Ron Lindsay raises an important point about judges and the Catholic church.

According to the Church, it violates the moral obligations of a Catholic to do anything—anything—that would facilitate the provision of contraception to an individual. (See this summary of recent court decisions for an overview of this argument.) According to the Church, this includes the simple act of filling out a form certifying that the employer has an objection to contraception. This act by itself would make the employer complicit in evil. It’s for this reason that some religiously affiliated nonprofits are suing over the mandate—even though as result of the government’s accommodation they will not have to pay a penny or spend one minute to arrange for contraceptive care for their employees.

Golly – even that is complicity in evil. So…that’s kind of worrying in light of the fact that six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court are Catholic.

Think of the implications of this argument.  If simply filling out a form objecting to contraception makes one an accomplice to evil, what about rendering a judicial decision upholding the contraceptive mandate? This would appear to be a much more affirmative and consequential act than the completion of a form. But if that is the case, how can a judge who is a good Catholic by Church standards possibly render a decision upholding the mandate?

In the past, Catholics in the U.S. have suffered from prejudice and bigotry. One of the traditional knocks against Catholics had been they did not and could not support the separation of church and state. John Kennedy, along with many other progressive Catholic politicians, did much to lay those fears to rest. They showed that support for a secular state is not incompatible with being a good Catholic.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church may now be resurrecting concerns about the compatibility between being a Catholic and being a good citizen, or at least between being a good Catholic and an impartial judge. In arguing for an extremely expansive understanding of a Catholic’s moral obligation, the Church is effectively undermining confidence in Catholic judges.

It is, isn’t it. Not to mention hospital administrators, pharmacists, obstetricians and gynecologists…all because the church insists that it’s evil for people to use birth control. A stark illustration of the evil of substituting the imagined rules of an imagined god for the needs of actual humans.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

 Or, On buying a car while female.

I bought a new car last month—a sweet little hybrid Ford C-Max to replace the less-efficient SUV I’ve driven for the past 12 years. My husband and I communicated openly about the financial elements of the process, but as I was to be the primary driver, I did my own market research, test drove several vehicles, decided exactly what I wanted and how much I wanted to pay for it. I went in alone to make the purchase, feeling supremely confident that the experience would be relatively quick and painless, as thoroughly prepared as I was.

Hours of facile sales psychology and a heavy dose of sexism later, I had what I wanted, but at considerable cost to my delusions of equality. The sales associate persisted in trying to guide me toward a particular car based on color rather than the more substantial features I knew I wanted, even after I told him repeatedly that I didn’t care what color it was as long as it wasn’t white. Immediately after this revelation he showed me a white car, claiming that it was actually a beautiful sparkly pearl color—couldn’t I see it glistening in the sun? Seriously. When drawing up the paperwork the sales associate/manager team repeatedly got the math wrong in the dealership’s favor, and blinked at me reproachfully when I challenged the calculations. I can’t say for sure whether these and numerous other miscues were due to rank incompetence or to their presumptions about my level of consumer intelligence based on my gender or appearance, but either way it was a sorry state of affairs.

I made my husband a co-signer on the sales agreement so that both our names would appear on the title. Hubby came in at the end of my two-hour negotiations, just to sign the finished papers, whereupon everyone involved ceased communicating with me altogether and spoke only to him.

I survived the experience unscathed, and, if I’m being honest, I had a bit of fun calling them out on their slimy behavior while I was in there. The look on their faces when I whipped through the sloppy math was pretty priceless. And I do love the car. That said, I think it tells a really sad story about our culture that someone with my socioeconomic and professional status who is also well-informed about the product will still receive the default assignment of ‘easily duped bimbo’ the minute I set foot inside a car dealership. And just to clarify that last, I don’t mean to suggest that I would expect different or special treatment because of any status. Rather, I know I am more privileged than the majority of car-buyers, and if ANY woman had a chance of being treated equitably, it would be someone like me. And still – no! So how do women who aren’t as well-off or educated get treated when they need to buy a car, I wonder? I think the answer would probably make me physically ill.

