Atheism 3.0

This can only be an approximate classification, but ‘first wave’ atheism, or Atheism 1.0, would be the sort espoused by philosophers ranging from ancient Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Classical Greco-Roman thinkers through to 19^th and 20^th century intellectuals like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell and E V Ramasami Naicker. Much of the main arguments against the existence of God(s) and criticisms of religion were first made by first wave atheists. Second wave atheism (Atheism 2.0, or New Atheism) arrived at the start of the 21^st century in the form of the so-called ‘Four Horsemen’ – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, who were joined by other outspoken critics of religion like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, A C Grayling and Victor J Stenger. Second wave atheists often repeated the same arguments made by the first wave, but thanks to factors like religious fundamentalism, anti-secularism and the internet, Atheism 2.0 galvanised godless folks everywhere to take a stand against religion, and popularised its ideas as never before in history.

Now atheists like Jen McCreight are calling for a third wave, for Atheism 3.0.

For Atheism Plus.

Your privilege is showing, Ms Nusrat

I have no issue with Muslim women choosing to wear the hijab. Even within the constraints of their faith, there seems to be enough latitude for them to exercise stylish self-expression with the hair-covering fabric. I can also respect their wish to dress modestly, even though I find their idea of ‘modest’ to be rather excessive. Compared to the niqab or the burqa, the hijab is arguably a less oppressive – certainly less dismal – garment that doesn’t erase its wearer’s identity.

The hijab can be chic.

But none of this should imply that the hijab is free from oppressive connotations. Let’s not kid ourselves; it isn’t. Being a Muslim garment, the hijab is inevitably bound to the doctrines of Islam, including those that render women second-rate human beings who should be subservient to men. It’s one thing for a woman to wear a hijab of her own volition, quite another when that same woman misrepresents her choice as being something that it is not: an unequivocal act of liberation.

Critical thinking and skepticism are for women too

Pick up any random women’s magazine and you are almost guaranteed to find a prettily illustrated astrology section. Men’s magazines in contrast rarely have a ‘masculine’-looking equivalent to Cosmopolitan’s sorbet-coloured horoscopes. It’s as if the belief in astronomy’s nonsensical doppelganger is essentially feminine, like lipstick and pencil skirts. Do magazine publishers presume that men are too sensible to buy into the touchy-feely mysticism of star signs?

This common stereotyping of women as being more intuitive, more emotional, more irrational than men is not only grossly inaccurate, but also harmful to the cause of gender equality. It sends out the message that reason and critical thinking are the preserve of the logical male. Women, meanwhile, can go channel their inner Goddess and connect with the Sacred Feminine while the men get on with becoming scientists, engineers and humourless skeptics.

Thankfully we have awesome female skeptics and rationalists like the ladies at Skepchick. Amy Davis Roth argues that skepticism is a gender-neutral worldview that, unlike faux-feminist mysticism, truly empowers women by giving them thinking skills that enable them to gain real knowledge. As Davis Roth writes to a Skepchick reader:

Don’t let superstition and the stereotypical roles of women influence your ability to understand reality and to educate yourself. Rise up, continue to speak up and fight back against the flood of anti-intellectualism and ignorance.

Davis Roth also smacks down the ridiculous idea that skepticism and the scientific method are ‘privileged’ worldviews that deny the validity of other ways of understanding reality. You’ll just have to read her post to witness her argument in all its acerbic glory. It’s a thing of beauty.

16.3.12

Only men may talk about vaginas

You’re probably feeling all happy and encouraged after watching that amazing flash mob dance by the women and girls of Beit Shemeth. So it pains me greatly to throw cold water on your warm, joyful glow with this piece of news. A conference on gynaecology being held in Jerusalem today is allowing only male speakers. From The Globe and Mail:

The conference on “Innovations in Gynecology/Obstetrics and Halacha [Jewish law]” is being held by the Puah Institute this Wednesday in Jerusalem. It will include such topics as “ovary implants,” “how to choose a suitable contraceptive pill” and “intimacy during rocket attacks,” in which there are many qualified female professionals, but none will be permitted to speak, at least not from the podium.

Women are allowed in the audience, in a section separate from men.

The conference is a private event, but the Puah Institute receives funding from the Israeli Health Ministry. The Israeli government is increasingly being strong-armed by religious conservatives into sanctioning sexist, discriminatory policies. Whether it’s Judaism, or Islam, or Christianity, fundamentalists from these patriarchal monotheisms are a scourge of women wherever their vile (and usually male) influence is felt.




