Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Minister for Equal Opportunities is Disquieted

    ‘Are we really reaching the stage where Ms Fallaci’s ideas are to be considered illegal?’

  • Italian Law Prohibits ‘Outrage to Religion’

    ‘Some of the things she said are offensive to Islam’ so she has to stand trial.

  • Oriana Fallaci Sued for ‘Insulting’ Islam

    Judge allowed charges; book has expressions ‘unequivocally offensive to Islam.’

  • Separation of god & science

    In January 2005 David Bell, a School Inspector, delivered a speech which was published in The Guardian about the rise in the number of religious schools in the UK. His comments have raised opposition by the Institute of Islamic Organisations in the UK. This interview aired on TV International. Bahram Soroush hosted the programme whilst Maryam Namazie was away.

    Bahram Soroush: You may have heard statements by David Bell and also the response by the Institute of Islamic Organisations in the UK. They have said he is picking on Islamic schools. Do you think this is discrimination?

    Azar Majedi: No I don’t. Actually my position is to ban all religious schools. I think education must be separate from religion and the church. It is a positive move to investigate faith schools, from a children’s rights point of view. It is of no surprise to me that they have found shortcomings in Islamic schools. I think it will probably be more or less the same with other religious schools. But perhaps other religious schools try to follow the national curriculum and standards more. Islamic schools are more into religious teachings than the regular curriculum.

    Bahram Soroush: So you feel that religious schools altogether across the board should be banned?

    Azar Majedi: Yes. They must be banned and education must be separated from religion and the church. Universal laws and standards are the basis of a civil society that respects human rights and the equality of all the citizens. Separation of religion from the state and education is the basis of a secular society, where free thinking is respected and encouraged. Religion, in my opinion, is permeated with superstition and contradicts the scientific achievements of humanity. For all these reasons religious schools must be banned.

    Furthermore, all religions are patriarchal and sexist. As it regards Islam, it is well-known for its sexist codes and rules. This is so because Islam has not historically been challenged or reformed, as it is the case with Christianity. The development of capitalism in the west resulted in significant social upheavals, of which the French revolution is the most influential. These upheavals challenged Christianity in different aspects and reduced its grip on the society and polished its most crude prejudices. When it comes to gender issues and sexual equality, religion has a negative effect.

    Religious schools, not only do not promote sexual equality, they reinforce sexism and encourage a sexual division of labour and differential gender roles. Islamic schools are segregated and promote totally different roles for girls in society and restrict girls from many activities. Finally, these schools are more a place for indoctrination than scientific teachings. By allowing religious schools to function, we are discriminating against a section of society, and we are setting double standards.

    Bahram Soroush: In that case what do say to this argument that we should look after children’s and pupils’ religious needs and that is why we have faith schools?

    Azar Majedi: I don’t believe children have any religious needs. When it is talked about children’s religious needs, it actually means their parents’ need to indoctrinate their children. “Children have no religion”; they happen to be born in a family with a particular religion. I believe there should be no official religious teachings to children. Once they become of age, then they can decide whether they like to pursue a particular faith or not. I strongly believe that religious teaching to children is indoctrination, like exposing them to any particular ideology. Therefore, it must be banned. It is fine to teach them the history of ideas, the history of religion but teaching religion as such should be prohibited.

    Bahram Soroush: Somebody made a comment in the recent controversy that if you have children who are in a religious family and when they go to school, they go to a religious school, and they come back to a religious family. So 24 hours a day they are confronted by religion.

    Azar Majedi: I think this is a very good and valid point. This refers to a sad reality of a life of indoctrination which is imposed on some children. I believe this must be stopped. This is wrong both from the child’s point of view and society’s point of view. To deprive a child of a normal happy life and normal education has become integrated in the society as a way of life. It is wrong to do that. They should be integrated with other children in the society as citizens, with children of all backgrounds. I understand that there are families with different religions and cultures.

    However, these religions and cultures must not be imposed on the children. In societies today, children are exposed to all kinds of religions and cultures. They should be given the right of choice. Once they reach adulthood, they can choose. And in any circumstance, education must be secular and based on the latest scientific achievements. Children should be free from religious brain washing and teachings and preaching.