I’ve since been back to the dealership several times, alone, to pick up the car, drop off some paperwork, and collect the license plates. I wrote the checks, my name came first on every document. It could not be clearer that this is MY CAR. Nevertheless, today a customer satisfaction survey arrived in the mail addressed to my husband. Only his name appeared on the envelope. And so it goes.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

News from our ally Saudi Arabia: another woman nabbed for driving a horseless carriage.

Saudi police on Saturday pulled over a woman minutes after she got behind the wheel in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after activists called for a new challenge to a driving ban.

“Only 10 minutes after Tamador al-Yami got behind the wheel police stopped her,” activist Eman al-Nafjan told AFP, adding that Yami carries an international driving licence and was with another woman who was filming her in the car.

Tamador’s husband was called to the scene and she was forced to sign a pledge not to drive again without a Saudi licence, said Nafjan on her Twitter account.

Has it all – surveillance, imposition of male “guardian” on adult woman, coercion to sign a pledge, and the insulting “without a Saudi licence” when women can’t get a Saudi licence.

The absolute monarchy is the only country in the world where women are barred from driving, a rule that has drawn international condemnation.

Why condemnation? Because women are human beings too; adult human beings with the necessary cognitive development to drive cars. That’s why.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

An update on that outrage-sparking post I did the other day about the putative similarity (or identity) between racism and “Islamophobia” which in the comments became also a discussion of the hijab. An update because a trackback just came in from a post by my noisiest critic, Sarah Jones, who has been being my noisiest critic on Twitter ever since I published the post. An update because she gets some things wrong, and also because I don’t disagree with her about 100% of all of everything.

From her post:

When a ruling class targets a minority class, it’s never just about religion. Religious and racial prejudice have historically walked hand in hand. I’ve been repeatedly accused of trying to argue that we can never criticize religion, and I want to make it clear that this is not a thing I have ever or will ever argue. Rather, I’m arguing that our critiques need to be historically informed. We need to understand and acknowledge that religious prejudice exists and that it is linked to racial prejudice.

Certainly. That’s why I said, in the post,

It’s getting to be a boring trope to point out that Islam is not a race, but all the same, it’s not, even though it’s true that Muslims are often treated as a despised racial group. Islam is not a race and “White” is not a religion.

Ok but one gets what she means. Islam is not in fact a race but Muslims are mostly de facto non-white; a Muslim who is white is usually a convert or possibly a child of converts; there are social and political issues one can talk about. 

See? That’s the bit where I acknowledge it. No doubt not in the way Jones would have thought more acceptable, but nevertheless I did.

We need to understand the consequences of reducing a community to a monolithically barbaric Other.

When white liberals say that the hijab is intrinsically misogynist, that’s what they’re doing. They are calling this symbol, which is not their symbol, which is, for better or worse, associated with a racial identity they do not share, backwards. They have declared open season on anyone who wears it.

That’s the bit she got wrong. I didn’t say that. The post wasn’t even about the hijab, and in the comments, other people claimed I had said that, but I didn’t say it. We paraphrase people inaccurately sometimes – I do it too – when we’re annoyed. “vexorian” claimed I had said it, but “vexorian” was wrong.

          Please note that Ophelia is the one who just decided that the Hijab is a misogynistic symbol. But this seems to say more about Ophelia having a partial view of Islam as a religion with only extremists and no moderates.

Except that I hadn’t said that. I accepted vexorian’s way of putting it when I replied, but that was for the sake of argument.

Not at all. You seem to be assuming that all Muslim women wear the hijab, but “moderates” (I would prefer to call them liberals or secular democrats [e.g. Tehmina Kazi]) are much less likely to wear the hijab, let alone see it as obligatory.

I haven’t “just decided” that the hijab is a misogynistic symbol. I’m not the one person on earth who thinks that.

