Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Another archbishop heard from

    Typical of the moral blindness of the Catholic church on the condom issue – the archbishop of Sydney talks a lot of emollient drivel about sexual morality as the putative reason for saying condoms make the AIDS epidemic worse – without ever mentioning the blindingly obvious (to anyone but a moral idiot) that condoms are needed because AIDS transmission involves two people, one of whom can be as sexually faithful as any pope or archbishop could desire and still be infected by the other party. Usually this cashes out to women infected by men. The archbishop talks and talks and talks and talks and never mentions this. It is wicked to fail to mention it.

    To blame Catholics and Pope Benedict for the spread of HIV/AIDS requires proof that while people are ignoring the first, essential Christian requirement to be chaste before and within marriage, they are slavishly obedient to a second requirement not to use condoms…Catholic teaching is opposed to adultery, fornication and homosexual intercourse, even with condoms, not because it denies condoms offer health protection, but because traditional Christian moral teaching believes all extra-marital intercourse contradicts the proper meaning of love and sexuality.

    But even if one agrees with every word of that the problem remains that a woman (or, much less likely, a man) could heed and obey that to the last jot and tittle and still, without a condom, be infected. Why does the archbishop ignore this fact? Because he has nothing to say? Because there is nothing to say other than that condoms are indeed needed as (at least) insurance? If so, that’s a wicked reason to keep silent.

    Christ called Christians to a different way of living, to a purity of heart where even looking on a woman with aggressive and disordered desire (lust) is wrong.

    Oh – well maybe the answer is even simpler, as indicated by that remark. Maybe the archbishop really is so stupid and so callous that he really doesn’t even realize that women exist – maybe he really does think that it’s only men who are agents, only men who are called to a different way of living, only men who can and should be faithful, and therefore only men who can be infected. Maybe he just doesn’t get it that women are also part of the equation, that when men ‘look on’ them with lust and then act on the looking, the act has consequences for the woman as well as the man.

    Yet he’s the archbishop of Sydney; he has a platform; he can go right on telling Catholics – women and men alike – that condoms are bad and harmful. That’s unfortunate.

  • The Political and Social Disaster in Pakistan

    Those who think Swat is a good idea have delusions about their ability to contain revolution.

  • Austin Dacey: Durban II Was Deeply Flawed

    Conflating religious criticism with bigotry, Islamic states and their allies are fashioning new political cudgels.

  • Justin Trottier on Hijacking Durban II

    Defamation resolutions conflate individual rights and liberties with protection for ideas, religions and gods.

  • Church of Scotland Mag: Accept Homosexuality

    Editorial in Church’s in-house mag challenges belief that the bible outlaws homosexuality.

  • Sydney Archbish Defends Pope’s Condom Advice

    Non-marital sex bad therefore condoms no help. Uninfected spouse should have married someone else.

  • Quantum Gods Don’t Deserve Your Faith

    Victor Stenger isolates and debunks the claims of ‘quantum theology’ and ‘quantum spirituality.’

  • Salil Tripathi on the Southall Uprising and Story

    The Southall Story celebrates what Salman Rushdie described in The Satanic Verses as ‘the city visible but unseen.’

  • The Science and Religion Question

    Paul Fidalgo on Coyne, Dawkins, Myers, Scott, and ‘instigator’ atheism v the other kind.

  • Iranian Prosecutor: Death for ‘Corruption on Earth’

    A ‘person who manages many immoral, anti-religious and anti-revolutionary sites’ should be executed.

  • Jerry Coyne on Truckling to the Faithful

    The accommodationist position of the NAS and the NCSE compromises the science they aspire to defend.

  • Who you calling crude, buddy?

    It’s a funny thing how the ‘athests should shut up’ crowd is constantly passing back and forth this old crumbling shredding battered item labeled ‘atheists use intemperate language’ and then when you look at them turn out to be so unpleasant themselves. They’re a vituperative bunch to be giving advice to other people about not being so foghorn-like.

    Look at Mark Vernon for instance. He’s always boasting of his own superlative and superior uncertainty, his better than anything else agnosticism, and yet when it comes to characterizing people he disagrees with, why, he throws uncertainty to the winds and just gets right down to name-calling.

