Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Two From MCB Say Rename ‘Honour’ Killings

    ‘We should be saying, “Any honour you once had, you’ve now lost”.’

  • US Public TV Cozies Up to Theocracy

    ‘Project smacks of covert Religious Right propaganda, not a forthright contribution to the national dialogue.’

  • ‘Honour’ Killing Used to Threaten Other Women

    The murder of Banaz Mahmod is being used to intimidate women accused of ‘shaming’ their families.

  • The Case for Humanity: Hitchens on Religion

    “I have been writing this book all my life,” Hitchens says, “and intend to keep on writing it.” Indeed, from his critical biography of Mother Theresa onwards the case against religion is always an underlying theme in Hitchens’s work, and I’m surprised that it has taken him so long to devote a whole book to this subject. It’s worth the wait, though.

    This is partly because of Hitchens’s style: erudite but never pretentious, furious without hysteria, serious and laugh-out-loud funny. The breadth of scholarship and learning, and the ease and wit with which he communicates it to the reader, means that you could read Hitchens on any subject regardless of whether you agree with him. To use a cliché in a true sense, he is a joy to read.

    Many of his arguments will be familiar. Hitchens demolishes creationism and the argument from design, and shows by close reading that pretty much every act of violence and repression carried out by religious believers can be justified by holy writ. A frequent retort is the truth that atheists can kill people as well, but as Hitchens says, “the chance that a person committing the crimes was ‘faith-based’ was almost 100 percent, while the chances that a person of faith was on the side of humanity and decency were about as good as the odds of a coin flip.” My own view is that this is explained by religion’s devaluation of life to merely a waiting room for the afterlife. Franco’s fascists and bin Laden’s Islamists shout “We love death” for a reason. If you think of mortal life as meaningless except as a preparation for death, you aren’t going to care too much about ending your own life or anyone else’s.

    What is new is Hitchens’s demonstration that all religions are essentially the same faith. The story of Abraham appears in Christian, Jewish and Islamic scripture, and immaculate conceptions appear everywhere from the Old Testament to Ancient Egyptian myths, prompting Hitchens to comment that, for religion, the birth canal is a one-way street. These competing faiths are different interpretations of the same totalitarian ideal. No government can know what you dream about, not even North Korea’s, but religion promises “constant surveillance, from cradle to grave – and beyond”. Personally, I can’t imagine a more terrifying prospect.

    Also recommended is his study of the tortured relationship between religion and sex. This has rarely been admitted, perhaps because it is so personal to us, but religion has promoted a morbid, perverse attitude to the sexual act that haunts even the most enlightened civilisations to this day. It mutilates its children’s genitals and represses their most natural instinct while promising everlasting orgies in the afterlife. As Hitchens says, “The homicidal lunatics – rehearsing to be genocidal maniacs – of 9/11 were perhaps tempted by virgins, but it is far more revolting to contemplate that, like so many of their fellow jihadists, they were virgins.” Innocence is great up to a certain point in life: after that, it becomes corruption. The Catholic Church is so well known for child abuse scandals that the paedophile priest is now a sitcom joke. And for good reason: Hitchens tells us that there was a time in Ireland when children who went to church schools and weren’t raped were actually in the minority.

    I know a lot of people who would nod along at this stuff but still be inclined to seek out spiritual answers. For the secular, Buddhism is a temptation because wisdom always looks better from far off and because it is seen as a nice, cuddly alternative to Western fire and brimstone. Hitchens punctures yet another illusion by exploring Buddhist leaders’ collaboration with Nazis, Buddhism’s pogroms of Hindu Tamils, and its array of charlatans who rip off the naïve seekers of the West. He gives a warning to those seeking wisdom from far away: “Those who become bored by conventional ‘Bible’ religions, and seek ‘enlightenment’ by way of the dissolution of the critical faculties into nirvana in any form… may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals.”

    Of course, many will not agree. There’s a growing critique of outright secularist thought, often from other atheists and liberals. Dawkins and Harris may have a point, they say, but they are too combative, too forceful, too ready to lose their tempers in public.

