Racism bad, but is criminal prosecution of ten-year-olds the best response?… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Ayhan Surucu Gets 9 Years for Killing Sister 
Apr 14th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
So angry when his sister started to date German men that he put a gun to her head at a bus stop.… Read the rest
Clash Between Religion and Superstition
Apr 14th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Just when faith turns hot and dangerous, the government responds by encouraging more of it.… Read the rest
Controversy Over Danish TV Host’s Hijab
Apr 14th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Head of Women for Freedom calls choice of co-host an insult to Danish and Muslim women.… Read the rest
Bradford and Vienna
Apr 14th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘The development of a European Islam is, in a sense, at a caterpillar stage.’… Read the rest
Kevin Phillips on Theocons and Theocrats
Apr 14th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Pervasive pressure for theological correctness.… Read the rest
Unzip
Apr 13th, 2006 6:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonZiauddin Sardar has been reading some Radical Thinkers.
… Read the restTaken together, the works selected by Verso embody the creation and development of a dissenting tradition that set out to question and subvert the established order. Yet while this was once the principal strength of these thinkers, it has become something of an Achilles heel. A collective reading exposes all that has gone wrong with radical thought in the 20th century. Traditions, and intellectual traditions in particular, rapidly ossify and degenerate into obscurantism…It is time to…move forward from Baudrillard’s and Derrida’s postmodern relativism to some notion of viable social truth; and for criticism to stop messing about with signs and signifiers, and instead confront the increasing tendency of power towards absolutism.
Norm Geras and Nick Cohen on Euston Manifesto
Apr 13th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Too many things that should be obvious in the light of the history of the past 100 years seem not to be so. … Read the rest
Worries About ‘Faith’ Schools
Apr 13th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Some of the ‘faith communities’ have agendas at odds with reason and science, says chaplain.… Read the rest
Ziauddin Sardar on Verso’s Radical Thinkers
Apr 13th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Traditions, and intellectual traditions in particular, rapidly ossify and degenerate into obscurantism.’… Read the rest
Scott McLemee on Cell Phones in Libraries
Apr 13th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How about a taser gun, with trained shooters?… Read the rest
Catherine MacKinnon: Are Women Human?
Apr 13th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘If women were human, would we be sexual and reproductive slaves…worked without pay our whole lives?’… Read the rest
Maruf Khwaja on Jamaat-i-Islami
Apr 13th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Pakistan has been eaten hollow by corrosive obscurantism unleashed by Jamaat and its sympathisers.… Read the rest
Get Out of My Head
Apr 12th, 2006 7:05 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe Christians who want to be intolerant again. Just to be difficult (I do love to be difficult, you know), I want to add that there is one place where one of the complainants had a point, though not a religious point.
In a 2004 case, for instance, an AT&T Broadband employee won the right to express his religious convictions by refusing to sign a pledge to “respect and value the differences among us.” As long as the employee wasn’t harassing co-workers, the company had to make accommodations for his faith, a federal judge in Colorado ruled.
That’s a pretty grotesque pledge, frankly. It’s a pretty demanding employer who wants to tell employees what to respect and value, and it’s … Read the rest
Enlightenment Values as Islamophobia
Apr 12th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
One might almost think there was no current cause for concern about Enlightenment values.… Read the rest
Royal Society on Evolution, Creationism, ID
Apr 12th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Some versions of creationism are incompatible with the scientific evidence.… Read the rest
Temporal Lobe Stimulus Triggers Sense of God
Apr 12th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
In some people; not in others. Dawkins did not find god.… Read the rest
Church Refuses to Serve Transsexual Woman
Apr 12th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
What she has done, Rev. Maxfield said, runs totally ‘contrary to God’s revealed will.’… Read the rest
So Naomi Wolf Has Found Jesus; This is News?
Apr 12th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
In all those years as an activist, she’d been neglecting her spirit. Ho hum.… Read the rest
Academics Prefer Hedged, Impersonal Language
Apr 12th, 2006 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Case studies are recorded, data are analysed, concepts are defined, all by an invisible agent.… Read the rest
