Most attend their local madrassa

Nov 24th, 2011 10:56 am | By

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.

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Afghan women have continued to struggle

Nov 23rd, 2011 5:30 pm | By

Grim news from Afghanistan:

A law meant to protect Afghan women from a host of abusive practices, including rape, forced marriage and the trading of women to settle disputes, is being undermined by spotty enforcement, the UN said in a report released Wednesday.

Afghanistan’s Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was passed in August 2009, raising hopes among women’s rights activists that Afghan women would get to fight back against abuses that had been ignored under Taliban rule.

The law criminalised many abuses for the first time, including domestic violence, child marriage, driving a woman to resort to suicide and the selling and buying of women.

Yet the report found only a small percentage of reported crimes against women are pursued by the Afghan government.

Only 26% of complaints investigated, only 7% prosecuted – 155 cases out of 2,299 complaints.

Sometimes victims were pressured to withdraw their complaints or to settle for mediation by traditional councils, the report said. Sometimes prosecutors didn’t proceed with mandatory investigations for violent acts like rape or prostitution. Other times, police simply ignored complaints.

In one such instance in Kandahar in March, a woman reported that after her daughter got married, in-laws used the young woman as an unpaid servant and forced her into having sex with visiting men. She committed suicide by setting herself on fire in her room and the mother brought the case to the police.

Bad.

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Thinking about thinking about thinking

Nov 23rd, 2011 11:18 am | By

More discussion of facts and belief, of Ward and Coyne, of science and philosophy, of evidence and reasons to believe. Jean Kazez did a post a couple of days ago, which I didn’t see until today, and Russell Blackford did one at Talking Philosophy.

I find Jean’s post very interesting because it talks about the same things I talked about in Ward’s brief Comment is Free piece replying to Julian Baggini. Ward’s piece might seem too slight to bear all this examination, but it’s about the place where some fundamental and important disagreements are born, so it’s worth all the close peering.

One interesting item:

So what’s left is Coyne’s puzzlement that atheist philosophers come to the
defense of people like Ward.

Well, it’s like this:  when I teach a philosophical argument, I take my task to have two parts.  First, I’ve got to fairly represent the argument, capturing exactly what the philosopher had in mind. It’s a deep-seated occupational habit, I think, to take this duty very seriously, and try to execute it without regard to whether I’m for or against what the philosopher is arguing for. So: we’ve got to understand what Ward’s saying, before we object. Second, it’s a sacred duty to be adversarial–strongly inculcated by the guild of philosophers. We need to figure out if there are problems with an argument (whatever we think of the conclusion), and if so, exactly what they are.

I asked if philosophers experience those two parts as pulling in different directions, if it’s hard to do both and do them well. I asked because sometimes (not to say often) in arguments people actually obscure their own meaning, by accident or by design, and that can make it very difficult to do both: to take seriously the duty to capture exactly what the interlocutor had in mind and to figure out if there are problems with the argument and if so what they are. Ward does that a lot. That makes it difficult to do both for practical reasons – it’s just plain hard to pin down exactly what he meant – and for emotional ones: it’s hard to damp down the irritation enough to make the effort to be fair.

Another interesting item was directly about this place I mentioned, where the disagreements are born. Jean broke Ward’s argument into stages.

Stage 2 is this: “A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable.” Why? “Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not observable now or in the future, and not subsumable under any general law.” Somebody a long time ago saw something, and told someone else, and we’ve been playing whisper down the alley for 2,000 years. Science can’t go back and confirm or disconfirm. According to Ward, whether we believe the report–for example, about Jesus healing the sick–will depend on “general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment.”

I read Ward as allowing here that someone like me is going to reject Jesus healing the sick as having occurred, because I’m philosophically disinclined to believe in miracles. But someone open to the possibility of miracles might think there really is a reliable chain of reports going back to Jesus healing the sick, and so may think “Jesus healed the sick” not only purports to be fact-stating but states a fact. At any rate, our reasoning about this long ago event falls at least partly outside the domain of science. That’s the main assertion in the column–Ward is not here trying to defend specific Christian beliefs.

