“How does one manage to drink a pint of beer, or any other drink for that matter, while wearing a full burka?”
Like the answer to most of life’s questions, youtube has the answers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQTIONbRuEU
SoG – “How does one manage to drink a pint of beer, or any other drink for that matter, while wearing a full burka?”
Next time you see one worn, have a close inspection. The very small hole in front can take a straw. Your case should not take long to come up in court.. .. .. ..
I feel their pain. I hate wearing a face covering whilst shopping. But at least it makes you shop a lot faster, thus giving me more time for doing my thing…
Thanks for the link, Peter Nason. Unfortunately, that video only shows how to eat or drink wearing a niqab face covering, which is easy to lift for eating or drinking, without revealing much of the face, as shown in the video. (I have actually seen women eating and drinking while wearing the niqab in that well-known Middle Eastern city, Birmingham.)
As far as I know, a burka encases the entire head and body, with only a small opening in front of the eyes (and even that opening is sometimes filled with some kind of wide-mesh grid). There may of course be some sort of hatch in front of the mouth that I am not aware of.
“(I have actually seen women eating and drinking while wearing the niqab in that well-known Middle Eastern city, Birmingham.)”
They do that in the Holy City of Toronto Canada as well. It looks a bit silly to me, pulling the bits of cloth away to stick a forkful in their faces—but such is the price of female religious freedom. If I’m a lucky voyeur I can catch a brief glimpse of naked Muslim lips on the careless sinners.
I was fortunate (if you want to call it that) to be in the upper-story restaurant at Al Faisaliyah Centre with my (male) friends. Being a somewhat cosmopolitan place, women were allowed to be in the same room, though well-distanced at their own table. Without wanting to be obvious about it, we took turns checking out how the ladies imbibed their coffee or sodas: they simply lifted up the niquab, discreetly, to take a sip.
I can remember travelling to a football game in yorkshire, england..when on seeing a group of muslim women , all burqa’d up for a night on the tiles..the coachload of fans began singing…”get your face out, get your face out, get your face out for the lads”….I thought it was funny at the time.
A reminder of what is not being discussed: the woman’s perspective and a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space and simply mind their own beeswax: Katie Russell: Without our consent
href=”https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/29/im-a-survivor-of-child-sexual-grooming-it-took-me-20-years-to-know-it-wasnt-my-fault”>I’m a survivor of child sexual grooming. It took me 20 years to know it wasn’t my fault
The homepage for World Hijab Day . This is what their press release states:
“The overall mission of WHD is to create a more peaceful world where global citizens respect each other. Particularly, WHD focuses on fighting bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice against Muslim women. This is most crucial in these times where Hijab is being banned in some countries while in other countries, Muslim women are being targeted and harassed verbally and physically.”
So again they are responding to the behaviour of men who simply cannot respect woman’s choice in how she deals with predatory men and tries to defend her space.
So how do men respond? They belittle their cause and find fault using the plight of other women in Muslim countries as a pretext.
i’m with misanthropopope – the connection is spurious. But in an idealistic fantasy vein … if the culture involved could just sort of disappear, both issues would disappear along with it, and Islam would be left to the Indonesians and other such less notoriously dysfunctional adherents.
I will confess to being a little concerned that ordinary women will grow to like the idea of underwear face. I mean, it sounds crazy, but since I don’t understand the attraction the Arabs have to concealment, it’s hard to say for sure that it can’t happen here, and that would be stinking shame. Extremely unlikely … I hope. Back in the ’70s I would have given fair odds to the end of the brassiere, but no such luck.
So Glenn, since you are a big fan of freedom of choice, would you agree that women should be free to go bare-headed if they want to, and that, even in conservative Islamic countries, to punish women for refusing to cover their heads is an immoral violation of their rights?
jb : As I said above, there is a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space and simply mind their own beeswax. I meant this to apply to all communities where women are insecure due to the poor conduct of men. Deal with the issue: men’s conduct and the need for boys to raised with a respect for women.
As for the cartoon its purpose is point-scoring to affirm whatever atheists want to believe about themselves (i.e., feed their ego). That’s the cartoonists brief. Its certainly not about telling atheists that maybe, just maybe, we’ve failure to deliver for women.
Glenn, I asked you a direct question, and you have not answered it. Again, do you think it is wrong for the authorities in Islamic countries to punish women who refuse to cover their heads in public? Your answer could be “yes”, or it could be “no”, or it could be some variation on “it depends on the circumstances”. But lamenting “a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space” is a lawyerly evasion that does not answer the question I asked.
This is a recurring argument. I myself have witnessed a lot of change in the workplace (regarding men’s interaction with women) since 1983. Clearly the monotheistic religions have failed to embrace the secular zeitgeist. Glenn…is that true or false…
jb : “do you think it is wrong for the authorities in Islamic countries to punish women who refuse to cover their heads in public”
Yes, now deal with the real issue: men’s conduct and how to raise boys so that they do not grow up to be drunken lads all piled into a bus travelling about town telling niqabis to show their faces, hijabis to show their hair, and the rest to show a bit of p***…. while onlookers sit back and have a bit of laugh.
Atheists have no credibility on this issue. Who were the leading advocates of conquest and war in the name of women’s rights and indeed civilisation? Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens said it would be worth the sacrifice of lives (not theirs of course). And where are they now? They moved on, enjoying the profits from book-sales and appearances to the applause of the their uncritical minions, while continuing to feed the frenzied mob (you guys) with their militant atheism and Western chauvinism (suggested reading: Foster, R., Megoran, N, Dunn, M. “Towards a geopolitics of atheism: Critical geopolitics post the ‘War on Terror’”, Political Geography, Vol. 60, Sept. 2017, pp. 179-189).
