Category: Notes and Comment Blog

The Vatican seems to have a strange lack of acquaintance with reality – at least its Council for the Family does. It has a statement on the family and human rights which floats weirdly free of the difficulties that humans tend to encounter.

The father and the mother, as a couple, with the characteristics proper to them, procreate and raise the child. The child thus has the right to be welcomed, loved and recognized in a family.

That’s a pretty idea, but the trouble is, it’s the Vatican itself that does more than any other human institution to make that right impossible to implement. It’s the Vatican that forbids birth control, thus removing (in intention at least, which is what’s relevant) people’s ability to avoid having children who are not wanted and thus at risk of not being welcomed. The same applies to abortion. The child may have a right to be welcomed and loved, but what of it? who is going to force the parents to welcome and love the child if they don’t in fact want it or (in the event) love it? The Vatican? How?

As the first natural community, the family is the exemplary place for solidarity. In the family human beings gradually become aware of their dignity, acquire a sense of responsibility, and learn to give attention to others. In the family, solidarity develops beyond the spouses’ love relation and extends to the relations between parents and children, siblings, and inter-generational relations.

Need for reality check again. ‘In the family, solidarity develops’ when it does, but when it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Has no one at the Pontifical Council for the Family ever encountered an unhappy (a ‘dysfunctional’) family? Has it never encountered a family that is more indifferent than anything else? Or one that is downright hostile, or one that is bullying and demanding and controlling? One that is shot through with tensions and jealousies and resentments? One that is estranged? Does the Pontifical Council for the Family really seriously think that all families are of their nature and essence loving and loyal and generous? Some are, certainly, but all of them? No. Yet the Pontifical Council prattles away as if it had never even read any Jane Austen, or any newspapers.

Family values people are like that, I suppose – they’re so keen to stamp out all the freedoms and choices and eccentricities and ways of living that thrive outside the familiar ones that they’re forced to pretend there is no flourishing outside The Family and no misery inside it. But then do they convince anyone?

A lot of women in Saudi Arabia attempt suicide. Now there’s a surprise.

Within family circles, boys always get preferential treatment. What is more, there is very little or no communication between girls and their parents. The report highlights many factors that can lead women to consider killing themselves, one of them being forced marriages.

Others probably being things like no freedom of movement, no ability to walk around in public looking at the sky and the flowers and anything else that comes along, no sense of having equal rights and duties. That must get a trifle dispiriting.

Disregarding a woman’s free will and her right to choose her life can simply lead her to desperation.

Well yes. It can.

Hmmmm.

This week the “better” democracies are wagging fingers at worse ones, like 17th-century popes reprimanding missionaries in the distant jungle. They tut-tut over a stuffed ballot box in Nairobi, a banned radio station in Islamabad or a murdered journalist in Moscow. They condemn a riot here, a bombed polling booth there and an imprisoned politician somewhere else. How dare these “developing” peoples corrupt the sacred rites of mother church?

They what? They ‘tut-tut’?? Over a ‘stuffed ballot box in Nairobi’ – meaning a possibly stolen election followed by an outburst of ethnic cleansing which perhaps heralds more? Over ‘a banned radio station in Islamabad’ – meaning eight years of military dictatorship, a state of emergency declared in order to fire all the Supreme Court justices and replace them with more compliant ones, followed by a tiny matter of the murder of the likely winner of the upcoming election? Over ‘a murdered journalist in Moscow’ – meaning Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered perhaps by the government, for exposing human rights abuses in Chechnya? These things strike Simon Jenkins as trivial and apparently slightly laughable? Not the kind of thing anyone should ‘tut-tut’ over? Well what would be the right kind of thing then?

If I had been Musharraf in receipt of such patronising remarks, I would have drawn deep from the well of irony. I would have referred Britain’s prime minister to his poor poll rating and said Islamabad was “dismayed” he had funked a democratic mandate last October. I would have expressed Pakistan’s disappointment at Brown’s record on habeas corpus, ID cards and the exploitation of Pakistani doctors by the NHS.

No doubt you would, but what is your point? That Gordon Brown and Pervez Musharraf are much of a muchness and that there is really nothing to choose between them? That Gordon Brown is the same kind of thing as a military dictator?

For all the manifest horror of the past week in Pakistan and Kenya it is presumptuous for the west to demand that the world take the same route to self-government that it spent bloodthirsty centuries pursuing. We may regard liberal democracy as the one true religion, but it is doubtful if many Russians or Chinese do likewise at present. Like many places on earth, they give a higher rating to security and prosperity.