…

My take on all this is–  Stage 1, check.  Stage 2, check. Stage 3, groan.

Jerry Coyne (11/6) reacts very differently.  Stage 1, check.  Stage 2,
groan.  Stage 3, groan.

I said I lean toward the groan at Stage 2. Jean said “our reasoning about this long ago event falls at least partly outside the domain of science” – and that’s the place – the spot where the paths veer off and fundamental disagreements start. I think what it boils down to is whether that reasoning really falls outside the domain of science – or what is meant by “outside”; on where and how the borders are drawn. I think the domain is right next door and the border is sloppily marked and unpatrolled. I think “outside” isn’t really outside but rather beside. The two are related. Massimo Pigliucci was talking about this yesterday – on Twitter! the worst possible place to talk about such a thing, as he pointed out himself – and he said something to the effect that “Coyne wants to make science mean all of empiricism, and that’s not kosher.” The idea, I think, is that scientists need to be able to recognize when they’re doing philosophical reasoning, partly so that they’ll do it better. I get that, I think. But at the same time, people in general need to be aware that the two ways of reasoning are related and genuinely compatible, while religious reasoning may not be.

Jean said she is ”philosophically disinclined to believe in miracles” and other people aren’t, and I pointed out that her reasons for being philosophically disinclined are better than other people’s reasons for being inclined, and those reasons are as it were next door to science. I think that relation is where the break is, not between science on the one hand and philosophical reasoning on the other. I’m thinking Barbara Forrest on methodological naturalism here: because it has such a good record, it provides good reasons to buy into philosophical or metaphysical naturalism too. There’s a relationship. I think Ward and people like Ward want to suggest that there’s a radical discontinuity.

 

 

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The rules

Nov 22nd, 2011 4:58 pm | By

TLC, the “Yay religion!” channel, has a new show called All-American Muslim. Guess what it’s about! Guess what its take is!

Well in one way its take is fine. Good, show people that Mulims aren’t some weird alien species; excellent; promote fellow-feeling and peace; great. But…

Well I’ve only managed to watch a few minutes of it, a couple of times, because it’s so annoying. It may be more annoying than it needed to be – it may have gone out of its way to be annoying, by seeking out hyper-observant Muslims. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s normal in Dearborn.

Anyway my point isn’t actually about TLC or the show overall, it’s about the bits that I did see – both of which, as it happens, featured women going on and on and on and on about will they put on the hijab or not, along with women already in the fucking hijab and men saying well you really ought to put on the hijab. Both featured a lot of hijab. There was also a little about fasting during Ramadan, for variety.

What was so irritating about it was the settled assumption that there are rules, there’s a right way to do Islam, and that’s that. This was a theme that kept recurring even in the tiny fractions of the shows that I saw: that a good Muslim follows the rules and does it the right way. There were discussion scenes with people sitting around on couches discussing “hijab: yes or no” and “fasting: yes or no” and always there was this assumption: there are rules, and you can obey them or not obey them, but they are the rules.

Some of the time someone was being all “liberal” and saying “it’s none of my business” – but it was still always The Rules. What’s the point of being a Muslim if you’re not going to do it right? Why convert to Islam (which someone was doing, or thinking about doing) if you’re not going to do it right? One woman said she didn’t fast during Ramadan because it was difficult with her job and then taking care of her children. (Of course it is! Going without water and food all day for a month is unhealthy.) A man replied that whether she fasted or not was her business, not his. How noble, but of course the implication was there that she was not following the rules.

There was another depressing bit where a woman decided to start wearing the hijab, and she was all smiley and kind of trembly, as if she were announcing a pregnancy, and she told her husband and he was all happy…And she said they should take all the photos off the living room wall, because of course it would be silly to wear a hijab but let people see her without one in photos all over the wall…so they took them all down (and there were a lot).

It’s all so depressing – handing themselves over to these stupid, bad, anti-woman, anti-human, antiquated rules for no good reason except that it’s “religious.” They don’t question whether or not they are rules, and if so why it matters; the most they can manage (that I’ve seen) is to say things along the lines of “well if you want to be a bad Muslim that’s your business.”