It’s time for atheist to admit their own failures, stop belittling and scapegoating religion, and address real underlying issues (or zip it).
Eh? I had to go back and look at the cartoon – it’s about burkas. The real issue? Burkas, it seems to me, but I tend to take things too literally I suppose.
Mens treatment of women, it’s an issue or perhaps a set of issues, and it seems like kind of a nutty leap from the subject of the cartoon. Recognizing that you’ve brought this up in a kind
[oops] … of atheists’ corner, are you thinking maybe it has something to do with religion? Like, religion is not known the world around for improving the woman’s lot so much, so maybe that’s another reason we ought to retire the priests and mullahs?
I don’t know, I really doubt religion or lack thereof has much to do directly with how people actually behave. But I suspect it does work perhaps even better than language to impede cultural exchange, e.g. the Arab world, a medieval cultural island.
Donn: Eh? I had to go back and look at the cartoon – it’s about burkas. The real issue? Burkas, it seems to me, but I tend to take things too literally I suppose.
Yes for you its about burkas, and burkas alone. Easy points.
Glenn. Perhaps we should have all become trappist monks rather than follow our football team and had the craic associated to it. Whether heckling those muslim women was funny or not is subjective obviously. But it did highlight a clash of culture. To suggest that instance was equivent to the manchester bomber is egregious me thinks…
Jesus and Mo is the antithesis of the scientific ethos. A scientific approach demands a self-critical approach. It would caricature atheists and theists alike; their failings and doubles standards. You’d see cartoons lampooning Dawkins and Harris along side Jesus and Mo. It would require engaging and learning from people you disagree with and holding your own beliefs up for scrutiny.
Instead, Jesus and Mo is intended to serve those who believe atheists are beyond reproach; their thoughts and actions are to be taken as always for the betterment of society and the “truth”. As such it is tailor made for those whose egos are fragile and demand constant affirmation of their cherished beliefs. It can only appeal to atheists who are dogmatic and not atheists who are sincere and hold themselves (before anyone else) to account.
thank you Glenn. I feel seen (in a good way) to the rest of you – women might as well have bags over our heads for all you notice what is really going on here
Are we aware of some failing or double standard exhibited particularly by atheists, that would be material for this elevated all inclusive version of a cartoon? Dawkins and Harris? I noticed an extensive work raking them over the coals for being convinced that we can’t live in peace with the Arabs, but since that’s an opinion that’s shared rather widely in the west among people of various religious persuasions, I take it as a sort of compliment that you expect more from prominent atheist writers. In any case, atheists are simply people who consider religion folly – it isn’t like an organized religion where someone like Dawkins represents all of us, so your argument is either with Dawkins or me, not with me because of Dawkins.
Wow! Well done, Glenn. You got there. It’s a satirical cartoon, isn’t it? It’s polemical in the good old tradition of Gillray, Cruikshank and Rowlandson. ( I know you like a learned reference). The former really should have turned out more stuff in support of Napoleon and King George in the interests of balance and scientific method, shouldn’t he?
I’m reminded of the letters in Private Eye cancelling subscriptions because the well known satirical magazine is satirical.
It’s always good to see a few ad hominem attacks from a claimed rational source and poor old Dawkins and co, as well as the ‘frenzied mob’ here, clearly deserve your ire for daring to earn a few bob from their publications or holding views which long ago took into account the opinions which you take such delight in quoting here at length.
Yobs will probably always be with us, albeit as a tiny minority, but their behaviour has nothing to do with the thrust of the cartoon which addresses a particular hypocrisy about the subjugation of women being dressed (sic) as freedom.
I do not doubt that some sort of Stockholm syndrome can lead some women to claim that body covering provides an escape from the ‘male gaze’ but that is a psychological problem which needs handling by means other than hiding under a blanket.
‘ Thank you for not not provoking my uncontrollable lust’ as per the tee-shirt is as apposite as ever, the covering of women being nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with male control. The fetishisation of female hair which obliges Iranian women to cover their heads but then spend fortunes on mascara and eye brow pencils must leave their men in paroxysms of desire. Or perhaps it’s just the wrong hair? Clearly, they do not find ‘freedom’ under the imposed scarves.
Remember, Glenn, the absence of ‘scientific ethos’ in a satirical cartoon is probably just par for the course.
Glenn wrote “…how to raise boys so that they do not grow up to be drunken lads all piled into a bus travelling about town telling niqabis to show their faces, hijabis to show their hair, and the rest to show a bit of p***…”
Well, I’ll tell you how I did it: First off, you model treating women as equals and show respect to women. My wife has a masters degree and is a highly respected (albeit woefully underpaid) professional; my kids know that what she does is more important than what I do.
You also make sure that they know that women are equally as capable and smart as men and, in fact, have contributed as much as men, historically. (We have these computers, WiFi, and smartphones specifically due to the contributions of women.) Then you have them involved with peers who are intelligent, erudite, and female so that they can see it on their level (such as the amazing young women on my son’s robotics team).
It also helps to be open about sex and talk with them about how to treat others and what sex is about so that when they finally get interested in it, they have the information they need to enjoy it and make sure their partners enjoy it as well. Talking honestly about things with your kids helps in many ways.
I will admit, however, that I’ve kinda dropped the ball on the whole equality-in-the-kitchen thing. I grew up with a sexist view of cooking (reinforced on what I’ve seen on telly) and may have passed on to my kids that cooking is a man’s job. (But I am trying to get my daughter to at least learn how to cook.)