11.1.12

This is all kinds of awesome

The Haredi are an ultra-conservative sect of Judaism, and they’re making their chauvinistic presence known in Beit Shemesh, a city in Israel’s Jerusalem district. From verbally and physically assaulting schoolgirls for dressing ‘indecently’ to imposing gender segregation on public buses, Haredi zealots (invariably men) are bent on making women and girls feel like second-class citizens in their own city.

But the feisty females of Beit Shemesh are not going to let the Haredi men’s sexism go unchallenged. The Haredi want them to be silent and unseen. So these women organised a flash mob instead to dance and sing loudly to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, in full view of possibly the same men who seek to oppress them.





Epic win.




HT: Rebecca Watson at Skepchick




11.1.12

Blackford on the UN’s new stance regarding ‘defamation of religion’

The UN, to paraphrase Churchill, can always be counted on to do the right thing – after it’s tried everything else. For the first time since 1998, the UN General Assembly didn’t qualify its latest call for religious tolerance with the expectation that states ban all forms of expression perceived to be critical or insulting towards religion.

No prizes for guessing which brand of sky-fairyism was largely behind the anti-religious defamation ban: of all the major religions, Islam is arguably the only one that has state-sanctioned anti-blasphemy tendencies that often manifest in violent, murderous ways. Until recently, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which comprises 57 Muslim-majority countries, was successful in pushing through annual UN resolutions on “combating defamation of religions”. But the OIC’s decade-long winning streak has finally been broken.

Russell Blackford’s new book Freedom of Religion and the Secular State explores the relevant issues of freedom of speech and freedom of religion in depth. Blackford wrote the following comments on his blog, which touch on the salient aspects of the UN’s position, past and present, regarding religious defamation:

It is one thing for the UN to condemn actions to provoke inter-religious hatred. No one wants to see the world’s societies riven with hatred, though it is worth remembering that much of the hatred comes from religious conservatives who refuse to tolerate sexual freedom (especially that of women), female emancipation, and any expressions of erotic love outside of heterosexual monogamy. Even in Western societies we see this in the emotive opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. It’s another thing to become so focused on this issue that important kinds of speech are stigmatised and even prohibited. There is a public interest in scrutiny of religion, and it should be a fair target for criticism, denunciation, or satire.

At any rate, we should always err, if err we must, on the side of freedom of speech. Whatever lines are drawn in the area should allow bold speech that might offend – and this includes various forms of anti-religious criticism and satire. Such a liberal attitude to speech might permit some ugly speech, but the long-term effect would be to reinforce a valuable lesson: ideologically opposed groups of whatever kind – religious, political, or philosophical – must make their own way, enduring criticism, and even satire, from their opponents, without asking the state to interfere.

Any ideology, religious or otherwise, that requires force and coercion to propagate reveals itself to be insecure, flawed, and tyrannical. You have to threaten, torture, jail and execute people to make them accept the validity of absurd ideas. True and good ideas on the other hand are self-evident to all reasonable people.




22.12.11

“All will have appetizing vaginas”

We’re all familiar with the promise of 72 virgins waiting in Paradise for devout Muslim men who martyr themselves in jihad against the enemies of Islam. But I recently came across a rather vivid description of said promise, written by Qur’anic commentator and polymath al-Suyuti (who died in 1505):

Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas.

So Paradise is going to be full of guys strutting around with perpetual boners. I imagine that this being the afterlife, medical concerns regarding erections lasting longer than 4 hours are moot. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Here we have a Saudi cleric, Muhammad al-Munajid, giving a lascivious description of the virginal delights awaiting good Muslim men when they shuffle off this mortal coil (and apparently only the men will have hot unvirgining sex to look forward to in Paradise).





If Al-Munajid’s Quranic exposition doesn’t make clear the misogyny and male chauvinism inherent in Islam, I don’t know what does. The women in Paradise are nothing more than the juvenile projections of selfish, immature boy-men who can’t stand the fact that women have flaws. It wouldn’t surprise me if this poisonous perfectionism contributes to the horrible treatment that women receive from a conservative Muslim patriarchy. Al-Munajid obviously finds certain natural aspects of women to be unseemly, if not outright disgusting.

Also, how is visible bone marrow supposed to be a turn-on? Or is that some Arab fetish I’m not aware of?




HT: Justin Griffith at Rock Beyond Belief




30.11.11

When women betray their own gender

Here’s the gist of Madeleine Bunting’s Guardian article: Western imperialists cynically used the oppression of women by the Taliban as a pretext to carry out the US-led Afghan War.