Moderates, secularists, liberals, democrats tend to be the ones who resist the pressure to “cover up” while the fundamentalists are the ones who apply the pressure. It’s always bizarre (or worse) to see “Western” liberals siding with the latter rather than the former.

Jones has said repeatedly on Twitter that I say the hijab is intrinsically misogynist. She’s wrong; I don’t say that.

Of course I don’t think it is, any more than a woolen cap is or a muffler is or a black hoodie is.

What I do say is that it has baggage, and that that makes it dubious for feminists (for instance) to treat it as a feminist act to put it on.

I could be wrong about that, but that’s my claim. My claim is not that it’s “intrinsically” misogynist. (My claim is generally not that it’s misogynist, period, but rather that it’s sexist.)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

An observation (inspired partly by JoshS’s musings on Twitter just now) about how symbols work. They work via shared meaning.

There can be exceptions, to be sure. We can have our own personal symbols that we make up.

But what we can’t do is take symbols that already have a meaning, and deploy them in public, and expect the rest of the world to give them our own personal meaning instead of the existing, public meaning.

That’s especially true of symbols that are contested or political.

Like the US flag, for instance. That has a lot of meanings, but one prominent one in the past (I think it’s mostly faded away now) was an in-your-face love-it-or-leave-it brand of patriotism. The Chris Noth character on the original Law and Order always wore a flag as a lapel pin, and I took that as a hint that he was that kind of character. I could have taken it to mean something else, or nothing, but the obvious meaning seemed the most likely one.

It’s a simple point enough.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Kenan Malik is another who is not impressed by the surface “liberalism” of the new pope, and, happily, he is not impressed by it in the NY Times, where he will reach many people.

Francis may be transforming the perception of the church and its mission, but not its core doctrines. He has called for a church more welcoming to gay people and women, but he will not challenge the idea that homosexual acts are sinful, refuses to embrace the possibility of same-sex marriage and insists that the ordination of women as priests is not “open to discussion.”

Oh oh oh but he mentions The Poor. He doesn’t wear the red shoes. He lives in a couple of rooms and goes places on the bus. Surely that’s good enough! Surely gestures are all anybody could possibly want.

Religious values are immensely flexible over time. Christian beliefs on many issues, from slavery to women, have changed enormously in the past two millenniums. Yet an institution like the Catholic Church can never be truly “modern.” The authority of the church rests on its claim to be able to interpret God’s word. Were the church to modify its teachings to meet the preferences of its flock, then its authority would inevitably weaken. But were it not to do so, the chasm between official teaching and actual practice would continue to grow.

And that is, of course, our fundamental problem with religion, those of us who have such a problem. It’s the problem I have with “God” – the fact that there’s no avenue of appeal, no way to negotiate or object. It’s an anti-human arrangement.

According to Professor Woodhead, few British believers now look to religion as the primary source of moral guidance. Most follow their own reason or intuition, or the advice of family and friends; fewer than one in 10 of believers seek guidance from God or a holy book. None look to religious leaders. The only faith that shows a substantially different pattern is, again, Islam.

It is easy to see why conservatives and traditional believers would find these figures troubling. Even for nonbelievers and social liberals, however, there may be cause for concern. The more open attitudes to social mores and the greater willingness to think for oneself are welcome. But the decay of religious authority points also to a more atomized society and a destruction of collective consensus about moral judgments.

But collective consensus about moral judgments is simply oppressive if it’s a bad consensus, as it so often is. The possibility of change and reform is the only hope of abandoning bad consensus moral judgments over time.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

My Turkish friend Torcant tells me that a lot of secular Muslims in Turkey celebrate the new year with trees, presents, celebrations, sometimes mixing the new year and Xmas in a cheerful hybrid mashup. But this year the Islamists decided to open a front in The War On Christmas.

Translation: No to Christmas and new year celebrations!

Pow!!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

So how is your trans-species present-shopping list doing? Natalie Angier has tips.

For the female scorpionfly: an extremely large, glittering, nutrient-laced ball of spit, equivalent to 5 percent to 10 percent of a male fly’s body mass. Gentlemen: Too worn down by the holidays to cough up such an expensive package? Try giving her a dead insect instead. You can always steal it back later.

