Author: Ophelia Benson

Salman Rushdie on the ‘Today’ programme on Tuesday. The subject is a collaborative exhibition with Anish Kapoor, based on Scheherezade. Rushdie points out that people forget or don’t realize how murderous the sultan is – he doesn’t point out, but could have, that the reason the sultan murders all those very young women after he’s had sex with them is so that no one else will have sex with them. He gets a new virgin every night, and she is killed in the morning. The subject has echoes of recent discussions, and the reporter asks them about Jack Straw. Kapoor says it’s a matter of respect, and Rushdie asks to disagree. Then he proceeds to do so as thoroughly as possible. So I transcribed it.

“But speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there’s not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of the veil, and I think the battle against the wearing of the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I’m completely on his side. He wasn’t doing anything compulsory, he was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. You see one of the things that’s interesting about the story around which this work is based is that it is precisely about a woman taking into her hands the matter of her life and taking power back from an extremely powerful and bloody ruler, and I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.”

Damn right. You rock, Salman. And veils suck.

Yasmin Alibhai Brown gets it.

I now find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Straw’s every word. Feminists have denounced Straw’s approach as unacceptably proscriptive, and reactionary Muslims say it is Islamaphobic.

Not this feminist. (See? This is why the word ‘some’ comes in handy. It’s similar when people over there get going on the subject of Americans. ‘Americans love sentimental movies, Americans are religious fundamentalists, Americans are fat, Americans mispronounce “Victoriar and Albert”.’ Not all of us, except for the last one: we all do make that mistake.) This feminist has not denounced Straw’s approach as unacceptably proscriptive; instead I’ve wished he hadn’t skated over the feminist issues.

But it is time to speak out against this objectionable garment and face down the obscurantists who endlessly bait and intimidate the state by making demands that violate its fundamental principles. That they have brainwashed young women, born free, to seek self-subjugation breaks my heart.

Yeah. And it’s also depressing that that brainwashed self-subjugation results in some liberals (and some feminists – some, mind you) indeed saying Straw’s approach is too proscriptive.

Britain has been both more relaxed about cultural differences and over-anxious about challenging unacceptable practices. Few Britons have realized that the hijab — now more widespread than ever — is, for Islamicist puritans, the first step on a path leading to the burqa, where even the eyes are gauzed over…I refuse to submit to the hijab or to an opaque, black shroud. On Sept. 10, 2001, I wrote a column in the Independent newspaper condemning the Taliban for using violence to force Afghan women into the burqa. It is happening again. In Iran, educated women who fail some sort of veil test are being imprisoned by their oppressors. Saudi women under their body sheets long to show themselves and share the world equally with men. Exiles who fled such practices to seek refuge in Europe now find the evil is following them…Millions of progressive Muslims want to halt this Islamicist project to take us back to the Dark Ages. Straw is right to start a debate about what we wear.

Don’t read the comments on this unless you want to feel sick. The Independent article has gone subscription, so I used this one, but the comments are…nasty.

Great.

Like many girls, Nabila has a boyfriend. However, as the daughter of a conservative Muslim family, this puts her at risk…[H]er two elder brothers have subjected her to repeated beatings, one of which was so serious it resulted in a trip to hospital. Nabila’s schoolwork has suffered, partly as a result of the emotional trauma and partly because of the raging migraines she now gets through being repeatedly beaten about the head…Nabila is one of many victims of “honour-based” violence, which, at its most extreme, can see young women of south Asian and Kurdish origin being murdered by their families. This kind of abuse has its roots in the cultural concept of women’s chastity being in the control of the men in her family; any suggestion of independence is seen as defiling the family’s reputation or “honour”. It can occur in strict Muslim and also Sikh families.

So the girls disappear.

…a statistical analysis done several years ago by Bradford city council. It tracked 1,000 boys and 1,000 girls with Muslim names as they moved through school; at primary, for 1,000 boys on roll, there were 989 girls; by secondary, the 1,000 boys were still around, but the number of girls had dwindled to 860. Across the report the analyst had written: “Where have all the girls gone?” Balmforth, who gives talks to teachers and social workers, says the answer is that the girls have been taken to Bangladesh or Pakistan. In such cases, by the time teachers notice girls have disappeared, it is frequently too late to do anything. The pattern that leads to forced marriage tends to run as follows: emotional blackmail, threats, beatings, imprisonment and kidnap.

Read the whole dang thing.

The BBC also discussed the limbo question.