Bunting isn’t anti-women’s rights; she’s anti-fighting-for-women’s-rights-while-also-shooting-and-bombing-their-oppressors. Now this may seem like a fair enough position to take. Spreading the idea of gender equality shouldn’t require the invasion of another country and subsequent mass killing of its people. Yet Bunting affects a concerned pacifism that disturbingly slips into cultural relativism.

Regarding the initial enthusiasm for the Afghan War, she writes:

Key to this largely supportive public opinion was how, over the course of a few weeks in 2001, a war of revenge was reframed as a war for human rights in Afghanistan, and in particular the rights of women. It was a narrative to justify war that proved remarkably powerful. A cause that had been dismissed and ignored for years in Washington suddenly moved centre-stage. The video of a woman being executed in Kabul stadium that the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan had offered to the BBC and CNN without success was taken up by the Pentagon and used extensively. The Taliban's brutal treatment of women, the closure of girls schools: all were used to justify military invasion and close down debate.

Iran denied seat on UN Women board

Iran added another mark of shame to its national image when it recently failed to get a seat on the executive board of UN Women, a newly formed UN agency for gender equality and women’s rights. This is the second time this year that Iran has been denied a place in a human rights organization. In April Iran withdrew its bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, presumably due to pressure exerted by liberal UN members who saw the utter ridiculousness of having an egregiously human rights-abusing nation like Iran on the council.

Ashtiani’s execution not revoked, only delayed

The 3rd of November has come and gone. To the relief of thousands, perhaps even millions, around the world, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is still alive. But the Iranian judiciary has only postponed her execution, not revoked it, and may yet proceed with her murder within the next few days.

Secularism and democracy in Turkey

Earlier this month, Turkey held a referendum on changes to its constitution, with 58 percent of Turks saying ‘yes’ to the amendments. The proposed changes aim to reduce the power and remove the privileges currently enjoyed by the military – who created the present constitution after a 1980 coup – and restore the sovereignty of civilian institutions, among other goals. According to UCLA School of Law acting professor Asli Ü. Bâli, the revised constitution will include provisions that “empower civilian courts while reducing the jurisdiction of military courts; strengthen gender equality and protections for children, the elderly, veterans and the disabled; improve privacy rights and access to government records; expand collective bargaining rights; and remove immunities long afforded to those responsible for the 1980 military coup.”

'Hijab is Protection'

I'm all for cultural diversity and yes, I do deplore the accelerating homogenization that's taking place globally. But I draw the line at oppressive practices that are promoted on supposed ethical grounds. Especially when the promotion - or rather propaganda - relies on crude caricatures of gender.

Who should feel more insulted by this message? Women, for being condescended to as unwitting temptresses who, unless they obliterate their femininity, are powerless to stop the attacks of lustful male predators? Or men, for being collectively portrayed as exactly that kind of sex-crazed thug?




17.7.10




Image taken from the Raajjeislam website.

Three cheers for the RANZCOG!

It’s encouraging to know that Aussie doctors unequivocally oppose the horrible practice of female genital mutilation – euphemistically referred to as ‘ritual nicking’ in this case – despite the knee-jerk objections of cultural relativists. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists appears to possess a moral backbone evidently lacking in their American counterparts, who actually considered a less drastic form of clitoral cutting as a compromise between religious ‘requirements’ and adherence to human rights. To their credit though, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has since outrightly rejected this policy.

PodBlack Cat’s blog write-up on this topic has additional content and links, including a couple of videos, one of which is an interview with author and human rights activist Waris Dirie, who underwent genital mutilation when she was a child. Rant & Reason also has a post that expounds on the issue in more depth.

If there is one lesson that we should take away from all this, it is that there is demonstrably little value in holding on to traditions from a bygone age that are not only irrelevant to today’s reality, but also proven to be harmful, whether physically or psychologically. Modernity isn’t exactly the hell-on-earth disgruntled nostalgics believe it to be, despite having bequeathed us the nuclear bomb, big box stores, e-mail spam and Justin Bieber. Cultural practices whose origins lie in a nomadic, patriarchal, tribal past are indefensible if their current exercise flouts every single bit of progress humanity has since made in our understanding of what contributes to people’s welfare. Whatever their gender.




28.5.10

The dark side of Japanese traditionalism

It’s a familiar travel-guide cliché: Japan is a land of contrasts, where tradition and modernity coexist in harmony. While many elements of Japanese traditional culture embody all that is refined, sensitive, beautiful and noble, there are aspects of such traditionalism that aren’t as flattering, which fall far from the lofty reaches that the best in Japanese culture attains. Two that are especially pervasive are gender inequality with its attendant discrimination against women, and negative attitudes towards migrants.