Choirboy: “I do not doubt that some sort of Stockholm syndrome can lead some women to claim that body covering provides an escape from the ‘male gaze’ but that is a psychological problem which needs handling by means other than hiding under a blanket.”
Choirboy, this is interesting (although it does sound like sour grapes). Can you elaborate, perhaps with some serious research?
Thanks Uncle Roger. A nice, simple and dignified example of how men can have a positive impact on women’s lives. What greater honor is there for man than to nurture respect for women?
I noticed an extensive work raking them over the coals for being convinced that we can’t live in peace with the Arabs, but since that’s an opinion that’s shared rather widely in the west among people of various religious persuasions, I take it as a sort of compliment that you expect more from prominent atheist writers. In any case, atheists are simply people who consider religion folly – it isn’t like an organized religion where someone like Dawkins represents all of us, so your argument is either with Dawkins or me, not with me because of Dawkins.
Monty Python could make a year series plus block buster movie on just these words alone:
Have you been to Iraq recently?
Oh yes.
What did you see?
Not much, I blew the place up and there wasn’t much to see after that.
Oh I see. Why did you blow it up?
Well because we cann’t live in peace with the Arabs.
Oh why’s that?
We keep blowing them up.
Oh see, but did you think it might help if you didn’t blow them up.
No.
Why’s that?
Because we cann’t live in peace with the Arab.
Right. Oh by the way, “Are we aware of some failing or double standard exhibited particularly by atheists, that would be material for this elevated all inclusive version of a cartoon? Dawkins and Harris?
Glenn, you are quite right to condemn those damned atheists, George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair for blowing Iraq to pieces on flimsy evidence and then launching the ‘war on terror’. I just wonder what prompted them to masquerade as a Born Again Christian and a convert Catholic while making references to ‘crusades’.
Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and Harris and Hitchens the Iraq invasion in 2003: (suggested reading: Foster, R., Megoran, N, Dunn, M. “Towards a geopolitics of atheism: Critical geopolitics post the ‘War on Terror’”, Political Geography, Vol. 60, Sept. 2017, pp. 179-189).
By the way, Choirboy, have you been working on your “Stockholm syndrome ” thesis? Doctorate in psychology perhaps?
I might be able help. I did look for references to “Stockholm syndrome ” and “Muslims” and there are some really super intellectual neo-Nazi sites that share your views…but I guess you are already aware of them.
The “he started it” thing in the Middle East goes back a century. It isn’t hard to find culpable parties, but it’s the laughable that of all the possibilities, we’re supposed to blame atheists. The problem really is that atheists have what little influence they have, only in the West, and in the Middle East they’re on pretty thin ice. I see that when asked about atheists, 63% of Egyptians polled in 2011 were for the death penalty; in Saudi Arabia atheists are officially terrorists.
See … in order to put out a funny cartoon, you have to lampoon some blind spot that everyone will recognize in the character and more importantly the people he or she represents. Your attempt to imply that 1) atheists are bloodthirsty imperialists aimed at 2) the innocent, peaceful inhabitants of the Middle East … is not going to meet that standard, so I’d suggest you look for another idea.
@Glenn Anderson, you have been heard, and understood. Not just by rebecca and Roger. Thank you for speaking up. There has previously been made the argument that prominent atheists have been culpable in propagating unscientific views about LGBTQ2+ topics, but today you have carried the torch regarding feminism v. atheism. Conceptually, ideas that should not be at odds, given the history of religion and women’s freedom. That there are some (atheists or otherwise) who quite obviously refuse to see their culpability or behaviour as also problematic, is not your failure Anderson. But documenting and highlighting it illustrates the problem, and may help those who come afterwards.
To be clear, using an example above, drunkenly hollering at someone, an opinion about their attire, is atrocious behaviour. Yes freedom of expression etc… but it doesn’t make a person less of an ass for behaving like one. From the context it was unknowable for us why the women were dressed as they were. For them to be accosted by men for their attire, serves to show that this problem has neither gone away, nor does it actually depend on how much or little skin is exposed. (seemingly it’s a no-win situation) The problem is that people were raised to think it was ok to harass strangers. (Consider, how it would feel to be screamed at by loud seemingly angry hooligans, from a moving bus. If anger and fear aren’t perceived, try more empathy.) Yes we need to speak up if there is a problem, but to make change, that voice must be respectful.
I was going to write, “the problem is people telling others others how to behave,” but that’s circularly self defeating. The wiccan rede comes close, “do as you will, so long as it harms none,” but again, the requirements of life preclude never harming other life except for many plants. Maybe a self-defeating rule is useful, as it shows how challenging it can be to know and demonstrate where the limit of acceptable behaviour is.
The best we can do as parents, is to raise our children to be better than we are.
[1] Edit button or no, any errors that remain are my own. We are all human in a flawed world. Mistakes get in. I am ok with that.
Glenn says: “A reminder of what is not being discussed: the woman’s perspective and a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space and simply mind their own beeswax”.
When my country’s head of state, an elected female President, visited Pakistan on a state visit some years back, she was forced to wear a veil. She did not want to. But she HAD to. It was made very clear to our delegation that failure to do so would trigger a diplomatic crisis.
So tell me, Glenn:
Was *her* woman’s perspective being honoured?
Did these men running the Pakistani state respect *her* woman’s space?
We couldn’t *they* simply mind their own beeswax and let her wear whatever she wanted?
Hm. Perhaps the “men in black’s” good natured semi-drunken pun on a well sung 70’s/80’s chant was “atrocious behaviour”…I can well imagine Glenn bristling with salacious outrage and thinking to himself “by-god that abedi character showed those unequal women and girls of the west what real hatred of women can achieve”…and Glenn, unlike you I have spoken to at length to a geezer who’s wife was blown to pieces…so save your philosophical navel gazing and trying to blame a coach load of mancs for provoking the next muslim atrocity….