Well if that’s the case, then they could vote for that, if they got the chance, couldn’t they. But if they don’t get the chance, then you don’t know what they give a higher rating, do you. What makes you so sure it’s not ‘presumptuous’ for you to decide what they give a higher rating when there is no mechanism for them to declare that? Presumptuous yourself.

Pamela Bone notes that Islamists hate women.

The fear of women, of women’s freedom, and most of all, of women’s sexuality, runs through Islamism. It is a large part of Islamist hatred of the West. “The issue of women is not marginal,” writes the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma. “It lies at the heart of Islamic occidentalism (anti-Westernism).” It is the “deep, ignored issue”, writes Paul Berman, author of Terror and Liberalism. Why, I wonder, is it mainly men who are making these points?

Well, I’m not sure it is, really; it may be just that the men who are making these points are bigger names than the women who are making them are, but there are a good few women making them. Gina Khan, Homa Arjomand, Azar Majedi, Marieme Hélie-Lucas, Maryam Namazie, Houzan Mahmoud, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and many many more. I consider myself one of them, in my own small way. There are lots of us. Eventually the drip drip drip of water will wear away the stone.

Al-Qa’ida has made it perfectly clear that its aim is an Islamic caliphate, first in all nominally Muslim countries and ultimately in the whole world. The jihadis would, if they could, impose the same rampant misogyny on women worldwide as was, and still is to a large extent, imposed on the women of Afghanistan.

Of course they would. Otherwise what’s the point? Rampantly misognyist oppression and suppression of women is the chief, central, throbbing reward of being an Islamist; without that the game is hardly worth the candle. (What, you get to force everyone to pray five times a day? Where’s the fun in that?) That’s why I went into a prolonged fit of rage and despair when I turned on the news in San Francisco last Friday; that’s why I don’t think Islamism is the hot new form of radicalism that’s going to make the world a better happier freer place; that’s why I dislike putative leftists who have a soft spot for Islamism. I take it personal-like.

Norm Levitt reads Steve Fuller. You remember Steve Fuller, right? The guy who so helpfully testified for the defense – for the ID side – at Dover? The guy whose testimony helped the other side win? The supposed lefty who is a fan of creationism? Sure you do.

The book under review is Fuller’s subsequent effort to justify philosophically the position that failed so miserably to sway the Kitzmiller ruling in ID’s favor. It is with frank satisfaction and not a little glee that I can report that it is a truly miserable piece of work, crammed with errors scientific, historical, and even theological…In this review I also want to consider the defection of Fuller (who all his life has proclaimed himself a progressive and “leftist”) to a cause demonstrably reactionary in all respects.

No but see the thing is the religious side is always the left side because The People are religious and The Scientists are an elite so therefore a good lefty always has to side with religion.

That obliviousness is even more evident in Fuller’s utter failure to come to terms with the political nature of the Intelligent Design movement. He mentions the notorious “wedge” strategy once or twice, but only with an exculpatory purpose…The “wedge”…is a patently reactionary political program, not a philosophical one. Naturally, this embarrassing fact is too much for someone who, like Fuller, thinks of himself as a left-populist, to admit directly.

Some of us had some experience of trying to argue with Fuller directly over at Talking Philosophy, but he’s one of those exasperating people who just ignore anything they don’t feel like answering. Like Theo Hobson. The fact that he doesn’t admit the reactionary nature of the program he’s supporting comes as no surprise.

Hi – This is Jerry.

Ophelia mentioned that we spent Christmas together in California. It was very cool. Here are some photos I took. Thumbnails appear below. Just click on the thumbnail for a larger picture.

(If the guy who complained last summer about this turning into a travel blog is reading – you should Stop Right Now. You will find this distressing. You have been warned!)

– Pebble Beach sunset

– A beach just past a mission.

– A marsh. (Notice how the sky has cleverly changed colour.)

– This tree is a tree next to a very important tree.

– Ophelia’s favourite dog just after I had read him chapter 2 of Why Truth Matters.

Copies of these prints are available at no good bookshops.

Happy New Year!

Speaking of the combination of bullshit and bullying – consider the way the word ‘faith’ is everywhere used as a tool of that combination. It’s a bully-word precisely because it’s about bullshit; it gets to bully people on the grounds that it is about unwarranted belief. What an odd arrangement.

Look at Deborah Solomon talking to Ian McEwan for instance.

It seems to me that the impulse to atone is a religious one, and yet you are a self-declared atheist. Yes, I am an atheist, and probably Briony is, too. Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It’s a little easier if you’ve got a god to forgive you.

Not necessarily. Faith in itself is not easy to sustain. Well, we won’t get into that.