 

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Strolling cop pepper spraying everywhere

Nov 22nd, 2011 3:11 pm | By

Jason collected some photoshopped pepper-spraying cops.

My favorite is

Check them all out. Commenters have more. Don’t miss George W’s.

 

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No billboard for YOU

Nov 22nd, 2011 2:17 pm | By

Mid Ohio Atheists had a contract with Lind Media Company for two billboards (of the atheist variety, of course). At the last minute Lind Media Company dropped Mid Ohio Atheists a line to say “Oops we changed our minds sorry thx bye.”

No fair.

 Granted, if I were putting up an atheist billboard in Ohio I would start smaller than that. I would start with something it’s easier to defend on a billboard*. But Lind Media Company shouldn’t string them along and then go “ha ha HA ha” at the last second.

 See that one’s much better. Less dogmatic. Easier to defend. Also offering solidarity in place of a scolding or command. Better billboard material. But either way Lind Media Company shouldn’t play nasty tricks.

*I said that before I saw the churchy billboards that Lind Media is happy to display. I take it back.

 

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The Bombay massacre

Nov 22nd, 2011 10:36 am | By

I haven’t been paying enough attention. (So often the case. There is so much to pay attention to, and it’s very difficult to pay attention to everything – ok it’s not very difficult, it’s impossible – so in paying attention to L, M and N, you miss S, T and U.) I missed David Coleman Headley. I missed the fact that an American

was one of the leading planners of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which killed 166 people over three days at two five-star hotels, a train station and a small Jewish community center.

I missed the fact that

Headley gave specific evidence about the close alliance between the ISI,
Pakistan’s intelligence force, and the Lashkar terrorist group.

…

Headley described meeting with both ISI and Lashkar officials before the
Mumbai operation. He also described meeting a Pakistani military official at Lashkar headquarters. The officer gave Lashkar advice on how to carry out a maritime attack.

“Because of his evidence, the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago indicted
Major Iqbal, [a Pakistani intelligence official], which is the first time you
have a serving Pakistani intelligence officer charged in the murder of
Americans,” says Rotella.

Mark that. A Pakistani intelligence official helped people plan a mass murder in Bombay. Not a battle in a declared war, but a mass murder of non-combatants in hotels and railway stations and a community center.

Furthermore, one of the guys arrested for the Bombay massacre is using a cell phone to this day.

During a meeting overseas last summer, a senior U.S. official and Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of Pakistan’s armed forces, discussed a threat that has strained the troubled U.S.-Pakistani relationship since the 2008 Mumbai attacks: the Lashkar-i-Taiba militant group.

The senior U.S. official expressed concern that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a terrorist chief arrested for the brutal attacks in India, was still directing Lashkar operations while in custody, according to a U.S. government memo viewed by ProPublica. Gen. Kayani responded that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), had told prison authorities to better control Lakhvi’s access to the outside world, the memo says. But Kayani rejected a U.S. request that authorities take away the cell phone Lakhvi was using in jail, according to the memo to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the National Security Council.

Staggering, isn’t it? They won’t take his cell phone away.

What are they going to do next? Give him a small nuclear weapon for his very own?

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Where’s the harm?

Nov 21st, 2011 5:28 pm | By

Via Gnu Atheism at Facebook – a new bus ad -

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Another foundation

Nov 21st, 2011 5:10 pm | By

I have another treat for you: R J Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. It has edu in its url, which is kind of funny. Anyway, it’s Dominionism. I chose an item almost at random – Joy as a Tool of Dominion for the Abused Woman. By Mrs. Gerald (Jennifer) W. Tritle – boy, you don’t see that much any more. Here is my article that I wrote, by Mrs Man’s Name (but you can call me Jennifer). So anyway here’s the Dominionist wisdom about what to do if you’re an abused woman, also why you are an abused woman in the first place. I bet you can guess – it’s because of feminism.