It’s not about blaming the “coach load of mancs” for the next muslim attocity. It’s about pointing out that an idea that one person gets to tell another how to dress is wrong. If that’s a country telling another countries representative or it’s own people how to dress, or if that is a drunk ass on a coach screaming at women on the street, they’re both in the wrong. Neither one being more wrong makes the the other ok. Despite that, they both point at each other’s behaviour as why they’re right to be telling women how to dress. And in all of this it is mostly men making these decisions. But this is again a man writing and I could really use an editorial check from an actual feminist, preferably female, to be more sure it’s on track.
And though this wasn’t written to reply to @Donn specifically, I hope that helped clarify.
A little more on the atheism v. feminism. Some atheists have spoken out against a women’s right to choose her dress as hijabs and burqas become more popular in the west. They don’t phrase it that way, but the effect is the same. What they completely miss, is that even if a person gains the freedom to dress how they please by escaping a regime, they may still have internalized the old ways to such an extent that although they know they can dress differently, it still would cause anxiety and fear for them to be out in public in a different form of clothing.
The irony being that now that /everyone/ has to cover their face and the world hasn’t imploded, it’s proven we can operate just fine that way.
“Some atheists have spoken out …“, while so have people of various religious convictions. It’s like blaming atheists for eating meat.
Why we’re here, is the repression in the Islamic Middle East, where women are forced to wear these concealments. That’s the punch line to the cartoon. And where likewise there’s notoriously little freedom of conscience etc. You can bet on atheist opposition to that – freedom of choice is a fundamental value here, whether of religion or of what kind of hat to wear or whatever.
It would be easy to get suckered into a discussion of whether burkas might be bad news in the west, but that can wait until we’re clear on the question of whether atheism has anything to do with it.
I should add, that a web search for atheism vs. burqa/burka/hijab turned up no instances of atheist intolerance in the west, and various instances where atheism was connected with freedom from concealment in the Middle East.
The human race is hundreds of thousands of years old, and in almost all times and places men and women have been able to freely look each other in the face. I consider the restriction of this freedom to be a sad, burdensome, and highly objectionable custom! That said, I am also a strong supporter of people’s right to live by their own customs, and if it is the custom in some Muslim communities to live this way then as far as I’m concerned that’s their call, just as it’s our call in Western societies to require that people wear clothes in public. (I am aware that some here have an issue with the latter requirement, but I don’t share it).
Given that we have the right to make and live by our own rules, I also see nothing wrong with Western societies banning the burka, and refusing to allow migration from countries where benighted customs are widespread. In fact I would see it as sanity!
As for Glenn, I think his criticisms of the cartoons are tendentious. It is commonplace for religious Muslims to defend the burka by claiming it is a defense against sexual harassment, but this is a bad argument, and a bad faith argument. It is a bad argument because even if it were true that the burka shielded wearers from harassment, it might still be the case that the downsides of the burka vastly outweighed this benefit, and that it should still be banned. It’s a bad faith argument because the religious Muslims who make it don’t actually care about sexual harassment, what they care about defending their own religious customs.
Likewise with the attack on the “new atheists” like Dawkins and Harris. Again, even if it were true the primary cause of the (disastrously mistaken!) Iraq war was a feeling (shared by large numbers of believers as well as nonbelievers!) that “we can’t live in peace with the Arabs”, and even if it were true that this feeling was widespread among the new atheists, it wouldn’t follow that the new atheists had any special responsibility for the war (it’s not like they have a lot of political clout!), or that Islam is a non-problematic religion of peace that we should welcome into our homelands.
Glenn in interesting. My guess is that he is a well educated Western convert to Islam, and that this is something he wants to conceal. If he were to tell me otherwise (in particular that he isn’t a Muslim) I would believe him, but at this point I’m not expecting to hear any straight talk.
I think he’s a victim, of a thousands of years of propaganda that we need gods to give us moral guidance to keep evil at bay – which is sure to trouble him, if, as one does, he has lost faith in the preposterous. He’s here because, perhaps unconsciously, he feels we have the answer, and he’s frustrated because he can’t see it.
Jb, depending on the context, costs may well outweigh the benefits. However, wearing the niqab is the woman’s call. No niqabi has asked my advice so don’t be disappointed if they don’t stop you in the street to ask for your opinion.
Thinking about how dangerous it could be wearing a niqab in a Western country, I was reminded of a true story about a marine veteran who described how he was barely able to restrain himself from breaking a niqabi’s neck when he saw her at his local supermarket. The interesting part is what happened next: ‘That was me’ “Former U.S. marine who planned to bomb a mosque before suddenly converting to Islam offers chilling insight into alleged Christchurch shooter’s beliefs”
One lesson we may draw from this story is if we oppress others then we are oppressing ourselves. The marine says the turning point for him was seeing that his anger threaten to alienate him from his 6 yo daughter. From that point he resolved to learn about Islam.
We’d all do better to learn from one another so we can improve our own lives and deal with issues such how to raise our boys. Deal with the real issue so women can go about their business in peace and security.
Another lesson we may draw from this story, is that Islam appears to have a certain appeal for nut cases. (Not that I intend to demean that soldier – far from it, his craziness is an all too common story among people returning from the front – but that doesn’t mean that’s an account of ordinary sane reaction.)
I actually found the complete life story of the marine (above). It is part of an oral history project by Ball University. It’s 1.5 hour so only for those with the time and inclination to learn: Richard McKinney oral history . Here is the shorter version (5 min): “I Wanted To Kill Muslims — Now I Am One”. Its all about the critical importance of learning for peace.
