Tag: Religious coercion

  • Peter Palumbo

    I saw this on Jessica Ahlquist’s twitter feed a few hours ago:

    State representative Palumbo called me an “evil little thing.”

    Just now I was about to google for details preparatory to doing a post, but JT Eberhard got there first.

    Peter G. Palumbo, the Democrat in the RI House from the Cranston district, has no rebukes for the Jesus-loving liars, bullies, or thugs.  He has nothing negative to say about the people who felt they were above the Constitution and lied to subvert it.  He did, however, have something to say about Jessica.  According to Palumbo she is “An evil little thing.”  That may have bee said sarcastically, but the line “I think she’s being coerced by evil people” was most assuredly not.

    I urge you to listen to him say that. It’s the first soundbite on the page, and it’s just a few seconds. Don’t listen if you have high blood pressure or a stomach ache. It’s disgusting – two grown men sneering at a high school girl who had the audacity to uphold the Constitution.

    JT says it more better:

    Palumbo’s email address is rep-palumbo@rilin.state.ri.us.   His office phone number is  (401) 785-2882.  Spread the word and inundate him.  Our leaders should respect the constitution, not snipe at those who have been been confirmed to have fought in its defense.  Palumbo has just sided with dishonesty and bullies.

    Drop him a line.

  • You call that “Light”?

    Just what Egypt needs – a mutawiyin like the one the lucky people in Saudi Arabia have.

    The radical Islamist Nour party, or “Party of the Light,” has captured more than a quarter of votes in the post-Mubarak Egyptian elections. Nour, which ran second to the Muslim Brotherhood in the polling, is a Wahhabi party, reproducing the ideology of the rulers of Saudi Arabia, under the label of “Salafism.” Its rhetoric presents “Salafism” as pure Islam unchanged by 14 centuries of Muslim history in differing lands and cultures worldwide. Nour is hostile to non-Wahhabi Muslims, repressive of women’s rights, and discriminatory against non-Muslims.

    The Saudi mutawiyin or “morals patrols” – sometimes miscalled a “religious police” – coordinated by the “Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV),” are one of the most criticized institutions in the Saudi kingdom. Known as the “mutawiyin” or “volunteers,” and as the “hai’a” or “the Commission,” this militia is composed of at least 5,000 full-time members, assisted by thousands of more ordinary Saudis. Armed with thin, leather-covered sticks, they patrol Saudi cities enforcing the strictures of Wahhabi ideology. They descend on and harass women who are not fully covered below the ankle by the black cloak or abaya, and who go out in public without a face veil or niqab. They interfere with couples whom they suspect of being unmarried or otherwise unrelated. They prevent women from driving motor vehicles. They raid private homes looking for evidence of alcohol consumption. And not least, they disturb the prayers of Shias and Sunni Sufi Muslims whose forms of devotion are disapproved of by the Wahhabis.

    Aaaaaaaaaaaand guess what.

    The unexpected rise of Nour has left non-Muslim as well as Muslim commentators shocked and, in many cases, silent. But the Egyptian supporters of Wahhabism have wasted no time in demanding the importation of retrograde Saudi customs into Egypt. Egyptian Wahhabis have now called for the introduction of so-called “Morals Patrols” on the Saudi model.

    They don’t have the numbers, by themselves…yet. But if the MB joins them in this benevolent demand – Egypt is screwed.

  • Jessica Ahlquist wins the case

    The judge said yes that’s a religious prayer. A Daniel come to judgement. Also a guy who can read with his eyes open.

    Why yes, that does seem quite religious, doesn’t it. Also patriarchal.

    The prayer banner that hangs at Cranston West High School must be removed immediately said U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lagueux in his decision issued Wednesday.

    According to the Justice’s decision “The purpose of the prayer banner was clearly religious in nature,” and that “No amount of debate can make the school Prayer anything other than a prayer, and a Christian one at that.”

    Jessica Ahlquist, a Cranston West student brought suit against the city over the banner saying it made her feel excluded and ostracized because she is an atheist.

    Not to mention she is a girl.

