Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Dante Made Fun With Trendiness and Slang

    Or perhaps not all that fun, suggests Helen Vendler.

  • Amos Oz on the Dream of Non-religious Israelis

    We want to live in an enlightened, open and just country, not in some messianic, rabbinic monarchy.

  • Child Dies After Alternative Therapy for Autism

    Cardiac arrest after chelation therapy to remove heavy metals from the body.

  • Lancet: Homeopathy No Better Than Placebo

    Society of Homeopaths says controlled trial is not the way to test homeopathy.

  • Two Sides to Animal Rights Story

    Accounts of debate on Parkinson’s and animal research differ.

  • Birmingham Rep Riot: Behind the Scenes

    Investigative journalist Amardeep Bassey uncovers the story behind the riot.

  • Two Thirds Oppose State Aided ‘Faith’ Schools

    Most respondents against ministers’ plans to increase number of religious schools.

  • Governments Should Not Push Religion in Schools

    Some people’s religious certainties are putting everyone in danger.

  • Writers’ Guild Anti-Censorship Committee

    Attacks on JSTO and Behzti and religious hatred law inspired guild to relaunch committee.

  • Women Victims of Islam

    Due to the sensitivity of this subject I will start by making a distinction between Islam and Muslims. Islam can be described as a civilization, as a source of spiritual guidance, as a way of life and so on. Most of all Islam is a moral framework, and central to this moral frame is the decree that a believer or follower submit his will to Allah. How this submission should be practiced is worked out in the Qur’an and hadith.

    A Muslim is any one – regardless of race or sex – who subscribes to or testifies to believing, among other things, that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet. Besides accepting god as Allah, and his prophet, a Muslim also believes in a host of other things like the existence of angels, a hereafter with a range of different heavens and hells, more prophets, and the view that the world will come to an end as predicted in the holy Qur’an.

    Islam as compiled in the Qur’an and Hadith could be viewed as static. The way Muslims believe or practice their religion is dynamic. The individual Muslim can choose to change. As humans they are endowed with reason and, if free, Muslims can, as Christians and Jews have done in the past and still do, progress by means of critical self-reflection. I regularly criticize Islam and especially the treatment of women as prescribed in the Qur’ an and Hadith. By doing that I have annoyed many Muslims, some of whom actually want to hurt me. Despite this, rejecting some of the teachings in Islam is not the same as rejecting Muslims. Muslims deserve to be and should be viewed in Europe and elsewhere like all other humans. What I ask is not to fear Muslims or persecute them for their beliefs. What I expect – both from Muslims and their non-Muslim supporters – is to have the opportunity to think, publish my ideas and engage in societal discussion about Islam as a moral framework without having to fear for my life.

    Having said that, I would like to defend the proposition that in Islam women are subordinate to men. The sexual morality propagated in Islam leads, when put into practice, to cruel violations of the rights of women and girls. By making a statement like this one I know that I am inviting disagreement. I am most interested in the arguments of my critics. Let me demonstrate this inequality. According to Islamic teachings in the Qur’an and hadith: Muslim men are free to go where they want while most Muslim women are confined to their houses. Muslim men do not need permission to leave the house; women do. Muslim men are not obligated to veil their beauty but Muslim women must. A man may divorce his wife as easily as repeating the words “I divorce you” three times in the presence of two witnesses. A woman who wants to leave her husband must prove at least that he does not meet her material needs. She must prove that he is impotent. She must prove that he cannot make her pregnant. She must have the approval of her wali (or guardian). A man may inherit twice as much as a woman. His testimony in matters of conflict is worth twice hers. Just in case there is a hereafter, women know from the prophet that their sort is over-represented in hell, while men can look forward to 72 virgins and companionship with their men folk. It is demanded in the Qur’an that a woman obeys her husband indefinitely. For the man conforming to the wishes of his wife is an option. A man may have sexual intercourse with his wife when and how he wants. Her refusal will invite the curses of angels and the wrath of her husband. If a man rejects his wife in bed the angels are silent and her disappointment may lead her husband to think that she is in the grip of the devil, who fills her with uncontrollable desires. Even though a man may marry four wives provided he promises to treat them equally, a woman has the right to only one man. And even this right is limited by the fact that she cannot do so without permission from her guardian (father, brother, or paternal uncle).

    Some of the Muslims who disagree with me say that I am confused by the way Islam is practiced in war-torn and backward Somalia, my country of birth. According to them I should look at the way millions of Muslims practice their religions in more peaceful and modern countries.

    I acknowledge that there are indeed areas in the world such as the large cities of Indonesia (the world’s largest Muslim country), Turkey, and some North African countries where Islam has somehow found a compromise with modernity. I also recognize that there are thousands of Muslims who treat men and women, boys and girls in an equal manner. However I invite those who disagree with my statement on inequality between the sexes in Islam to compare the consistence between the teachings in the Quran and hadith and real life circumstances in the majority nations with large Islamic populations and especially those whose state of affairs are regulated according to the model of the prophet Muhammad.

    Is one who takes note of the daily suffering endured by girls and women in Saudi Arabia and Iran (two countries based on the sharia) deranged and traumatized? Or is the reality of the Sharia difficult to endure when enforced by those who will tolerate no criticism of Islam?

    Is the high rate of illiteracy among girls and women in the UNDP report on Human Development in 22 Arab-Islamic countries an outcome of the lowly position women and girls are accorded in their religion and culture, or is the report only meant to defame and insult the countries researched?

    Why are Muslim girls and women over-represented in the shelters of the abused and the crisis houses for teenagers who run away from home? Is it a coincidence, or is the strict virginity required in Islam a possible explanation of why these girls are haunted by their families: their fathers, brothers and husbands, the very people who should be protecting them from external harm?

