In their efforts to discredit advocates of women’s international human rights

More from Mayer’s long 2000 article on gender apartheid. The article is very apposite to what we’ve been talking about lately.

The discussion will point out how those seeking to defend what amounts to gender apartheid have tried to turn the discussion away from actual patterns of oppression of women, endeavoring to depoliticize this phenomenon by, among other things, minimizing the important role of the state. Instead of acknowledging that governments of modern states are controlled by men and that these men may have vested interests in retaining a status quo that favors them, they pretend that religion and culture are independent determinants of women’s status. [Read more…]

Ibn Warraq on Edward Said

More than ten years ago I published at ur-B&W a long article by Ibn Warraq, adapted from a longer one with full references and notes, on Debunking Edward Said. I think it’s relevant to things we’ve been discussing lately, so I want to pay it a visit.’

Consider the following observations on the state of affairs in the contemporary
Arab world :

The history of the modern Arab world – with all its political failures,
its human rights abuses, its stunning military incompetences, its decreasing
production, the fact that alone of all modern peoples, we have receded in democratic and technological and scientific development – is disfigured by a whole series of out-moded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never
suffered and that the holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the
Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much – far too much – currency;

….[T]o support Roger Garaudy, the French writer convicted earlier this year
on charges of holocaust denial, in the name of ‘freedom of opinion’ is a silly
ruse that discredits us more than we already are discredited in the world’s
eyes for our incompetence, our failure to fight a decent battle, our radical
misunderstanding of history and the world we live in. Why don’t we fight harder
for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be
told, that scarcely exists?

It takes considerable courage for an Arab to write self-criticism of this kind,
indeed, without the personal pronoun ‘we’ how many would have guessed that an
Arab, let alone Edward Said himself, had written it? [Read more…]

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…]