‘Faith in itself is not easy to sustain.’ And why is that? Because it’s ‘faith’ – it’s not based on evidence or probability or plausibility, it’s just a choice, an act of will; naturally it’s ‘not easy to sustain’ when there are so many ways it can seem wrong. Yet Solomon turns it into a smug boast combined with a reproof. ‘Faith’ is not easy to sustain therefore people who sustain it are brave or loyal or dedicated or athletic, or some such thing. Faith-people are the brave strong tightrope-walking ones, atheists are the pale weak cowards who stay at home and suck on their pacifiers. That’s sheer intellectual bullying, that is, and McEwan, politer than Solomon, allowed her to get away with it. But faith-people really ought not to play that card, because it’s not a legitimate card to play; it gives them an unfair advantage based on other people’s civil reluctance to embarrass them; it’s tawdry and passive-aggressive to take advantage of that politeness.

The Texas Education commissioner used the same tawdry weapon in discussing the firing of Christine Comer.

The Texas Education commissioner, Robert Scott, told The Dallas Morning News that Ms. Comer was not forced out over the message, adding, “You can be in favor of science without bashing people’s faith.” He did not return phone calls to his office.

‘You can be in favor of science without bashing people’s faith.’ What does that mean? You can be in favor of science without forwarding a message saying that Barbara Forrest was going to be giving a talk in Austin? You can be in favor of science without thinking and saying that science classes ought to teach science and not religion? You can be in favor of science without saying that Creationism and ID are not science but religion? Is that what that means? (In the context, it sort of has to mean that; there’s not really anything else it can mean.) Well, if it is, it’s nonsense. You can’t be ‘in favor of science’ while raising no objection to the replacement of science by religion in the science classroom. That’s not ‘being in favor of science,’ it’s being in favor of religion in place of science. But, of course, calling such a view ‘bashing people’s faith’ is just the way to prevent a fair and open discussion of the question and to substitute a sweaty atmosphere of guilt and shame and apology – if people buy it, that is. Chris Comer didn’t buy it; good; no one should buy it. Everyone should be highly sensitized to the deployment of the ‘faith’ guilt-trip, and should ward it off with contumely and scorn.

Some ideas are dangerous any way you look at them. This is one.

Over the past decade, thousands of people, from top politicians to ordinary voters, have been murdered by Islamists in Muslim countries that have held reasonably free elections (Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia). Islamist opposition to democracy is based on the claim that allowing men to legislate would be a form of sherk, that is to say associating Man with God, who is the “sole and ultimate legislator”. Man-made law cannot rival God-made Shariah.

Humans can’t and mustn’t (especially mustn’t, because in fact of course they can, so they have to be stopped) correct or review or displace or act for or contradict or just plain ignore ‘God’; God always trumps humans, humans have to do what God says, never the other way around; yet (here’s where things get scary) ‘God’ of course is not around, not available for consultation or plea, not at the bench to commute sentences or pardon mistakes or hear about extenuating circumstances. All that’s around is a very very old and tedious book, and various interpretations of and commentaries on that book, along with a great many self-appointed interpreters of that book, who are pleased to kill you if you don’t do what they say, armed with the self-righteous claim that they are killing you in the name of this absent ‘God.’ You could hardly come up with a better recipe for that miserable combination of bullshit with tyranny which torments so much of the world. The sole and ultimate legislator is some sky-dweller whom no one ever sees or talks to, so all six-plus billion of us down here on this lumpy little planet are helpless to say anything about our laws or leaders or lives (unless we’re mullahs, of course). Heads they win tails we lose.

So…I was driving around in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, I had dropped Jeremy and Cheryl at the SF airport and then gone on into the city to have fun looking around for a couple of hours until it was time for me to go back to the airport. I turned the radio on and found some okay music and drove up 19th and through the park and through the Avenues a little and over to Arguello, and then the music changed so I looked for another station and hit a news one – and then I found myself repeatedly shouting a bad word as loudly as I could possibly shout it, and kind of thrashing back and forth in rage. It took me awhile to calm down, and all I calmed down into was despair and only slightly quieter rage. I was upset, and I went on being upset all afternoon.

Because…well, perfect. Great. There’s a glimmer of hope that Pakistan might get to be able to have a secular democracy after all, and thus be an example to other majority Muslim countries; and one with a woman at the head of it besides, and thus even more of an example; well of course we can’t have that, so Bang. And I admired Bhutto, while being unsure how justified the corruption charges were or were not. And – you know how it is – I hate it when women who get some power, whether political or intellectual, are killed because they got some power. I hate it. It makes me feel threatened and furious. I hate being reminded that people can prevent each other from doing things any time they feel like it, just by finding a gun or a bomb, and that lots of people do feel like it. It’s the truth, it’s reality, and it stinks.

