Author: Ophelia Benson

It’s a pig’s life for women in the US military.

According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed. The Department of Defense acknowledges the problem, estimating in its 2009 annual report on sexual assault (issued last month) that some 90% of military sexual assaults are never reported.

Well yes but don’t forget, women are privileged, the bitches.

I was the only female in my platoon of 50 to 60 men. I was also the youngest, 17. Because I was the only female, men would forget in front of me and say these terrible derogatory things about women all the time. I had to hear these things every day. I’d have to say ‘Hey!’ Then they’d look at me, all surprised, and say, ‘Oh we don’t mean you.’

Hm. I wonder if they ever referred to women as cunts. Ya think?

There are only three things the guys let you be if you’re a girl in the military – a bitch, a ho, or a dyke. You’re a bitch if you won’t sleep with them. A ho if you’ve even got one boyfriend. A dyke if they don’t like you. So you can’t win.

Oh well, those are just words, they don’t matter.

Talk Islam obligingly posted the whole of Chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser’s email message on apostasy. He starts off by laying down some ground rules.

While I understand that will happen and that there is some benefit in them, in the main, it would be better if people were to withhold from debating such things, since they tend not to have the requisite familiarity with issues and competence to deal with them. Debating about religious matter is impermissible, in general, and people rarely observe the etiquette of disagreements.

But this is an issue that necessarily is of pressing interest to all Muslims. They have a natural desire to know if they are to be killed or not if they should ever decide to leave Islam. Therefore it is only natural that they should want to know about it, and if they learn something they don’t altogether like, to argue about it. It seems more than a little unfair to say that that is impermissible. It would be like telling Americans that it is impermissible for us to debate about capital punishment, when we could be subject to it. In the US it is not impermissible to debate about capital punishment.

The preponderant position in all of the 4 sunni madhahib (and apparently others of the remaining eight according to one contemporary `alim) is that the verdict is capital punishment. Of concern for us is that this can only occur in the domain and under supervision of Muslim governmental authority and can not be performed by non-state, private actors.

Of concern for us? Meaning that capital punishment for leaving Islam is not of concern if it is in the domain and under supervision of Muslim governmental authority? Why’s that then? Because Abdul-Basser and the people he’s talking to are all outside that domain and supervision and thus don’t have to worry about it? Well, if so, that’s rather callous. In fact it’s worse than callous: it’s complicit and callous. What it means is that Abdul-Basser is adhering to a religion that kills people who leave it when it has state power, while staying out of reach of such power himself. If he in fact is happy to be safe while still defending the religion that executes other, distant people simply for changing their religion – he’s a nasty man.

Maybe that’s not what he meant. But that is what it looks like.

I would finally note that there is great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand. The formal consideration of excuses for the accused and the absence of Muslim governmental authority in our case here in the North/West is for dealing with the issue practically. And Allah knows best.

Ah; well that’s consoling. As long as Allah knows best, and everybody knows what Allah wants (but do they? how? how do we know? how do they know? how does anyone know? if everybody knows why does anybody have to ask Abdul-Basser? if anyone doesn’t know then how does everyone know that someone knows and who that is and how to know who it is?) then being killed for changing your religion is no problem. That’s a relief.

Hmm…I hope Julian isn’t permanently joining the tedious chorus of people shouting at ‘new’ atheists to shut up. It’s not a very glorious vocation.

Intelligent atheism rejects what is false in religion, but should retain an interest in what is true about it. I don’t think many of my fellow atheists would disagree.

I would – depending on what is meant by ‘what is true about it.’ I don’t think anything is true about it, if we mean factually true. If we mean something much looser by ‘true’ such as ‘having some good things to say about compassion or peace’ then I don’t think religion has anything to offer that is inherent to religion as opposed to simply widely-shared moral intuitions, so again, I don’t really think there is anything true about it (about it alone, to the exclusion of other ways of thinking). If I want wisdom about morality or justice I don’t turn to clerics. There are other sources, who are less encumbered by beliefs that need to be protected.

Why is it, then, that we are increasingly seen as shrill, bishop-bashing fanatics who are tone deaf to the spiritual?