  • When certain Muslims voiced their offense

    The Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society at University College London is the object of attempted censorship by the university’s student union because the former used an image from Jesus and Mo on its Facebook page, and that, of course, is “offensive.”

     Citing a “number of complaints” regarding both the depiction of Muhammad and the fact that the image shows him with a drink that looks like beer, the union contacted the ASHS president demanding that he remove the image as soon as possible…Pointing out that UCL was the first university in Britain to be founded on secular principles, the ASHS have refused to remove the Jesus & Mo image and have launched an online petitionto defend free expression at the university. The petition, which you can sign, includes the following statement:

    “In response to complaints from a number of students, the University College London Union has insisted that the UCLU Atheist, Secularist & Humanist Society remove the following image from a Facebook event advertising a pub social. It has done so on the grounds that it may cause offence to Muslim students.

    This is a gross infringement on its representatives’ right to freedom of expression taken by members of the first secular university in England. All people are free to be offended by any image they view. This does not give them the right to impose their beliefs on others by censoring such images.
    We the undersigned urge the University College London Union to immediately halt their attempts to censor the UCLU Atheist, Secularist & Humanist Society and uphold its members’ right to freedom of expression.”

    And then there’s an unpleasant little update:

    Update: one of the Islamic societies at UCL, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Students Association, has put out a statementarguing that the ASHS is wrong to refuse to take down the image from Jesus & Mo. The author argues that there is a difference between freedom of speech and freedom to insult, and suggests that once something has offended someone, it should be withdrawn:

    “Once a particular act is deemed to be offensive to another, it is only good manners to refrain from, at the very least, repeating that act. In this particular case, when at first the cartoon was uploaded, it could have been mistaken as unintentional offense. When certain Muslims voiced their offense over the issue, for any civil, well-mannered individual or group of individuals, it should then be a question as to the feelings of others and the cartoons should then have been removed.”

    Bollocks.

  • Decent women don’t have “crisis pregnancies”

    And if we haven’t had enough religious bullying today, here’s another batch.

    As ThinkProgress has reported, so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that claim to help women in need are actually established by anti-abortion activists with the sole objective of shaming women out of having abortions. Despite receiving federal and state funding, they have a history of preying on and misleading pregnant women who are seeking abortions and giving them false medical information to dissuade them from making their own decisions.

    After a year-long investigation, a new report to be released today by the pro-choice group NARAL reveals that those problems plague the vast majority of North Carolina’s crisis pregnancy centers. In addition to providing false medical information, many of the centers actively proselytize and tell women of non-Christian faiths to convert or face damnation…

    The number of centers in North Carolina has nearly doubled since 2006, and there are eight times as many of them as there are abortion clinics. Carey Pope, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, said the group’s investigators found numerous instances where crisis pregnancy centers were misinforming and misleading women. “Staff and volunteers often use propaganda to dissuade women from abortions,” she said.

    Publicly funded; 8 times more of them than abortion providers; medical misinformation; convert or face damnation. One-stop shopping!

    North Carolina’s GOP lawmakers have flooded these anti-abortion centers with taxpayer money while defunding Planned Parenthood and taking money away from legitimate family planning centers that provide medical services. Two new state laws will drive even more funding and patients their way. Money from sales of the new “Choose Life” license plates will go to the centers, and starting this Wednesday, a state-run website will launch and list the places that provide free ultrasounds.

    Keep those pesky women down.

  • Behold the whore

    I couldn’t watch more than a couple of minutes of the video of Na’ama Margolese without getting too angry to keep watching. It’s so disgusting that grown men consider it their “religious duty” or some such fucking nonsense to bully and threaten a little girl, call her a slut, and spit on her.

    …she was featured in a news  broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 about the ongoing Haredi harassment of the girls who attend the Orot Banot School, and about the problem of extreme Haredi control in Beit Shemesh in general.

    Naama spoke on camera of her fears while walking the short distance from her home to her school, after numerous occasions when she was cursed at and even once spit on by the Haredi demonstrators. Israeli viewers watched as her mother,  Hadassah, holding her hand, tried to convince her to make the short walk as she cried, whined and protested; it’s a ritual they go through every school day.

