I’m curious about something. To the best of my knowledge, a sexist epithet is a sexist epithet. There’s not generally a lot of ambiguity about it, although there’s always room for ironic uses in private conversation and so on. In public discourse, a sexist epithet is what it is. Yet – I keep encountering people who dispute that, in places where I wouldn’t expect to, such as comments on Jesus and Mo. So I’m curious about what other people think.

A commenter said ‘the god of Islam is such a pussy. He is unable to do a thing to protect himself or his reputation and must rely on his minions to do his dirty work.’ I took exception, and … Read the rest

Madeleine Bunting takes a minute to remind us how stunningly predictable, how jaw-droppingly selective, how risibly but irritatingly woolly she can be and pretty much always is.

Increasingly, one hears a distaste for the polemics of the New Atheist debate and its foghorn volume, and how it has drowned out any other kind of conversation about religion.

Does one? Does one not rather rush about attempting to create such a distaste one’s very own self? Much of this putative distaste comes from Bunting herself, so it’s a little sick-making to see her pretending to be too modest to mention her own energetic campaign. And then of course the drowning out is completely ridiculous – witness Bunting herself, and all the … Read the rest

And then there’s Karzai – he says he’ll ‘review’ the new law that says women can’t leave the house without a damn good reason. But his idea of ‘reviewing’ is not quite that of, say, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Western media have either mistranslated or taken incorrect information and then published it. If there is anything in contradiction with our Constitution or Shariah, or freedoms granted by the Constitution, we will take action in close consultation with the clerics of the country.”

Ah. So the law will stay as it is then. There won’t be anything ‘in contradiction with’ Shariah, and close consultation with the clerics of the country will of course issue in warm approval of … Read the rest

Tarek Fatah pointed out (at Facebook) a speech by a Kuwaiti professor daydreaming about an anthrax attack in the US that would kill 300,000 people in a few minutes. I did some googling, and found a MEMRI follow-up item quoting ‘a number of prominent liberals: Kuwait University professor Ahmad Al-Baghdadi and columnist Ahmad Al-Sarraf, both of whom are Kuwaiti, and the Jordanian-American author Shaker Al-Nabulsi.’ They all think Professor Anthrax’s views are disgusting.

The guy is actually Dr. ‘Abdallah Al-Nafisi, a prominent Islamist. Depressingly, his doctorate is from Cambridge. Salman Rushdie is another alumnus of Cambridge. They seem to have taken away different things.

Kuwait University professor Ahmad Al-Baghdadi had this to say:

Frankly, I am very happy with Dr.

Thought for the day, from Niall Shanks in God, the Devil, and Darwin: a Critique of Intelligent Design Theory.

[T]he dark side of the wedge strategy, lurking at the fat end of the wedge, lies in the way that it is intelligently designed to close minds to critical, rational scrutiny of the world we live in. The wedge strategy describes very well the very process whereby, beginning with mild intellectual sedatives, religion becomes the true opiate of the masses. As [Philip] Johnson makes clear, once the wedge is driven home, even the rules of reasoning and logic will have to be adjusted to sit on theological foundations. In this way, critical thinking and opposition will not just be hard … Read the rest

Shiraz Maher gets it – much better than Robert Lambert does. This could be because (or notwithstanding or both) he was once in Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The British state has traditionally predicated its policy on the premise that ostensibly nonviolent Islamists can be part of the solution to al Qaeda violence…The practical effect of this has been to engage and empower nonviolent exponents of Islamism who, while expressing opposition to the terrorism of Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, hold values and views that are antithetical to mainstream British society. This has often meant turning a blind eye to preachers who advocate the killing of homosexuals, the oppression of women and the subjugation of nonbelievers.

Precisely; I’ve been carping at … Read the rest