    The effect of non-secular, religious and segregated education is very destructive on the society as a whole, and on our children’s happy, normal life, and upbringing.

    As we can see even a school inspector has come to recognise this fact. Of course this criticism is not radical enough (probably they have stronger criticisms themselves). It is carefully worded as not to “offend” any religious groups. But with a bit of insight one can recognise the severity of the problem. I am more concerned about the lot of these children. They are being deprived. Their basic rights are being violated. We cannot sit and watch. We should take action to defend the rights of these children to a happy, normal life, to safeguard their equal access to the world’s scientific achievements, to free-thinking, and safeguard their integration into the society, with all other children.

    Bahram Soroush: In a sense these children are being sent to the religious schools by their parents and are being denied the same rights as the children who attend the mainstream schools. What is your view on that?

    Azar Majedi: Yes that is true. Mansoor Hekmat has a very interesting and provoking statement regarding this issue and I have quoted it in many of my speeches and articles: “The child has no religion, tradition, and prejudices. She has not joined any religious sect. She is a new human being who, by accident and irrespective of her will has been born into a family with specific religion, tradition, and prejudices. It is indeed the task of society to neutralise the negative effects of this blind lottery.

    Society is duty-bound to provide fair and equal living conditions for children, their growth and development, and their active participation in social life. Anybody who should try to block the normal social life of a child, exactly like those, who would want to physically violate a child according to their own culture, religion, or personal or collective complexes, should be confronted with the firm barrier of the law and the serious reaction of society.”

    I believe the position is very clear. We should have the interest of the child before us. Providing a happy, normal life for any child, and the creation of a harmonic society on the basis of secularism i.e. separation of religion from the state, are the right principle and the basis of a right and just position. Respect for multi-culturalism and cultural relativism leads to discrimination against some sections of the society, violations of human rights for some sections, double standards, and the creation of a disintegrated and segregated society, where people are put into different pigeon boxes and identified by their cultural or religious backgrounds, instead of as equal citizens.

    Diversity is fine but creating boxes and stamping people’s foreheads with their religion or their family’s or community’s religion is wrong. Furthermore, children are not given proper scientific education in these faith schools. They are given a one-sided education which is more based on superstition than science. Thus a normal life is denied from them.

    We then come to the question of gender and sexual equality. Faith schools in general, and Islamic and Jewish schools in particular are based on sexist values and beliefs. In all religious schools there is a very definite defined gender role. Girls are considered as a whole different kind of human being than boys. There you have gender apartheid and segregation which is very discriminatory against girls and women. We have a long history of fighting for women’s rights in Europe. Especially the gender roles have been challenged significantly in the past 30 years in Western Europe. The religious schools deny that and contradict society’s achievements. They turn the clock backward. We should not let this happen. Bringing up children in religious schools is wrong and has to be banned.

    Bahram Soroush: Some might say fair enough, you want secular education, that children should be left alone until they reach the age of maturity, until they are 16, and then they can decide what religion to have or what not to have. But they also say, what about the rights of the parents? Don’t they have any rights and responsibilities towards raising their children? Aren’t you excluding them of their rights?

    Azar Majedi: No, I am not excluding any one of their rights. Parents definitely have a responsibility towards their children. They also have some rights. These rights and responsibilities must be defined by the society as a set of universal laws. Parents are responsible to provide their children, in the framework of their means, with a happy, normal and safe life. They must provide their children with love, security and safety. But this does not mean that if a child is born in a poor or disadvantaged family, the society will leave the child to have only what the parents are capable of providing. Society has a duty toward the well being of the child. That is why there are internationally recognised charters and declarations to safeguard and protect children. Modern society has recognised the need for such laws.

    That is why every civilised society has laws regarding obligatory education, prohibition of child labour, criminalising physical and sexual abuse of a child and so on. By passing such laws, the society has taken the matters in its own hand out of the parents’ realm of rights. We are not living in a feudal system where the parents – actually the father – decide over the whole family’s existence. For example, according to Islamic laws, a father or a grandfather can kill his children without being prosecuted. This is a law in some countries. Modern, civil society has abolished this right.

    I want to say rights are not absolute and ahistorical. Each society must define these laws according to the well being of children and in light of children’s interests. In my opinion, indoctrination of children is one of those so-called rights that must be taken away from parents. Education must be standardised and universal for every child in a given society.