Merry Xmas. (No war on Christmas here.)

As may be obvious, I’m away for a few days. I’m on the Monterey peninsula doing my day job, and Jeremy and Cheryl are here for a visit. We went to Point Lobos yesterday, on a brilliant beautiful windy day, with pelicans flying back and forth in front of us. Jeremy took a few thousand photographs (he’s a professional you know) and he says he will post some here when he gets back. Normal broadcasting will resume on Friday.

‘If the essays in “Thinking Politically” share a single theme, or better, a common tension,’ says Adam Kirsch, ‘it is Mr. Walzer’s effort to reconcile his liberal instincts with his leftist commitments to socialism and cultural relativism.’

The problem for Mr. Walzer, as a left liberal, is that the left has never really shared the morality of liberalism, or even credited it…To the left, the liberal love of freedom is a self-deception, designed to obscure the fact that the material conditions of life leave most [people] unable to enjoy their freedom. The danger of this conviction is that, once the love of freedom is discredited, freedom itself usually follows, as the history of the last century shows again and again. And when freedom is lost, equality — which was supposed to take its place, in the Marxist vision — also disappears, since without the liberal respect for the individual, there is no basis on which to erect equality.

Unless you just swap group equality, ‘community’ equality, cultural equality. Which is exactly what a lot of people seem to have done, often without fully realizing it, or the implications of it.

It is only because he is deeply wedded to liberalism that Mr. Walzer assumes that all cultures can converge on the liberal belief that the self-legislating individual is the ultimate ground of value. Ironically, Mr. Walzer seems to be guilty of the very same error that he chastises in his polemics against John Rawls and the Rawlsians: His ostensibly neutral moral deliberation rests on principles that he smuggles in because he cannot openly declare them.

Ah yes – the ever-present danger. I was reading a long article or declaration from the Vatican a couple of hours ago, and noticing exactly that. It makes certain things crystal clear and leaves obscure the implications of those things – because it cannot openly declare them. It smuggles in the principles that make one set of things more important – more clarity-worthy – than others. Always something to watch for (in self as well as others, of course).

“If each of us walks with his own god, then all of us will sit in peace under our vines and fig trees,” Mr. Walzer writes sanguinely. But the assumption that our god wants us to sit in peace, rather than to convert the heathen, is already a thoroughly liberal assumption, which would find no purchase in, say, fundamentalist Islam.

Another assumption is that we will all even be able to sit in peace under our vines and fig trees. What will actually happen is that prosperous men will be able to sit in peace under their vines and fig trees while women do all the domestic work and unprosperous men cultivate the vines and fig trees.

The alternative to this illusory neutrality would be openly to confess that liberalism is a positive creed, which holds some human types and some forms of society to be better than others. Such an admission would considerably ease Mr. Walzer’s difficulties in articulating a criticism of the enslavement of women — a practice he clearly loathes but finds it hard, given his axioms, to directly condemn.

Yes. JS and I are busy doing that for this book that articulates a criticism of the enslavement of women (that’s why I was reading a Vatican declaration a couple of hours ago). We openly confess that we hold some forms of society to be better than others. That item is much too big to smuggle.

After that it’s good to be able to read Farrukh Saleem.

Aqsa is dead; she can wear a scarf no more; can go to the school no more. Aqsa can change into jeans no more; she can breathe no more…Honour killing is our export to Canada…Of the 192 member-states of the United Nations almost all honour killings take place in nine overwhelmingly Muslim countries. Denial is not an option…[H]onour killings have taken place in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Intriguingly, all these honour killings have taken place in Muslim communities of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Denial is not an option.

Soumaya Ghannoushi, meet Farrukh Saleem. Denial is not an option (and neither is obfuscation via ‘discourse’ about binaries and the other and hegemony).

Here’s another fact: Illiteracy and honour killings are correlated. Jacobabad District has a literacy rate of 23 percent, the lowest in Sindh. Jacobabad has the highest rate of crimes of honour; 91 honour killings in 2002…Another fact: Around 2.5 percent of humanity lives in Pakistan. But, nearly 30 percent of all honour killings reported from around the world are reported from Pakistan. Is denial an option? Who will take the honour out of these killings? Who will expose the horror from under the hijab? Who will protect women from the laws of men?

Well, probably not Soumaya Ghannoushi.

Soumaya Ghannoushi tells us there are two discourses that are actually one – that are ‘one in essence’: a conservative one that keeps Muslim women stuck at home and in the power of male relatives, and a liberation one that is opposed to the first one but is (somehow) wicked too.

