All entries by this author

Everybody agrees about everything hurrah

Feb 23rd, 2007 12:04 pm | By

Terry Eagleton says wrong things again.

The basic moral values of the average Muslim dentist who migrates to Britain are much the same as those of a typical English-born plumber. Neither is likely to believe that lying and cheating are the best policy, or that they should beat their children. They may have different customs and beliefs, but what is striking is the vast extent of common ground between them on the issue of what it is for men and women to live well.

Is he joking? No, apparently not, he apparently means it – he means that ‘the average Muslim dentist’ and the ‘typical English-born plumber’ and, presumably, by extension, everyone else in the world is unlikely to … Read the rest



Jonathan Rée on Wordsworth and Coleridge *

Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by

One of the great literary friendships, rivaling Marx and Engels or Beauvoir and Sartre.… Read the rest



Hitchens on Irwin on Orientalism *

Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by

Academic reticence about Islam may be to do with potentially atheistic consequences of unfettered inquiry.… Read the rest



Mo Plans a Campaign *

Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by

Women should bear reponsibility for the sexual self-control of men – that’s what hijab is about.… Read the rest



How Best to Stop Female Genital Mutilation *

Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by

Laws against it ‘can be perceived as discriminatory for targeting particular communities.’… Read the rest



Paul Gross on the Mammoth in the Garden *

Feb 23rd, 2007 | Filed by

Why the harmonization of science and religion is a strong human need.… Read the rest



Operating on the very margin

Feb 23rd, 2007 11:36 am | By

Hitchens’s review of Robert Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge starts well. Attentive readers of B&W may be able to answer his opening question.

Of what book and author was the following sentence written, and by whom? “Rarely has an Oriental servant of a white-identified, imperial design managed to pack so many services to imperial hubris abroad and racist elitism at home — all in one act.”

This was the quasi-articulate attack recently leveled, by a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, on Reading Lolita in Tehran…The professor described Nafisi’s work as resembling “the most pestiferous colonial projects of the British in India,” and its author as the moral equivalent of a sadistic torturer at Abu Ghraib. “To me there is no

Read the rest


Terry Eagleton Says Strange Things *

Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by

Basic values are the same, nobody thinks children should be beaten, though customs differ.… Read the rest



Minister, HR Commission Condemn Murder *

Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan termed murder of Zill-e-Huma Usman a terrible tragedy.… Read the rest



Chimps Observed to Make Spears *

Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by

They sharpen them with their teeth, use them to jab at smaller animals.… Read the rest



Egyptian Blogger Jailed for ‘Insulting Islam’ *

Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by

Abdel Kareem Soliman had used his blog to criticise al-Azhar university and Hosni Mubarak.… Read the rest



Johann Hari on the Fence Around Religion *

Feb 22nd, 2007 | Filed by

We’re allowed to criticize politicians’ religion.… Read the rest



Man Kills Wife, Daughters for Westernizing *

Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by

He threw petrol over them and ignited it.… Read the rest



Pakistani Minister Killed for Refusing to Wear Veil *

Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by

Killer singled out prominent women’s rights activist in the belief that women should not be in politics. … Read the rest



MCB Attempts to Bridge Cultural Gap *

Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by

By urging schools to allow Muslim girls to wear headscarves for all lessons. That should do it.… Read the rest



School Head Explains Niqab Ban *

Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by

School promotes equality between men and women; she feared other Muslim girls would come under pressure.… Read the rest



Judge Rejects Challenge to School Niqab Ban *

Feb 21st, 2007 | Filed by

School’s head hopes the student will now return and resume her education.… Read the rest



William Paley’s Wonderful Watch

Feb 21st, 2007 | By Ian MacDougall

Socrates, though all too mortal, gave us a reasoned argument that the soul is immortal. It is all there in Plato’s Phaedo.

I first read Plato in 1957, as a sixteen-year-old student of one of the most formidable intellects Scotland has ever produced: John Anderson, Sydney University’s Challis Professor of Philosophy.

Anderson had studied mathematics and physics at the University of Glasgow before switching to philosophy rather late in his time as an undergraduate. The son of a village schoolmaster, he spoke with a well-modulated Scots burr, and with his grey hair and a thick moustache was to my mind the very model of a professor. His contemporary Bertrand Russell had also started in mathematics and physics, but where Russell … Read the rest



Misogyny 6, women 0

Feb 21st, 2007 11:49 am | By

Oh, god. I feel sick. I feel like screaming. I do, I feel like screaming and screaming and screaming.

An Islamic fundamentalist shot and killed a female Pakistani minister yesterday because of her refusal to wear a Muslim veil. Police said that the bearded attacker had singled out the prominent women’s rights activist in the belief that women should not be in politics. Zilla Huma Usman, the Punjab provincial minister for social welfare and supporter of President Musharraf, was shot as she prepared to address a public gathering in the town of Gujranwala…As party members threw rose petals at her, the gunman shot her in the head, police said. They identified the attacker as Malulvi Ghulam Sarwar and said

Read the rest


Good and better

Feb 20th, 2007 2:49 pm | By

The opening of Steven Weinberg’s review of The God Delusion made me muse on something, not for the first time.

Of all the scientific discoveries that have disturbed the religious mind, none has had the impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. No advance of physics or even cosmology has produced such a shock…[A]mong the natural phenomena explained by natural selection were the very features of humanity of which we are most proud. It became plausible that our love for our mates and children, and, according to the work of modern evolutionary biologists, even more abstract moral principles, such as loyalty, charity and honesty, have an origin in evolution, rather than in a divinely created soul.

There is … Read the rest