Donn: “Another lesson we may draw from this story, is that Islam appears to have a certain appeal for nut cases.”
Donn everyone of us is a bit of ‘nut case’. Its whether we are prepared to admit it and get on with the healing by addressing own own issues, rather than projecting them on to others.
If you are accusing others of not being able to get along with you, its most likely you who cannot live with others. Instead of blaming others for being different from you — using them as scapegoats for your own anxieties— chill, take a deep breath and say ‘things have gotta change’! That’s what the marine did. So just deal with it.
jb: Likewise with the attack on the “new atheists” like Dawkins and Harris. Again, even if it were true the primary cause of the (disastrously mistaken!) Iraq war was a feeling (shared by large numbers of believers as well as nonbelievers!) that “we can’t live in peace with the Arabs”, and even if it were true that this feeling was widespread among the new atheists, it wouldn’t follow that the new atheists had any special responsibility for the war (it’s not like they have a lot of political clout!), or that Islam is a non-problematic religion of peace that we should welcome into our homelands.
Actually, public opinion at the time was against the war. The demonstrations went into the millions and were coordinated globally. I remember it vividly. The leaders simply ignored the majority and Dawkins and Harris supported them in making the case for war. They are warmongering, then and now.
wikipedia documents the “Opposition to the Iraq War”:
“Opinion polls showed that the population of nearly all countries opposed a war without UN mandate, and that the view of the United States as a danger to world peace had significantly increased”
And, as for listening to the experts:
“Richard Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council for both the latter part of the Clinton Administration and early part of the George W. Bush Administration, criticized the Iraq War along similar lines in his 2004 book Against All Enemies and during his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. In addition to diverting funds from the fight against al-Qaeda, Clarke argued that the invasion of Iraq would actually bolster the efforts of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals, who had long predicted that the U.S. planned to invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern country.”
So ‘New Atheists’ ignored expert opinion to pursue their (very lucrative) personal agendas. And it turned out like the experts said it would.
Lets be careful here. Dawkins supported the Afghanistan invasion, along with Harris and Hitchens. It was Harris and Hitchens who argued the case for the Iraq war
I still don’t get what this has to do with atheism in general. Atheists are not driven to incite violence against Middle Eastern countries because they have no God to teach them better, they just draw the same conclusions anyone would from reading about Middle Eastern culture, suicide bombers etc. And genocide in the case of Iraq. It’s possible to have a “lively discussion” over what mistakes have been made in the Middle East, but we should be clear that, like the problem with harassment of burka wearers, it has nothing in particular to do with atheism.
Donn and jb, I did a search and couldn’t match Dawkins with the notion of “we cannt live in peace with the Arabs” but I found this conversation between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris:
“Sullivan: The Wall is not what makes it a prison camp. On top of the Wall, they occupy and control that entire region, and maintain checkpoints that burden and enrage many of the inhabitants. And remember, again, and this is where we have to go back to history, when you say the Israelis only want to live in peace with their neighbors, is that why 1948 is regarded by any non-Israeli in the region as a “catastrophe”? Was that living in peace with their neighbors? That was a terroristic campaign of expulsion, of ethnic cleansing, and of mass murder. That’s how Israel was founded. And many of the people living in Gaza and on the West Bank are the descendants of refugees from that original act of ethnic cleansing. One problem of the debate in the U.S. is that this vital piece of context is so often removed, and so we have an utterly ahistorical understanding in which the motives of one side become unintelligible.
Harris: The problem with invoking history in this discussion is that you have to decide when to start the clock. You could go back further than 1948—and many Jews would have you go back 2,000 years, pointing to the fact that this is their ancestral homeland, as evidenced by the history of the diaspora. The Jews were kicked out of Palestine and hunted and hounded and ghettoized and murdered for millennia—which would seem to justify the decision to return them to their homeland, provided it could be done in a way that wouldn’t ruin the lives of other people.
Sullivan: Well, the problem is that other people happened to live there already in the land assigned to newcomers—and they regarded their lives as ruined. They were the majority, and they were not Jewish. This is the most recent big event in the history of that part of the world—and the Palestinians had almost no say in any of it. So to claim that we just have to accept this as a given and that any complaints about the deep wound in that part of the world are somehow illegitimate or to be bracketed off from the core discussion seems to me to miss the whole point of the conflict.”
And it goes on. So is this what you are referring to? Its a waste of time discussing burkas, women’s rights and so on if your real agenda is geopolitical.
It’s what I was referring to when I said “he started it” in the Middle East goes back a century. Whose agenda? Are you saying the Author, atheists in general, and/or people who oppose repressive cultural misogyny are bent on conquest on behalf of Israel, or any such thing? Come on, Glenn – talk about taking a deep breath – we need some logical rigor here.
Having read GA recent regurgitation of nonsense selected to sate his confirmation bias. I see his primary solution is for everybody to convert to Islam…sic…
I’ve just looked through a few months of cartoons. I’m looking for “satire” directed at Moses based on the actions of Jews or their scripture. Is there any to find?
I have enjoyed J&M for years and also enjoyed reading the comments, gently mocking “the sincerely held beliefs of millions” as stated under NOTE at the bottom of the page. The forum has so far been friendly and entertaining. I have appreciated the writings of Darwin Harmless, M27Holts, Son of Glenner to name just a few, and even if I don’t agree with everything written I haven’t felt the urge to put in my two cents’ worth. But I have to react now – since January 20th, the narrative has been dominated by Glenn Anderson, who must only recently have discovered the site, revealed by his comment today on Moses. He is doing his best to destroy the atmosphere.