Few greater challenges exist for the Christian woman who has experienced verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse in her life than for her to obey God’s Word with a guilt-free and undefiled joy from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim. 1:5). To truly enjoy God, a Christian woman who has experienced abuse must, as every other believer, obey God’s Word and allow it to transform her mind.

It is certain that abuses are not new under the sun. Nonetheless, this
century has been characterized by fathers who have failed to lead and to
discipline their families and by feminism, which has attempted to reverse God’s perfect creation order regarding male and female roles, and abuse in families is highly prevalent.

See? That’s where abuse of women comes from – fathers who fail to boss and punish their families enough, and feminism.

There’s Andrea Schwartz on god’s rules for women.

God’s design for women is in a complementary and supportive role. Were men sufficient to carry out God’s dominion mandate alone, there would have been no need for a helpmeet.  The balance and insight that women provide allow men to fully step into their dominion roles. Yet, the Tempter’s plan continues to seduce women away from their God-appointed functions to arenas of life that distract them from their created design.  To remove women from their high calling in God’s basic institution of the family spells disaster.  It is noteworthy that, despite all attempts at eliminating gender designations in our culture, the method by which new people enter the world remains through a woman’s womb.

Oh damn, she’s right! We forgot to fix that! God that was sloppy – we totally meant to, but I guess we got so hung up on explaining that no actually cooking one meal a week (and not cleaning up afterward) doesn’t count as sharing the domestic duties that it just slipped our tiny little girly minds.

From the beginning of time, God has decreed that people be defined in
terms of their gender rather than apart from it. For example, rather than
describe myself as  an offspring, sibling, adult, spouse, and parent, it is
Biblically correct  to identify myself as  a daughter, sister, woman, wife, and
mother. Each of these clearly identifies the fact that I am female.

Biblically correct? Really? The bible says women aren’t allowed to say they’re adults? The bible says women have to use words that clearly identify the fact that they are female? Where does it say that?

One wonders if she’s ever met any feminists. She apparently thinks they say things like ”I am Kate’s sibling” and “I am Henry’s spouse.” No wonder she’s terrified!

The Bible clearly states that women are not to serve as elders in the church.
This mandate in no way indicates that men are superior to women in character or ability. This is an organizational difference by God’s design, outlining His hierarchy of authority and responsibility, not to mention jurisdiction. A woman’s role in the immediate and extended family is of such paramount importance, that to assume roles outside these areas is wasting her as the valuable resource she is. There’s simply too much to do in this arena for her to abdicate her position to areas of lesser importance.

Riiiiiiiiiight. Everything except family work is of lesser importance…Is that what they told her? And she believed them? That would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

So that’s the Chalcedon Foundation. It’s some articles. Maybe I should start calling B&W a foundation – ya think?

 

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Take that, rabble

Nov 21st, 2011 11:28 am | By

The UC Davis police chief has been placed on leave after the pepper spraying of students on Friday.

On Sunday, the university said that two police officers had been placed on administrative leave with pay pending an investigation into Friday’s incident. In videos that were widely distributed over the Internet, two police officers in riot gear were seen dousing about a dozen protesters with pepper spray as they sat on a sidewalk with their arms entwined.

Yup. That’s what happened.

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Having to promise

Nov 21st, 2011 10:38 am | By

A new thing for Christianists to worry about.

Girls wanting to become Guides, Brownies or Rainbows currently promise to “love” God when signing up to the 101-year-old organisation.

However, the association is considering reviewing the wording of its affirmation for new members, to remove religious references.

The NSS says the story is bogus, but taking it as true for the moment…What of it? Why should children have to promise to love “God” in order to join a group that does fun things? Why should even children who do in fact love “God” have to do that? Why should even children of “devout” parents have to do that? Why have a requirement of that kind at all? It seems surplus to requirements. It seems intrusive and bossy.

Atheists don’t make children promise to hate “God,” after all. Atheists don’t make anyone promise to hate “God.” Atheists don’t try to extort emotional commitments of that kind. Why do scouting organizations do so? What’s the attraction?

