A guest post by Bruce Everett
Day Four – Sunday: Last day of the convention proper…
I have to confess, owing to considerations arising out of personal matters not mine to recount, coupled with a genuine need for more sleep, I missed the first three speakers of Sunday’s presentations: Eugenie Scott, Tanya Smith and Annie Laurie Gaylor. [Read more…]
Maryam points out this helpful item: a speech last summer by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, religious advisor to Ahmadinejad, explaining that human rights have no place in Islam. Oh. Well thank you; that’s what critics keep saying, and it’s helpful to have the corroboration.
Mesbah-Yazdi, the theoretician of violence, gave a new speech at the end of Ramadan (end of August) in which he criticized the opinion of those people who claim Islam is based on generosity and respect for Human Rights.
Yes exactly! I’m always criticizing the opinion of those people too. I keep asking them to name just one place where that works out in practice – just one country where the government is “Islamic” in some sense and generosity and respect for human rights are running the show. Just one.
In this speech he said: “Democracy, Human Rights and the rights of citizenship have no place in Islam.” He continued that there is no room for freedom of speech and thought in Islam, and that Islam is based on strictness and violence. Muslims and those who convert to the religion of Islam must only adhere to the opinions of the leader of the Islamic Republic, according to Mesbah. He continued: “Until a person has converted to Islam, he is free — but democracy and Human Rights have no meaning within Islam. Everything must be under the surveillance of the government, even the way people dress. And if some people say otherwise, they don’t know Islam.”
Tariq Ramadan please note.
“There is no room for freedom of speech and thought in Islam, and that Islam is based on strictness and violence.” That really sums it up admirably. Two words do the job. That’s exactly what I fear and loathe about Islam-in-power: strictness and violence. That’s a horrible way to live; absolutely horrible. It’s very helpful of Mesbah-Yazdi to make it so clear for us. It’s not as if people can accuse him of Islamophobia! And they can’t pretend it’s Western racism, either.
This little spat between the Inquisition and the slightly disobedient (but not disobedient enough) nuns reminds me of something that we generally don’t focus on sharply enough. It’s certainly obvious, yet it kind of fades into the background of the taken-for-granted.
The something is:
Women are the only category of people who can’t ever be Catholic clergy no matter what they do or don’t do. The only one. Atheists can change their minds. Buddhists can convert. Convicted felons can repent. Gay men can be closeted.
But women, and women only, are barred, completely and finally; barred as such, barred from birth, barred because of what they are. Trying to unbar them is an excommunicable crime, while raping children is not. Raping children in the performance of priestly duties is not an excommunicable crime – but ordinating ordaining a woman as a priest is.
It’s very interesting, if you think about it. There are no Chinese or Brazilian disciples of Jesus, but that doesn’t make Chinese or Brazilian men ineligible for the priesthood. Yet the explanation for the ineligibility of women is that there were no female disciples. That’s a transparently feeble reason.
No; it’s just that the church and its all-male staff share the age-old bigotry about women and they’re authoritarian and vicious enough to refuse to abandon it. They think women aren’t good enough to be priests. They think women are too dirty, and stupid, and sluttish, and weak to be priests. They don’t want women stinking up their club house. And because religion is Special, they get to act on their bigotry.
Ah the dear US Conference of Catholic bishops – how it does love itself a chance to tell people to obey it. The same of course goes for the dear Inquisition, now thoughtfully renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was Ratzinger’s part of the organization until he got the top job. The Inquisition has issued a new Obey Us, which the UCCB has kindly shared. It begins with – well, with Obey Us, of course.
The context in which the current doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States of America is best situated is articulated by Pope John Paul II in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita consecrata of 1996. Commenting on the genius of the charism of religious life in the Church, Pope John Paul says: “In founders and foundresses we see a constant and lively sense of the Church, which they manifest by their full participation in all aspects of the Church’s life, and in their ready obedience to the Bishops and especially to the Roman Pontiff. [Read more…]
A guy in Russia was arrested for saying gay people should have rights.
