This is a piece of really very good news. The author says it hasn’t had much attention in the West – or elsewhere either. So let’s pay attention.

In a bold but little-noticed step toward reforming Islamic tradition, Turkey’s religious authorities recently declared that they will remove these statements [such as “If a husband’s body is covered with pus and his wife licks it clean, she still wouldn’t have paid her dues.” – OB] , and more like them, from the hadiths – the non-Koranic commentary on the words and deeds of the prophet Muhammad…Hadiths are serious stuff. More than 90 percent of the sharia (Islamic law) is based on them rather than the Koran, and the most infamous measures

Here’s something I don’t get. Or maybe I do get it and just think it’s silly. One of those. It’s from an article by Michael Ruse in Robert Pennock’s collection Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics, “Methodological Naturalism under Attack,” page 365. Ruse is making the distinction (which featured heavily in the Kitzmiller trial) between metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism; he’s making the distinction and explaining it and arguing for it.

This is not to say that God did not have a role in the creation, but simply that, qua science, that is qua an enterprise formed through the practice of methodological naturalism, science has no place for talk of God. Just as, for instance, if one were to

Sometimes I think I should keep a suitcase packed at all times, ready to grab when I hear the sirens approaching.

Penny Edgell, Doug Hartmann and I published a paper in the American Sociological Review called “Atheists As ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society.” In a national survey, part of a broader project on multiculturalism and solidarity in American life that we call the American Mosaic Project, we found that one group stood out from all others in terms of the level of rejection they received from the general public. That was atheists. And not by a small margin, either.

That’s not in the least a surprise, but it’s a useful sharpening.

How does such a

Okay, what’s the deal here? I thought Ana Marie Cox was supposed to be so clever, or witty or interesting or something – ? Isn’t she? I thought she was. I’ve never read or even glanced at Wonkette, because life is short and time is scarce and blogs are many and the subject matter – beltway gossip? Urrgghh – is so very unappealing; but I’ve gathered (how? I don’t know – as one does) that she’s good in some way. But clearly there has been some mistake. That “book review” is a piece of crap; it’s stupid and smug and truly staggeringly predictable. So if that’s Wonkette, I’m glad I’ve never wasted so much as a nanosecond on it.… Read the rest

Martha Nussbaum’s review of Catherine MacKinnon’s Are Women Human? ties in well with Danny Postel’s interview of Fred Halliday. Both put rights at the center – and in fact, as I noted in ‘Fred Halliday Rocks,’ Halliday cites Nussbaum (and Sen) on the subject. I would so much rather read Sen or Nussbaum or Appiah than Andrew Murray or Faisal Bodi or Inayat Bunglawala.

Inequality on the basis of sex is a pervasive reality of women’s lives all over the world. So is sex-related violence…Despite the prevalence of these crimes, they have not been well addressed under international human rights law…Until recently, abuses like rape and sexual torture lacked good human rights standards because human rights norms were typically

This is a stirring piece.

Fred Halliday: My view is that the kind of position which the New Left Review and Tariq have adopted in terms of the conflict in the Middle East is an extremely reactionary, right-wing one. It starts with Afghanistan. To my mind, Afghanistan is central to the history of the Left, and to the history of the world, since the 1980s. It is to the early 21st century, to the years we’re now living through, what the Spanish Civil War was to Europe in the mid and late 20th century…The issue of rights is absolutely central. We have to hold the line at the defense, however one conceptualizes things, however de-hegemonized, of universal principles of