For the male Zeus bug: a monthlong excursion aboard the luxury liner that is the much larger female’s back, with its scooped-out seat tailored to his dimensions and a pair of dorsal glands to supply the passenger with all the proteinaceous wax he can swallow.

For the bonobo you’ve just met: half your food, at least. Just shovel it over. Sharing is fun!

Oh look, half a cheesecake with half a cross in it. Yum.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

We’ve been hearing more and more nonsense about how marvelous the new pope is, in particular from James Carroll in the New Yorker and on Fresh Air. Carroll takes the new pope’s talk about poor people with immense seriousness. He’s been depressed about the church for decades, ever since John 23 did some good things which were reversed the instant he popped his clogs.

Wouldn’t you think that would tell him something? Even if a comparatively not-so-fascist pope gets in somehow and says some nice things…the next one will throw them all out the window. The church isn’t a thing that can reform reliably, because it’s not set up that way.

Anyway…about that marvelous new pope. I was looking at something else so I missed this item last September.

Father Greg Reynolds of Melbourne, Australia found out last week that Pope Francis had excommunicated him, and he was shocked. Granted, Reynolds holds less than traditional views in the Catholic Church—he supports women’s ordination and gay marriage—but Pope Francis has more than hinted lately that the Church needs to adopt a new tone towards those social issues. “I am very surprised that this order has come under his watch; it seems so inconsistent with everything else he has said and done,” Reynolds told the National Catholic Reporter, a widely read source for Catholic news.

Excommunication is a severe penalty in the Catholic Church. Today it is the church’s harshest punishment, and it means an individual can no longer participate in the sacraments or worship ceremonies, much less ever officiate a mass again. Reynolds’ letter of excommunication itself contained no official explanation for his excommunication. It accused Reynolds of heresy and claimed he had violated the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Reynolds told the National Catholic Reporter that he also believes he was excommunicated because of his support for the gay community. He has officiated mass weddings for gay couples, even though he claimed they were unofficial, and he justified his actions as a call for reform.

The pope is the pope is the pope. There are no marvelous ones.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Drop everything! A couple in Arizona have spotted a cross on their cheesecake, so obviously it’s A Message.

A suburban Phoenix family says their Christmas cheesecake sent them the message of a holiday miracle.

The Arizona Republic reports that when the family in Scottsdale, Ariz., pulled their dessert out of the oven, it cracked as it cooled and formed a crucifix.

The family members, who have not given their names publicly, say the crucifix is a message.

They say they won’t be eating the cheesecake. Instead, they plan to sell it and donate the money to a local charity or church.

But that’s the end of the story. They forgot something. What’s the message?

It could be that the family that pulled their dessert out of the oven doesn’t know how to make a cheesecake.

But anyway, whatever it is, you would think that’s part of the story. Strange that they didn’t tell us.

Shall we try to guess?

It’s cold here?

Cut me a slice?

Go to church?

I’m vegan?

Put some berries on top?

Repent?

I died for your sins and now I’m doing guest spots on cheesecakes?

Does this make my butt look big?

Wait, there’s been a mixup, I’m Mohammed?

H/t Leonie Hilliard.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There’s a Free Raif Badawi petition to sign.

Raef Badawi, a Saudi who is one of the establishers of the “Liberal Saudi Network”, which angered Ultra-orthodox clerics of Saudi Arabia could be beheaded soon for a claimed “apostasy” if no action is taken.

The news in Arabic about this issue is numerous, in English it has not got good attention till now, however, this piece of news has been published by AFP:

“A Saudi court on Monday referred a rights activist to a higher court for alleged apostasy, a charge that could lead to the death penalty in the ultra-conservative kingdom, activists said.

A judge at a lower court referred Raef Badawi to a higher court, declaring that he “could not give a verdict in a case of apostasy,” a rights activist told AFP. Apostasy means renunciation of a religious faith.