Sergey Kondrashov was jailed in St. Petersburg, Russia for defying a new draconian “homosexual propaganda” law. His crime? Holding up a sign saying a close family friend, who happens to be lesbian, deserves the same rights as he and his wife. Stand with Sergey – and other Russians who are refusing to be silenced, and challenging the spread of this backwards law nationwide.
There’s a petition you can sign. Only 30 thousand to go and they’ll have 100 thousand.
So people are trying to combat the bullying of LGBQ teenagers in school, and religious conservative lunatics are trying to combat the efforts to combat the bullying. Yes that’s right. Grown-ups in grown-up organizations full of grown-ups are trying to prevent people from stopping bullying in schools.
Last year, many conservative political organizations, including Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel and Concerned Women for America vocally opposed attempts by school districts and public officials to combat bullying based on actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity—categories typically considered along with other attributes such as race, sex, age, disability and national origin. Moreover, these groups smeared and demonized advocacy groups that collaborate with teachers and administrators in developing best practices to combat bullying, warning that anti-bullying groups would encourage everything from “homosexualizing” youth to anti-Christian persecution to pedophilia. [Read more…]
I saw this billboard while on a bus yesterday; it was urging adoption of pets from shelters, and it was a big banner portrait (not a photograph) of five Yellow Lab puppies. Four of the five are looking straight out, while just one of them is tilting the head…and has a pink bow behind the ear. Well gee, guess what we’re supposed to think – the one with the bow is A Girl.
So why is there only one girl then? Why four forthright direct Boy puppies and just one flirtatious coy bow-behind-the-ear Girl?
(And why single her out? Why signal her sex? Why put a bow behind her ear? When the fuck do puppies ever wear bows behind their ears?!! How would you even attach it? And why would you try when you know the puppy would yank it off in two seconds flat? What is your point?) [Read more…]
Leo Igwe reports there is a new church in Cross River-Akwa Ibom states in Nigeria that looks set to cause more misery, torture and death with accusations of witchcraft.
Leo writes:
Recently, the prophetic ministry joined the vanguard of witch hunting churches that are fueling witchcraft related abuse in the region. [Read more…]
But then we read a story from Saudi Arabia, and we are struck dumb.
A Sri Lankan woman is currently facing decapitation by sword on a witchcraft charge in Saudi Arabia, in accordance with Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam. The UN reports executions tripled in the kingdom in 2011.
A Saudi man complained that in a shopping mall his 13-year-old daughter “suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, which happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman,” reports the daily Okaz.
After the local man denounced the Sri Lankan for casting a spell on his daughter, police in the port city of Jeddah found it sufficient cause to arrest the woman.
A Sri Lankan woman was in a shopping mall. Some guy said his daughter “suddenly started acting in an abnormal way” after she came close to the woman. The woman was arrested as a witch, and could have her head chopped off.
It makes you hate the species. It makes you wish human beings had never evolved.
In the absolute monarchy that Saudi Arabia is, a criminal code does not exist per se. Court sentences are based on Islamic Sharia law on the interpretation of judges.
It’s all been such a mistake. We were once little shrew-like animals. That would be so much better.
The beheading of Indonesian national Ruyati binti Sapubi in 2011 sparked a widely-discussed scandal. The 54-year-old woman, who worked as a maid, was sentenced to death after she confessed of murdering her employer with a kitchen knife after suffering abuse.
With about 1.5 million Indonesians working in Saudi Arabia, many of them as maids, the ruling caused an outcry in Indonesia, which even considered banning its women from working in the kingdom. After the Saudi Arabian ambassador officially apologized for the incident, the initiative was left in oblivion.
The cases of mistreatment of maids, who came in waves to Saudi Arabia in the recent past, received a different attitude of national justice. In April 2011, a Saudi woman convicted of torturing her Indonesian maid successfully had her conviction quashed on appeal.
I saw this horror via Taslima.
I can only find it funny. There was an old joke about Martin Amis – that his first book was titled My Struggle. That should be a new joke about the Romneys. Our Struggle.
You’re going to need a hanky for this sob story, as told by Ann Romney back in 1994, of just how hard young Mitt and Ann struggled when they were just starting out:
They were not easy years. […]We were happy, studying hard. Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time. [Read more…]