But limbo has long been a problem for the Church. Unease has remained over reconciling a Loving God with one who sent babies to limbo and the Church has faced much criticism.

So – there’s unease about a loving god who sends babies to limbo, but what about a loving god who gives babies diseases, or one who lets babies get scalded, or raped (it happens), or beaten, or crushed (slowly) after earthquakes? What about a loving god who hands babies and children over to parents who neglect them or tell them they’re ugly and stupid or sell them into slavery or yank them out of school and force them to marry strangers? What about a loving god who allows all the suffering that sentient beings undergo on this particular planet? I’m curious about that. I’m permanently curious about it. Curious and also worried: because I think the resolution or repression of the problem has some unpleasant consequences – a justification or minimization of suffering that is not morally healthy. I don’t think we ought to reconcile a loving god with the way things are for sentient beings; I don’t think it can be done, and I think the attempt is corrupting.

But, that’s a separate issue, so never mind that for now.

But there are those who argue that it is not simply a “hypothesis” that can just be swept aside; that the notion that unbaptised children do not go to heaven has been a fundamental part of Church teaching for hundreds of years. Then, of course, there is the argument that if this can be abolished, what else is disposable?

My point exactly. If it’s been a fundamental part of Church teaching for hundreds of years then members of the church were expected to take it seriously; they were expected to believe it and take it as true, not just think it was an interesting notion of the church hierarchy that they could take or leave. And given that, it is surely bound to give believers pause to have the hierarchy suddenly say ‘Oh, wait, we’ve changed our minds.’ It just is. They’re bound to wonder why, if the idea has turned out to be as revisable as all that, they were told it was true for so long. And as the BBC shrewdly points out, if they wonder that, they’ll also wonder what else is disposable. Why would they not?

You know the US is in the grip of a war on religion, right? Sure. That’s why there are all these religious exemptions cluttering up the place.

Alabama exempts church day care programs from state licensing requirements, which were tightened after almost a dozen children died in licensed and unlicensed day care centers in the state in two years.

Well that’s good thinking. State licensing requirements were tightened presumably to improve the safety of day care centers – but church day care programs are exempt. On what grounds? Because if children in those programs crack their skulls on the concrete under the swing set, they’ll go to heaven so it’s okay? Because the church needs the money? What?

In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide “war on religion” that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly. Some of the exceptions have existed for much of the nation’s history, originally devised for Christian churches but expanded to other faiths as the nation has become more religiously diverse. But many have been granted in just the last 15 years — sometimes added to legislation, anonymously and with little attention, much as are the widely criticized “earmarks” benefiting other special interests.

Some legal scholars and judges see the special breaks for religious groups as a way to prevent government from infringing on those religious freedoms.“Never forget that the exercise of religion is a constitutionally protected activity,” said Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has written and testified in support of greater legislative protection for religious liberty. “Regulation imposes burdens on the free exercise of religion. Exemptions lift those burdens.”

The free exercise clause has some unfortunate effects, in my view – such as zealots suing for the right to post bible verses in their offices saying homosexuality is a sin. Run-amok exemption would be another. Regulation imposes burdens on everything, which is precisely why it should be universal.

Read it all. It’s intensely irritating.

I usually disagree with Cristina Odone, but she makes a reasonable point here.

In our romantic vision, these bearded men and apron-clad women offer the possibility of etching out a distinct path, removed from the ugly materialist world of big business and commercialism. The families’ tragedies is unbearably moving, yet the way this community is dealing with a gunman killing five young schoolgirls (and then himself) is disturbing…It’s not just TV and iPods they reject: it is schooling beyond 14, the emancipation of women and scholarship that questions a single interpretation of the sacred texts…Given their uncompromising ways, the Amish live in an apartheid of their own choosing. This can be dangerous, as we have seen with Catholic paedophile priests: when community leaders become the custodians of their own morals and are not subject to scrutiny, all kinds of wrongs can take place and all manner of fundamentalist tendencies thrive.

It’s interesting to note that pretty much all the comments on this piece indignantly reject her criticism – which is unfortunate, because she’s right. Amish isolation does protect for instance domestic abuse. There was a long article about just that in Legal Affairs in January 2005. I commented on it at the time. Odone for once absolutely nails it: when community leaders become the custodians of their own morals and are not subject to scrutiny, all kinds of wrongs can take place. Indeed they can, which is why isolated patriarchal groups should not be given an automatic free pass and exemption from scrutiny. Not Jonestown, not David Koresh’s setup, and not the Amish.