Carlin Romano on conversation as a process of learning to live with one another.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
It Takes a Sentence
Apr 6th, 2006 7:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere’s a lot of kack in this piece on religion in the New Statesman. This particular sentence especially caught my eye, for sheer quantity of kack in one sentence.
“So far, the response of the government has been mostly correct: dismissing the crude secularism of the French ban on the hijab, allowing for the establishment of Muslim schools and working closely with the leaders of the Muslim community.”
One, the word ‘correct’, as if political decisions were as clear-cut as arithmetic. Two, that much-recycled bit of obfuscation: the French ban on the hijab is not a French ban on the hijab, it’s a French ban on the hijab (and other conspicuous religious symbols and garments) in state schools. … Read the rest
Explaining and Understanding
Apr 6th, 2006 7:21 pm | By Ophelia BensonI posted a comment on Dennett’s reply to Ruse and Bunting this morning – and since the idea I was commenting on is (I think) a fairly pervasive one, and related to this whole question of ‘shut up about your atheism, they might hear you,’ I thought I might as well post it here too. The first para, in italics, is someone else commenting.
on the subject of Dawkins getting up ones nose, it would be all well and good if he was just another academic. He does however hold a position called ‘The Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University’ (according to wikipedia) which means he has the task of communicating his subject to … Read the rest
Introduction to ‘Living Without God’ [pdf]
Apr 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonRonald Aronson on finding faith in disbelief.… Read the rest
Only Animists Shout at Their Computers
Apr 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe danger here, Dennett says, lies in the sacred becoming too sacred.… Read the rest
André Glucksmann on Separating Truth and Belief
Apr 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCivilized discourse analyzes and defines matters of fact relating to knowledge, not to faith. … Read the rest
What War on Christians?
Apr 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDisagreement isn’t oppression.… Read the rest
Irfan Husain on Apostasy and Liberal Attitudes
Apr 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonDouble standards can be problematic.… Read the rest
On Taking the Templeton Foundation’s Dime
Apr 6th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIf you don’t think science and religion should be reconciled, qualms arise.… Read the rest
Cultural Relativism and its Enemies
Apr 6th, 2006 1:26 am | By Ophelia BensonPhyllis Chesler and Maryam Namazie are (you should pardon the expression) singing out of the same hymnbook.
Chesler:
… Read the restChesler’s experiences in Afghanistan have helped shape her thoughts about the failure of feminism to engage with what she sees as the oppression of women in Islamic countries…looking at mainstream feminism in the west – in the universities, in the media, among academics and the socalled intelligentsia – there is a moral failure, a moral bankruptcy, a refusal to take on, in particular, Muslim gender apartheid. So you have many contemporary feminists who say, ‘We have to be multiculturally relativist. We cannot uphold a single, or absolute, standard of human rights. And, therefore, we can’t condemn Islamic culture, because their countries have
All-purpose Tool Going Cheap
Apr 5th, 2006 5:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s good to know that whatever happens, whatever the conditions, whether it rains or sizzles, at midnight and at noon, whether things are going well or badly, in peace and war, in poverty and plenty, whether there are too few women or too many, the result is always the same – women are treated like dirt. Women are grabbed, pushed around, sold and bought, beaten and killed, raped and enslaved, exploited and used, thrown away and swapped around. Women are treated like livestock, like farm machinery, like incubators, like any old possession except worse because they have to be broken and forced and violently bent to the will of other people. Incubators and ploughs don’t argue, but women – well, … Read the rest
Profile of Maryam Namazie
Apr 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe rejects attempts to silence all criticism of theocratic regimes as ‘racism’ or ‘Islamophobic.’ … Read the rest
Ishtiaq Ahmed on Apostasy
Apr 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAre we all then to be hanged because we question dogma?… Read the rest
Women Sold Into Slavery in Haryana
Apr 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSelective abortion has made women scarce, so they are coerced and exploited.… Read the rest
Human Rights Watch on Children in D.R. Congo
Apr 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWar, HIV/AIDS, high school fees, accusations of sorcery increase number of street children.… Read the rest
Congo Child Sorcery Abuse on the Rise
Apr 5th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHRW: self-styled pastors use torture, beatings, denial of food to rid children of alleged sorcery . … Read the rest
Falling
Apr 5th, 2006 12:02 am | By Ophelia BensonHowever, despite Sutherland’s inexplicable resort to Islamophobiawatch as a source, it was pleasing to see Daniel Dennett reply to Bunting and Brown. I replied to them myself here and here but I was just filling in the time until Dennett got around to it.
… Read the restI find it amusing that two Brits – Madeleine Bunting and Michael Ruse – have fallen for a version of one of the most famous scams in American folklore. When Brer Rabbit gets caught by the fox, he pleads with him: “Oh, please, please, Brer Fox, whatever you do, don’t throw me in that awful briar patch!” – where he ends up safe and sound after the fox does just that. When the American propagandist William
Watch It
Apr 4th, 2006 8:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonJohn Sutherland is a little worried that Phyllis Chesler may have an Islamophobia problem. He cites a very weighty and authoritative source to back this up:
The blog Islamophobia Watch suggested that this signalled “the point of total dementia”.
The blog Islamophobia Watch? Has he read it much? It equates any criticism of or dissent from Islam at all with ‘Islamophobia’ and (of course) it equates ‘Islamophobia’ with hatred of Muslims which it equates with or simply considers identical to racism – so, criticism of Islam (including of course by people from Iran, Pakistan, and other ‘brown’ countries) amounts to racism. That’s stupid, and it works to stifle criticism and dissent, and it works to stifle them in advance of… Read the rest
Dennett Replies to Bunting and Ruse
Apr 4th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonReporters should avoid being complicit in publicity stunts by the likes of Dembski.… Read the rest
Phyllis Chesler Talks to John Sutherland
Apr 4th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSutherland quotes the wisdom of Islamophobiawatch.… Read the rest