Author: Ophelia Benson

I can’t help wondering…was it really about the guinea pigs? Or was it mostly about being a Protester, an Activist, a Rebel. Was it more about tormenting people than about rescuing animals. I can’t help suspecting, just as I can’t help suspecting similar things about those four guys on July 7. Zealots are like that. That’s why zealots are mostly so horrible.

Some protests at Darley Oaks farm have been peaceful. But other activists launched a campaign of intimidation against the Halls, their family, staff and suppliers. Their tactics, denounced as mob rule by some in the medical research industry, included hate mail, malicious phone calls, fireworks, a paedophile smear campaign, paint stripper on cars and arson attacks. The protests appeared to culminate in the theft in October of the body of Gladys Hammond, mother-in-law of Christopher Hall from the churchyard in Yoxall.

That sounds to me like cruelty for the sake of it, not for the sake of a goal. Just like those shits who gather outside abortion clinics and torment women on their way in.

Colin Blakemore talked about animal rights and the opposition to it and public opinion on ‘The World Tonight’ last night. He talked to Jeremy about the same subjects in the interview in Jeremy’s book What Scientists Think.

Ninety-nine percent of physicians in the United States say that it is essential to use animals in medical research; and more than ninety-five percent of British physicians say the same thing. So whilst it is important to listen to maverick opinion, it is clear we shouldn’t put too much weight on it when one considers that the American Medical Association, the Royal Society, the British Medical Association, and the General Medical Council all state that animal experimentation is necessary.

He also talked both on ‘The World Tonight’ and in the interview about what a huge majority – 90% – of public opinion agrees that animal research is necessary, which is a large shift in opinion from what it had been.

The support from the media, in particular, was quite extraordinary and a big surprise; virtually the entire spectrum made strong statements about the importance of animal experimentation. So the debate served a useful purpose; it produced a kind of national solidarity, which was much needed. This is also reflected in public opinion. The latest opinion poll shows ninety percent of the population in support of animal research. It is significant that there is no other major issue where you get this kind of consensus; we still treat the issue of animal research as if it is highly controversial, as if the public haven’t made up their mind; but they have made up their mind.’

But, the interviewer pointed out, the opinion poll Blakemore is referring to phrased its questions in a particular way (as opinion polls do). ‘For example, one question asked whether people could accept animal research for medical purposes, where there was no other alternative. But, of course, it is precisely the claim of the animal rights lobby that there are alternatives to animal research.’

‘Well, if there are, let’s see them delivered by those people who claim that there are,’ Blakemore responds, when I put this to him…’If there are alternatives, let’s see them. We want them. I don’t know of a single person who uses animals in their research who wouldn’t rather use an alternative.’

The whole interview is interesting. They all are. The Susan Greenfield one is my favourite, but they all are.

Yet another installment in the continuing series: Behold how women are treated like livestock if not worse in many parts of the world. Sometimes it’s hard to believe what you read…

Journalists who have visited Niger are reporting finding a strange phenomenon: villages in which women and children are going hungry, while there is still food in their households. Kim Sengupta of the UK’s Independent newspaper found that men had left their families, locking the grain store, while they were away. “They’ve gone away to look for work or look for money and sometimes across the border in Nigeria. And you have this strange situation where there were women in the villages with stocks of sorghum and millet with hungry children, but no access to the food,” he says.

Locking the grain store – that’s the interesting part.

There are reports that women are not even allowed to look in the family grain store – that it is taboo. There is widespread polygamy in Niger, and with men taking more than one wife, each woman is given a small plot to support herself and her own children. “There is a tradition that women are more or less supposed to cater for themselves and their children with the produce that they manage to get out of the tiny plots they are given when they are married,” says Moira Eknes of Care aid agency, who has just returned from Niger. “They also have to work on the larger family fields but the production from these large fields they have no control over and no access to,” she says.

That’s how it goes if you have the bad judgment to be a woman.

Every day, Minta, a 40 year-old mother of six, fetches water for the household, does the laundry in the river, labours on her millet farm and, if there is food, prepares the family meals before collapsing into bed, exhausted. But during this particularly difficult lean season, there is no food, and the daily grind has become even more unbearable. With her youngest child wasting away from hunger, Minta has had to walk three hours in the scorching sun on an empty stomach in the hope of getting some food aid…For Minta, and the other women at the hospital, the hunger that has reduced her children to skin and bone is just another hard fact of life. At the hospital the women each cradle at least one baby and most have a toddler or two in tow. Some babies – like the one curled in the folds of Minta’s blue tunic – are little more than tiny skeletons…The food crisis that has affected 3.6 million people in Niger, has highlighted the vulnerable position of women in what is a staunchly Muslim and conservative society and the second poorest country in the world, according to UN figures…

Vulnerable doesn’t even describe it.