Badawi, who was arrested a June in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for unknown reasons, is a co-founder of the Saudi Liberal Network with female rights activist Suad al-Shammari and others.” 

Here I am saying one action is better than another again. What Raif (or Raef) Badawi is doing is good, what the Saudi authorities are doing is bad. It’s very bad.

Godless woman at EXMNA has a post.

Last but not least: Raef Badawi:

Nationality: You guessed it! Saudi

Work: Blogger and creator of the website Free Saudi Liberals.

Offence: Insulting Islam through his liberal website by hosting material criticizing “senior religious figures”. This charge has been morphed into a blasphemy charge and is being bounced through courts left, right and center for over 2 years now. On July 30, 2013 he was handed down a sentence of 7 years plus 600 lashes for violating Islamic values and propagating liberal thought.

His website was shut down and if that isn’t bad enough on December 26, 2013 Badawi’s wife told CNN that a judge had recommended him to go before a high court for the apostasy charge which if found guilty, would very likely result in the death penalty .

Country of imprisonment: Saudi

Islam must be both weak and cruel if it can’t allow people to leave it and disagree with it but imprisons or kills them instead. Not much of a recommendation.

PZ has a post.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh damn, I guess I am wading back in after all. So much damn foolery is popping up on my Twitter feed…

Like this other item from Beard Nihilist:

Beard Nihilist @borednihilist

Silly me thinking a white atheist feminist (@opheliabenson) wouldn’t criticize the choices of a Muslim feminist. #solidarityisforwhitewomen

S Mukherjee @essemjee

@borednihilist@OpheliaBenson That Muslim feminist is also white so I don’t get why u are using this hash tag. #solidarityisforwhitewomen

Why indeed. It’s a game of identity bingo, I suppose, in which “choosing” to wear hijab makes you an honorary non-white at least for certain purposes – such as telling of “Cis White Feminism” and getting support from people under the hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The discussion is getting more absurd as it continues, and I’m short on time today, so I’m not planning to wade into it again, but one tweet addressed to me does seem worth disputing, because it encapsulates a trope that’s being recycled a lot.

Beard Nihilist @borednihilist

One can dislike Islam as a religion, as both I and @OpheliaBenson do, but criticizing an individual woman’s choices seems anti-feminist.

Really?

So if a couple of friends discuss a mutual friend who has made the “choice” to (say) marry a man who has repeatedly beaten her up, and the friends criticize her “choice”…that’s anti-feminist?

I don’t see it. Feminism isn’t agreeing with all women no matter what. Feminism isn’t endorsing every choice every woman makes no matter what. Feminism is in fact all about being critical of some choices and endorsing others.

If a woman makes the “choice” to become a Quiverfull Christian, or an obedient, anti-birth control, anti-abortion, anti-ordination of women Catholic, or an ardent fan of Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter…It’s not anti-feminist to criticize her choices.

Feminism is substantive. It considers some things better than other things. That’s the point of it. That means it is going to be critical of some choices, including some choices made by some women. I’ve been critical of the choices made by Phyllis Schlafly for decades; ditto Anita Bryant; ditto Laura Bush. That’s not anti-feminist.

That’s the broad general point, but there’s a narrower one that should perhaps be even more obvious. What was at issue in this discussion wasn’t just an individual woman’s choices, but an individual woman’s public writing about her choices. Her discursive essay on the subject; her arguments; her goal of persuasion; her advertisement and promotion of her choices. I don’t mean advertisement and promotion in a pejorative sense, just a descriptive one – she was laying out her point of view on a subject to make some points. That’s often what people are doing when they write; it’s usually what I’m doing when I write; there is nothing whatever wrong with that. But it is what it is: it’s about persuasion and/or argument.

So how could it possibly be anti-feminist to reply to it or comment on it or dispute it?

It seems to me it’s a great deal more anti-feminist to claim that feminist women can’t dispute other women’s claims because feminism means never criticizing an individual woman’s choices or even her blog posts about her individual choices.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

More on Modi from the New York Times.

