In Germany, to five years for inciting racial hatred.… Read the rest
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Having it all
Feb 24th, 2007 11:01 am | By Ophelia BensonThe problem with soothing official boilerplate is that it tends to ignore incompatibilities – it tends to say ‘Yes yes of course we can do everything, of course we can fly through the air and creep along the ground and dive beneath the sea, all at the same time.’ It tends to say everyone can have everything everyone wants, next question please. The Department for Education and Skills reaction to the MCB’s helpful educational guidelines for instance.
… Read the restThe Department for Education and Skills has no involvement with the document produced by the MCB. We have already provided schools with a wealth of official guidance, which makes clear they should take into account, and recognise, the needs and cultural diversity of
Everybody agrees about everything hurrah
Feb 23rd, 2007 12:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonTerry Eagleton says wrong things again.
The basic moral values of the average Muslim dentist who migrates to Britain are much the same as those of a typical English-born plumber. Neither is likely to believe that lying and cheating are the best policy, or that they should beat their children. They may have different customs and beliefs, but what is striking is the vast extent of common ground between them on the issue of what it is for men and women to live well.
Is he joking? No, apparently not, he apparently means it – he means that ‘the average Muslim dentist’ and the ‘typical English-born plumber’ and, presumably, by extension, everyone else in the world is unlikely to … Read the rest
Jonathan Rée on Wordsworth and Coleridge
Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonOne of the great literary friendships, rivaling Marx and Engels or Beauvoir and Sartre.… Read the rest
Hitchens on Irwin on Orientalism
Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAcademic reticence about Islam may be to do with potentially atheistic consequences of unfettered inquiry.… Read the rest
Mo Plans a Campaign
Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWomen should bear reponsibility for the sexual self-control of men – that’s what hijab is about.… Read the rest
How Best to Stop Female Genital Mutilation
Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonLaws against it ‘can be perceived as discriminatory for targeting particular communities.’… Read the rest
Paul Gross on the Mammoth in the Garden
Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWhy the harmonization of science and religion is a strong human need.… Read the rest
Operating on the very margin
Feb 23rd, 2007 11:36 am | By Ophelia BensonHitchens’s review of Robert Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge starts well. Attentive readers of B&W may be able to answer his opening question.
… Read the restOf what book and author was the following sentence written, and by whom? “Rarely has an Oriental servant of a white-identified, imperial design managed to pack so many services to imperial hubris abroad and racist elitism at home — all in one act.”
This was the quasi-articulate attack recently leveled, by a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, on Reading Lolita in Tehran…The professor described Nafisi’s work as resembling “the most pestiferous colonial projects of the British in India,” and its author as the moral equivalent of a sadistic torturer at Abu Ghraib. “To me there is no
Terry Eagleton Says Strange Things
Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBasic values are the same, nobody thinks children should be beaten, though customs differ.… Read the rest
Minister, HR Commission Condemn Murder
Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHuman Rights Commission of Pakistan termed murder of Zill-e-Huma Usman a terrible tragedy.… Read the rest
Chimps Observed to Make Spears
Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey sharpen them with their teeth, use them to jab at smaller animals.… Read the rest
Egyptian Blogger Jailed for ‘Insulting Islam’
Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAbdel Kareem Soliman had used his blog to criticise al-Azhar university and Hosni Mubarak.… Read the rest
Johann Hari on the Fence Around Religion
Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWe’re allowed to criticize politicians’ religion.… Read the rest
Man Kills Wife, Daughters for Westernizing
Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe threw petrol over them and ignited it.… Read the rest
Pakistani Minister Killed for Refusing to Wear Veil
Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonKiller singled out prominent women’s rights activist in the belief that women should not be in politics. … Read the rest
MCB Attempts to Bridge Cultural Gap
Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonBy urging schools to allow Muslim girls to wear headscarves for all lessons. That should do it.… Read the rest
School Head Explains Niqab Ban
Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSchool promotes equality between men and women; she feared other Muslim girls would come under pressure.… Read the rest
Judge Rejects Challenge to School Niqab Ban
Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSchool’s head hopes the student will now return and resume her education.… Read the rest
William Paley’s Wonderful Watch
Feb 21st, 2007 | By Ian MacDougallSocrates, though all too mortal, gave us a reasoned argument that the soul is immortal. It is all there in Plato’s Phaedo.
I first read Plato in 1957, as a sixteen-year-old student of one of the most formidable intellects Scotland has ever produced: John Anderson, Sydney University’s Challis Professor of Philosophy.
Anderson had studied mathematics and physics at the University of Glasgow before switching to philosophy rather late in his time as an undergraduate. The son of a village schoolmaster, he spoke with a well-modulated Scots burr, and with his grey hair and a thick moustache was to my mind the very model of a professor. His contemporary Bertrand Russell had also started in mathematics and physics, but where Russell … Read the rest