The case of Pegah Emambakhsh has become front-page news in Italy while going almost unreported in Britain. … Read the rest
All entries by this author
Women’s Rights? What Are They?
Sep 5th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Proposed law forbids abortions without written permission from the father of the fetus.… Read the rest
The New Islam project
Sep 4th, 2007 3:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonMeet Tahir Aslam Gora.
Tahir Aslam Gora is a Canadian-Pakistani writer, novelist, poet, journalist, editor, translator and publisher…In 2005 Gora translated into Urdu Irshad Manji’s book, The Trouble with Islam. He is currently translating Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel. Gora writes a column for The Hamilton Spectator and is currently working on two manuscripts; one on Canadian multiculturalism, the other on Islam and the need for its transformation into “a humane theology.” In Pakistan he was a noted critic of religious intolerance. He fled to Canada in the spring of 1999 following threats to his life.
A critic of religious intolerance who received threats to his life by people keen to show what religious intolerance really is.
… Read the rest[M]any
Thinking about writing
Sep 4th, 2007 12:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonFunny stuff from Jo Wolff.
… Read the restWhy is academic writing so boring? I am impatient by nature, easily irritated, and afflicted with a short attention span. That I ended up in a job where I have to spend half the day blinking my way through artless, contorted prose is a cruel twist of fate. But the upside is that it gives me plenty of opportunity to reflect on why reading academic writing is so often a chore and so rarely a joy…As far as I know there has been little, if any, literary analysis of academic writing…But, by chance, I recently read a short piece of literary theory, and, to use one of the two metaphors academics allow themselves, the scales
Secularism is an ‘Ideology Inimical to Religions’
Sep 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘Secularists have a right to have a voice but not a voice to denigrate or relegate religions to a non-space.’… Read the rest
Morris Dickstein on the Critical Landscape
Sep 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Books are still read and enjoyed, but the pleasure is had at the expense of analysis and criticism.… Read the rest
Why is Academic Writing so Boring?
Sep 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: ‘In this novel I shall show that the butler did it.’… Read the rest
John Allen Paulos on Goddy Math
Sep 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
We read more about the intrusion of pseudoscience into school science curricula in the US.… Read the rest
David Thompson Interviews Tahir Aslam Gora
Sep 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
‘I cannot understand how Islam or any religion could be a complete way of life.’… Read the rest
Simon Caterson Reviews Grayling on Freedom
Sep 4th, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
It is only in the past few centuries that any human beyond a tiny ruling class had any expectations.… Read the rest
Murder in Amsterdam
Sep 4th, 2007 | By Max DunbarMy father lived in Amsterdam for five years. Every time I went over to see him I was asked by friends if I was intending to smoke large amounts of dope and/or have sex with large amounts of prostitutes. Amsterdam’s image is of a party town. English stag parties descend on the city every weekend to take advantage of a supposed liberalism which many of them would abhor if it were introduced in their home country.
The image is misleading, though. The red light is confined to a few areas of the city. People work hard in the Dam. My father wrote, ‘For sure, they don’t like freeloaders. It’s pump or drown. Do what you want otherwise, but take your … Read the rest
Site of the week
Sep 3rd, 2007 5:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonHere’s a fan of Point of Inquiry and also of Butterflies and Wheels. Here’s someone with good taste, in other words.… Read the rest
Oh not that again
Sep 3rd, 2007 3:20 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnd another thing. As long as I’m quarreling with Alibhai-Brown – I get tired of this familiar chunk of doggerel:
Some aspects of our nature are not susceptible to scientific enquiry, cannot be dissected, categorised and validated in terms that would satisfy the “rational” disbelievers, whose intellect is colossal but imagination puny. There are no experiments and tests to explain love, empathy, longing, the agony and ecstasy of the heart, the wild and wonderful creativity of the brain…
That is such kack – yet people go on trotting it out as if it were transcendent and indisputable wisdom. Of course there are experiments and tests to explain love and the rest of it – experiments and tests, theories and evidence, … Read the rest
A temperate remonstrance
Sep 3rd, 2007 3:06 pm | By Ophelia BensonYasmin Alibhai-Brown has a few very gentle words to say to her friends in the atheist community – the
rowdy and brash God bashers [who] fulminate like demented fire-and-brimstone preachers [and who] know it all, don’t listen, and presume to judge people they won’t ever understand…the fanatic atheists…the “rational” disbelievers, whose intellect is colossal but imagination puny.
You know the ones, right? Quite unlike saintly Alibhai-Brown, they are; she says so herself.
Having faith makes me humble and self-questioning, unlike the unbelievers who know they are always right.
Ah yes – obviously – here she is humbly questioning herself all over the place. What would she sound like if she were arrogant and dogmatic, I wonder?
… Read the restTo these zealots, believers
Mother Teresa couldn’t find Jesus, which proves that he was there
Sep 3rd, 2007 2:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonSusan Jacoby takes a look at those doubt of Mother Teresa’s (thanks to Frederick Crews for pointing the article out to me).
… Read the restThe media frenzy over Teresa’s apparently unending crisis of faith offers a spectacular and comical example of the irrationality, credulity, and unwillingness to face facts that inform all conventional wisdom concerning religion and holiness…I have no doubt that excerpts from the letters will appear in future case studies of well-known individuals who combine masochism with narcissism…I would think that someone who observes extreme human suffering on a daily basis would have more doubts than most about the existence of a benevolent deity. But what is striking about Teresa’s doubt is that it is all about her: it has
Review of Frederick Crews’s Follies of the Wise
Sep 3rd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Reports on a zone where political preferences often determine fact claims.… Read the rest
Reading the Presidential Advance Manual
Sep 3rd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
How to prevent protesters from showing up at public events.… Read the rest
The Murder of Chauncey Bailey
Sep 3rd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
The editor of the Oakland Post was killed last month allegedly for investigating Your Black Muslim Bakery.… Read the rest
Susan Jacoby on Teresa’s Narcissistic Doubt
Sep 3rd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Both the psychonanalysts and the priests think Teresa is even holier because of her doubts.… Read the rest
The Social Impact of VVF
Sep 3rd, 2007 |
Filed by Ophelia Benson
Many of the women turn to prostitution to survive, and when they get older, they become beggars.… Read the rest