evidence, subject to contamination, deterioration and corruption.… Read the rest
Russell Blackford on Human Rights
Mar 17th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonFreedom of speech is the most important freedom of all and should not be abridged without very powerful reasons.… Read the rest
Sibling rivalry
Mar 17th, 2009 11:49 am | By Ophelia BensonIs there no limit?
A senior judge has called for an end to the use of the phrase “honour killings” to describe what is “in reality sordid, criminal behaviour”…The judge had heard that a mother had set fire to one of her three children and tried to burn down the house where they lived in an attempt to incriminate her sister-in-law. The sister-in-law “presented a problem to the family” and had fled the home after she had been beaten and her first child murdered by her husband, the mother’s brother.
So let me get this straight – a guy beats his wife and murders their child so she runs away – so the guy’s sister sets fire to her … Read the rest
Vatican Backpedals on Brazil
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPrelate, writing in Vatican newspaper, urges respect for the Catholic doctors.… Read the rest
‘Chastity Squad’ Thug Sentenced to 4 Years
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe was hired to assault and intimidate a woman who ‘defaulted’ on the proper haredi way of life.… Read the rest
‘Bullying and Intimidation’ by Secular Groups
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies,’ says Catholic archbishop of Sydney.… Read the rest
Reporters Without Borders on Kambakhsh
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIncludes a petition to President Karzai urging him to quash the sentence and release Kambakhsh.… Read the rest
Stewart v Cramer
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCramer was pummelled like a rope-a-dope over his profession’s failure to be an effective watchdog.… Read the rest
Liberal Muslims Feel Betrayed by Labour
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBengali liberals view Jamaat-e-Islami as UK liberals view the BNP: the enemy of all their best principles.… Read the rest
Thousands of Girls Genitally Mutilated in UK
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf they discussed it ‘they’d be seen as betraying their family and their community and culture.’… Read the rest
‘It’s Not Right to Betray Your Community’
Mar 16th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSo shut up about the rapes and beatings and forced marriage. Or else.… Read the rest
The myths that legitimated their hierarchies
Mar 16th, 2009 11:54 am | By Ophelia BensonBernard Williams says some things relevant to this idea of ‘betraying your community’ in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, which I was re-reading a couple of days ago.
“The dispositions and reactions that are exercised within one culture are not merely diverted or shown to be inappropriate by the fact that its members are presented with the behavior of another culture. In any case, it is artificial to treat these matters as if they always involved two clearly self-contained cultures. A fully individuable culture is at best a rare thing. Cultures, subcultures, fragments of cultures, constantly meet one another and exchange and modify practices and attitudes. Social practices could never come forward with a certificate saying that they … Read the rest
Her own community
Mar 16th, 2009 10:49 am | By Ophelia Benson“Hannah Shah” is…the daughter of an imam in one of the tight-knit Deobandi Muslim Pakistani communities in the north of England. Her father…rap[ed] his daughter from the age of five until she was 15, ostensibly as part of her punishment for being “disobedient”. At the age of 16 she fled her family to avoid the forced marriage they had planned for her in Pakistan…[S]he then became a Christian – an apostate. The Koran is explicit that apostasy is punishable by death; thus it was that her father the imam led a 40-strong gang – in the middle of a British city – to find and kill her.
Islam is a religion of peace; Allah is merciful.… Read the rest
Rush Limbaugh as Leader of Republican Party
Mar 15th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAggressive, self-indulgent, noisy – and as for ‘family values’…… Read the rest
Cultural Warriors Are Unemployed
Mar 15th, 2009 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPutative moral majority has been downsized.… Read the rest