    Julian Baggini was asking militant atheists to turn down the volume in the Guardian yesterday. What I think Julian hasn’t quite realised is that this movement, from which he wants to distance himself, is evangelical in nature – which is to say loud in nature, and crude and ultimately dehumanising.

    Well same to you, bub.

    Moreover, and ironically, he won’t understand it unless he uses religious categories to analyse it. It will tarnish anyone who wants to use the word ‘atheist’ of themselves, much as fundamentalist Christianity or Islam does for Christians and Muslims.

    That’s Mr Agnostic, Mr Uncertain. Nice, isn’t it? ‘Militant’ (you know, bomb-throwing, bus-exploding, mass murdering) atheists are evangelical in nature, loud in nature, crude, dehumanizing, a source of tarnish, like fundamentalist Christianity or Islam. That’s civil, that’s temperate, that’s fair, that’s reasonable.

    He then jokes about Julian calling him ‘fluffy.’ Quite right; I wouldn’t call him fluffy either; I would call him just plain nasty. But unlike him I offer genuine quotes to illustrate why.

  • Religious Laws and Customs are a Disgrace of the 21st Century

    Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17 year old girl from Iraqi Kurdistan was publicly stoned to death in the town of Bashiqa before 1000 men. None of them did anything to stop the stoning; on the contrary they rejoiced at the killing and took footage of the carnage on their mobile phones.

    Du’a wasn’t from a Muslim background, she was a Yazidi, but she fell in love with a Muslim boy. The price of this love was to be publicly stoned in broad daylight. She was stripped of her dignity and pride, her life was taken away simply for falling in love with someone outside of the Yazidi tribe. Her killers were never brought to justice and a year after her murder 40 million Iraqi Dinars were given to her family to keep their silence. The cost of love was a human life. The cost of silence, 40 million Dinar.

    The killing of women continues and many more women have fallen victims to so-called honour killings, female genital mutilation, forced and arranged marriages. All of these things are on the rise. In these societies, religion takes priority over the lives and freedom of women.

    Tribalism, traditions, Islamic Sharia laws and religious customs are still shaping the lives of millions of women and men in Islamic dominated countries.

    Wherever Islam rules there is no place for human enjoyment of life. Religious figures control women’s body, sex and sexuality. They ban music, dance, art, public outings, and anything else that makes ordinary human beings happy.

    In countries where the laws are based on Islamic Sharia, there is no place to be free and human life counts for very little. It is impossible to live without the constant fear of being killed for doing or feeling the simplest things.

    Every woman, even those who have gained a degree of freedom to enter education or who have managed some sort of economic independence, live with the fear of ‘wrongdoing’. They must live their lives according to their family’s and countries code of conduct. Why should women live like this in 21st century?

    Just a few days ago our television and computer screens were filled with images of savage violence when a 17-year-old Pakistani girl was flogged in public by Taliban militants in the Swat valley.

    The footage showed a burka-clad girl being pinned to the ground by two men while a third whips her backside 34 times. The girl is seen screaming and begging for forgiveness as a crowd of largely silent men look on. She is accused of having had an “illegal” sexual relationship. Her brother is among those restraining her. When we see these crimes taking place day in and day out by religious militias, tribes, and governments who base themselves on the teachings of the Quran we come to expect no better.

    In most Islamic dominated societies women have almost no rights. They have no right to life. They have no ownership over their own bodies:

    • If you fall in love with the “wrong” person, with someone your family doesn’t approve of, you are dead;
    • If you get raped, then you more likely to be punished than the rapists;
    • If you don’t follow religious, tribal, and traditional code of conduct you will be killed;
    • If women loose their virginity – whatever the reason – they will be killed;
    • Women can not wear what they want, or have make-up;
    • Women cannot mix with men because they ‘arouse’ them;
    • Women are sexually objectified and are therefore considered filthy;
    • Women have to be covered at all times;
    • A women’s body can only be seen by her husband because she is his property;
    • The wife must reserve herself exclusively for her husband;
    • Women should make themselves available to their husbands whenever he is in need of her – she must submit herself to sexual intercourse at the husbands will. This is little more than rape.

