Here’s a great listen for you – Julia Sweeney on Fresh Air. She’s got a one-woman show called ‘Letting Go of God’ at an off-off-Broadway theater, and she gives a pretty good run-through of the journey from theism to atheism in this interview. In fact it’s pretty hilarious what a lot she manages to get into thirty minutes or so – religion as consolation in despair, Bible study, Abraham and Isaac, perverse excuses for Abraham and Isaac, a wink-wink priest who explains that we sophisticated believers know better but myths are for the people, the anger and sense of treachery at being told that, withdrawal from the church, turn to New Age, in particular Deepak Chopra, being stimulated by … Read the rest

All this kind of thing is useful in a way. A way one wishes we didn’t need things to be useful, but useful all the same. Useful in the sense of being an extreme and conspicuous form of a pervasive bad thing that one wishes were not there at all, so not useful in any ultimate sense, not inherently desirable; quite the contrary; but useful in educational terms; useful in making clear what we’re up against. Useful, to spell it out, in making it clear how deep misogyny really does go. It goes so deep that a lot of people think women have exactly two choices: lifelong confinement to a room, or deserved rape followed by stoning to death. It … Read the rest

This is quite funny. It’s from an article on Alan Johnson’s U-turn on quotas for ‘faith’ schools.

The Guardian yesterday attempted unsuccessfully to contact Tahir Allam, an education spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. Earlier he told Radio 4″s Today programme: “This assumption that faith schools are divisive is a false one because there is no evidence to support this.”

Actually I think that’s downright hilarious. The Guardian is so eager to check in with the MCB, and to be seen to check in with the MCB, that it even lets us know about its failed attempts. What – did it think we would be annoyed and ‘offended’ if it wrote a story on government policy on ‘faith’ … Read the rest

Sheik Hilali clarifies things.

Australia is a multicultural society. Whoever wants to, let them take their clothes off. Whoever wants to go naked, let them go naked. Whoever wants to get drunk, let them get drunk. Whoever wants to smoke hashish, let them smoke hashish. It’s a free country, it’s none of our business. But it is our right to tell our women (that they dress appropriately).

And, presumably, that they stay home and stay in their room, since that’s what he said the first time. So anyway – who’s the ‘our’ in that sentence? Who is the ‘we’ who get to tell ‘our’ women what to do? Men, of course. It always is. ‘We’ are people and ‘we’ … Read the rest