The fiery head of India’s leading opposition party, who remains under pressure for his handling of an ethnic riot 11 years ago, won a victory on Thursday in one of the many disputes dogging him as he seeks to become India’s next prime minister, but faced a setback in another.

An Indian court rejected a petition seeking the prosecution of the opposition leader, Narendra Modi, the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party, over his role in riots in his home state, Gujarat, in 2002 that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

But the government ordered a formal investigation into allegations that Mr. Modi’s top lieutenant, using state intelligence and security officers, oversaw wide-ranging surveillance of a woman on behalf of Mr. Modi.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, is a right-wing Hinduist party. It would be terrible if Modi were elected prime minister.

The petition seeking Mr. Modi’s prosecution was filed by Zakia Jafri, the widow of Ehsan Jafri, a Muslim lawmaker in the governing Indian National Congress party who was among 69 killed — some burned alive — during the riots when a Hindu mob attacked a Muslim enclave in the city of Ahmedabad.

Neither case is likely to derail Mr. Modi’s growing popularity in India, since his tough-guy image is a big part of his appeal. Yet taken together, the cases demonstrate why he is a deeply divisive figure.

The most serious allegations against Mr. Modi concern the 2002 riots, which began in February of that year after Muslims set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims who were returning from a visit to a shrine. Fifty-nine Hindus were burned alive.

In the days following the train attack, riots rippled across Gujarat, in western India, fed by a strike called by Hindu groups and encouraged by some of Mr. Modi’s close associates. Initial investigations by Gujarat authorities were so suspiciously incompetent that the Indian Supreme Court ordered special police units to redo the investigations, which eventually resulted in hundreds of convictions.

Ms. Jafri claimed that Mr. Modi, a Hindu and chief minister of Gujarat, was criminally negligent and complicit in neglecting to quell the riots. A judge in Gujarat rejected that argument on Thursday.

Nothing like religion for persuading people to live in harmony, is there. (I look forward to the Twitter uproar about my Hinduismophobia.)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A Saudi blogger is under threat of being executed for “apostasy” – meaning, daring to leave Islam.

A SAUDI judge has recommended that a liberal activist and blogger be tried in a higher court for apostasy, a charge that could carry the death penalty, rights campaigners say.

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom sentenced Raef Badawi in July to seven years in jail and 600 lashes for setting up a “liberal” network and for allegedly insulting Islam.

On Wednesday, a judge remanded Badawi to the General Court on charges of apostasy, rights lawyer Waleed Abulkhair said.

“Ultra-conservative” doesn’t really cover it. Murderously theocratic, misogynist and racist would be more like it.

Badawi, 35, was arrested in June last year in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for unknown reasons.

The network that he co-founded with female rights activist Suad al-Shammari had declared May 7, 2012 a “day of liberalism” in the kingdom, calling for an end to the domination of religion over public life in Saudi Arabia.

The strict version of Islamic sharia law applied in Saudi Arabia stipulates death as a punishment for apostasy, but defendants are usually given the chance to repent and escape being beheaded.

Oh, isn’t that generous. All they have to do is knuckle under to the ferociously anti-human religion of the Saudi clerics and monarchy, and they will “escape being beheaded.” What need of liberalism with such generosity as that on offer?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Not good news.

The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), chaired by former CBI director RK Raghavan who investigated the 2002 Gujarat riots has concluded in its 541-page closure report that the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi took ample measures to control riots rather than stoking the fire as it is made to be believed. The SIT also questioned the motive behind filing a complaint against the Chief Minister by Zakia Jafri four years after the communal violence.

Modi is apparently on the way to being India’s next prime minister…which is appalling.

Get this part -

The SIT has said that even if Narendra Modi had told the police during the riots to allow the Hindus to vent their anger over the massacre of 56 kar sevaks in the Godhra train burning incident, the mere statement of those in the confines of a room does not constitute an offence. On this, the SIT seems to have based its report on public statements made by Modi during the riots.

