At 50 Million Missing, a post about the axing of Taslima’s tv serial.

Feminist author Taslima Nasreen’s scripted television series (in Bengali) titled ‘Dusahobas’ meaning ” Unbearable Cohabitation,” although ready for telecast has been “indefinitely postponed” for airing, because of pressure from Islamic clerics in the state of West Bengal.

Abdul Aziz of the religious group Milli Ittehad Parishad said their group had written to the producers of the show and told them to withdraw Taslima’s name and reference from the serial, even though Taslima has scripted the show! Aziz said, “We have been told that there are some scenes in the serial that might hurt our sentiments,” even though he does not specify as to what exactly in the show is hurtful to Muslim sentiments in India.

In fact this show is not about Islam but about issues that are effecting women of all religious and cultural communities in India, issues like dowry, dowry violence, sexual violence, and prevention of education. Issues that Indian society needs to contend with through mass media like television. [Read more…]

The Times of India reports:

A year after the Nirbhaya horror, yet another gang-rape victim lost her battle for life at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on New Year’s Eve.

The 16-year-old, a resident of Madhyamgram in North 24-Parganas, was gang-raped at Badu on October 25. The next day, while on her way back home from the police station after lodging a complaint, she was allegedly sexually abused all over again.

The teenager and her family were so traumatized by the sequence of events that they chose to shift to another tenement close to Kolkata Airport. But there was no respite. The miscreants continued to hound her till she finally poured kerosene on herself on December 23 and lit a match. She was admitted to the hospital with 40% burns and finally succumbed on Tuesday afternoon. [Read more…]

Thanks to a comment by Ariel, we can read this interview with a priest, Dariusz Oko from the Papal University of John Paul II, translated from Polish and titled Gender ideology destroys a cradle of humankind – a family. This is good because I was just wondering what the Vatican thinks it means by “gender ideology.” Let’s find out.

Anna Cichobłazińska: – In media there appear more and more terms: gender, ideology of gender, totalitarianism of gender, philosophy of gender. What does this term mean and why is it so dangerous?

Fr. Dariusz Oko: We should speak not so much about ‘philosophy’ but about ‘ideology’ of gender. Philosophy is a radical search for the truth and the good, whereas the ideology is a tool of a ruthless fight about one’s interests also at the cost of the truth and the good. [Read more…]

Sunday morning at 10 a.m. UK time, BBC1 The Big Questions will be asking the ridiculous question, “Should Human Rights always outweigh Religious Rights?”

But the good news is that Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis will be taking part, so it should be interesting.

Mind you, I can ruin the suspense right now by saying yes, of course they should. Any religious practice that violates one or more human rights should not be allowed. There is no “religious right” to enslave people or cut off their genitalia or keep them out of school or deny them medical treatment or prevent them from getting birth control.