It is a game of binaries that pits one stereotype against another: the wretched caged female Muslim victim and her ruthless jailer society against an idealised “west” that is the epitome of enlightenment, rationalism, and freedom.

Meaning…what? That there are no Muslim women in wretched ‘caged’ situations? That the ‘west’ is not in fact the epitome of enlightenment, rationalism, and freedom and therefore there are no Muslim women in wretched ‘caged’ situations?

The narrative revolves around a dehistoricised, universal “Muslim woman”; a crushing model that oppresses flesh and blood Muslim women, denies them subjectivity and singularity, and claims to sum up their lives with all their vicissitudes and details from cradle to coffin. It reserves for itself the right to speak for them exclusively, whether they like it or not.

Really? Does it? Where? Who spins this narrative, and where, and to whom? I’ve read a fair bit about this subject and I don’t recall anyone blathering about a dehistoricised, universal ‘Muslim woman.’ Could this be just a phantom in Ghannoushi’s mind? I don’t recall anyone reserving the right to speak for Muslim women exclusively, whether they like it or not, either. I really think I would have noticed.

Representations of the Muslim woman serve a dual legitimising function, at once confirming and justifying the west’s narrative of itself, and of the Muslim other.

Yes yes yes, we know, Orientalism; we’ve heard. Tell that to Gina Khan and Irshad Manji and Maryam Namazie and Necla Kelek and Fadéla Amara and countless others. Then tell it to Aqsa Parvez and Mukhtar Mai and the women of the Abu Ghanem family.

From Taliban, Ahmed Rashid, page 114:

Until Kabul, the UN’s disastrous lack of a policy had been ignored but then it became a scandal and the UN came in for scathing criticism from feminist groups. Finally the UN agencies were forced to draw up a common position. A statement spoke of ‘maintaining and promoting the inherent equality and dignity of all people’ and ‘not discriminating between the sexes, races, ethnic groups or religions.’ But the same UN document also stated that ‘international agencies hold local customs and cultures in high respect.’ It was a classic UN compromise, which gave the Taliban the lever to continue stalling…

In the chapter ‘Women and Cultural Universals’ in Sex and Social Justice Martha Nussbaum tells ‘true stories’ of conversations at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, ‘in which the anti-universalist position seemed to have alarming implications for women’s lives.’ Pp 35-6.

At a conference on ‘Value and Technology’ the economist Stephen Marglin, a leftwing critic of classical economics, gives a paper urging the preservation of traditional ways of life in a rural part of Orissa, India, citing for example the fact that unlike in the West there is no split between values that prevail at work and those that prevail at home. His example of this: ‘Just as in the home a menstruating woman is thought to pollute the kitchen and therefore may not enter it, so too in the workplace a menstruating woman is taken to pollute the loom and may not enter the room where looms are kept.’ Some feminists object. Frédérique Apffel Marglin replies: ‘Don’t we realize that there is, in these matters, no privileged place to stand? This, after all, has been shown by both Derrida and Foucault.’ Those who object are neglecting the otherness of Indian ideas by bringing their Western essentialist ideas into the picture.

Then Frédérique Apffel Marglin gives her paper, which expresses regret that the British introduction of smallpox vaccines to India eradicated the cult of the goddess Sittala Devi. Another example of Western neglect of difference. Someone (‘it might have been me’ says Nussbaum) objects that surely it is better to be healthy than ill. But no: ‘Western essentialist medicine conceives of things in terms of binary oppositions: life is opposed to death, health to disease. But if we cast away this binary way of thinking, we will begin to comprehend the otherness of Indian traditions.’

This is where it gets really good. Eric Hobsbawm has been listening ‘in increasingly uneasy silence’; now he rises to deliver a ‘blistering indictment of the traditionalism and relativism’ on offer. He gives historical examples of ways appeals to tradition have been used to support oppression and violence. ‘In the confusion that ensues, most of the relativist social scientists – above all those from far away, who do not know who Hobsbawm is – demand that Hobsbawm be asked to leave the room.’ Stephen Marglin, disconcerted by the tension between his leftism and his relativism, manages to persuade them to let Hobsbawm stay.

That’s good, isn’t it? Feel for poor Stephen Marglin, confronted by outraged relativist social scientist colleagues who don’t know who this tiresome old geezer is and don’t like his blistering indictment, demanding that Eric Hobsbawm be thrown out! It would be funny if it weren’t, at bottom, so disgusting.

