'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.

Why secularism matters

Those of us who take our secular societies for granted need to be reminded that a great number of our fellow human beings live under governments that don't distinguish between politics and religion. That there exists cultures that conflate morality with one particular set of irreproachable, divinely-mandated rules. That those whom fate has cast into such a culture may have to pay a terrible price if their conscience should ever lead them to question and perhaps reject those rules.

Culture viewed through the three 'E's

All of culture can be examined on the level of entertainment, education and edification. Some cultural products score highly in one ‘E’ while neglecting the other two, while some address all three to a more or less similar degree. Yet the general vibe is that (too) many areas of culture emphasize only one ‘E’: entertainment. Variety shows, reality TV, no holds barred cage fights, Michael Bay movies; all these vacuous descendants of the ancient gladiatorial combats in the Colosseum have now annexed vast tracts of the cultural landscape into their sphere of influence. Meanwhile those aspects of culture that focus on educating and edifying their audience are shouted down by the cacophony of the spectacle.

Against immaterialism: A rebuttal of esoteric metaphysics

In his article ‘It’s Immaterial’ (New Humanist magazine, May/June 2010), Hindu Council UK director and trained scientist Jay Lakhani becomes the umpteenth person to attempt the impossible: reconciling unprovable, faith-based religion with testable, evidence-based science. More specifically, it is the ideas of non-theistic esoteric Hinduism that Lakhani puts forward as a replacement for what he scoldingly calls the ‘materialist paradigm’. “It has long seemed to me,” Lakhani writes, “that the paradigm which now needs to be challenged is that of materialism, that worldview that everything and everyone is essentially just a product of little bits of matter.” With this line, Lakhani takes his place amongst the ranks of discontents revolting against the reductionist, secular, Western (and thus automatically disreputable) idea of a purely physical universe governed by discoverable laws.

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