I googled “Glenn Anderson” and “atheist” and found a Glenn Anderson on Quora answering the question “What is the best example of a debate to beat atheists and win them?” like this:
One idea is to hit the atheist in the head with some sort of heavy, blunt object, damaging their temporal lobe (I’m not sure if left or right matters, so just get both). This part of the brain is known to influence religion. In fact, instances of Hyperreligiosity can be attributed to temporal lobe epilepsy.
Not sure it’s the same Glenn Anderson.
So, no answer to my simple question, then, Glenn.
Here it is again; was the invasion of Iraq launched by the Born Again Christian, George W Bush and the convert Catholic, Tony Blair?
Iho,
I’ve enjoyed the company and the relaxed atmosphere but if I’m causing a long-term visitor like yourself grief then perhaps I’ve outlived my welcome.
I just find it odd that an atheist website intended to gently mock “the sincerely held beliefs of millions” would self-censor when it comes to one of the three main monotheistic religions, particularly when the battle remains to be won against ‘cancel culture’. Very odd.
I must admit to missing j&m for the last few weeks, got a bit caught up in the whole pandemic worry. So I came back half an hour ago to find my favourite polite gentle religion mocking forum has been infected by a C.O.V.I.D (confirmed overt virulent islamic dipwit ) called glenn.
How did it get in and has the author tried antibiotics to cure the infection? I have seen this type infection on other polite sites defending Q anon, stolen votes and every other type of nonsense. “Hijabs are a big victory for women” is just another daft conspiracy theory that nobody sane could ever support. I won’t mention this annoying buzzing noise again, if everyone else ignores the noise it should just wander off.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for, where Moses comes in, but one thing you might try to bear in mind is, this cartoon is funny. That’s a phenomenon you probably can’t really relate to directly, but you can perhaps understand something about it at an intellectual level.
Mockery of Jesus, Mohammed and Moses is funny, but for various reasons that come out of our experience with these characters. The subject of a cartoon is often some appalling religious folly that took place in our world. Moses generally appears here as a sort of irritatingly politically correct intellectual, because that’s funny. Jews have not been particularly known for forcing their religious beliefs or practices on anyone, so casting Moses as another like J & M wouldn’t be funny.
Of course there’s an extra element here, in that the Author puts himself at real personal risk by mocking Mohammed. I can’t speak for him on the motivation for that, but I doubt the cartoon would be here if it weren’t for a perceived need for the West to defy this threat. But out of that simple motivation has sprung an interesting and funny body of work that is well set up to poke some things that need poking.
Anyway. I’m busy contemplating my next drink in the bar that I constructed in my double garage. I raise my glass of Hobgoblin to all as we await the end to this horrid virus…and get back to our usual water holes..
Donn
The cartoons are not that funny to me because they do not caricature the real criminals but instead ascribe their actions to the teachings and the teachers despite the historical evidence to the contrary. Two wrongs do not make a right.
I might sort of agree – we’re talking about medieval culture that represses women here, right? and there’s reason to think it isn’t entirely Mohammed’s fault, even though his religion is so strongly associated with it in the popular eye. But it’s hard to make a good case for that … I was going to say (again) what about those Indonesians, but then I had to check, and sure enough there’s a conservative Moslem element there pushing for marriage with no dating, requires women to clothe themselves like nuns, etc. Whatever Mohammed “taught” us that his angel whispered in his ear, Islam seems to fit hand in glove with repressive medieval culture.
Perhaps our Glenn here has missed where Mo is repeatedly declared to be but a body-double of the unnameable entity of much peas? It does tend to reduce some desperate tension and enable a sense of humour (where one is compatible with host tenor) in its place. YMMV.
Glenn Anderson says:
February 6, 2021 at 11:20 am
Ok, so why is there no “satire” directed at Moses based on the behavior of religious Jews or their scripture?
And – Glenn – if you’re sweating over the attitude towards those “teachers”, forget it. For unbelievers, the person behind this is practically irrelevant. Was there even a Jesus, or how many of them were there? Well, who cares. We’re stuck with a reality today that’s centered around these characters, and to us they represent that; whether they even really existed or not is immaterial, because at most they were just like any ordinary religious swindlers. And yeah, we know they didn’t get in bed together.
Donn: I was going to say (again) what about those Indonesians, but then I had to check, and sure enough there’s a conservative Moslem element there pushing for marriage with no dating, requires women to clothe themselves like nuns, etc.
The “conservative Moslem element” you referred to are in fact professional women who have given up on dating and are organising a match through an intermediary. No-one is forcing anyone to do anything. In fact it is the opposite. To quote from the article:
“But Pujiartati saw it as a way to ditch dating that went nowhere and be a devout Muslim at the same time by avoiding pre-marital touching and sex: “Why should I choose something that wastes my time and doesn’t please God?” she said.”
So exactly what is the problem with this? We have professional women making a personal choice.
What are you suggesting? They be forced to date and sleep with the guy? As I’ve said a couple of times, its none of our beeswax.
Let the women make their own choices. Why should they be disparaged simply because they don’t please the Uncle Donns, jbs and Choirboys of this world?
Choirboy says these women suffer from Stockholm syndrome and jb says they should be forced to uncover. In my opinion, its you guys that that have the psychological issues. I really do think there is a bit of sour grapes: disparaging something you you cann’t have, because you’re simple not the type guys these women want to mix with.
While some people have helped make a valuable contribution on one point, it seems clear that the purpose of their continued participation is not for productive dialogue. I will happily admit my mistakes (well, maybe not always happily, but I will discuss them). Those of you harrassed by their increasingly juvinile argument, to you I appologize for having encouraged their further contribution.
