Author: Ophelia Benson

  • What would Jehovah do about Gaza?

    Paula Kirby notes, the Bible is full of helpful examples to follow.

  • Syrian women ponder rare political victory

    Women’s rights groups successfully resisted a proposed new personal status law.

  • Submission, abject

    Just a little more about Sholto. It doesn’t seem to have gone very well for him – the comments at the New Statesman are scathing, and Google blogsearch turns up only more scathe, no pleased cries of “At last somebody talking sense about sharia.” He must be feeling sadly disappointed in the multicultural broadmindedness and flexibility of – of – well of everybody but himself, I guess. There’s one comment at the NS that looks favorable at first blush, but when you read on it becomes obvious that it’s a parody. So Sholto is 0 for 0 with the “let’s look at the good side of sharia” enterprise.

    Back to the article for a moment.

    The example of Saudi Arabia undoubtedly has much to do with this [distaste for sharia]. Yet it is important to stress that to look at that country and then assume that its version of sharia is the only one, or the one to which Muslims all secretly aspire, would be akin to holding up a vision of Torquemada’s Inquisition and concluding that this was what real Christianity was.

    So the Saudi version of sharia is not the only one; so what other version is there? He never says. He says that in Malaysia non-Muslims are allowed to ignore it, but he doesn’t point to some other kind of sharia that is benign and fair and reasonable and just the right kind of thing. Actually he doesn’t even say that the Saudi version is not the only one, he just says what it would be like to assume that it is. Maybe that’s because even he doesn’t actually believe that there is a different one, he just wants his readers to think so. Tut tut, Sholto.

    He commented only once, and concluded with something really silly when he did:

    There are plenty of atheists and anti-religious writers who appear in the NS – surely you don’t object to the debate being a bit wider than that?

    Yes, I damn well do, when “a bit wider” means “pro-sharia.” The NS is supposed to be a left-wing magazine and there are some things that are not left-wing by any definition. Sharia is right-wing; it’s savagely, harshly, vengefully right-wing, and there is nothing left-wing about it. Nothing at all. The New Statesman is a disgrace.

  • Who is playing god?

    The creation of an artificial cell has triggered a predictable reaction – voices were immediately raised about “playing God”. Supposedly we are “playing God” when we use contraceptives (because we are thwarting His plans); supposedly we are “playing God” when we genetically modify plants; even worse, we “play God” when we learn how to clone animals; sinfully we “play God” by experimenting on human embryos; we “play God” at the very Gates of Hell when we decide to use in vitro fertilization.

    And who is talking? Obviously, believers, because nobody who does not believe in God would utter such rubbish. “Do not play God” is almost the same war cry as “Avoid temptation”. However, priests themselves have the longest history of playing god. We all know what this game looks like. It is enough to remember what priests were doing in ancient Egypt.

    For thousands of years the priesthood was the most enlightened social stratum; not only could priests read and write, but they gathered and developed knowledge. They controlled science and guarded their monopoly over it. This monopoly over the access to knowledge allowed them not only to make both the rulers and the people dependent on them, but it also gave them tricks which reinforced the belief that gods existed and that the priestly class was in daily contact with them.

    The times when priests were the most enlightened social stratum are long gone, while the ignorance and stupidity of the clergy has been a subject of endless mockery at least since the Reformation. Science and the Church gradually parted company, although for a long time the majority of scientists wore cassocks, often revolting against Church authorities for limiting the freedom of research. After centuries of moving in different directions, the Church now has nothing in common with science and is just left with playing god.

    The clergy’s playing god starts with clownish clothing, perpetually pompous faces, bizarre language, and (of course) the endless repetition that they are the mouth of god. The Holy Spirit is personally speaking through them and they are preaching the Truth, i.e. God.

    And why is the Holy Spirit speaking just through them? He has his reasons. We are told about it by a Polish Internet preacher in “Sermons and Homilies”:

    Through the gift of love, the sinful, weak human being is internally transformed, changed into a beloved child of God (Romans 5:5; 8:14-16). And this is the fundamental meaning of all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It should be remembered though that the Holy Spirit is not given to each of us individually and for each of us in private. He is not a private gift and for “private use”. It should rather be understood as the Gift of Christ to the Church and in the Church (1Cor 12). Therefore all the Holy Spirit’s gifts must and should be used for good, for the building of the Church and in the Church, for Christ promised to send the Holy Spirit to the Church and not to individuals. He who would wish to “appropriate the Holy Spirit” in any way, claiming that He was given to him privately and outside the Church, and sometimes even against the Church, he misuses and ultimately opposes the Holy Spirit; such a claim does not serve unity or come from the Holy Spirit, for the fruit of the Holy Spirit is unity. (Boldface by Internet preacher – A.K.)