On a different note – the Saudi rape victim has been ‘pardoned’ by King Abdullah – the one we ‘share values’ with, according to Kim Howells. But don’t get the wrong idea – the King (the one we share values with) doesn’t actually think there was anything wrong with the sentence – the two hundred lashes for being raped – he just thinks it would be inconvenient at the moment, that’s all.

Mr. Khashoggi [a newspaper editor] said that the woman, who has married, had been living freely while her case was being appealed. There have been reports that her brother has tried to kill her to remove the “stain” to the family’s honor, and bloggers and international human rights activists have expressed concern for her safety. The Saudi minister of social affairs, Dr. Abdul Mohsin Alakkas, reached by telephone, said that Saudi women who run into trouble with the law frequently fear retribution from their relatives. Some women who serve prison time refuse to leave prison at the end of their sentences, he said. The Ministry of Social Affairs operates special shelters for these women, and Dr. Alakkas said the Qatif victim would be able to live in one.

Ah. Isn’t that sweet. Isn’t that kind. She gets to go live in a special prison for the rest of her life to avoid being murdered by her brother; is that thoughtful or what.

Commenting on the pardon, the Saudi justice minister, Abdullah bin Mohammed al-Sheik, told Al Jazirah that the king fully supported the verdicts against the woman but had decided to pardon her because it was in the “interests of the people.”

That’s the ticket. Stick to your guns, kingy. Merry Christmas and happy shared values.

Theo Hobson has outdone himself – again. He keeps breaking his own record – it must be exhausting.

What’s up? Well, journalism is an atheistic bear-trap of cynicism and ferocity and Theo is tremulous with fear and anxiety about saying what he says but what the hell, he’ll just bravely risk the fury of the censors at Comment is Free and say it: Christmas carols make him soppy. There. They have the same effect on an ‘atheist comedian’ . There. He admires the comedian’s honesty in saying so. There. Imagine what Dawkins would say. There. Then Theo proceeds to imagine what Dawkins would say, then he proceeds to give him a damn good thrashing for saying it, then he talks some unadulterated nonsense by way of conclusion.

Christmas seems to me the refutation of the idea that beauty and truth can be separated. The beauty of the Christmas story, and of the festival, is more than beauty. Mere aesthetics cannot account for it.

No, quite right, it’s baby Jesus what does it.

The really funny part is that the commenters almost unanimously point out that Theo has simply invented ‘what Dawkins would say’ and then attacked his own invention (and not for the first time – he’s fond of this tactic), and that his refutation of the idea that beauty and truth can be separated has a few holes in it, with the result that Theo comments several times, more absurdly each time. I’ll show you – each new comment on a new line, each separated by a slew of sane, rational, well-argued replies and questions from the commenters; no wriggling, no evasion, no hero-worship, no failure to think.

I am berated for making a straw-man Dawkins. So what does he think? I take it that he thinks carols are beautiful but meaningless (and perhaps a bit dangerous in glorifying superstition). This is a flawed position – it treats as merely aesthetic what is more than that. Instead of thinking about this, lots of you are just jumping to the defence of your hero.

Look, I’ve got an incredibly simple question for you atheists. Please don’t try to wriggle out of it. Would you like to see the practice of childtren singing ‘Away in a manger’ and suchlike dying out? Please take a few minutes to THINK.

those of you atheists who say ‘who cares if children sing carols?’ are intellectually dishonest. For do you not think that it’s wrong to encourage children in harmful superstition? It stuns me how evasive and unthinking you are about the implications of your atheism.

It seems to be Dawkins’ view (judging from some of the comments realting to him) that carols are lovely, harmless, part of our heritage. Don’t you see that this makes him a big hypocrite? If he were logically consistent he would oppose them for their promotion of lies, but because they are popular, he doesn’t dare say this.

Ultimately you are either for or against Baby Jesus. Atheists should have the honesty that they’re against him, that they’d like the celebration of him to be wiped out. Don’t hide from the decision in aesthetics.

That last one tipped the balance: surely we have here a case of stolen identity. I suggested a secret agent of the dreaded International Atheist Conspiracy, or else that Theo Hobson is Richard Dawkins’s sock puppet, like Lee Siegel’s ‘sprezzatura’ at The New Republic*. Now that would be truly funny.

*But insulting instead of flattering – double-bluff kind of thing.

Blind fingers-in-ears lalalala denial is interesting to see. It is not so because it cannot be so because it would be bad if it were so therefore it is not so; do you understand.

Violence against women is sadly a global human rights issue and occurs within all communities, regardless of race, class, culture and faith. It is troubling when this occurs in some communities because the media are quick to focus the story on “issues in the community” that have led to Aqsa’s slaying. The story becomes about how some communities have a greater tolerance for violence against women.