    There is even a disgusting moral equivalence that has fast become cliché: the idea that, because they hold strong views, some antitheists are basically the same as religious fundamentalists. Cristina Odone describes Richard Dawkins as “a world-famous apologist for secularist extremism”; Prospect referred to The God Delusion as “Dawkins’ dogma” in the earliest of many patronising reviews. In February this year the British Guardian ran a long thinkpiece on faith and secularism, which portrayed the debate as between two parallel fundamentalisms. It interviewed Azzam Tamimi, director of London’s Institute of Islamic Political Thought:

    I refer to secular fundamentalism. The problem is that these people believe that they have the absolute truth. That means you have no room to talk to others so you end up having a physical fight. They want to close the door and ignore religion, but this will provoke a violent religiosity. If someone seeks to deny my existence, I will fight to assert it.

    The Guardian failed to point out that Tamimi is a Special Envoy of Hamas who has spoken in favour of suicide bombing and the eradication of the state of Israel.

    Hitchens deals with the equivalence straight away:

    Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith… We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfulfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication… We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books…. We are reconciled to living only once, except through out children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion.

    Another criticism of strongly expressed atheism is that it seeks to cruelly puncture the comforting illusions that do no harm. Passionate atheists are seen as akin to someone kicking apart a doll’s house. Hitchens acknowledges this and puts Marx’s famous description of religion as “opium for the people” in context: for Marx religion was not a brainwashing tool but a genuine comfort to people who had nothing.

    There’s nothing morally wrong with deluding yourself to be happy, we all do it from time to time. But a big theme in God is Not Great is that faith belongs to the “sinister, spoiled, selfish childhood of our species”. Of course, a five-year-old with an imaginary friend is cute. A twenty-five year old with an imaginary friend is just disturbing. Put simply, it’s time to grow up, and put away these childish things.

    Organised religion is declining, despite the best efforts of our governments and of isolated fundamentalist groups. We may be seeing new attempts at censorship and repression, but I agree with A C Grayling that this is faith’s last death-rattle rather than a sign of its resurgence. Religion has had thousands of years to put its ideas into practice, and it’s time to give something else a chance.

    Life is there to be lived, and for all its imperfections, it is the only life we are sure of. Slowly, we are packing away our toys and games and walking hand in hand into the mortal sunset. When faith ends, life begins.

    God is Not Great: The Case Against Religion, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic 2007

  • Egypt Has a Fatwa Problem

    ‘The problem created is confusion in thought, confusion about what is right and what is wrong, religiously.’

  • New Supermarket Owner Trashes Secularism

    ‘I believe that in a Jewish state in which there is a large Muslim minority, selling pork is a provocation.’

  • Banaz Mahmod Warned the Police Four Times

    Mahmod tried to kill his daughter first on New Year’s Eve 2005…

  • Malaysia Worked Up Over Religious Law

    Widespread disquiet as people realize the court failed to uphold the supremacy of the secular constitution.

  • A C Grayling on Offended Believers

    Hundreds of religious books, no problem; a mere six anti-religious books, fury and outrage.

  • Inspector Plod

    Oh dear – they messed that up.

    Banaz Mahmod made no secret of her belief that her father wanted to kill her. She was in hospital, nursing wounds incurred in an escape from him, when her boyfriend recorded a video of her…Ms Mahmod also told police, four times, that she feared for her life and produced a list of three men she believed would murder her – but all to no avail…It emerged during the trial that a female police officer concluded Ms Mahmod had made up her story to get her boyfriend’s attention.

    Oh well, we all make mistakes.

    The campaign of intimidation against Ms Mahmod began when she met the man who was to become her boyfriend, Rahmat Sulemani, after fleeing an abusive, two-year arranged marriage, which had been punctuated by beatings and sexual violence…When word of the affair started getting back to Mahmod’s “controlling, powerful” brother Ari that the couple had been seen out together, a family “council of war” was held. But the decision about what to do had apparently already been taken. A day before, Ari telephoned Amir Abbas Ibrahim, an associate in Birmingham, to arrange for the burial of Banaz’s body.

    Quick off the mark, aren’t they. ‘Hey look, there’s Banaz with a man – right, we’ll have to kill her; phone Amir to fix the burial.’