    Together, gentleman, together we will play god. There is strength in numbers. But are they really playing god—maybe biologists, after all, are playing god, and not priests?

    ”In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. The same was in the beginning with God. (…) That was the true Light, which lighteth every Man that cometh into the Word.. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not”.

    Out of such gibberish arises the science of the Church, and after such an introduction we can be sure that no normal person is speaking to us, but we are hearing an inspired “word” out of the mouth which will tell us better than any other what is right and what is wrong.

    The most recent god-playing consists of refusing Holy communion to people who support in vitro fertilization[1]. One can, in a way, be pleased with this game, because it may cause some people to exchange communion crackers for club sandwiches. Those people, in a sudden surge of irritation, could say to the priest at his next visit that if God wanted something from them, He could come Himself.

    Anatole France used to say that the impotence of God is infinite. It is not surprising that playing god demands a system with representatives. Playing god is drummed into every tiny tot by grandmothers and parents, by religious instructors in kindergarten[2] and in school, that they may, yea verily, achieve what Egyptian priests achieved with the help of science, i.e. boundless respect, awe, and fear of priests. For playing god yields gains both material and spiritual.

    Let us therefore repeat after the priestly caste: playing god is not allowed! In this matter we should all be principled and consistent. When somebody pretends to be god’s mouth, to be god’s Word, to be god’s servant – it is time to say playtime is over. Some could say that they are dealing with the Lord God of Hosts themselves, without the help of the cracker distributors, others can simply ask, “Which god?” The god whose proof of existence was solar eclipses, lightning or earthquakes? Priests knew about the mechanics of solar eclipses long before other people. They exploited this knowledge to deceive people. Science taken away from priests serves other goals. However, priests are still playing god and are dealing in prenatal metaphysics.

    Jacek Hołówka[3] wrote some time ago about prenatal metaphysics, disputing the comments of Cardinal Dziwisz in the directive Dignitatis personae. Hołówka was treating those playing god with deadly seriousness and was trying to refute their attempts to ascribe dignity to embryos. Personally, I suspect that this dignity of an embryo is like the Holy Spirit, whose gift of love is supposed to be a gift for the Church. Playing god here means to appropriate a person from the moment of conception until the last requiem mass after her death.

    Science has proved repeatedly that God is a bit overrated. He does not send cataclysms for our sins, he performs no miracles, he does not respond to prayers, he didn’t create life and he didn’t create the world. In reality only his self-appointed servants exist, and they ceaselessly warn us not to play god, in whose name they wish to own us body and soul.

    Playing god has been going on for thousands of years. It strips people of their dignity—the dignity which is associated with personal freedom, with respect for every human being, and with the freedom to understand the world we live in. This understanding is not a result of any inspired “word”.

    It is not thanks to religion, but thanks to science, that we can counter a hostile nature, and thanks to our legal codes we can protect individuals from the sneaky tricks of those who think that, because they are playing god, they are above the law.

    Understanding the mystery of life is a cumulative process that has been going on for hundreds of years and will never be finished, but which is constantly giving us practical results, enhancing the quality of our lives. Thanks to that knowledge (and not to prayers proposed by religion) we have managed to limit the devastation wrought by plagues and diseases which we today think trivial; thanks to science (and not prayers) we have been able to more than double the length of human life; thanks to science the Earth can feed all its inhabitants (provided that we reject the dictates of the god-playing fools who encourage mindless baby production); thanks to science (and not to an inspired “word”) we learn the secrets of the cosmos. We are witnessing miracles when we look at pictures from Mars, when we look at distant galaxies, and also when we step onto an airplane or when we talk by telephone.

    Of course, the Church would prefer all those miracles created by science to serve their favorite pastime—playing god. Such a miracle is not likely to happen, but they do what they can to exploit the marvels of science in order to promote their god-playing, and they are using all their power to stop scientific development.

    There is no reason to answer who is playing god here. Scientists, especially unbelievers, have no intention of playing god (and yet they are performing miracles that are greater than any that all the saints put together can boast of, and the frequency of these miracles is much higher).

    One serious question is left: what to do to stop them playing god? And there is a very familiar answer: only voting with our feet will convince the enthusiasts of this playing. Emptying churches rapidly leads to a drop in the number of priestly vocations. It appears that a candidate for the priesthood is like an embryo: he has potential and can develop into a thinking being.

    Translation: Małgorzata Koraszewska and Sarah Lawson

    [1] The Polish Church decided in May 2010 to refuse Holy Communion to anybody supporting fertilization in vitro. The decision is not final as it was met with a storm of protest and even some Church authorities are against it.
    [2] Religious instruction is given in all public kindergartens and schools.
    [3] Polish contemporary philosopher.