    What I am trying to say is that there is a responsibility by the society towards children as much as there is parents’ responsibility towards children. That happy, normal and secure life that I was talking about is partly society’s responsibility in all aspects: economically and education wise. The society will not leave it to the parents just because the children are born in a particular family to teach them whatever they want and brain wash them with superstition. There is actually a law and a limited safeguard that the society offers to children if the parents are abusive. Society would intervene and take the child’s side.

    I think abuse is understood as merely sexual or physical and verbal violence whereas indoctrination and brain washing of children with superstition and prejudgments must also be recognised as abuse. Inflicting or imposing religious or cultural customs upon children that hinder healthy physical and mental development must be considered as abuse. I consider child veiling as a serious violation of children rights. In the same token, sending children to religious schools is a serious violation of their rights.

    Bahram Soroush: It particularly affects the girls. Doesn’t it?

    Azar Majedi: It does. Religion by its nature and as an ideology is very much sexist and male chauvinist. Christianity has been challenged in the 18 and 19th century, from the French revolution to the transformation of the European society from a feudal society to a capitalist system. It has been pushed back in the society and is more or less behaving itself. Islam however, has not gone through the same process. Islam has never been dealt with like this in the societies that it was born in. Islam has never been challenged in this way, has never been pushed back from the society.

    Moreover, for the past 3 decades a political movement has been born and developed, which takes its ideology and policy from Islam and is very reactionary, i.e. political Islam. This movement is not only religious but also political. We can see what political Islam is doing, gaining more and more inroads in western society as well. We know Islam’s record, what Islam says; it is written black on white and we know how male chauvinistic and sexist it is. Gender apartheid is the basis of Islam. The veiling of children and many other abuses should be stopped. If you expose a girl or even a boy to that culture and education, you are actually depriving these children of a humane life, especially the girls. Islamic schools must be stopped because this gender discrimination is embedded in Islam.

    Azar Majedi is the head of the Organisation of Women’s Liberation.

  • My Baby Done Gone, 2005 Edition

    So here we are again. Where? Here. Where we were a little more than a year ago. In the land of post-partum depression or separation anxiety or what do you think this is, a hotel?. In short, we’ve finished another book. Your well-meaning if surly and inelegant hosts have written another book, which includes the process of finishing writing another book. We have put words down on screen, one after another, patiently piling Pelion on Ossa, except on those days when we opted to pile Ossa on Pelion; one after another, I tell you, until after awhile, after a week or two or three, we had a whole paragraph. Then hey! no sooner had we caught our breath than we were off for the next height. On it went, on and on, while the leaves flew off the calendar, and the flowers bloomed and then withered, the rain fell and the wind blew, the snow piled high and then thawed, the cat threw up and the dog slept, until finally, lo, the land was still and hushed, and there was a great calm upon the waters, and all creation held its breath, and then – in that moment, O best beloved – Jeremy pressed ‘Send’ –

    And that was that.

    Got that? We done written another book. We’ve finished. We finished today – just now – a couple of hours ago. Therefore soon – i.e. early next year, which is not exactly ‘soon,’ but these things are relative, and I don’t want to go to the damn lighthouse anyway – soon there will be another book with our names on it that people can read and make fun of. It’s not the same kind of book as the last one. Not satirical. Not ironic, not even zany madcap. Although it does have moments – quite a few, actually – where if you look very hard in a strong light, you can just make out a sneer.

    But basically it’s serious. (Oooh, serious. Yes very droll, now go away.) It’s called Why Truth Matters and its subject is how to raise angora rabbits.

    Which raises an interesting issue, actually. Because my colleague is famed far and wide (meaning, from Cheam to Sutton and back again) as a liar. Everyone who knows him (which is in the high one figures, which is a lot more people than know me) falls to the floor laughing when told that he is writing a book about truth. ‘You! writing a book about truth!’ they exclaim, sobbing with hilarity. ‘How can you write a book about truth when you’re such a liar?!’ Then they call to other people who are in the vicinity, and share the joke with them, and pretty soon the room is filled with people sprawling about positively shrieking with laughter. My colleague takes it all with quiet dignity, as is his wont. He doesn’t allow mockery and incredulity to deflect him from his chosen path. No, he simply wedges a chair under the doorknob so that no one can get in, and carries on putting down words on the screen, just as he ought to.