    Mahmod tried to kill his daughter first on New Year’s Eve 2005, when he lured her to her grandmother’s house and forced her to drink brandy, but she ran away. Afterwards she collapsed and was taken to hospital. She refused to leave the ambulance at first, insisting her father was trying to kill her and, once in hospital, recorded the message. When asked to investigate, PC Cornes was more concerned with a window broken as Ms Mahmod escaped from the house, and wanted to charge her with criminal damage.

    Well hey, what’s more important, a woman’s life, or a window?

    Ms Mahmod thought she would be safe at home because her mother was there. The next day, when her parents went out, the men were able to come to the family home and murder her…The campaign group the Southall Black Sisters has demanded an investigation by the IPCC…One Metropolitan Police officer said last night the initial handling of the case had set back by 25 years the Met’s efforts to encourage victims of crime to come forward.

    Especially if they have the bad luck to break a window when escaping.

  • All the hornets

    Anthony Grayling considers the squawks of the offended believers.

    To the annoyance of many, the alarm of some, and the satisfaction of others, the half dozen books recently published that powerfully set out the case against religion and religious beliefs – books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Michel Onfray – have all sold in large numbers…The appearance of these books shows that the immunity of religion to forthright questioning and challenge is over, and with it its claim to automatic respect, privilege, sensitive handling and a place at the high table of politics and public life….The hard truths spoken about it in these books and the public debate surrounding them are as genies freed from the bottle: they cannot be put back.

    I do hope he’s right about that – and it does seem like the kind of thing that’s hard to put back. Once it’s out, well, it’s out. It’s hard to unknow it.

    A trawl along the shelves of any major bookstore is enough to reveal the vast output of every conceivable specimen of religious view, though admittedly much of it consists of saccharine would-be uplift merely. There they are in their dozens and score and hundreds, where is the outrage, the condemnation, the complaining about this? Non-religious people simply ignore such books…Yet a mere half dozen anti-religious tomes have stirred up all the hornets in their nests, have offended and outraged the devout, and between them have exposed religious claims and beliefs for what they are.

    It is quite funny when you think about it. It’s not as if Dawkins and Dennett and Grayling himself have been pitching huge fits in the Guardian for decades at every single religious book that is published. It’s not as if they’ve been screeching that theists are cowardly and pretentious and jowly and ageing all this time. But six measly anti-theist books, and my god you’d think they were advocating child porn spiced up with a spot of priest-murder. In short, there’s a major double standard in operation here. The books packed full of bullshit get a free pass, the ones pointing out that it’s all bullshit are treated to a chorus of screams and imprecations. Uh – it should be the other way around, you know?

  • Relatives Found Guilty in Banaz Mahmod Case

    She tried repeatedly to warn police that her life was in danger, even naming the likely killers.

  • Southern Baptists Warned Against Atheism

    Some atheist books are popular; it’s an outrage.

  • Southern Baptists Plan Their Future Course

    Advice not to intermingle personal political persuasions with their chief responsibility to represent JC.

  • Hitchens Major on Hitchens Minor

    ‘The religious mentality forces honest and reasonable people to say dishonest and irrational things.’

  • Satire: Islamic London Would Be a Better Place

    It is satire isn’t it? Surely?

  • What happened to secularism?

    Sue Blackmore is right.

    “Religious faith is not inconsistent with reason.” I nearly choked on my breakfast when I heard this on the Today programme. These words were spoken by Mr Blair, in his inimitably sincere style. He was addressing an Islamic conference in London, on June 4…But religious faith is inconsistent with reason (and much more that we value as well)…Faith is corrosive to the human mind. If someone genuinely believes that it is right to believe things without reason or evidence then they are open to every kind of dogma, whim, coercion, or dangerous infectious idea that’s around. If someone is convinced that it is acceptable to base their beliefs on what is written in an ancient book, or what some teacher tells them they must believe, then they will have no true freedom of thought; they will be trapped by their faith into inconsistency and untruths because they are unable to throw out false ideas when evidence against them comes along.