  • Johann Hari on human rights as universal

    It is never the “culture” of a torture victim to want the torture to continue.

  • Faisal on The New Statesman and sharia

    A treat when middle-class blokes champion religious laws that they will never be affected by.

  • Next week on Oprah

    Chuck should team up with Sholto Byrnes. Together they could make Britain a more spiritual and caring place. Chuck has told the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies that environmental problems are on account of not believing in “the soul” and that it’s Galileo’s fault and that scientists are baffling because they don’t see things his way.

    “As a result, Nature has been completely objectified — ‘She’ has become an ‘it’ — and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme.” The Prince said that he believed “green technology” alone could not resolve the world’s environmental problems. Instead, the West must do something about its “deep, inner crisis of the soul”.

    That ‘she has become an it’ is choice, don’t you think? As if he somehow knows that it’s a she (or a he) in the first place? As if he is privy to secret information that nature is a person, with a soul, who deserves a personal pronoun?

    Speaking at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies to mark its 25th anniversary, the Prince — who is patron of the centre — said that the West had been been “de-souled” by consumerism.

    He said that the present approach to the environment was contrary to the teachings of all of the world’s sacred traditions. The desire for financial profit ignored the spiritual teachings.

    Maybe he and Sholto could get Sarah Ferguson to join them and they could all go on Oprah and explain it to everyone, and then global warming would stop and women would all wear hijabs and the lion would lie down with the kid. Sound good?

  • Oliver Kamm: PC’s views are pure mumbo-jumbo

    The Prince’s prescriptions are not a call for humility but a recipe for the suppression of knowledge.

  • P. Charles rebukes Galileo

    Said at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies that the West had been been “de-souled” by consumerism.

  • Eve Garrard on Israel and common humanity

    Does Israel lack humanity while Sudan, Congo, Sri Lanka, Iran, France, the US and UK all have it?

  • Vatican to clamp down on liberal secular opinion

    And how about those fun-loving guys at the Vatican?

    Vatican investigators to Ireland appointed by Pope Benedict XVI are to clamp down on liberal secular opinion in an intensive drive to re-impose traditional respect for clergy, according to informed sources in the Catholic Church.

    Uh…what? The investigators have been appointed to go to Ireland by the pope to investigate the church’s long history of tormenting children and shielding child-raping priests from the law. Why then do they think the job is to re-impose traditional respect for clergy? And why the fuck do they think the way to do that is to “clamp down” on secular liberal opinion (which frowns on practices like sticking children in prisons and then starving and beating and terrorizing them, also on raping them) and replace it with traditional respect for the very shits who have been doing the tormenting and raping? And why do they think they get to “clamp down” on anything in Ireland anyway? Who do they think they are? What do they think Ireland is? What century do they think this is?

    The nine-member team led by two cardinals will be instructed by the Vatican to restore a traditional sense of reverence among ordinary Catholics for their priests…

    Which will presumably require explaining away the fact that some of “their priests” used their confessionals as pleasantly secluded spots to rape children in. That could be uphill work.

    A major thrust of the Vatican investigation will be to counteract materialistic and secularist attitudes, which Pope Benedict believes have led many Irish Catholics to ignore church disciplines and become lax in following devotional practices such as going on pilgrimages and doing penance.

    But that’s got nothing to do with anything! Even if you care, even if you think that’s a bad thing, it’s still got nothing to do with anything. It’s not the Irish Catholics who are at fault here, it is the church, the priests, the hierarchy that protected them and did not protect their victims. What the fuck is the pope worrying about the “laxity” of Irish Catholics for when he’s supposed to be, and pretending to be, doing something about the crimes of his employees in Ireland? What is he doing pretending it is the people of Ireland who are at fault? What kind of vile sanctimonious stony-hearted bastard is he?

  • A sharting pot

    Of course – a reasonable sensible even-toned review of Stephen Prothero’s God is Not One which stops the reasonable sensible even-toned bit for the final paragraph in order to say the obligatory:

    Prothero debunks not only the fallacy of religious sameness, but also the “New Atheists” who have, lately, become so pervasive and culturally relevant. Atheism can take on its own religion, one dedicated entirely to disparaging the god-fearing, and, in doing so, become as nasty, hostile and ill-informed as the religious fanatics they so thoroughly condemn.

    Keep it up. The steady relentless malicious othering is just the way to bounce more and more and more people into the “New Atheist” camp.

  • AI on human rights abuses in Iran

    At least six people remain on death row charged with “enmity against God” for their alleged involvement in demonstrations.

  • Shirin Ebadi on rebellious women in Iran

    For 31 years the women’s movement has resided in every Iranian household that cares about human rights.