    I don’t have that problem, because I am known far and wide as honest OB, because of that time I gave a guy his glass eye back. Okay that’s an old W C Fields joke, and I tell quite a few whoppers myself, but people are too afraid of me to mock the way they mock my colleague. They know damn well I’d shop them to the committee, or else sneak up on them and kick them when they weren’t expecting it, so they mind their manners.

    It actually is called Why Truth Matters, and its subject matter is pretty much what you’d expect the proprietors of B&W to write about – only more so. It’s good, actually. Somewhat to my surprise. It’s very various, despite being thematically unified; it goes in a lot of directions, but also ties together; it has some new ideas, and it deals with interesting subjects. Okay I never said I was modest. Honest, and frightening, yes, but not modest. But no actually it has to do with the material, as well as with our undeniable talent. The material just is interesting – as you all know, because why else are you here? Unless of course it’s because you’re afraid I’ll sneak up behind you and kick you if you try to leave. I might, too.

  • Darkness as Far as the Eye Can See

    Are you all familiar with the Darkness at El Dorado affair? Remember that? The book that exposed a putative scandal in the world of anthropology? Except the putative scandal was – well, let us say it was not well-supported by the evidence. But we all know how that goes. The ‘exposure’ of the ‘scandal’ is front-page news and a best-seller, while the later exposure of the fact that the ‘scandal’ was something more in the nature of a good old mud-throwing exercise is confined to academic journals where most people never hear of it. So that in fact the people who set off the whole mess to a considerable extent got what they wanted. In short, a miscarriage of justice.

    It’s a fascinating (and infuriating) story. My colleague just read quite a lot about it for this book we’ve been writing, this book we are finally finally finally about to stop writing – this book that we have in fact stopped writing and are now just putting a few last bits of lace on. There is an article on a new development at Inside Higher Ed – where I left a comment late yesterday, unfortunately so late (my time) yesterday that I appear to have started out writing one sentence and ended up writing another, with unfortunate results for the coherence of the bastard sentence on the page. But the article is interesting and useful, and has links. There is also, as I say in that misbegotten sentence, an excellent article by Thomas Gregor and Daniel Gross in the CHE from 2002. An article they published in ‘American Anthropology’ in December 2004 prompted the American Anthropological Association to hold a referendum on whether or not to rescind its own report on the allegations against James Neel and Napoleon Chagnon that are the subject of Darkness at El Dorado. The report, the fact of its existence, the way it was carried out – all make a compelling (and rather horrifying) story of warped judgment.

    What galls many anthropologists is a shamefully conducted investigation that should never have happened in the first place…By the fall of 2000, the charges of murder and genocide against Chagnon and Neel had collapsed. Preliminary investigations established that far from conducting cruel experiments on humans, they had safely vaccinated the Yanomami and saved countless lives. In a normal world, that truth would have punctured the balloon of allegations and left the accusers deflated and apologetic.

    But guess what – that’s not how it went.

    How then did the association, in violation of its own rules, become the lead prosecutor in an investigation of what it eventually found were “sensationalistic” charges leveled by a “deeply flawed” and journalistically “unethical” book? Our answer is that the leadership was swept away by a riptide of political righteousness so powerful that not even the association’s established policies and the demolition of the most scurrilous charges could withstand its force…In the case at hand, the most serious allegations against Chagnon and Neel had been disproved; the anthropology association does not license its members to practice; and it is among the most politicized of associations. Its fault lines include residual political schisms of the 1960s and ’70s and a confusion of the discipline’s intellectual goals with advocacy.

    There it is, you see – a confusion of the discipline’s intellectual goals with advocacy. That’s where the wheels come off. It’s not that advocacy is a bad thing – hell no; indeed, it’s one of the best things. But it is not, repeat not, the same thing as an intellectual goal. In some very important ways, the two inhabit different universes. One universe is that of is, and the other is that of ought. One is facts, the other is values. Facts can (with due caution) inform values, but when values start to inform facts – the facts immediately stop being facts and become something else, only they’re still called facts, and out come the secret police and the show trials and the memory hole and all the rest of the mess.