What’s happened to the Iraq War being the responsibility of atheists?
I asked the question about who actually launched it twice. The first time it was conveniently ignored and the second sidestepped with a childish facetious remark.
Sometimes silence is much more revealing than words.
Glenn, here is the clue you requested. The Iraq War was launched by the Born Again Christian, George W Bush and the convert Catholic, Tony Blair. (recommended reading; what I just wrote)
Christopher Hitchens certainly wrote in favour of it and although I disagreed with it I’m not sure that seeing first hand as he did the bloated gassed bodies of men women and children that I might not have been swayed a bit.
The difference is that he was not being hypocritical as he made clear that as an atheist he espoused no religious belief in turning the other cheek; unlike the two actual perpetrators of the horror.
Bush and Blair, however, the declared believers in ‘love thy neighbour’, ‘do unto others’, ‘seventy times seven’, ‘turn the other cheek’ were more than happy to incinerate babies from 40,000 feet from the comfort of their armchairs; and to provide the world with a ringside seat.
Still, those good old Christians in the States do like a good old electric chair or a gas chamber, especially if they can get hold of a poor black man!
Hypocrisy in excelsis!
I will not pursue the suggestion that their mutual belief in ‘The End of Days’ might have played a part but I suspect you might well be with them on that. (Recommended reading; most of the guff you’ve burbled so far.)
And you have the effrontery to attach blame for all that to atheists!
(Recommended reading; King Lear – ‘You should not have been old before you were wise!’)
‘The real issue…’ as you tried to assert way back before making a ridiculous link to the war, is not, ‘men’s conduct and how to raise boys…’. It is the hypocrisy of using controlling impositions upon the way women dress in the name of religion and claiming that as freeing them. Banning women from driving reduces their chances of road accidents. Clearly a thoughtful way of keeping them safe but there seem to be plenty willing to risk imprisonment to assert the right anyway.
The Ayatollahs are ageing and the scarves are being draped over traffic bollards. Presumably these misguided youngsters will look back nostalgically at the freedom that covering their beauty afforded them when these symbols of religious hypocrisy are finally consigned to the dustbin of history.
By the way, Glenn, the resort to Nazi comparisons is, to paraphrase, ‘ the last refuge of a scoundrel’ (recommended reading, Dr Samuel Johnson)
Glenn, no-one on this site (I’m guessing) wants to force women in Muslim countries to do anything, certainly not to have sex with anyone. As you said, it’s not our business.
As a general issue: though, religions have a tendency to engage in a piety spiral (aka purity contest, and similar terms). That happens in politics too, but here we’re talking about religion.
When that happens, eventually the ultra religious, those at the peak of the piety spiral, eventually try to change the behavior of those who are insufficiently devout. It has happened in every religion, and it proceeds first by shaming, then by legal means, and finally by violence.
Since you mentioned Jews, they’re not immune to this nonsense. In America, the great majority of Jews are of the Reform sect which means that many of them are almost indistinguishable from atheists. (I’ve been told by an elder of a nearby Reform synogogue that half the congregation were actually atheists, just there for the cultural and community stuff. He was trying to get me to join, but my wife is German and I wasn’t buying it.) So the majority of American Jews are not currently engaging in a piety spiral. In Israel, that is somewhat reversed. The Ultra-Orthodox have political power and create situations that secular Jews dislike.
It’s because of the piety spiral, that ends up hurting everyone, that we want extremely religious countries to be less so. And I don’t care what individual women decide to do with their vaginas. I care that laws may be passed that tell non-religious women what they can and can’t do with their vaginas.
Glenn discovers that there is a conservative Muslim element in Indonesia after all, and behold, it is a triumph for female self-determination! He even has a link to prove it!!!
Interestingly though, if you Google “indonesia muslim fundimentalism”, the top links tell a rather different story about the influence of conservative Islam in Indonesia:
As usual, Glenn is arguing tendentiously towards a predetermined conclusion, which is that Islamic customs, including the ones that strike Westerners as highly objectionable, are all just really really good.
You know, I think I’m starting to lose interest in trying to have a conversation with someone who won’t be straight about anything…
Yeah, I must have, or there was some kind of glitch. Here’s my comment again — please delete the botched version:
Glenn discovers that there is a conservative Muslim element in Indonesia after all, and behold, it is a triumph for female self-determination! He even has a link to prove it!!!
Interestingly though, if you Google “indonesia muslim fundimentalism”, the top links tell a rather different story about the influence of conservative Islam in Indonesia:
As usual, Glenn is arguing tendentiously towards a predetermined conclusion, which is that Islamic customs, including the ones that strike Westerners as highly objectionable, are all just really really good.
You know, I think I’m finally losing interest in trying to have a conversation with someone who is never straight about anything…
Laripu : It’s because of the piety spiral, that ends up hurting everyone, that we want extremely religious countries to be less so.
Yes I agree. But it works both ways. Atheists can impose their own “piety spiral” and it is playing out in its most extreme form in China right now.
In Western countries the coercion takes the form of ridicule and clothing regulations under the pretext that these women do not have rational grounds for their choice of lifestyle. Some prominent atheists are playing a critical role in nurturing this toxic atmosphere.
If you have time watch this video . Dawkins is interviewing girls from a Muslim school and they are trying to describe a passage in the Quran which reads as follows:
Quran 25:53: “And it is He who has released [simultaneously] the two seas, one fresh and sweet and one salty and bitter, and He placed between them a barrier and prohibiting partition.”