  • Religion’s regressive hold on animal rights issues

    Religions tend to preserve attitudes that have become obsolete and often are positively harmful.

  • Sholto Byrnes is “rethinking Islamism”

    Oh jeezis – the New Statesman is telling us to love sharia now – at least Sholto Byrnes is on the NS blog, and he wouldn’t be doing that if the NS didn’t approve. If you see an article in the Nation telling us to love Nazism you’re entitled to conclude that the Nation has lost its mind and is endorsing Nazism. Same with sharia – and yes they are pretty similar. They at least share a ballpark.

    But the very concept of sharia has been so oversimplified by scaremongers that in the popular imagination it is inextricably linked with the punishments of beheading, flogging and amputation for crimes such as theft and adultery, and for which Saudi Arabia has long been notorious.

    Yes, that’s right, along with stoning to death, and rules of evidence that mean men accused of rape can just say “I didn’t do it” and get off while the women who make the accusation are then automatically convicted of adultery because after all they have admitted to fornication by accusing the man of rape and the man said he didn’t do it (and the woman forgot to bring along the requisite four men of good character to watch, without whom she has no case), so she must be flogged or perhaps stoned to death. And similar items of limpid justice and fairness.

    Then Byrnes quotes Tariq Ramadan saying it’s all a misunderstanding, then Byrnes says it’s all a misunderstanding some more, without ever actually managing to offer a particular example of sharia being a good thing. He says in Malaysia it’s not so bad because it applies only to Muslims (which is dubious itself), but he still doesn’t say why it’s actually good. Then he concludes with a great burst of powerful argument:

    Of course, there are plenty who will object to any legal system or way of life that has a religious basis, regardless of how it operates. But the one word that is, above all, associated with sharia, stressed by Ramadan in his writings, Mahathir in his interview with me, by Bernard Lewis in his latest book and by countless others, is “justice”. I think we can agree that it is not just Islamists who are in favour of that.

    Lots of people say sharia has something to do with “justice,” therefore…

    Oh, god. It’s too depressing.

  • LA Times reviews Stephen Prothero on religion

    And of course ends with the obligatory swipe at “New” atheists.

  • Sholto Byrnes says why sharia is nice

    In the New Statesman blog!

  • Vatican to invade Ireland and re-impose theocracy

    No more secularism for you, orders pope.

  • Street censorship

    Imagine being a writer, or a reader, in Egypt.

    More recently, the literary magazine Ibdaa (“Creativity”) had its license revoked over the publication, in 2007, of a poem by the renowned poet Helmy Salem, deemed blasphemous because it personified God with lines such as: “The Lord isn’t a policeman/who catches criminals by the scruff of their necks”…Before Ibdaa was shut down, Salem had already been forced to return a State Award for Achievement in the Arts, honoring his entire body of work. The court that rescinded the award found that “The sin that he committed … against God and against society, challenging its traditions and religious beliefs should fail the sum total of his work, rendering him ineligible for any state honor or prize.”

    We need Nicholas Kristof about now, to tell us that yes Islam does crush women and hate gays and forbid people to leave and fuck up literature and art and thought but hey the calligraphy is pretty.

    Salem was the victim of a hisba case — what has become the legal weapon of choice in the arsenal of would-be censors. These are cases — based on a principle in Islamic law — in which an individual may sue another on behalf of society, alleging some grave harm has been done it. Several Islamist lawyers specialize in hisba lawsuits and use them with alarming frequency against writers, intellectuals, and professors whose opinions they deem to have denigrated Islam. Egypt’s minority Christian Coptic population also has its self-appointed moral guardians, eager to take novelists to court. And while charges against a book, author, or publisher are being investigated, the book is usually confiscated from the market.

    Can you imagine anything more nightmarish? A situation in which any ignorant benighted mindless godbothering fool can take you to court for writing something it doesn’t like, and win? There are a lot of ignorant benighted mindless fools out there, godbotherers and non-godbotherers. Imagine knowing they could shut you down any time they felt like it.

    [A]ny one book or film may find itself the center of a public scandal, singled out on the basis of a few lines. The arbitrariness of censorship in Egypt makes publishers (especially the government-run ones) afraid to take risks and leads writers to second-guess themselves. “In Egypt we’re born and we live in a state of constant self-censorship,” the writer Khaled Al Khamissi, whose book Taxi has been an international hit, once told me.

    That’s what I mean. Nightmare.

    Update: On the other hand – a bit of good news for a change – the last comment on the article linked to a news flash: the prosecutor threw out the case.

    Prosecutor Abdel Megid Mahmud threw out the case, saying the epic tales had been published for centuries without problems, and had been an inspiration to countless artists.

    Yessss!