    …

    Members of an extremist Haredi group that have settled there over the past several years have been pushing for the creation of gender-segregated bus lines, designating parts of the city where women and men were directed to separate on public streets, and harassing the girls of Orot Banot on the ground that they did not dress modestly enough.

    A Jewish Taliban, in short. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you? A Baptist Taliban, a Mormon Taliban, a Mennonite Taliban? Who knows, but the fashion is disquieting.

  • Tenets of Islam are not subject to change

    UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay went to the Maldives, and there she said some things. She said some things relevant to human rights.

    In an address delivered in parliament last Thursday, Pillay said the practice of flogging women found guilty of extra-marital sex “constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women, and should have no place in the legal framework of a democratic country.”

    The UN human rights chief called for a public debate “on this issue of major concern.” In a press conference later in the day, Pillay called on the judiciary and the executive to issue a moratorium on flogging.

    Well yes. Commissioners for human rights can be expected to say things like that, unless they are merely window-dressing commissioners for human rights. Flogging women for extra-marital sex does strike contemporary supporters of human rights as incompatible with respect for human rights. Flogging itself, flogging as such, is seen by people like that as incompatible with respect for human rights, and extra-marital sex is seen as a private concern as opposed to a state concern.

    On article 9(d) of the constitution, which states “a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives,” Pillay said the provision was “discriminatory and does not comply with international standards.”

    There again – mandatory religion is widely considered incompatible with respect for human rights. So far so unsurprising. But the top people in the Maldives didn’t see it that way.

    Statements by visiting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay calling for a moratorium on flogging as a punishment for fornication and criticising the Muslim-only clause for citizenship in the Maldivian constitution have been widely condemned by religious NGOs, public officials and political parties.

    …

    Shortly after Pillay’s speech in parliament, Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari told local media that “a tenet of Islam cannot be changed” and flogging was a hudud punishment prescribed in the Quran (24:2) and “revealed down to us from seven heavens.”

    Bari noted that article 10 of the constitution established Islam as “the basis of all the laws of the Maldives” and prohibited the enactment of any law “contrary to any tenet of Islam,” adding that the Maldives has acceded to international conventions with reservations on religious matters such as marriage equality.

    In his Friday prayer sermon the following day, Bari asserted that “no international institution or foreign nation” had the right to challenge the practice of Islam and adherence to its tenets in the Maldives.

    And there you go – as usual. It’s in the Quran; it can’t be changed; it was revealed. Islam is the basis of all the laws; any law contrary to any tenet of Islam is prohibited; the end. Allah said we can flog women if we want to (and that we, meaning men, are the only ones who count), so we’re going to, so shut up and go back to UNistan where you belong. By the way if you were a Maldivian we could flog you, so ha.

    Meanwhile, the religious conservative Adhaalath Party issued a statement on Thursday contending that tenets of Islam and the principles of Shariah were not subject to modification or change through public debate or democratic processes.

    Adhaalath Party suggested that senior government officials invited a foreign dignitary to make statements that they supported but were “hesitant to say in public.”

    The party called on President Mohamed Nasheed to condemn Pillay’s statements “at least to show to the people that there is no irreligious agenda of President Nasheed and senior government officials behind this.”

    The Adhaalath statement also criticised Speaker Abdulla Shahid and MPs in attendance on Thursday for neither informing Pillay that she “could not make such statements” nor making any attempt to stop her or object to the remarks.

    Funny that the Adhaalath Party doesn’t seem to have read the memo about religion not being literal and being all about compassion.

  • Evil

    More on Mansor Almaribe, sentenced to 500 lashes in Saudi Arabia for “insulting the companions of the prophet.”

    THE family of a Victorian man sentenced to 500 lashes in Saudi Arabia has made an emotional plea to bring him home, fearing he will die in jail.

    The Shepparton family of Mansor Almaribe, 45, who was also sentenced to a year in jail for blasphemy, will head to Canberra to plead for help.

    Isaam Almaribe, 21, said his father suffered from diabetes and had broken bones in his back and knees from a car accident in Australia.