    The usual reply to that (along with a lot of abuse and random insult about aging and fundamentalism and jowls) is that there are plenty of rational people who have religious faith. The reply to that, I think, is ‘Yes, maybe, but only to the extent that they don’t allow the ‘faith’ to transfer to anything other than religion, which condition itself means that faith is not consistent with reason.’ The two have to be kept firmly separated for reason to be reason (and faith to be faith), and that surely means that they’re not compatible, not that they are.

    [U]niversities should be teaching people how to think, question, and understand these things, not to have faith in “truths” proclaimed without reason or evidence. Tony Blair pronounces the word “faith” with just that touch of special reverence in his voice, as though it were something to respect, something we should admire in others and grant them licence to believe whatever they want on its account. Indeed he proclaimed that the conference was “an opportunity to listen; to hear Islam’s true voice; to welcome and appreciate them; and in doing so, to join up with all those who believe in a world where religious faith is respected”. How despicable. How creepy. How frightening when we see the dire consequences of faith-based actions all around us…I, for one, do not want to live in a world where religious faith is respected…[O]ur great universities should continue to teach people to think for themselves, to respect the truth, and to take nothing on faith.

    Exactly, about that touch of special reverence in the voice. That’s what the word ‘faith’ is for, really: to summon up that creepy tone of voice. The hell with that.

    Blair says some very dubious things in that speech.

    We have successful Muslims in all areas of our national life – business, sport, media, culture, the professions. We have our first Muslim MPs, first Muslim Members of the House of Lords; hopefully the next election will bring more and hopefully also the first women Muslim MPs.

    That’s a bizarre thing to hope. Does he hope the next election will bring more Sikh MPs? More Hindus? More Jains? More Shintoists? Mormons? Jehovah’s Witnesses? Baptists? Mennonites? Dukhobors? Orthodox Jews? Catholics? Christians?

    Probably not. But then why more Muslims? Because he’s treating them as a minority group, excuse me a minority community, rather than (or as well as) adherents of a religion. But he shouldn’t do that, because that causes him to say there should be more adherents of a particular religion in Parliament, and that’s an anti-secular suggestion if I ever heard one.

    In the face of so much high profile accorded to religious extremism, to schism, and to confrontation, it is important to show that religious faith is not inconsistent with reason, or progress, or the celebration of diversity. Religious faith has much to contribute to the public sphere; is still a thriving part of what makes a cohesive community; is a crucial motivator of millions of citizens around the world; and is an essential if non-governmental way of helping to make society work. To lose that contribution would not just be a pity; it would be a huge backward step.

    Another anti-secular suggestion, to put it mildly.

    There is also a clear move across the world to assert strongly the moderate and true authority of Islam. In Jordan, in 2004, under the leadership of HM King Abdullah, a statement, the Amman Message was released seeking to declare what Islam is and what it is not, and how it should be manifested. I was deeply impressed when, the next year, the King convened 200 leading scholars from no less than 50 countries, who unanimously – unanimously – issued a Declaration on 3 basic issues: the validity of different Islamic schools of thought and theology; the forbidding of declarations of apostasy between Muslims; and criteria for the issuing of fatwas – religious edicts – to pre-empt the spawning of illegitimate versions.

    What does he mean the true authority of Islam? Why is he talking admiringly about the authority of a religion? Why is he impressed by that Declaration? What about declarations of apostasy between Muslims and non-Muslims or ex-Muslims? Why is he validating the idea of fatwas at all, however criteria-bound they are?

    Also in 2005, the summit meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference issued a declaration and a 10-year action plan. The summit reaffirmed Islam as a religion of moderation and modernity. It rejected bigotry and extremism. It supported work to establish the values of Islam as those of understanding, tolerance, dialogue and multilateralism.

    That’s not all the OIC did in 2005. Furthermore – Blair neglects to mention the little matter of the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Well he ought to. The whole damn speech is evasive that way. Flattering, obsequious, and evasive. He ought not to do that.

  • Todd Gitlin Remembers Rorty

    ‘The philosophical arguments in my head were often arguments with him.’

  • Richard Rorty 1931-2007

    In April the American Philosophical Society awarded him the Thomas Jefferson Medal.

  • CFI Offers Secular Equivalent of Bible Camp

    Impressive line-up includes philosopher Paul Kurtz, famous skeptic Joe Nickell, and others.