Jeezis.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Someone at the invaluable Facebook group British Muslims for Secular Democracy posted an article in the Huffington Post last May by Ali Rizvi, An Atheist Muslim’s Perspective on the ‘Root Causes’ of Islamist Jihadism and the Politics of Islamophobia.

It begins by quoting.

The ambassador answered us that [their right] was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

The above passage is not a reference to a declaration by al Qaeda or some Iranian fatwa. They are the words of Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France, reporting to Secretary of State John Jay a conversation he’d had with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, Tripoli’s envoy to London, in 1786 — more than two and a quarter centuries ago.

The envoy was explaining why the pirate raids off the coast of North Africa would continue; because jihad, that’s why.

Adja’s position wasn’t a random one-off. This conflict continued for years, seminally resulting in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed into law by President John Adams in 1797. Article 11 of the document, a direct product of the United States’ first-ever overseas conflict, contained these famous words, cementing America’s fundamental commitment to secularism:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext, arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Yes, the establishment of secularism in America back in the 18th century was largely related to a conflict with Islamist jihadism.

How can that be? The same way it can be now: many people really are motivated by religious beliefs and dogma, and not by something “deeper” or more occult or more political or more attractive.

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings and the foiled al Qaeda-backed plot in Toronto, the “anything but jihad” brigade is out in full force again. If the perpetrators of such attacks say they were influenced by politics, nationalism, money, video games or hip-hop, we take their answers at face value. But when they repeatedly and consistently cite their religious beliefs as their central motivation, we back off, stroke our chins and suspect that there has to be something deeper at play, a “root cause.”

The taboo against criticizing religion is still so astonishingly pervasive that centuries of hard lessons haven’t yet opened our eyes to what has been apparent all along: It is often religion itself, not the “distortion,” “hijacking,” “misrepresentation” or “politicization” of religion, that is the root cause.

And the same applies to religiously-based sexism, homophobia, violence against heretics and apostates, forced marriage, and so on. It’s not the case that religion is always a screen for something else; often religion is what there is. It’s not “Islamophobia” to say that.

 Typically, resorting to ad hominem attacks and/or labeling the opposing side “bigoted” is a last resort, when the opponent is unable to generate a substantive counterargument.

This phenomenon can be wholly represented by loaded terms like “Islamophobia.” As an atheist Muslim (I’m not a believer, but I love Eid, the feasts of Ramadan and my Muslim family and friends), I could be jailed or executed in my country of birth, the country I grew up in and a host of other Muslim countries around the world for writing this very piece. Obviously, this is an unsettling, scary feeling for me. You may describe that fear as a very literal form of “Islamophobia.” But is that the same thing as anti-Muslim bigotry? No.

No; but by god there are a lot of people who rush to claim that it is.

Jews frequently profess their faith without justifying or defending passages in the Old Testament calling for the stoning to death of homosexuals, non-virginal brides or blasphemers. In fact, most of them condemnthese ideas. Religious Catholics still identify with their faith in large numbers without agreeing with the pope on birth control, abortion or premarital sex. Like them, almost all Muslims cherry-pick the contents of their faith as well. Why not be honest about the parts you don’t like? If you’re being discriminated against, why not protect your people first instead of jumping to protect your beliefs, books or religion every time someone driven by them commits mass murder?

This is a key difference for “new atheists.” To us, the fight against religious ideology isn’t a struggle against human rights but a struggle for them. Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. Books and beliefs don’t and aren’t.

Also hijabs and niqabs. They also don’t and aren’t. Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. Books and beliefs and religious garments don’t and aren’t.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s funny how feminism gets it in the neck from both directions, isn’t it. On the one hand there are people who say “feminists are silent about stonings and forced marriage and FGM!” To which I murmur replies to the effect that not all feminists are silent about that. On the other hand there are people who claim that “Mean Girls Cis White Feminism” is silent about the marginalization of women who wear the hijab. To which I murmur replies to the effect that I don’t want to see anyone marginalized or bullied, but at the same time I reserve the right to say I think the hijab is a bad, regressive, sexist custom, and why I think that.