    “Dad told us ‘Take me out of here as soon as possible because if I stay here I will die’ – that’s how bad his situation is,” Isaam said.

    “He couldn’t survive 50 lashes let alone 500 lashes.”

    And he was sentenced to this monstrous punishment for what, again?

    “Apparently he was in Medina with a group of fellow Shiites…and he was quoting out of a book which insulted the Prophet Muhammad’s companion. This is how it’s being described. Apparently this is a deeply offensive thing to do in the Medina apparently for people of Sunni Islamic philosophy or religion.”

    That’s from MP Sharman Stone, who is trying to get Kevin Rudd to intervene with the Saudis.

    Mr Almaribe arrived in Australia in 1999 from Iraq as a refugee and brought his family over in 2006.

    Isaam said the war in Iraq did not compare with what the family was going through now.

    “We had different problems back then but now his life is on the line,” he said.

    “To be lashed is barbaric and it’s really terrifying. Humans shouldn’t be treated that way.”

    Wife Waffa Almaribe has not slept since her husband was detained while making the Hajj pilgrimage to Medina last month.

    She collapsed in tears when she heard he would be lashed 500 times and serve a year in jail.

    “It’s very hard for me and my family and it’s so terrible,” she said.

    “My husband is a peaceful man who looked out for everybody. My children and I need him with us. I am very scared he won’t survive.”

    The family said Mr Almaribe, a Shiite Muslim, was dragged away by religious police while praying in the Sunni-dominated country.

    So that’s how it works – the hajj is a religious obligation if you can afford it, but if you go, you risk being flayed to death if you do the praying the wrong way.

    It’s barbaric.

    Thanks to Helen for the link.

     

  • Most attend their local madrassa

    The BBC is so stupid sometimes – so conformist and reactionary and authoritarian. There’s this piece on UK madrassas “modernizing” for example.

    Most mosques have their own madrassa or religious school. Larger mosques can have a number of them, and they all form an integral part of the local community.

    In close knit neighbourhoods most Muslim children regularly attend their local madrassa, in part due to peer pressure, as everyone living near the mosque does so.

    See what they did there? (I say “they” even though the article has a byline, Sanjiv Buttoo, because the Beeb has a house style and this piece is typical.) See how they dressed up the situation by invoking “the local community” and “close knit neighbourhoods,” which sound cozy and loving rather than stifling and coercive? They did admit that there’s peer pressure, but they softened that blow by first tucking us into the arms of the local close knit community neighborhood.

    There’s also a total failure to question the value of what is learned in madrassas.

    Unlike older mosques, children sit at desks and chairs, instead of the floor,
    and although everyone has to learn Arabic so they can read the Koran, classes are taught in English.

    Mohammed Sarfaraz is one of the teachers who works here. He said: “It’s
    different to when we grew up when we could not understand Urdu very well. In my class we all speak English as it is the mother tongue of all the students.

    “The benefits are that they learn quicker and they remember more, and at the end of the day what they learn, they can put to use in their everyday lives.”

    In other words they can learn The Rules as laid down by a guy who lived in the Arabian peninsula 14 centuries ago. Totes modern.

  • Blot her out

    It’s a hard job obliterating women from the landscape. People have been trying for centuries but it’s like weevils or mildew…there’s always a bit you miss and then before you know it – the big chomping jaws come through the wall and eat you.

    The Saudis are struggling with this problem now, and they’ve decided there’s no help for it, they’re just going to have to cover up the eyes too. Otherwise – munch munch.

    Saudi women with sexy or “tempting” eyes may be forced to
    cover them up    , according to a spokesperson for the Committee for the
    Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the news site Bikyamasr
    reports.

    Bikyamasr quotes a spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet, as saying the group has the right to order women whose eyes seem “tempting” to shield them immediately.

    It seems inconvenient, because women will be walking into walls or holes in the ground or getting run over, but if you think about it they’re really not supposed to be outside anyway, so it’s ok. If they’re turbulent enough to insist on going outside they’ll just have to have their eyes covered up along with the rest of them.

    They understand this in Jerusalem, ironically enough.