I suppose the question is otiose, because the promise dates from 1910, so it’s a “why did they” question rather than a “why do they” one, and it’s not really pressing to know why they did. But it ought to be possible to re-think a social practice of that kind, and then why-questions do become relevant. “Why should we keep doing this? Hmmm, can’t really think of a good reason. Let’s bag it.”

The promise is optional but only girls who have taken it can be awarded the movement’s highest badges.

Christian campaigners yesterday warned that the 600,000-member association risks losing its values if it abandons the religious element of the oath.

“It would be terribly sad,” said Mike Judge, spokesman for The Christian Institute.

“The Girl Guides has always embraced all people but has its roots in Christian values, which is what has made it so popular and successful.

“It will be very difficult for it to maintain its values if it removes the ethics from where those ideas spring from. It would change the character of the Guides for the worse.

“Sadly, I think this is symptomatic of a much wider problem in Britain, which stems from a culture of embarrassment about being Christian.”

How would it change the character of the Guides for the worse? It wouldn’t stop anyone from being Christian, or loving “God.” It would just stop requiring a promise to do so, which shouldn’t be its business in any case.

 

 

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Blot her out

Nov 20th, 2011 4:22 pm | By

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.

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Abuse of privilege

Nov 20th, 2011 11:27 am | By

Simon Singh finds Charles Windsor less than reasonable on the subject of alternative “medicine.”

The heir to the throne will not accept that treatments such as homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractic therapy do not work in the vast majority of cases, according to Simon Singh.

Speaking at the Hay Festival in Kerala, India, Singh said that hundreds of scientific studies had concluded that alternative medicine is ineffective.

Yet despite this, the Prince of Wales continues to believe the therapies can help patients because of his ideological commitment to the natural world, Singh said.

‘He only wants scientific evidence if it backs up his view of the natural treatment of health conditions,’ he said.

…

‘We presented evidence that disputes the value of alternative medicine and despite this he hasn’t changed his mind,’ he told the festival, which is sponsored by The Daily Telegraph.

This is because he is ‘ideologically fixated’ about the benefits of nature, he claimed. ‘It’s a shame, because he’s so influential.’

Exactly so, and he abuses his (unearned, inherited) influence to persuade credulous people to use bogus medical ”treatments.” It’s an outrage, and he should be wracked with shame.

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You know how you tell your little woman to bring you a beer, and she brings you the dog instead?

Nov 19th, 2011 4:54 pm | By

Via Dana’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “There is a Crucial Difference Between Being Contentious and Being a Misogynistic Asshole,” we read Anne Jefferson’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “You got a sexist story, but when you published it, you gave it your stamp of approval and became sexist too.”

A post by Anne JeffersonDear Nature,

“Womanspace” by Ed Rybicki is the most appalling thing I have ever read in a scientific journal. When I read the Futures (science fiction) piece you published on 29 September 2011, about how the hero and a man friend were unable to cope with a simple errand and how that led them to discover the existence of parallel universe inhabited by women that naturally endowed women with their domestic prowess, but which women were too dumb to observe until the great men of science made their discovery, I checked to make make sure I was still on nature.com. To my dismay, I was.

The story hearkens back to the “good old” sexist days when men did important things (like write books about virology) and women did unimportant things (like keep their families fed and clothed); when men couldn’t be bothered to be useful around the house and even when women did manage to get science degrees they were better employed as cooks and errand runners. The writer makes the explicit assumption that all of his (and, thus Nature’s) readers are male and have a “significant female other” who helps with their shopping. The story uses a cliched trope that women have an alternate reality, but then adds the extra punch that we aren’t even smart or observant enough to know it. As a woman scientist reading this article, it seems in every way designed to make me feel othered and excluded from the scientific academy.

That’s how to tell them.

