Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Islam and Apostasy

    The main traditions of jurisprudence in Islam draw on Hadiths to argue in support of death for apostates.

  • Patriarchy Makes Men Crazy and Stupid

    Sometimes men sulk until women give up the debate.

  • Is Either Amis Any Good?

    Neil Powell thinks the first is better than the second.

  • Catholics to Pope: Lift Contraception Ban

    Groups said Church’s ban has had catastrophic effects, particularly in prevention of AIDS.

  • Happy 40th Birthday ‘Humanae Vitae’

    Vatican refuses to change disastrous policy on contraception.

  • Vatican Priest Calls Letter ‘Paid Propaganda’

    Obscurantist nonsense about spiritual relation between husband and wife and fecundity.

  • Priest’s Sudden Insight About Sexuality

    ‘The gift of love should be allowed to be fruitful. This simple idea lit up everything like lightning in a storm.’

  • Jersey ‘Bone’ is Probably a Piece of Wood

    Experts have told Jersey police that multiple tests show the fragment is not bone.

  • Michael Shermer on a Habit of Human Cognition

    We have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives are usually harmless.

  • Olivia Judson on Recent Evolutionary Change

    Start with the evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago.

  • Aberystwyth Cleric Defends ‘Life of Brian’ Ban

    Hasn’t seen it, says it was unpleasant then and still is, therefore should be banned.

  • Catholic Group Tries to Prosecute Parade

    Catholic ‘civil rights’ group accuses organizers of gay pride parade of ‘inciting religious hatred.’

  • Jersey Abuse Claim ‘Corroborated’

    Police investigating allegations of child abuse say search of a bunker seems to support witness statements.

  • Universal or selective?

    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) begins with a preamble, the first clause of which says

    Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…

    The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) also begins with a preamble; its first clause is quite different:

    Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization in which harmony is established between this life and the hereafter and knowledge is combined with faith; and the role that this Ummah should play to guide a humanity confused by competing trends and ideologies and to provide solutions to the chronic problems of this materialistic civilization…

    We are in different worlds already. The UDHR, because it is universal and because the universality is the whole point, does not carve up the human family into nations or religions, while the CDHRI does exactly that from the very beginning. The UDHR starts with the rights of all human beings, the CDHRI starts with the superiority of the Islamic Ummah. In short the CDHRI subverts the entire purpose of the UDHR in its very first words.

    The UDHR preamble’s second clause makes clear why the universality and equality of rights are so important and why the invocation of the superiority of a particular community is so sharply – so pointedly, even wickedly – at odds with the purpose of the UDHR.

    Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind…

    The UDHR was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Nazi genocide. The human rights in question had to be universal in order to address ‘barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind’; if the human rights are particular then we’re right back where we started, committing barbarous acts against people who are not members of ‘the best nation.’ So with the CDHRI we’re right back where we started.

  • Karadzic as Dabic, Spiritual Explorer

    He was an expert in ‘human quantum energy’ and ‘a researcher in psychology and bio-energy.’

  • Interview With Barbara Ehrenreich

    You could have sunny economic indicators but the population is so divided there’s not an average.

  • Hitchens Gets Himself Waterboarded

    Waterboarding used to be something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict

  • Man, 64, Will Wait to Poke Bride, 10

    He’s paid the SR100,000 but will wait until she’s 15. Lucky girl.

  • Getting a Laugh From ‘World Youth Day’

    The walls had collapsed. I was standing out in the open. It was very liberating.

  • How special

    And then there’s Prince Charles’s surprise colleague.

    Captured war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic was living in Serbia’s capital Belgrade and practising alternative medicine, Serb officials say. He was sporting a long white beard…

    Good good; glad he looked the part. And so appropriate…’alternative medicine’ – yes that’s one of those ironic euphemisms that murdering bastards go in for, isn’t it, like Sonderbehandlung. Killing people wholesale is special handling all right, and it’s also alternative medicine, very alternative indeed. Very droll, Rado.

    “He was involved with alternative medicine, earning his money from practising alternative medicine… he was working in a private practice.”…He even gave public lectures and was a regular contributor to Healthy Life magazine, editor Goran Kojic said.

    Okay that’s carrying irony a little too far. There is such a thing as good taste.