    The segregation of women is nothing new amongst the ultra-orthodox community who itself lives segregated from the rest of the population, by choice. In the downtown Mea She’arim neighbourhood that’s populated by Haredi Jews, signs warn women not to enter the quarter dressed “immodestly”.

    A woman’s appearance is “immodest by nature”, said a Rabbi who insisted he would remain anonymous for fear of “offending sensitivities”. “Our demand isn’t geared at oppressing women – the opposite. Our intent is to protect their honour and dignity.”

    By announcing that their appearance is immodest by nature; funny idea of honour and dignity.

  • After she was raped, she was charged with adultery

    The EU commissioned a documentary film on women in Afghanistan who get shoved into prison for doing outrageous things like leaving abusive “husbands” they never wanted to marry in the first place. The documentary was duly made, at which point the EU got cold feet and said on second thought let’s put this documentary in a locked drawer and never think about it again.

    The documentary told the story of a 19-year-old prisoner called Gulnaz.

    After she was raped, she was charged with adultery. Her baby girl, born
    following the rape, is serving her sentence with her.

    “At first my sentence was two years,” Gulnaz said, as her baby coughed in her
    arms. “When I appealed it became 12 years. I didn’t do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?”

    Or, for that matter, at all? Why not, rather, sentence the rapist? Now there’s a novel idea!

    But don’t worry: there’s a happy ending for Gulnaz.

    Gulnaz’s pardon may be in the works because she has agreed – after 18 months
    of resisting – to marry her rapist.

    “I need my daughter to have a father,” she said.

    Nothing to add.

  • She rebelled herself to death

    There’s a terrifying piece at No Longer Quivering, by a former believer in the child-rearing methods of Michael Pearl. She followed the plan; it didn’t work; she did what Pearl said to do, and followed it harder. Hit harder, was what you were supposed to do when it didn’t work. Hit harder, and blame the child. She had a hard time with that, but her ex-husband didn’t.

    My ex-husband got angry with the kids for thwarting the Pearl method, but he remained coldly self-controlled. He also left bruises. A lot of bruises.

    Why didn’t I stop him? I finally did, but early in my marriage I was paralyzed by fear and brainwashed by bad teaching. We both feared raising ungodly kids. We were looking for confirmation that some part of this system worked, and my ex-husband began to get results. The children flinched when he even moved. Cowered when he reached for a spanking implement. Had semi-seizures on the carpet following “biblical correction.” We got compliance with our wishes. Eventually, there was immediate and unquestioning compliance. My ex-husband had quelled the rebellion in three kids. He had created unfocused, freaked-out little robots who obeyed.

    That last sentence chills me.

    To Train Up a Child is a manual of progressive violence against children. Not only are there no stopgaps to prevent child abuse, the book is a mandate to use implements to inflict increasingly intense pain in the face of continued disobedience. The part about not causing injury is vague and open to interpretation, but the part about never backing down or shirking your parental duty to spank harder and harder is crystal clear. The Pearls’ teachings will lead, inescapably, to extremely strong-willed kids being abused and sometimes murdered by fundamentalist parents who are determined to “break” those children.

    Like Hana Williams.

    The only way to break the wills of children like this is to kill them. The 911 call that Carri Williams made to the police dispatcher says it all.

    “Operator: What’s the emergency?

    Carri Williams: Um, I think my daughter just killed herself.

    Operator:  Why do you say that?

    Carri Williams, Um, she’s really rebellious, and she’s been outside refusing to come in, and she’s been throwing herself all around, and then she collapsed.”

    And died of exposure, with her mouth full of mud. Because she was so rebellious.

  • Why firebomb Charlie Hebdo?

    Because they published the Motoons, and because they were about to publish more Motoons. Therefore boom.



    www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYhOIa_CQeo

  • In which the rights of God are assured

    The “soft-spoken Islamic scholar” Rachid Ghannouchi has nice plans for Tunisia, he tells us.

    “We will continue this revolution to realize its aims of a Tunisia that is free, independent, developing and prosperous in which the rights of God, the Prophet, women, men, the religious and the non-religious are assured because Tunisia is for everyone,” Ghannouchi told a crowd of cheering supporters.