    We saw this same lost-in-the-fog confusion of intellectual goals with advocacy in that Judith Halberstam article the other day, in which what had been literature departments magically transmogrified overnight into some kind of guerrilla movement against colonialism combined with amateur philosophy/political economics departments.

    To this must be added the postmodern worldview, much current in anthropology, with its penchant for stripping away appearances — in this case that of a disinterested science in search of the truth — to discover an evil within, or, at minimum, complicity with powerful elites…Such a civil war now threatens anthropology, which is riven with divisions between scientifically oriented, data-driven research and interpretive approaches. What makes the discipline uniquely vulnerable to political turmoil is the worldwide tragedy of beleaguered indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, and the guilt that their suffering evokes. Although the poverty and the oppression are real, academic adversaries may misuse them as swords and shields in their battles…In the association’s report, this exquisite sensitivity extends even to the thoroughly postmodern demand that anthropologists surrender to their subjects the task of defining the topics to be investigated.

    That last item is very reminiscent of an article in the Washington Post last September, that I chatted about here and here. Very postmodernist reporters they have at the Post.

    Once any outsider starts thinking like an anthropologist, it’s hard not to start asking those bullying Margaret Mead questions. How do you know the natives are telling the truth? Is something sacred just because they say it’s sacred? How do you know that they’re not snowing you with all that talk of the Creator and the power of place and all the happy animism that runs through the general discourse of native life? If you believe that only native voices can get at the truth of native people, you must take it all in at face value. Truth is what individual people say about themselves, beyond refute and suspicion — which is perhaps the most powerful, and radical, challenge that Postmodern thought has proposed.

    ‘Truth is what individual people say about themselves, beyond refute and suspicion’ – how’s that for a recipe for getting everything wrong? That’s a powerful and radical challenge, all right – a challenge to anyone’s ability to think straight. And can end up with kangaroo courts and show trials. Advocacy is a fine thing, but it has to be the right kind of advocacy.

  • Mark Your Calendars for Mega Conference

    ‘World’s greatest minds’ to meet in Lynchburg for creationist jamboree.

  • Evolution Based not on Science but Ideology

    Creationists are scientists and biologists peddle fairytales.

  • Why Lee Smith’s Doorman Ate His Homework

    Dangerous to invest artifacts with too much metaphysical significance.

  • Enough With the Moist and Sympathetic Treatment

    Western cringe in face of intolerance of others best corrected by serious Muslims.

  • Anthropology and the Enemy Within

    What’s wrong with AAA report? A riptide of political righteousness.

  • Hitchens on That Johns Hopkins Guide

    No Orwell or Ayer or Gellner. Well of course not.

  • Darkness at American Anthropological Association

    Was AAA report on allegations against Neel and Chagnon unfair?

  • John Banville Reviews Simon Blackburn on Truth

    Less a guide for the perplexed than a guided tour through philosophical perplexities.

  • Dawkins’ ‘Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant’

    Attacks creationists’ lack of logic and ‘deceitful misquoting.’ [pdf]

  • Most Reform Candidates Blocked in Iran

    Ruling clerics seek to consolidate their power in the June 17 vote.

  • Hurrah for Old-Time Atheism

    Well…call me delusional, call me hasty (call me a cab, call me for dinner, yeah yeah, I know), but I can’t help wondering if Salman Rushdie has been reading B&W, at least once. I started with surprise when I started reading this article.

    “Not believing in God is no excuse for being virulently anti-religious or naïvely pro-science,” says Dylan Evans, a professor of robotics at the University of West England in Bristol…Evans’ position fits well with that of the American philosopher of science Michael Ruse, whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, lays much of the blame for the growth of creationism in America — and for the increasingly strident attempts by the religious right to have evolutionary theory kicked off the curriculum and replaced by the new dogma of “intelligent design” — at the door of the scientists who have tried to compete with, and even supplant, religion.