“When you say food crisis, you say women,” Aissata Bagna, a prominent female activist and former health minister, told IRIN in her home in Niamey. “Men can go elsewhere, they can work for food or move away from the village. But the women have to stay behind. They have to take care of the children. They suffer the most,” she said. The wave of democratisation that swept through West Africa in the early nineties spawned the first women’s groups in Niger and increased their political influence. But at the same time, social progress was hampered by the rapid rise of religious fundamentalism, Bagna explained.

Family values.

Pat Robertson is a funny guy, but Madeleine Bunting is just silly. (I know, that’s grossly unfair. PR is funny because the stuff he says is so loony. He’s not funny at all, really, since a great many people listen to him and think he makes sense. But look, living in the US these days, you have to laugh at people like Patto if you don’t want to go plain nuts.)

A campaign is being orchestrated through the media to destroy the credibility of many of the most important Muslim institutions in Britain, including the Muslim Council of Britain.

Yeah, a campaign – she cites all of two features, one in the Observer and one on Panorama. That’s a campaign? And, that’s a campaign compared to all the cuddly fond admiring references to the MCB in the media? Why doesn’t she fret about the considerably larger ‘campaign’ being ‘orchestrated’ through the media to inflate the credibility of the MCB, and to portray it as far more benign than it is? What about that then eh?

The impact of this campaign – in the Observer and particularly in John Ware’s Panorama documentary last night – will be a powerful boost for the increasingly widespread view that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim: underneath, “they” are all extremists who are racist, contemptuous of the west, and intent on a political agenda.

Well that’s just stupid. Shockingly stupid. Part of the point of that Panorama was precisely that there is such a thing as a moderate (not anti-secular, not misogynist, not Kaafir-hating) Muslim, and that they are ignored while the MCB gets all the attention. Part of the point was precisely that ‘they’ are not all extremists who are anti-secular misogynist Kaafir-haters, and that’s exactly why the MCB should not be treated as representative or average or ‘moderate.’

First on the charge sheet were examples of the former: the “conviction that Islam is a superior faith and culture which Christians and Jews in the west are conspiring to undermine”, and a “distaste for western secular culture”. This is ridiculous; I’ve yet to meet a member of any faith who doesn’t believe in the superiority of their beliefs, while fear of being undermined is similarly common. Since when has “distaste” become a cause for suspicion?

Oh, please. If you met some Christians who routinely referred to all non-Christians by an epithet – infidel, say – wouldn’t you feel uneasy? I would! I have in fact met one or two Christians like that, and they damn well do make me feel uneasy. I think journalists should point out that habit of mind.

What is deeply troubling is how exacting British society is becoming of its Muslims. A new set of “cricket tests” are being imposed on British Muslims – they are expected to sign up enthusiastically to every aspect of western secular society and to jettison any part of their intellectual heritage that is critical of the west. They are expected to keep their faith entirely out of politics (yet faith plays a crucial role in US politics).

Every aspect of western secular society? Are they? Not that I’ve seen. But women’s rights and gay rights – yes, critics generally do think Muslims should accept those as a part of western secular society that the people who live in it do not want to abrogate. I don’t think that is troubling. What’s troubling is to refuse to expect that, and to shrug and turn a blind eye to, say, ‘honour’ killings or forced marriage of children. And as for the role ‘faith’ plays in US politics – what of that? Has Bunting never seen a single article in the Guardian or the Observer or program on the BBC that criticizes the role ‘faith’ plays in US politics? I wonder what she would find if she typed ‘faith US politics’ into the Guardian’s search box. More than one article, I bet.

Alexandra Simonon has a good reply on the Letters page.

It’s a shame there are still people, like Madeleine Bunting, who believe some ideologies are extremist in one culture, but normal, or moderate in another. We should not accept the idea of “their world” and “ours”, as having totally different sets of values. The Muslims who fight bigotry and terror are not less authentic – and they are not “westernised” either.

And Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society has another.

Why are the official, government-recognised spokesmen for the “Muslim community” all theocrats? Why is there this unquestioned assumption that all Muslims are mosque-going, Qur’an-reading religionists, to whom only their faith matters? I know from experience there are plenty of Muslims who aren’t particularly religious, who don’t want to wear hijabs, who want to go down the local for a pint with their mates from work, who enjoy watching EastEnders and reading Harry Potter. Why don’t we ever hear their voices on official committees and on TV debates? Why is it only imams and “scholars” of religion? When Mr Blair opens his new Muslims schools, the preachers will be able to tighten their grip even further.

Why indeed. Why don’t we hear from Maryam Namazie or Azam Kamguian or Ibn Warraq as often as we hear from Iqbal Sacranie? Who ‘orchestrated’ that arrangment, Madeleine Bunting? Write an article about that, why don’t you.