    He might as well say “We will continue this revolution to realize its aims of a Tunisia that will square the circle.” If the rights of God and the Prophet as understood by clerics and “Islamic scholars” are assured then the rights of women and the non-religious can’t be assured; it’s an impossibility.

    It’s blood-chilling that a political leader thinks he knows what “the rights of God” and “the rights of the Prophet” are, and that they have to be assured, and that they get top billing. It’s not surprising, of course, because that’s what Islamists do think, but it’s blood-chilling.

    The prophet is dead. He’s been dead for 14 centuries. What “rights” can he have?

    “God” is hidden and secretive and mysterious and indistinguishable from not there at all. What “rights” can it have?

    How can the cryptic spooky incomprehensible “rights” of a long-dead guy and a posited supernatural agent come ahead of the rights of living people?

    Those are general questions. More particular questions would ask how the “rights” of the god and the prophet can co-exist with the rights of women, such as the right to choose whether or not to marry and whom to marry; the right to be equal before the law; the right to education; the right not to be stoned to death for being raped; and similar items. They would ask how the “rights” of the god and the prophet can co-exist with the rights of the religious to stop being religious. They would ask how the “rights” of the god and the prophet can co-exist with the rights of the non-religious to point out that to all appearances the god in question doesn’t exist.

    H/t to Fin in comments for the quotation from Ghannouchi.
     

     

  • Shoving people off the sidewalk, again

    Stewart sent me a couple of interesting items last week. I was having technical issues and am catching up.

    Israel High Court upholds ban on Sukkot gender segregation in Jerusalem.

    Oh yes? There was gender segregation?

    Rather.

    During this year’s Sukkot celebrations, police gave ultra-Orthodox leaders of Mea She’arim’s Toldos Aharon community permission to erect a barrier dividing the street by gender, despite the fact that, last year, the High Court ordered community leaders to revoke the segregation they imposed on women on Sukkot.

    …

    Large billboards posted throughout the capital’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods last week forbade women to enter Mea She’arim Street during the Sukkot celebration.

    This is a public street, you understand. It’s not private property, it’s not the grounds of a synagogue, it’s a public street.

    Last year, community leaders put up tarpaulin partitions along the sidewalks on Strauss and Mea She’arim streets, creating a narrow path on one side for women to walk on, and women were forbidden to walk on certain sidewalks and streets during Sukkot’s intermediate days.

    Womens’ rights groups and organizations opposing religious coercion have demonstrated against the segregation. Jerusalem councilwomen Rachel Azaria of the Yerushalmim (Jerusalemites) faction and Laura Verton (Meretz) petitioned the High Court of Justice against the practice.

    The Jerusalem Post also reported.

    Separation barriers erected in the streets of Mea She’arim designed to prevent male and female intermingling during Succot have been ordered dismantled.

    At a hearing of the High Court of Justice on Sunday, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch ordered the police to remove the separation barriers and also ordered the police to remove private security personnel enforcing the gender separation.

    Can you imagine? Walking on a public street and having private security personnel forcing you behind a partition because you’re a woman?

    The decision, also heard by Justice Asher Dan Grunis and Justice Hanan Melcer, comes following a petition filed by Jerusalem City Councilwoman Rachel Azariah on Friday, demanding that last year’s high court ruling, which affirmed that gender separation is illegal, be enforced.

    “Succot has arrived and once again there is illegal segregation [of men  and women],” Beinisch stated during the hearing. “There has been a  takeover of public places by a minority in the neighborhood… The private-security personnel and the canvas partitions should be removed  now and beginning at the end of Succot, and from then on, there should be no segregation in Mea She’arim [in the future].”

    …

    “The court established today once again that segregation in the public domain on the basis of gender is illegal and has to be acted against,” said Azariah in response to the decision. “There is a long way to go  until we reach equality between men and women, but… if Rosa Parks  succeeded in the racist period of US history in the 1950s, then we in  the democratic State of Israel of 2011 will also succeed.”

    Let’s hope so.