I particularly loved the bit about the explicit assumption, because I often think that apart from my friends Claire and Mary Ellen, no one else notices those assumptions when they appear. Here’s how this one appeared, in Rybicki’s story:

At this point I must digress, and mention, for those who are not aware, the profound differences in strategy between Men Going Shopping and Women Going Shopping. In any general shopping situation, men hunt: that is, they go into a complex environment with a few clear objectives, achieve those, and leave. Women, on the other hand, gather: such that any mission to buy just bread and milk could turn into an extended foraging expedition that also snares a to-die-for pair of discounted shoes; a useful new mop; three sorts of new cook-in sauces; and possibly a selection of frozen fish.

And the interesting thing is — and this is what sparked the discovery — that any male would be very hard pressed to say where she got some of these things, even if he accompanied her.

Have you never had the experience of talking to your significant female other as you wend your way through the complexity of a supermarket — only to suddenly find her 20 metres away with her back to you? And then she comes back with something you’ve never seen before, and tosses it in the trolley as if nothing has happened?

See? He’s assuming that the reader is male (and straight). He’s assuming that women are too busy foraging for shoes to read science magazines, or perhaps anything at all.

It’s a good thing we have all these waves of feminism (what is it now? 23? 37?), because the first two or three certainly didn’t finish the job.

 

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A burgeon too many

Nov 19th, 2011 3:57 pm | By

And another thing. What does this remind you of?

The rise of the Haredim  has been disastrous for the country’s economy,  according to Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Unmaking of Israel.

Gorenberg writes that  Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is becoming ever  more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people’s labour.

”By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational  requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that  neither understands nor values democracy.

Quiverfull, and the homeschool movement. The democratic US state is fostering  a burgeoning sector of society that  neither understands nor values democracy – or secularism or human rights.

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Deface them

Nov 19th, 2011 3:51 pm | By

How do you know when the theocrats are winning? Women start to disappear, and at the same time, the ones who haven’t disappeared yet are subject to spittle-flecked hatred…including those who are six years old.

An Ultra Orthodox Jewish man walks past a vandalized poster showing a woman, in Jerusalem.

 Like that. Posters that feature women have been “defaced” in Jerusalem, the SMH article says, and by defaced it means defaced, as you can see. That poster says, “You think you’re pretty, bitch? I’ll give you pretty, you whore. How pretty do you think you’ll be after I stick a razor in your eyes, you cunt?”

That’s not “segregation”; it’s not “modesty”; it’s not “religious obligations”; it’s just loathing.

 A torn poster of a woman is seen in Jerusalem. Images of women have vanished from the streets of Israel's capital.

 ”Shut your filthy mouth, bitch.”

Not content with segregated streets, queues and buses, extremist members of  the Haredi  have turned their attention to the city of Bet Shemesh, 30  kilometres to the west of Jerusalem.

Here, Jewish girls as young as six, wearing a  conservative uniform of skirts below the knee and shirts to the elbow, are being targeted by the Haredi, called  ”pritzas” (prostitutes) for being ”immodestly dressed” as they walk into  Orot girls school, a state-funded religious-nationalist school. The Haredi are demanding the girls cover up.

That’s how you know when theocracy is winning – when men start calling little girls prostitutes. In public. Outside a school. At girls on their way to school.

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Othered and excluded from the scientific academy

Nov 18th, 2011 3:13 pm | By

Oh look, we’re back on this corner again. Some drearily unthinking guy writes a patronizing “funny” article story about women for Nature, people say how drearily unthinking it is, and everybody says “oh lighten up, ladies.” It’s just a joke, huh huh huh. Jokes never do any harm, any fule kno that.

In a pig’s eye, says Christie Wilcox at SciAm blogs.

Reinforcing negative gender stereotypes is anything but harmless.

It was Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson who, in 1995, first coined the term stereotype threat. It refers to how the knowledge of a prejudicial stereotype can lead to enough anxiety that a person actually ends up confirming the image. Since that landmark paper, more than 300 studies have found evidence for the pervasive negative effects of societal stereotypes.

When it comes to women, studies have shown that stereotype threat is very real. Women are stereotyped to be worse at math than men due to lower test scores. But it turns out that women only score lower when they are reminded of their gender or take the test in the presence of men. In fact, the greater the number of men in the room with a female test taker, the worse she will do. The gender profile of the environment has no effect, however, on women’s verbal test scores, where no such inferiority stereotype exists.

