Nigerian police arrest…a protest leader

Yes that’s right. Nigerian police arrest not a kidnapper or an army of kidnappers; not a Boko Haram bigwig; a protest leader. Why? Because the kidnapped girls are not really her daughters. She said they were her daughters! They’re not! Bust her!

A source in the presidency said Naomi Mutah Nyadar had been detained over allegations of falsely claiming to be the mother of one of the missing girls. [Read more…]

Saratu’s father fainted

I read the Guardian article again (I read it the first time a few days ago when I did a post about it) and I don’t think the Guardian is being euphemistic here. The way the story is set up, the news that the girls “are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants” was taken very hard – the news was worse than they were hoping, not better. I assumed that was because 1. it confirmed they were being raped (but there can’t have been much doubt of that in any case) and 2. it meant they were all the more firmly trapped.

Let’s look at it again.

For two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed for news of his niece Saratu, who was among more than 230 schoolgirls snatched by Boko Haram militants in the north-eastern Nigerian village of Chibok. Then on Monday the agonising silence was broken.

When Dawah called together his extended family members to give an update, he asked that the most elderly not attend, fearing they would not be able to cope with what he had to say. “We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls. They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants,” Dawah told his relatives.

Saratu’s father fainted; he has since been in hospital. [Read more…]

Labels at a distance

Proshant at Nirmukta talks about the label “hate hag” currently trendy in India.

The term ‘hate hag’, used to describe “women supporters of Narendra Modi” in an Outlook Magazine article recently gained currency, especially on social media…

…

In this essay I critique the term ‘hate hag’ through three broad arguments: first, I argue the term ‘hate hag’ is inherently sexist and misogynistic, and in using the term to ‘shame’ women because of their political ideology, we reinstate another form of a the medieval witch-hunt. [Read more…]

Finally paying attention

Nick Cohen points out – as I’ve been pointing out – that the Nigerian schoolgirls haven’t been kidnapped but enslaved. They weren’t just yanked away to be hostages or bargining chips or shields, but to be sexual slaves and, no doubt, labor slaves as well.

A desire for sexual supremacy accompanies their loathing of knowledge. They take 220 schoolgirls as slaves and force them to convert to their version of Islam. They either rape them or sell them on for £10 or so to new masters. The girls are the victims of slavery, child abuse and forced marriage. Their captors are by extension slavers and rapists. [Read more…]

Late night, alcoholism, punching down

It’s bad news for insomniacs, you know, Craig Ferguson’s divorce from The Late Late Show. I’ve never watched any of the other – the normal – late shows, but if I had an attack of the wide-awakes then Craig Ferguson was just the ticket.

Slate says some of why (although much of my why is somewhat different):

Still, this is bad news for fans of late night television. It’s even bad news for haters of late night television: Ferguson was an irreverent genius, a consistent and consistently surprising comic who took the genre’s tiresome format and threw it out the window. He had no in-house band. He had no in-house announcer. His co-host was a robot. [Read more…]

A printing error by an external company

The University of East London’s Islamic Society is attempting the “you are victimizing us” ploy, after UEL canceled a gender-segregated Isoc event in mid-April, according to the Newham Recorder.

The University of East London’s Isoc claimed the segregation, which would have meant separate seating for men and women, was advertised by mistake due to a printing error by an external company.

However, it defended the policy on its Twitter feed with the hashtag “SegregationIsNotHate”, and said the hastily re-arranged April 17 dinner went ahead in a North London mosque with segregated seating. [Read more…]

Did he get his law degree at Walmart?

The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore – a guy you would expect to know something about the Constitution, given his job – says the First Amendment protects only Christians.

Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us. [Read more…]

ReMorePlusAgain sophistification

This time it’s a piece in the Irish Times, by Joe Humphreys, about a new book by Richard Kearney, who is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. What the article neglects to mention is that Boston College is Catholic.

The subject is familiar – the current discussion of theism and atheism is simplistic and boring; we need something more sophisticated than that. Enter the guy from the Jesuit college.

The philosopher is trying to move the discussion onwards through his writings and The Guestbook Project, which is described as an “experiment” in hospitality and inter-faith dialogue and is sponsored by his employer, Boston College. In his book Anatheism: Returning to God after God, Kearney rejects the notion that we must chose between either theism or atheism. This forms the basis of today’s idea: God is a symbol that constantly requires reinterpretation. [Read more…]