  • It could turn out like Iran

    Middle-class women in Tunisia are not thrilled about the win of the “moderate” Islamist party.

    In Sunday’s election Tunisia, birthplace of the “Arab Spring” uprisings,
    handed the biggest share of the vote to Ennahda, a moderate Islamist party that was banned under decades of autocratic, secularist rule.

    “We’re afraid that they’ll limit our freedoms,” said Rym, a 25-year-old
    medical intern sitting in “Gringo’s”, a fast-food outlet in Ennasr.

    “They say they won’t but after a while they could introduce changes step by
    step. Polygamy could come back … They say they want to be like Turkey but it
    could turn out like Iran. Don’t forget, that was a very open society too.”

    Not to mention the fact that Turkey is getting more Islamist, not less so. These “moderate” Islamists are only as “moderate” as they’re forced to be. As soon as they can, they go stricter.

    Many of them do not trust assurances from Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s
    leader. He says he will model his approach on Turkey’s moderate ruling AK Party, will not impose Islamic values on anyone and will respect women’s
    rights.

    Nadia Khemiri, a 39-year-old former public relations executive who is now a
    housewife, says it is not Ghannouchi that worries her, but the message his win
    will send to the streets.

    A few days before the election, Khemiri was handing out leaflets in support
    of a rival party with other women activists.

    “There were some men who looked at us and said: ‘You keep doing what you’re
    doing. But it’s not going to last long. Soon you’ll be staying at home’,”
    Khemiri recalled in an interview on Tuesday.

    “We have seen incidents that justified our fears of excesses from certain
    people, who are now going to feel stronger, and that they can get away with
    anything.”

    Just so. As soon as they can, they will.

    Ennahda’s victory means Tunisia will finally have a leadership who share the
    values and Muslim identity of the majority of the population.

    …

    “It’s men not looking you in the eye; talking to your husband, not you,” said
    another woman, who did not want to be named. “I have a daughter and I worry
    about her.”

    Khemiri said she was shocked to see separate queues for men and women at
    polling stations in areas where Ennahda is strong.

    “In some working-class districts, when you go to pay the gas or electricity
    bill, there are men who come with their wives and try to enforce separate queues…”

    Not good.

  • Corporal punishment is legal in religious settings

    And speaking of beating up on children –

    Britain’s madrassas have faced more than 400 allegations of physical abuse in the past three years, a BBC investigation has discovered.

    But only a tiny number have led to successful prosecutions.

    …

    Some local authorities said community pressure had led families to withdraw
    complaints.

    In one physical abuse case in Lambeth, two members of staff at a mosque
    allegedly attacked children with pencils and a phone cable – but the victims
    later refused to take the case further.

    Mustn’t annoy the imam, must we.

    Corporal punishment is legal in religious settings, so long as it does not
    exceed “reasonable chastisement”.

    What does that mean?  Corporal punishment is legal in religious settings in particular? Exclusively? At any rate, it’s ridiculous – corporal punishment shouldn’t be legal anywhere. It’s a mistake to trust people to know what’s “reasonable chastisement” and what isn’t.

     

  • A more secular approach to education

    One of the UK’s oldest public schools has demolished its chapel and replaced it with new science classrooms.

    Oh my god somebody call the cops!

    The decision has upset the Church of England and brought complaints that the   institution is turning its back on its Christian heritage in favour of a more secular approach to education.

    Yes, and? A secular approach to education is bad or wrong why, exactly?

    We’re always being told how liberal and mild and lukewarm and basically harmless the C of E is. But what’s mild and harmless about thinking theocratic education is better than secular education? What’s mild and harmless about protesting secular education?

    Churches don’t do education. Religion doesn’t do education. Churches and religion do religion, which is different from education. Education is what schools do. It is fundamentally secular – it is about the world, and exploring and learning about the world. Like newspapers, like forensics, like medicine, like so many human institutions, it is supposed to get things right. It is supposed to teach what is true, not what is false. Churches and religions are not. That is the fundamental radical difference between them. A secular approach to education is the only legitimate approach there is. A god-inflected approach is not education properly understood.