I’ve noticed that the position between those two poles is not always a popular one.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Taslima wonders if anyone is listening.

It’s hard to miss her in Calcutta these days. She beams at passers-by from king-size hoardings at several busy junctions, anxiously marking her “return” to Bengal after six years.

But Taslima Nasreen is not returning to the city. Not in person, certainly — thanks to embargoes on her travelling and living in India. And not on television either, which had been promoting her as the writer of a mega serial that was to have been aired from December 19.

Despite the grand announcements, the show has been stalled. And Nasreen is furious. “Hating Taslima is an essential part of politics in the subcontinent. I feel pity for those who need to violate a writer’s rights to get votes,” she tweeted. “Whatever I write is hated by ignorant anti-women, anti-human rights bigots. Because they are afraid of the truth and the power of the pen,” said another tweet.

Of course she’s furious. Who wouldn’t be?!

She walks into the drawing room-cum-study of her apartment located in an upmarket area of Delhi, where she has been living since 2008, full of misgivings. Just days before the serial was called off, she’d heard that the Calcutta police had met the producers of the serial.

“Some bigoted individuals asked for a ban and the state acquiesced — I don’t think this will happen even in Saudi Arabia,” she says. “But fundamentalists are anti-women and anti-freedom of expression, and for political reasons the government might side with them. But why are the people in Bengal silent,” she asks.

Dressed in grey winter pants, a black sweater and a blue embroidered stole, the maverick writer looks younger than her 51 years with her bright eyes and dishevelled short crop. She sinks into a reclining chair with a blue iPad in her hand.

That’s Taslima all right – that iPad is never out of her hand.

This is the second time the soap has been stalled. She began writing it in 2006, when several episodes were also shot. “But then the 2007 drama happened and I was summarily thrown out of the city on November 22 that year,” she says, referring to the Ripon street violence. “That brought the production to a standstill.”

She had then urged her producers not to give up on the series merely because she had been ousted by the Bengal government, which cited her as a problem for law and order. “Why should the producers, or any creative person for that matter, be afraid of negative forces? These are just fringe elements who would oppose anyone who talks about gender equality and social change because they are misogynists.”

She cites the treatment meted out to reformists Vidyasagar and Raja Rammohan Roy by “anti-progress groups” for their pro-women measures. “The same thing is happening to me — I speak about new ideas, changing society, gender equality and humanism.”

What riles her more is the lack of protest in Calcutta. “This is a dangerous sign — if writers, intellectuals and other creative people keep quiet after this, something is wrong with society. Society is on the path of decline — this is what the silence signifies.

“But intellectuals do not keep their mouths shut when Hindu fanatics attack writers or artistes, or even when Muslim fanatics attack male writers such as Salman Rushdie. Misogynistic society shows solidarity towards victims, provided the victims are male, macho or anti-feminist,” she says.

And then there’s Twitter.

Her tweets too have landed her in legal wrangles. Two cases — one in Uttar Pradesh and the other in Bihar — have been lodged against her. “The complaint from UP was against a tweet saying those who issue fatwas and rewards on beheading were anti-Constitution, anti-women and anti-freedom of expression,” says Nasreen, who has had three fatwas issued against her in Bangladesh and five in India so far.

“What have I said wrong? These people who issue fatwas are roaming scot-free while I am the one who is confined to one place,” she says, adding India’s home ministry has helped her with the cases.

She hasn’t stopped tweeting, though. “I will write more tweets. Let me see how people can stop me.”

Does she ever feel like giving it all up in India and settling down in the West? “I travel to Europe and America frequently. But I want to stay in India for the sake of this country,” she says. “I want to tell the world I can stay in India because this country is a true pillar of secularism and a standard bearer of freedom of expression in the subcontinent.”

Is anyone listening?

Yes! Whether India is or not, though…I don’t know.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)