So this kind of thing does matter. There is no “just a joke.”

Ed may not have meant to demoralize women scientists when he wrote Womanspace, but by reinforcing the stereotype of the domesticated woman as opposed to the scientific man, he did just that. But even worse, as Anne Jefferson said, by approving of such a piece, Nature has given this kind of sexist attitude their highly-valued stamp of approval.

Shame on you, Nature, for contributing to the kind of environment which leads to stereotype threat – the kind of environment that tells girls they shouldn’t bother becoming a scientist. Because while I can shrug off some bigoted humor, they can’t. They’re the ones harmed by such careless support of antiquated gender roles. I am mad at you for them. You have done wrong by little nerdy girls everywhere, Nature, and you need to acknowledge it. Anything less says that you simply don’t care.

Please don’t do it any more.

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Facts and belief

Nov 18th, 2011 11:50 am | By

Keith Ward wrote a short piece for Comment is Free, a couple of weeks ago, saying something about religion and science and claims and facts. (I put it loosely that way because Ward oscillates between terms a lot, so it’s not easy to specify exactly what he’s claiming. The title of the piece is “Religion answers the factual questions science neglects,” which is an ok summary, but it’s not necessarily written by Ward.) Ward’s piece was in response to Julian Baggini’s piece on whether science and religion are compatible.

Jerry Coyne wrote a piece responding to Ward’s. Jim Houston wrote a piece at Talking Philosophy responding to Coyne’s, with a response directly from Ward.

All straight? Shoes buckled? Knives put away in the basket? Off we go.

Ward said:

We need to ask if particular religious and scientific claims conflict, or whether they are mutually supportive or not. Some are and some are not, and it would be silly to say that all religious claims conflict with all scientific claims, or that they do not.

Many religious statements are naturally construed as statements of fact – Jesus healed the sick, and rose from death, and these are factual claims.

…

A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable. Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law. We know that rational answers to many historical questions depend on general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment. There are no history laboratories. Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based, but the evidence is not scientifically tractable.

Wait. Wait wait wait. I spy a bit of smuggling.  “Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based.”

Objection, your honor. Bullshit (in the technical sense). Equivocation. Smuggling. Playing silly buggers with ambiguity. That claim is true only if you mean something quite eccentric by “much religion”; if you mean what is generally meant and understoody by religion, it’s not true at all. Religion in general, religion as such, is not evidence-based in the sense that history is.

Claims that the cosmos is created do not “trespass onto” scientific territory. They are factual claims in which scientific investigators are not, as such, interested. Scientific facts are, of course, relevant to many religious claims. But not all facts are scientific facts – the claim that I was in Oxford last night, unseen by anyone, will occur in no scientific paper, but it is a hard fact. So it is with the miracles of Jesus, with the creation of the cosmos and with its end.

So it is? So it is? No it isn’t. The claim that Keith Ward was in Oxford on a particular night is not inherently implausible; it goes against no known public facts about nature or the social world or geography. The same cannot be said of “the miracles of Jesus.” The mere fact (if it is a fact) that both Ward’s presence in Oxford on October 30 2011 and the miracles of Jesus are unverifiable does not demonstrate that both are hard facts.

Now, it is true that there is a fact of the matter about both. It could be a fact that Ward was in Oxford that night, or it could be a fact that he wasn’t. It could be a fact that Jesus did miracles, or it could be a fact that he didn’t. But that isn’t what Ward said: he said “it is a hard fact” that he was in Oxford that night. Well maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but the rest of the world – on his own account – doesn’t know that. I think he wanted readers to take his “it is a hard fact” as meaning an established, public, accepted fact (despite having just said that it isn’t) and then be rushed into accepting the same of Jesus and his miracles. Tricky.

The interesting question is not whether religion is compatible with science, but whether there are important factual questions – and some important non-factual questions, too, such as moral ones – with which the physical sciences do not usually deal. The answer seems pretty obvious, without trying to manufacture sharp and artificial distinctions between “hows” and “whys”.