  • Individual apologies to everyone who complained

    Jesus is a strange guy. I’m always noticing it. On the one hand he’s God – the God, you know, the one who is omnipotent and omniscient and has a mind without a body – and on the other hand he’s so fragile that an ad for a cell phone hurts his feelings.

    Wouldn’t you think he could handle it? Wouldn’t you think he would see the bigger picture and just not worry all that much about jokey cell phone ads?

    I would; you probably would; but some of his fans think the opposite. Some of his fans think he’s so touchy and vain and narcissistic that he can’t even tolerate a picture of himself winking and giving a thumbs-up. The Advertising Standards Authority agrees with them.

    The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the Phones 4U advertisement was “disrespectful” to the Christian faith and must not be used again…

    The ASA said the complaints had cited the cartoon depiction of Christ and the Sacred Heart, the use of the term “miraculous” for describing a mobile phone deal, and the fact that it was published on Maundy Thursday.

    Published on what? What the fuck is Maundy Thursday? Who in hell alive or dead gives a rat’s ass about Maundy Thursday?

    Phones 4U said that as soon as it received complaints, it had apologised and withdrew the advertisement. It also sent individual apologies to everyone who complained.

    With the benefit of hindsight, and in the face of complaints from Christians, it “understood and regretted” that offence had been caused, it said.

    The ASA welcomed this but said the advertisement had appeared to mock and belittle core Christian beliefs and was likely to cause serious offence.

    Grovel. Grovel grovel grovel. Slobber. Whine, bow, kiss, kneel, prostrate, whimper, simper, kiss, hug, grovel. Will that do?

    Andrew Copson, from the British Humanist Association, said the “completely ridiculous” ruling represented a “further encroachment on free speech in our society, tantamount to a reintroduction of blasphemy laws by the back door”.

    “The ASA have shown themselves to be absurdly hypersensitive to the
    possibility of religious offence and are chilling the free mockery of all
    beliefs which is vital in a free society.

    “They seriously need to review their line on cases of this sort. It is an
    embarrassment in an open society to have this sort of regulation,” he said.

    Damn right. Well said, Andrew.

  • A pox on compassion

    Eric has a post on Christian interference and coercion with respect to assisted suicide. One aspect in particular hooked my attention.

    Christians who are anti-choice-in-dying have been complaining for some time now that it’s not just about pain. In fact, they point out that of those in Oregon who choose assisted suicide very few are in intense pain. It is, they say, because of loss of independence, loss of dignity, loss of control that people choose to end their lives, not just because the pain is unrelenting and uncontrollable. And that is true. Choice in dying is not just about pain. It is about choice. It is to provide choice for people who do not want to go on living with the kinds of disabilities and distresses that make their lives no longer worth living — for them, not for others. It’s about individual life choices. And they are choosing only for themselves, not for others. It is about their sense of the worth and value of theirown lives, not about the lives of others. And Christians don’t want people to have that choice. They are determined, along with many of their Muslim and Jewish partners in crime, to make their will felt somewhere and by someone. Let it not be said that their influence does not stretch to some suffering person. They are still a vital force in society. Indeed, they say, they should be given a greater part to play in decisions regarding social policy, for religion is, after all, as the fatuous Karen Armstrong keeps repeating like a dripping faucet, about love and compassion, and about compassion and care for the sick and the dying especially. And they want someone left to have compassion on.

    And that’s exactly what I don’t want, and I’m not the only one.

    It’s pretty much the last refuge of the piously-inclined to say that slow miserable death provides a wonderful opportunity for compassion to roll up its sleeves and get to work. But here’s the thing: I don’t want compassion. I want to be in no need of compassion.

    I don’t want to be helpless and dependent. It’s that simple. Being that way and getting lots of compassion doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse. It just underlines the helplessness and dependency.

    Compassion is a very over-rated virtue. It’s good in emergencies, to motivate people to act, and that includes slow-motion emergencies like chronic poverty and underdevelopment and exploitation. But it’s lousy as a permanent fixture, and it’s nightmarish as a reason to keep people alive who would prefer to escape precisely the condition that is the object of compassion.