Uh oh. A state-funded religious education program in Australia has been telling girls they’re sluts.

Parents and teachers have called for an urgent overhaul of religious education in schools after year 6 children were given material claiming girls who wear revealing clothes are inviting sexual assault, and homosexuality, masturbation and sex before marriage are sinful.

Students at Torquay College were presented with “Biblezines” as a graduation present at the end of their Christian education program, run by Access Ministries – the government accredited provider of religious instruction in Victorian schools.

The magazines, Refuel 2 and Revolve 2 – which intersperse the text of the New Testament with dating advice, beauty tips and music reviews – warn girls not to

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A Turkish lawyer and women’s rights activist, Canan Arin, was arrested for mentioning the fact that girls get married off very young in Turkey.

I was the co-founder of the Istanbul Bar Association, Women’s Rights Enforcement Centre and worked as a trainer there.  The Antalya Bar Association was opening a Women’s Rights Enforcement Centre and the lawyers needed training. I gave a talk on violence against women in the form of early and forced marriages in the context of training.

I used two examples to illustrate my point. One was the Prophet who married a girl of seven. The second was the head of the Turkish Republic who was engaged to his wife, the first lady, when she was 14

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A member of the General Synod of the Church of England explains about the vote not to allow women bishops.

The legislation we voted on needed to achieve two outcomes: the ordination of women to the episcopate; and sufficient provision for those who, for theological reasons, find this innovation unacceptable.

For theological reasons – that’s important, you see. They can’t be political reasons or moral reasons or we just don’t like them reasons. Why? Because it looks bad. But theological reasons – ah now that’s a whole different kettle of bullshit. That gets a pass, and a wide berth, and a deep bow, and a determined looking in the other direction.

You can do a lot with theological reasons. You … Read the rest

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Okay maybe I’m being a big mean atheist poopy head, but honestly, I do wish people would stop thanking Allah for saving Malala’s life. Say what? If Allah saved her life, why the fuck didn’t Allah prevent her (and her schoolmates) from being shot in the first place? Why didn’t Allah cause the shooters to have four flat tires on a very isolated mountain road? Why didn’t Allah give them all a bad intestinal upset that day?

Same old same old. Theodicy. If God this, then why that. Well think about it, people. Use your heads. Don’t just mindlessly thank Allah for stepping in hours after a girl of 14 was shot in the head by a man who thinks … Read the rest

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Małgorzata has sent me another gem - a lecture on tv by an Egyptian cleric explaining why men have to beat up women.

Abd Al-Rahman Mansour: Islam instructs a man to beat his wife as a last resort before divorce, so that she will mend her ways, treat him with kindness and respect, and know that her husband has a higher status than her.

That’s usefully blunt. We know where we are. We’re among stupid unreflective people who have not managed to figure out that stronger does not equal better or higher, and that the mere fact that person X is able to beat up person Y does not mean that person X is better than person Y. It’s … Read the rest

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Remember the 9-weeks pregnant Dominican 16-year-old with acute leukemia whose doctors refused to give her chemo because she was pregnant? Well, great news: you don’t have to worry about her any more, because she’s dead.

Her plight gained attention over the last few weeks as doctors debated whether it was morally correct to start treating her cancer, given as Article 37 of the Dominican Constitution states that “the right to life is inviolable from the moment of conception and until death.” It took doctors and the Dominican government a full 20 days to decide that God and Country might care about the actually living mother’s life, too, not just the fetus inside of her, and allow the treatment. By

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For awhile there it looked as if Mali were going to have a new and better Family Code to improve the rights of women.

Its provisions included raising the minimum legal age of marriage for girls, improving women’s inheritance and property rights and removing the clause demanding a wife’s obedience to her husband. The law was adopted by the National Assembly in August 2009 but was withdrawn following uproar from conservative Muslim groups.

Provocative headlines in newspapers warned that women would no longer have to obey their husbands and thousands took to the streets in protest. A task group formed by Mali’s top Islamic council called it an “open road to debauchery” and the National Union of Muslim Women’s Associations

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Udate: note this is from the Washington Times, a very dubious source.

Good old liberation struggles, like the liberation struggle of Chechnya from the brutal embrace of Russia.

Chechnya’s government is openly approving of families that kill female relatives who violate their sense of honor, as this Russian republic embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam after decades of religious suppression under Soviet rule.

In the past five years, the bodies of dozens of young Chechen women have been found dumped in woods, abandoned in alleys and left along roads in the capital, Grozny, and neighboring villages.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov publicly announced that the dead women had “loose morals” and were rightfully shot by male relatives. He went on to

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I don’t understand.

Eleven years ago, Farida Bano was circumcised had her genitals mutilated by an aunt on a bunk bed in her family home at the end of her 10th birthday party.

The mutilation occurred not in Africa, where the practice is most prevalent, but in India where a small Muslim sub-sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra continues to believe that the removal of the clitoris is the will of God.

I don’t understand, because if they think God wants the clitoris removed, how do they explain God’s putting it there in the first place?… Read the rest

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There’s a new group in Tunisia, Equality and Parity, that is protesting the wearing of the niqab.

Equality and Parity promised that they will plan manifestations and sit-ins if women’s rights are violated in Tunisia. The group lobbies against denigrating women’s representation in decision-making – whether it be in the political, social, cultural, or economic sphere. It also promotes the full citizenship of women and total eradication of gender discrimination.

It put together a rather cryptic video that looks like a campaign for the niqab but is apparently intended as a campaign against it. Maybe it just seems cryptic to me because I’m not familiar with Tunisian advertising.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaRXO_Lo74

 … Read the rest

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This little spat between the Inquisition and the slightly disobedient (but not disobedient enough) nuns reminds me of something that we generally don’t focus on sharply enough. It’s certainly obvious, yet it kind of fades into the background of the taken-for-granted.

The something is:

Women are the only category of people who can’t ever be Catholic clergy no matter what they do or don’t do. The only one. Atheists can change their minds. Buddhists can convert. Convicted felons can repent. Gay men can be closeted.

But women, and women only, are barred, completely and finally; barred as such, barred from birth, barred because of what they are. Trying to unbar them is an excommunicable crime, while raping children is … Read the rest

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Sooraya Graham is very confused. She wants to be liberal and free and provocative, and she also wants to be reactionary and veiled and submissive. She’s an art student, see. She wears hijab. She took a picture of a friend of hers who wears a niqab and abaya, holding a bra. She wanted to “humanize” her.

Graham said her intention had been to “humanize” women who wear the niqab, which covers a woman’s entire head except for her eyes, by showing one doing a simple act that many women can relate to.

The way to “humanize” women who wear the niqab is to persuade them to stop wearing it. The niqab is a dehumanizing object, and that’s the point … Read the rest

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