That’s Ward. Coyne disagreed, and ended with a challenge:

I challenge Ward to give me just one reasonably well established fact about the world that comes from “general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment” without any verifiable empirical input.

Jim Houston asked Ward to respond to the challenge, and Ward obliged.

I have been told that Jerry Coyne has challenged me to cite a “reasonably well established fact about the world” that has no “verifiable empirical input”. That is not a claim I have ever made, or ever would make.

What I do claim is not so controversial, namely, that many factual claims about the world are reasonably believed or even known to be true, even when there is no way in which any established science (a discipline a Fellow of the Royal Society would recognise as a natural science) could establish that they are true or false.

Here is an example: my father worked as a double-agent for MI6 and the KGB during the  “Cold War”. He told me this on his death-bed, in view of the fact that I had once seen him kill a man. The Section of which he was a member was disbanded and all record of it expunged, and all those who knew that he was a member of it had long since died. This is certainly a factual claim. If true, he certainly knew that it was true. I reasonably believe that it is true. But there is absolutely no way of empirically verifying or falsifying it. QED.

That seems to me to be an absolutely hopeless “example” of what he is claiming. He is claiming, in a somewhat evasive way, that it is reasonable to believe that claim. I say “evasive” because he (carefully?) put the claim in the passive voice, which enabled him to omit any believing agent or agents. Who is supposed to be doing this believing? Ward himself? Or everyone? It makes a difference, you know.

Here’s the thing. It may be reasonable for Ward to believe that story (if in fact – in fact – it really was told to him), depending on a lot of things – what he knows about his father, and the like – but it’s not the least bit reasonable for anyone else to believe it. It’s minus reasonable, because in fact it has a whiff of tall tale, or more than a whiff. Once saw him kill a man did he? My, that’s casual. And then Ward is using it to make a point. And double-agents aren’t all that abundant, and they are figures in novels and movies.

I think Ward is equivocating again: I think he’s expecting us to take the polite or social sense of “believe” which could better be called “taking his word for it,” and treat it as genuine, reasonable belief. I don’t mind taking Ward’s word for it, if there’s nothing at stake, but as for genuinely believing it…I beg to be excused.

 

 

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We’re back!

Nov 18th, 2011 11:48 am | By

And we’ll never never never leave you again.

Not if we can help it anyway.

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Filthy and rotten children

Nov 17th, 2011 5:31 pm | By

Mohammad Shafia doesn’t seem to have liked his three daughters very much. In fact he seems to have disliked them – indeed one could say he seems to have hated them.

An Afghan immigrant accused of murdering a wife and three teenage daughters in what prosecutors have called an “honour killing” told his alleged accomplices that the newly deceased women were “filthy and rotten children”, adding: “may God’s fury descend upon those girls”.

Not affectionate.

A court in Ontario yesterday heard a series of secret police tape recordings
of 58-year-old Mohammad Shafia attempting to justify the brutal murder of his
daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13. He described them as
“treacherous” and said they deserved to die for having betrayed Islam.

Shafia, a Muslim who lived in a polygamous household, is accused of drowning
the girls and their mother Rona, 50, the first of his two wives, in June
2009.

Because?

The motive for the alleged crime was Zainab’s recent marriage to a Pakistani.
Shafia did not approve of the relationship, and blamed Rona for it. He decided
to also kill Zahar and Geeti because they had picked up Western habits.

It’s all so out of proportion, you know? He didn’t approve of Zainab’s relationship – so because he disliked something she did, she had to die, and so did her sisters, and so did his first wife. To him it’s just a thing he dislikes, to her it’s her whole life, as theirs are to the other three – and he considers himself so important that it’s worth killing four people just because he dislikes something. Apart from anything else I can just never get my head around the vanity and self-centeredness. I can’t get my head around people who never manage to grasp that they are not somehow fundamentally more important and real and significant than other people; that their displeasure counts more than other people’s lives.

 

 

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