Because people like Matthew Nisbet and Madeleine Bunting and now, alas, you, keep writing pieces that call us shrill, bishop-bashing fanatics who are tone deaf to the spiritual, that’s why. Or at least that sure as hell is part of why. It’s a drum that a number of people have been banging on with frenzied energy – Chris Hedges comes to mind – for two or three years now; obviously it’s had an effect! So it’s a little disingenuous to ask such a question while engaged in yet more of the same thing. Why is it that we are seen as shrill fanatics, Julian asks, while engaged in the 40 thousandth piece calling us shrill fanatics.

The answer, I fear, is to be found in St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” In short, we had it coming.

Really – for what crime? For not being quiet enough? For not being evasive enough?

Last week, in these pages, Madeleine Bunting spoke for many when she complained about the “foghorn volume” and “evangelical fervour” of the New Atheists, with their “contempt for religion”…Atheists who criticised the details of Bunting’s argument missed the point. What it revealed is the negative perception people have of the godless hordes, and the New Atheism must share responsibility for creating its own caricature.

He says, doing his bit to re-enforce it that little bit more.

You can’t publish and lionise books and TV series with titles like The God Delusion, God is Not Great and The Root of All Evil? and then complain when people think you are anti-religious zealots.

You also can’t (or shouldn’t, anyway) set about scolding books with titles like The God Delusion and God is Not Great when you are on record as not having read them, and you also shouldn’t scold people for titles (The Root of all Evil?) that other people chose for them and that they are on record as detesting. That’s unfair, frankly. We mentioned this to Julian last time…

Perhaps a period of New Atheist exuberance was necessary. At least it got people thinking, although I fear it has confirmed every negative stereotype about it. We now need to turn down the volume and engage in a real conversation about what of value is left of religion once its crude superstitions are swept away.

But there again – not having read the books, how can Julian know that the volume is up? How can he know that the ‘new’ atheist books don’t engage in a real conversation about what of value is left of religion?

PZ is also skeptical, and so is Jason Rosenhouse.

No no, I’m not starting it up again, I just want to offer a little illustration of what I’ve been saying, which is that the (putative) fact that ‘cunt’ does not refer to women and is not an insulting epithet for women in the UK does not mean that that description holds everywhere. I consulted Google blog search, and one of the first items was a rather truculent San Francisco blog…

This Just In: Jeanene Garofalo is a CUNT

Ugly, bitter, has-been Jeanene Garofalo spews more racist hatred on Olbermann.

Bitch still thinks she’s funny. But I guess we can remove the “still” – seeing that she was never funny.

What motivates a person like Garofalo to scream “racist” at anyone who dares object to her God Obama?

I trust I don’t have to convince anyone that that post conveys more than a whiff of misogyny?

I certainly hope I don’t.

Harvard has an ‘Islamic chaplain’. Lucky Harvard.

Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser ’96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates. In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.”

Oooooookay, isn’t that interesting. One shouldn’t dismiss out of hand the idea that apostates from Islam should be executed, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse. So Harvard has a chaplain who not only quasi-approves (or perhaps fully approves, who knows) death for apostasy, it has one who is disdainful (in a Theoretical kind of way) of human rights. Harvard has a chaplain who not only thinks that perhaps it is ‘wisdom’ to kill people for leaving a religion, but also thinks killing people for leaving a religion is better than human rights. He doesn’t think, then, that people have or should have a human right to leave a religion without being killed for doing so. Harvard has a chaplain of this description. Isn’t that fascinating.

It’s good, under the circumstances, to see that students have no fear about speaking up.

“I believe he doesn’t belong as the official chaplain,” said one Islamic student, who asked that he not be named to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities…“[His remarks] are the first step towards inciting intolerance and inciting people towards violence,” said a Muslim Harvard student, who requested that he not be named for fear of harming his relationship with the Islamic community…A Muslim student at MIT, who also asked to remain anonymous to preserve his relationship with the Islamic community, said the chaplain’s remarks wrongly suggested that only Westerners and Westernized Muslims who did not fully understand Islam would find the killing of apostates objectionable.

Spot on, Muslim student at MIT; that’s exactly what the chaplain’s remarks suggest, insultingly enough. But how sad it is that these students want to preserve their relationship with a ‘community’ that they think might disagree with them about this. How sad that their ‘community’ might agree with Abdul-Basser, and might shun the students for not agreeing with him. How depressing it all is.