    In order to reject the statement that women are subordinate to men in Islam, my opponents will have to answer disturbing questions like these honestly.

    An argument often heard in defence of Islam is that the cruel treatment of Muslim women is not so much the outcome of the Qur’ an and hadith as God originally meant them to be, as a narrow and opportunistic abuse of these holy sources by men in patriarchal societies. This argument is not convincing because Islam was founded by a man in a patriarchal society. Islam is a tribal religion, founded under tribal conditions and a moral framework whereby those virtues held high in the Arab tribe are made divine. I do not intend to deny that the prophet Muhammad may have improved the position of women in the 7th century AD. For example he contributed to abolishing the custom of burying girls alive at the age of 7 and the right of men to marry as many wives as they wished. But let’s not forget that while these improvements may have seemed revolutionary 14 hundred years ago, now they are horribly outdated.

    Continual reference to the improvements made so long ago does not make the current suffering of women abused in the name of Allah more bearable. All it does is divert the attention from the inhuman treatment of Muslim girls and women today and the fear they live in.

    That, among other reasons, is why it is so important to take a moral stand against those teachings and practices in Islam that degrade women to a species between human and animal. For those Muslims who agree with me, and for those Europeans who do not wish to look away, taking this moral attitude means that we should take action. Debate with Muslims living in Europe, and through words and pictures challenge the sexual morality in Islam held by so many European Muslims; Provide protection from honour killing for Muslim women who are on the run. Introduce a control system as an instrument to eradicate female genital mutilation. (There is controversy on whether this is Islamic. It is remarkable however that many Muslim countries practice FGM. Indonesia, is an example of a country where FGM came with the Muslim missionaries). Interfere through the schools and day care centres with the way Muslims in Europe start their families and bring up their children. Stop financing faith based schools.

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Dutch Member of Parliament and author of the film ‘Submission.’

  • Colin Blakemore

    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.

  • Hands Off the Sorghum

    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.

  • Animal Rights and Medical Research

    Some UK animal rights campaigners take the movement to have won a great victory. More rational proponents of animal rights may well think the victory is decidedly Pyrrhic.

    The Darley Oaks Farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire, which has been breeding guinea pigs for medical research for more than 30 years, has decided to stop because of a campaign of intimidation by ‘activists’. The owners of the farm and employees have received death threats, and the body of a relative was stolen from a churchyard in October 2004 and has never been found. Suppliers of the farm were also subject to intimidation, as the BBC reported:

    Rod Harvey supplied fuel to the farm and endured four years of abuse from activists before he was forced to cease trading with the Halls. The 63-year-old businessman said he received threatening letters, including one accusing him of being a paedophile which was then sent to a number of people he knew.

    Scientists and the government expressed anger and frustration at this outcome. By coincidence, a declaration of support for animal testing for medical research was published the day after the news of the Darley Oaks Farm decision, on August 24, 2005. The declaration was signed by more than 500 UK scientists and doctors, including three Nobel laureates (Sir Paul Nurse, Dr Tim Hunt and Sir John Sulston), 190 Fellows of the Royal Society and the Medical Royal Colleges, and more than 250 professors. The Department of Trade and Industry condemned the campaign of intimidation:

    It is wholly unacceptable that a small minority of animal extremists should mount a campaign of fear and intimidation in an attempt to stop individuals and companies going about their lawful and legitimate business.

    the Guardian reported that the closure of Darley Oaks Farm caused worries about the possibility of medical research in the UK:

    ‘They will make Britain a place where we cannot do clinically relevant research,’ warned Roger Morris, a leading CJD researcher at King’s College London. ‘When we talk to colleagues in Europe and America, Britain is seen as a place where you cannot do animal research.’

    And Simon Festing from the Research Defence Society pointed out that guinea pig research had led to 23 Nobel prizes in medicine.

    It is appalling that a small bunch of criminal extremists can close down a legitimate business supplying animals to medical research.

    The Guardian quotes Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council, on the issue:

    I was involved in the original declaration 15 years ago. It is as important now as it was then to show that scientists and doctors are fully aware of the importance of animal research to science and medicine. Of course animals must be cared for properly and never used unless absolutely necessary. This is how we do research and it would be illegal to do it any other way.

    Blakemore discussed the issues in some detail in an interview with Jeremy Stangroom in What Scientists Think.

    [T]he Royal Society has recently published a pretty comprehensive study which says that virtually every medical advance in the last century has depended on the use of animals in research at some point; or with the statement from the Department of Health, in its evidence to the House of Lords committee on animal experimentation, that the National Health Service could not operate without the foundation of the knowledge which animal research has built. The overwhelming view of the scientific establishment, and I’m not using that expression in a pejorative way, is that animal research is necessary for progress in medical science…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.

    It would be nice if all medical research could be done with computer modelling, but unfortunately that is not the case. It would also be nice if leopards and eagles and pythons all ate lentils instead of sentient animals, but that is not the case either.

    Recommended Reading

    Jeremy Stangroom, What Scientists Think

    External Resources

  • Kim Sengupta Reports From Maradi, Niger

    The women do all the hard work while men hoard all the food.

  • Declaration on Animals in Medical Research

    Text of Research Defence Society endorsement of animal research.

  • Resist Intimidation, Scientists Urge

    Hall family was subjected to a six-year hate campaign by fanatics.

  • Anger at ‘Victory’ for Animal Rights Campaign

    Warning that there could be severe consequences for clinical research in the UK.

  • Scientists Support Animal Testing

    Research Defence Society declaration says small, vital part of medical research involves animals.

  • Women Bear the Brunt of Food Shortages

    ‘When you say food crisis, you say women,’ says Aissata Bagna.

  • Women in Niger Go Hungry Despite Food in House

    Women in villages with stocks of sorghum and millet but no access to the food.