Funny old media, focusing on what appears to be the grim reality of what led to Aqsa’s murder; they should have ignored all that and pretended it was inexplicable and random. And how terrible that the story should become about the fact that some ‘communities’ have a greater tolerance for violence against women, even if it is in fact the case that some ‘communities’ have a greater tolerance for violence against women. Why? Well, because…because they’re communities, so they must be nice, right? (No one ever talks about the fascist community or the racist community or the Neo-Nazi community – so all communities are nice – surely.)

The discussion of this homicide as stemming from issues of a “clash of cultures, faith, the hijab” misrepresents the issue of violence against women. Violence is about the power and control of women by men.

Uh…yeah, violence is indeed about the power and control of women by men, and religion very often provides the pretext for exactly that. If the hijab were not about the power and control of women by men, then why would women get beaten up in so many places for refusing to wear it?

The assertion that this violence reflects the community and Islam is rooted in both racism and Islamophobia. Violence is not a value in any culture or faith community.

Really. Any evidence for that claim? None that’s offered, at any rate – it’s pure assertion. ‘Violence is not a value in any culture’ – well where does it come from then? Godalmighty – does Cindy Cowan think all violence is a product of epilepsy or something? The assertion that violence is not a value in any culture is rooted in a near-deranged level of denial.

Media preoccupation with this young woman’s background supports the myth that the incidence of violence and murder of women is somehow greater in these “other” communities, but this is false.

False, is it? Any evidence for that claim? No again. Which is depressing, because this Interim Place that Cindy Cowan is the executive director of is a women’s shelter. She kind of needs to know something about this subject, and she appears to know less than nothing; she appears to know minus-facts, anti-facts. She seems to think that the incidence of violence against and murder of women is exactly the same in all ‘communities’ as opposed to being ‘somehow’ (that ‘somehow’ is interesting – as if she can’t even figure out how such a thing could possibly be, even in principle) greater in some than in others. She seems to live in an alternate universe.

Okay now let’s not get excited here. These things happen. Teenagers rebel, parents get cross, the fur flies, doors slam, windows shatter. It happens in the best of families – Christian, atheist, Buddhist, Scientologist, Free Silverist, you name it. It’s a terrible shame, but it doesn’t mean anything – it’s just like a spot of bad weather.

It’s a bitterly sad story, and if, indeed, her father killed her, nothing can excuse that. Aqsa might well have defied family values and parental rules, but nothing she did warranted death. Harsh words, perhaps, and even grounding, but there can be no tolerance for such violence.

Oh good – glad to know that killing a daughter for defying family values is not okay. Glad we got that straight.

Murdering daughters is no more an Islamic value than murdering estranged wives is a Western one. Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart. Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something – boyfriends, lipstick, short skirts, staying out late, dyed hair, body piercings, tattoos and any number of other age-inappropriate enormities.

How very true – and few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who don’t then go on to murder those adolescent daughters. Yes indeed, fathers murder their adolescent daughters by the thousands every day in every city on earth; it’s commonplace; it’s like jaywalking. There can be no tolerance for it of course, but all the same it’s terribly common. So nothing to see here folks, move on.

I don’t see eye to eye with Ali Eteraz here.

[T]he fact that Muslims around the world insist “Islam means peace” is evidence that a vast number of Muslims do not think that Islam means violence.

No…the fact that (many) Muslims insist that Islam means peace is evidence that many Muslims want to think that Islam means peace, and therefore they 1) simply insist that it does and 2) explain away anything that would cast doubt on that thought, either by saying that violence is extremist and aberrant or by saying that what looks to the uncomprehending like violence is actually peace. In short, they rationalize, as people often do about their chosen religion. It’s a mistake to take people’s defensive, often desperate rationalizations as evidence that they actually think what we want them to think. Really: big mistake. If a Christian tells you that Christianity means love, it would be a mistake to assume that that Christian means what you mean by ‘love.’ Christians will insist that Jesus was all about love then when you cite chapter and verse of Jesus getting quite hostile, they will say ‘Oh that was because he was angry with the Pharisees’ and go right on believing that Jesus was all about love.

Further, when a Muslim does commit something nasty against fellow human beings, and other Muslims decry this person as an “extremist”, this is evidence that a vast number of Muslims find brutish behaviour worth distancing themselves from. This too is a good thing. At the least, it shows that most Muslims share in the universal definitions of good and bad.

How does Eteraz know that ‘other Muslims’ are ‘a vast number of Muslims’ and how do the ‘a vast number of Muslims’ suddenly become ‘most Muslims’? How did we get from other to vast number of to most? Since the numbers are all left vague, we have no clue.

