Imagine

And one other thing. The way Laurie Penny keeps talking about “Muslim feminists” while ignoring the existence of ex-Muslims and non-Muslims, as if no ex/non-Muslim could possibly have anything relevant to say about women’s rights and religion, or standing to say it – as if only Muslims are allowed to say anything critical of Islam, and as if all non-Muslim critics of Islam are simply racists in disguise –

– the way Laurie Penny keeps doing that –

Well imagine carrying on that way if the subject were the Vatican v women. [Read more…]

Relatively benign

Gita Sahgal alerted me to this long article by Ann Elizabeth Mayer on “A Benign Aparheid: How Gender Apartheid Has Been Rationalized” [pdf].

An examination of the situation of women in some Middle Eastern countries reveals patterns of systematic, egregious gender discrimination. However, to date international law has failed to classify such treatment as a kind of apartheid, and the international community has failed to impose sanctions to deter such treatment of women. This article explores why gender apartheid, despite its direct analogies to racial apartheid, has largely been seen as a relatively benign phenomenon. [Read more…]

It’s hard to get people to leave their desks

A couple of weeks ago the Secular Coalition for American held a briefing for Congress to introduce the “Model Secular Policy Guide,” a book of separation-of-church-and-state policy prescriptions. They chose a rather…strange way to go about it. USA Today reports:

It had all the makings of a Christmas party: sparkling cider, cheese, chocolate-covered strawberries, even fashion models wearing sparkling gowns.

……………………………….What? [Read more…]

Mutts and purebreds

Motivated by Janet Heimlich’s post and the discussion of it here, I’m reading Nicholas Humphrey’s 1997 Amnesty lecture published at Edge. Its subject is childhood teaching and indoctrination. One major theme is the difference between the two; between open and closed.

Donald Kraybill, an anthropologist who made a close study of an Amish community in Pennsylvania, was well placed to observe how this works out in practice. “Groups threatened by cultural extinction,” he writes, “must indoctrinate their offspring if they want to preserve their unique heritage. Socialization of the very young is one of the most potent forms of social control. As cultural values slip into the child’s mind, they become personal values—embedded in conscience and governed by emotions. . . The Amish contend that the Bible commissions parents to train their children in religious matters as well as the Amish way of life. . . An ethnic nursery, staffed by extended family and church members, moulds the Amish world view in the child’s mind from the earliest moments of consciousness.”(7)

The question is…is the preservation of a “unique heritage” worth imprisoning children in a closed system?

I think it’s not, but then I have the benefit (if I’m right that it is a benefit) of having been raised in an open one. I wasn’t raised on a single book, nor was I raised to preserve a unique heritage. I was raised a mutt. [Read more…]

You have to judge

Janet Heimlich would like to get Richard Dawkins to withdraw a comment he made about how we should view people who abused children a few generations ago. She explains in a post at her blog at Religious Child Mistreatment.

Dr. Dawkins made the comment after he was asked about his downplaying of having been fondled by a teacher at his boarding school in Salisbury, England. Calling the molestation “mild pedophilia,” Dr. Dawkins said that he didn’t think that he, nor other boys who experienced the same molestation by the teacher, suffered “lasting harm.” [Read more…]

The virtues of being partisan

Maryam interviews Marieme Helie Lucas. Right at the start MHL makes an important point:

As long as all these attempts by Muslim fundamentalists – whether in the form of different rights for different categories of citizens, veiling, sex segregation and so on – is not analysed in political terms – as the expression of an anti-democratic programme, but rather in terms of religion or culture, the British government will not limit the rise of this extreme-Right movement, which will be increasingly difficult to control. [Read more…]

Dog’s elevenses

Laurie Penny amended her article slightly in response to the comments she got on Twitter.

Her second paragraph as she first wrote it:

The recent blanket coverage of the “gender segregation on campus” story was a textbook case. This month Student Rights, a pressure group not run by students, released a report vastly exaggerating a suggestion by Universities UK that male and female students might be asked to sit separately in some lectures led by Islamic guest speakers. The tabloids went bananas. Extremists were taking over the academy.

The amended version:

The recent blanket coverage of the “gender segregation on campus” story was a textbook case. This month Student Rights, a pressure group not run by students, released a report vastly exaggerating a suggestion by Universities UK that male and female students might be asked to sit separately in some lectures led by Islamic guest speakers. Many Asian women’s groups and individual Muslim feminists joined the subsequent protests, sometimes taking personal risks to do so. Unfortunately, rightwing commentators and tabloids seized upon the issue to imply that Islamic extremists are taking over the British academy. [Read more…]

Be sure not to support liberal feminists of Muslim background

Alom Shaha alerted me to a tumblr post by King of Dawah.

Jemima Cheltenham – We Betray Our Principles By Supporting Them

As white liberal feminists we must oppose misogyny in all its forms.

Especially when we get scared by requests from Muslim feminists that we stand side by side with them in the face of angry reactionaries and passive aggressive sulking community leaders.

Yes, the Muslim liberals and feminists who are fighting for equal rights and against the dictates of clerics are very brave. But as white liberals we have to be even braver, by ignoring them, so we don’t get scared by scary men with beards demanding reactionary things who may call us racist for supporting women who struggle for the same rights as everyone else.

Yeah.

Read the whole thing.

Another dog’s breakfast

Oh christ, not again. This time it’s Laurie Penny getting it all wrong.

This isn’t ‘feminism’, says the title, It’s Islamophobia. The title isn’t directly the fault of the author, since editors write the titles, but that one does reflect what the article says, and it’s the same old crock of shit.

As a person who writes about women’s issues, I am constantly being told that Islam is the greatest threat to gender equality in this or any other country – mostly by white men, who always know best.

Well that can happen, yes. (Dear Muslima? Yes. It can happen.) But that doesn’t mean that there is no problem with conservative Islam and Islamism when it comes to gender equality, just as there are problems with conservative Christianity, the Vatican, conservative Judaism – you get the idea. Liberal, secular versions of religion are mostly benign, epistemology apart, but it doesn’t follow that all versions of religion are. [Read more…]