    Millions of women grow up hearing these words and teachings taken from Islam and its Sharia Law. The oppression of generations of women and men alike stems from these ideas. Girls from as young as 4 years old are forced to cover their hair, and are brainwashed by religious teachings. According to Islam, when a girl is 9 years old she is due to marry. Where the letter of this teaching is implemented there is nothing but child abuse and ‘Islamic legal’ rape of children.

    The ways in which both Du’a and this 17 year old Pakistani girl were punished in public is a method conditioning society to such brutalities and socialising them into accepting such scenes of carnage on daily bases. In this case they make the entire society complacent and bullied by force to accept this as a way of life.

    This is typical of Islamists and Islam in general. Because of the violence and terror they use against civilians, they engender ignorance and Dark Age thinking over society.

    In spite of the terror they can never put an end to people expressing themselves and acting as they want to. Women are particularly defiant. They are treated harshly because no religion, state, law, The Quran or any other holy book can restrict or prevent human beings from exercising their natural impulse to have sex and physical pleasure. Islam is particularly patriarchal and has always tried to keep women subordinated and use them as subservient of men. Having four wives for the same man is another ugly face of Islam.

    Stoning, flogging, beheading, rape, polygamy, veiling – all these have been used against women, yet women continue to fight in every possible way to escape the hell that Islamists want to create in places like, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. They even want to bring Sharia to the heart of Europe.

    These forms of religious violence against women are a shameful disgrace on 21st century humanity and it must stop. Every government is responsible for what is happening to women.

    Houzan Mahmoud, Representative Abroad of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

    www.equalityiniraq.com

    http://houzanmahmoud.blogspot.com/

  • Cutting Pay for the Sake of Gender Equality

    Sheffield city council plans to cut the pay of many of the lowest paid workers in the name of gender equality.

  • Pay Cuts Make All Equal

    Anomalies where low-paid women have lost pay have emerged across the UK.

  • Supreme Court to Hear Strip-search Case

    Do schools have a right to peer into 13-year-old girls’ underpants in search of ibuprofen?

  • Normblog on Obama and the Torture Memos

    There is no higher authority that can legitimize the practice of torture. It is a crime under international law.

  • Taleban Moving Into Bandur

    Spokesman for Swat Taleban said his movement’s aim is enforcement of Sharia in all of Pakistan.

  • Consulting Mr Mill

    G mentioned, and quoted a bit of, On Liberty yesterday. I’d been thinking of quoting it myself, and G sent me to the right bit to quote, so here is some more. From the last paragraph of Chapter 2.

    Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

    That’s just it, you see. Theists and fans of faith were always going to say that atheists were too noisy and ‘militant’ and dogmatic and whatever other stick came to hand. Of course they were. They weren’t going to like explicit atheism, and once the explicit atheism hit the best-seller lists, well – the result was what you might call overdetermined. Of course they would say atheists were too noisy! For the very reason that Mill suggests. Shouting that atheists are too noisy is a lot easier than arguing. So to conclude that therefore atheists really are too noisy and should be more quiet now so that…so that I’m not sure what, is to conclude too much.

    With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions.

    Bingo.

    In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion.

    Thank you and good evening.

  • ‘Equal’ does not mean ‘the same’…

    I was going to post a comment to say that things didn’t actually get all that much better but I was relieved to see that someone already had.

    This isn’t necessarily a substantive change. The Afghani Constitution is written in a way that simultaneously enshrines conflicting values, leaving wiggle room to really do anything you want regarding women- or remain paralyzed in confusion. And a Western audience is particularly susceptible to not “getting” this because of the power of some of the lipservice to rights, and the common ignorance of how Islamic law actually works…“Equal” does not mean (has not meant) “identical” in an Islamic context regarding gender, especially in the realm of family and personal law. “Equal” can mean “complementary,” (*wink*) meaning, patriarchal gender roles being upheld with the full force of the State. So, basically, women are screwed.

    Precisely. Equal can and very often does mean ‘complementary,’ and women are indeed screwed. The Vatican, the FLDS, conservative Baptists – all use this trick. There’s a chapter of Does God Hate Women? that’s largely about that. Pretending to give with one hand and violently snatching away with the other. Bastards.