[W]hat is honesty to a secular humanist is psychological devastation to a believer. If a woman-respecting, non-violent, cool-headed Muslim says that he is a good person despite Islam, he would essentially be saying that Islam is irrelevant to his existence. A believer would never say that. He will chalk up his successes to his faith. He will insist that his faith galvanised every good thing in his life.

Some Muslims, in fact half of them, are women themselves as opposed to ‘woman-respecting’ men, but leave that aside for the moment. We know all that (we ‘secular humanists,’ though I’d rather be called an atheist, please), but that’s the problem. Defending the religion comes first, and truth or reality or unpleasant facts come second; the latter have to be made to fit the former, not the other way around. ‘A believer’ has to be able to credit his ‘faith’ for every good thing, therefore the believer will simply insist that the religion is the source of goodness no matter what evidence there might be that it’s not; the result is that whatever belongs to the religion is by definition good, necessarily; thus the believer is unable to judge what is good and what isn’t, and thus bad things are labeled good while remaining bad. That’s the danger of that way of thinking; that’s the danger of having sacrosanct protected ideas or beliefs that can’t be thought about without psychological devastation.

At the end of the piece Eteraz tells us of the contortions believers resort to in order to explain away a Koranic verse on flogging. But the verse remains – and people who like flogging remain, and people who want divine sanction for flogging remain, so what good is it twisting oneself into a pretzel to pretend that flogging is really a kind of massage? Not much.

Kuwaiti tv sounds like fun – like Oprah but more intense.

Kuwait TV Host Sheikh Tareq Al-Sweidan: “We have a question for the viewers at home, not in the studio, and they can respond with a text message. What is the best way to deal with apostates who converted from Islam? You have three possible responses. The first is through dialogue only. The second option is killing them, and the third option is to leave it up to the legal system.

Don’t you wish you could watch tv shows like that? We have a question for the viewers: What is the best way to deal with apostates who converted from Southern Baptism? You have three options. You can chat, you can kill them, or you can call the cops.

That would be even more fun when most of the audience went for door number two. Kill them, Bob, definitely.

Fatima: “He should be declared an infidel. The Koran divided people into Muslims, infidels, and the People of the Book. So there is a group of people who should be declared infidels.”

Just so. Because otherwise the Koran would have divided people into three groups for nothing. The Koran divided people into three groups, one of which was infidels, therefore there is a group of people who should be declared infidels. Naturally.

Gamal ‘Allam: “If he believes that his law is equal to the law of Allah, he is comparing Allah to human beings, and thus, he is an infidel. If he believes his law to be better than the law of Allah, then he prefers the creature over its Creator, and thus, he is an infidel.”

Humans are forbidden to use their own judgement about the law because they are required to defer to the judgment of someone who doesn’t exist, doesn’t answer when called, doesn’t apologize, doesn’t explain, can’t be demoted or fired or thrown out of office, doesn’t care, isn’t there. Otherwise they are infidels. End of story.

Young man in audience: “Sir, if you become an apostate, your punishment is death. There is a great problem that most of us, 70% of us, are Muslims because they were born to Muslim fathers and mothers. Before a person converts to Islam, he has the liberty to choose, but remember that if you want to convert from Islam, you will be punished by death. So you have the liberty to choose, but on the condition…”

Oh, okay, thanks – I have the liberty to choose, but on the condition that I’ll be killed if I do. Fine, that’s fair.

Prince Charles tried to improve things once, but had no luck.

“In 2004, Prince Charles called a meeting of leading Muslims to discuss the issue,” adds Dr Sookhdeo. “I was there. All the Muslim leaders at that meeting agreed that the penalty in sharia is death. The hope was that they would issue a public declaration repudiating that doctrine, but not one of them did.”

Oh. Well, maybe PC could try again in a few years. Meanwhile…um…well I guess nobody convert from Islam, okay?

Damian Lanigan notices this is not such a great arrangement but then fumbles over another arrangement.

If Muslim religious leaders in Britain are unwilling to speak out on this issue then we really are in trouble. [Well yes. ed]…And credit should be given to secular Muslim leaders. Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), says that it is “absolutely disgraceful behaviour… In Britain, no Muslim has the right to harm one hair of someone who decides to leave Islam.” Let’s hope that behind closed doors, at the community centres and mosques people like Mr Mogra are winning the argument.

No let’s not. (And what makes Lanigan think anyone in the MCB is secular?) Let’s not hope people who stipulate that ‘in Britain’ killing apostasy is not okayare winning the argument; the not okay has to apply to everyone everywhere, not just to the locals. No Muslim anywhere has the right to harm someone who decides to leave Islam.