    It’s not the Evans thing, it’s the combination of that with Michael Ruse, and then farther down in the article Richard Dawkins appears. Hit the End button and take a look at the N&Cs from the beginning of the month, and you’ll see why I think Salman may have been reading here. Maybe not! Maybe I am delusional. Only Ruse is not all that conspicuous, I don’t think; it just happens that I’m interested in him and why he thinks what he does, and so pay attention when he writes something or is reviewed. Then again…I think a review of Ruse’s new book showed up at Arts and Letters Daily, so maybe it is just coincidence. Still – ! It’s not impossible. There is Ibn Warraq’s address to the UN, for instance, and Azam’s, and there are Maryam’s and Homa’s articles. It’s not out of the question that Salman R has a certain interest in issues of this kind, is it now. Anyway, if so, if I inspired him to write about the Evans-Ruse Plan, then very good! Very useful of me. And if not, if he thought of it all by himself, also good, because I can think how clever of me to think of the same thing, and sooner.

    Enough about me. It’s the article that’s interesting. Go, Salman.

    Evans’ “Atheism Lite,” which seeks to negotiate a truce between religious and irreligious world views, is easily demolished. Such a truce would have a chance of working only if it were reciprocal — if the world’s religions agreed to value the atheist position and to concede its ethical basis, if they respected the discoveries and achievements of modern science, even when these discoveries challenge religious sanctities, and if they agreed that art at its best reveals life’s multiple meanings at least as clearly as so-called “revealed” texts. No such reciprocal arrangement exists, however, nor is there the slightest chance that such an accommodation could ever be reached.

    Just so. That’s one of the things that made Evans’ piece so irritating. He’s so annoyed with atheists, and so non-annoyed with theists. Wait – huh? Why do we have to do all the accomodating and sucking-up? Why are we the only ones who have to abandon what we think at the door and sit still and be quiet while the theists stomp around and tear the house apart? Why’s he yelling at us and letting the theists just do whatever they damn well feel like?! We didn’t do anything – why doesn’t he go shout at them for awhile?! In fact why doesn’t he just go shout at them, period, and leave us alone.

    Nor does the current behaviour of organized religion breed confidence in the Evans/Ruse laissez-faire attitude. Education everywhere is seriously imperilled by religious attacks. In recent years, Hindu nationalists in India attempted to rewrite the nation’s history books to support their anti-Muslim ideology, an effort thwarted only by the electoral victory of a secularist coalition led by the Congress party. Meanwhile, Muslim voices the world over are claiming that evolutionary theory is incompatible with Islam.

    Yeah but see that’s okay because religion is art, man, so it’s harmless, and it doesn’t matter if it tries to eviscerate science teaching. No problema.

    Meanwhile religions continue to attack their own artists: Hindu artists’ paintings are attacked by Hindu mobs, Sikh playwrights are threatened by Sikh violence and Muslim novelists and filmmakers are menaced by Islamic fanatics with a vigorous unawareness of any kinship.

    Yes, they are, aren’t they. As are non-Muslim novelists who ought to be Muslims because their grandparents were. I’m not naming any names or anything, but I can think of one not a million miles from this very article.

    Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, while demanding kid-glove treatment in return. As Evans and Ruse would do well to recognize, atheists such as Dawkins, Miller and Wilson are neither immature nor culpable for taking on such religionists. They are doing a vital and necessary thing.

    Yeah! Attaboy, Salman! Sing it! Tell those bastards.

    Excuse my warmth. But I do get so tired of all this rebuking of atheists even by other atheists for being too noisy or talkative or definite or ‘adolescent’ for Christ’s sake. I do get so sick of all this ‘Shh, shh, if you don’t talk too loud maybe they won’t get angry and will let us live, over here in this little corner with a heap of rags to sleep on, if only you don’t say anything – oh do please be quiet!’ I won’t be quiet. Why should I be quiet? I’m not the one who’s telling everyone there’s a giant Man in Heaven taking care of us, and that’s why the world is such a perfect place and so free of suffering, am I. They can be quiet. I’ve got stuff to say.

  • Salman Rushdie Agrees With B&W

    That Dylan Evans and Michael Ruse get both atheism and religion wrong.

  • A Struggle, a Struggle, and a Struggle

    The fight for women’s rights in Iraq.

  • Jonathan Rée on Paul Ricoeur

    Aim was to teach us to feel full force of authentic intellectual discomfort.