Back in the TV studio, in front of a live audience, Dawkins recounts:
“They told me that salt water and fresh water don’t mix. The reason? Because it says that in the Quran (laughter from the audience). Alas I lacked the presence of mind to turn to the teacher sitting next to me and say ‘Will you please at the very next science lesson get some salt water, get some fresh water and mix them and see what happens” (applause).
What Dawkins does not acknowledge is that what the girls were describing is consistent with the halocline effect
“A halocline can be easily created and observed in a drinking glass or other clear vessel. If fresh water is slowly poured over a quantity of salt water, using a spoon held horizontally at water-level to prevent mixing, a hazy interface layer, the halocline, will soon be visible due to the varying index of refraction across the boundary.”
Dawkins is a scientists and he would have had to have been aware of the halocline effect. Imagine the effect this would have had on the girls as they sat at home watching in anticipation of their appearance and as it gradually dawns on them that Dawkins has betrayed their trust and ridiculed them in front of a nation-wide television audience. It’s sickening and of course it made the lives of other Muslim women all the more difficult.
Thanks Donn. The verse in and of itself is insufficient proof of a miracle, but even Anwar Bilal does not go so far and claim it is inconsistent with science. The question is whether Dawkins has behaved in bad faith.
This is not an isolated instance of bad faith by leading atheists. Another example is from a recent article by Boudry & Coyne (2016) who interpret Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi, 2014 issued by 120 scholars in the following way
” In an open letter to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, more than 120 Islamic scholars and jurists take issue with the horrific practices of the self-proclaimed caliph. But the letter reveals that they share many of his underlying beliefs. The scholars attack the caliph on almost purely exegetical grounds, correcting several of his theological misconceptions (despite his doctorate in Islamic theology at the University of Baghdad). For instance, they point out that waging jihad is permissible only with parental consent (not fulfilled in the case of many ISIS fighters), that the jihadists’ desires for martyrdom must be pure, and that one should bear in mind important theological distinctions between “wicked evildoers” and “unbelievers,” as well as between idolaters and “People of the Book” (in relation to the genocide of the Yazidi minority) (Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi, 2014).
Whatever, your view of the scriptures, there is no way anyone who reads the Open Letter could honestly describe it as merely “correcting several of his theological misconceptions” and the scholars share al-Baghdadi’s “underlying beliefs”.
The Open Letter offers extensive scriptural proof to argue that the actions of ISIS have no legitimacy under the Islamic rulings on jihad, that they amount to “warmongering and criminality” by (1) waging war without any legitimate reason (“safety, freedom of religion, having been wronged, and eviction from one’s land”), and (2) in a manner that violates all the rules of conduct for jihad through treachery, killing of non-combatants (innocents and prisoners of war), mutilating the bodies, destruction of places of worship and so forth. They even go so far as to provide evidence that their actions and appearance is consistent with a group that the Prophet forewarns Muslims to avoid (see the appendix).
So Boudry & Coyne’s rendering is a fabrication but one that will be accepted to be the truth given their status and popularity among atheists.
Reference:
Boudry, M., & Coyne, J. (2016). Fakers, fanatics, and false dilemmas: Reply to Van Leeuwen. Philosophical psychology, 29(4), 622-627.
Atheists need to be as skeptical about what they are being told by fellow atheists as much as anyone else, especially if they are trying to argue the case for ongoing conflict and irreconcilable differences.
For some reason my last post appeared as ‘anonymous’ but still no answer to my simple question. Check mate in two moves, I think.
Interesting that the only cartoons that Glenn concedes as funny are the anti-Semitic ones he’s been led to.
And now a load of specious claptrap about the halocline effect in a metaphor which, ‘in and of itself is insufficient proof of a miracle’. Really? Wow!
I wonder why the great communicator who whispered this into the prophet’s ear specified ‘simultaneously’ but omitted any use of a carefully deployed spoon. Obviously when reading about two seas coming together ‘simultaneously’ most readers will imagine one running directly underneath the other to create a horizontal separation, a phenomenon of which little else is spoken in Barnsley. (recommended reading; Vic Feather)
It’s too daft to laugh at! (Reference; my dad)
If the metaphor is about anything it is presumably a pretty clumsy attempt to persuade the gullible that nature imposes unbreakable separations created by the Imaginary Friend. (Horizontal of course – not the ones normally experienced by humans)
Dawkins is being lambasted for promoting the idea that we cannot live together- purely for personal gain and because he is an atheist and yet when presented with this ‘sacred’ metaphor about natural separation he shoots himself in the foot by undermining it with science. (He didn’t, of course. He said he wished he had)
And the consequences of this wickedness? A generation of poor young Muslim women
suffering terribly from the betrayal of a well known atheist upon whose every word they are known to hang.
A ‘hoot’? Not ‘arf! (Reference; Sid James)
Hey, it got interesting again! The Sea Barrier Miracle is an excellent example of a particular type of fallacious argument made primarily by Muslim apologists (but occasionally by fundamentalists of other religions as well). It works like this: Let’s say the Quran has 6,000 verses. And let’s say (for the sake of the argument) that Western science has one million scientific facts. It follows that there are six billion ways to combine one Quranic verse with one scientific fact. Most of those combinations will be obvious nonsense, but just by chance a small number will, if you squint real hard, kinda, sorta make sense. The apologists seek out these random correspondences and then trumpet them as examples of the Quran miraculously anticipating Western science.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a deeply stupid argument, one that will convince no one aside from committed believers (like the moron with the eggs in the video about Dawkins that Glenn linked to). Even the best correspondences are vague to the point of meaninglessness. The Quranic verse about the two seas has multiple possible interpretations (i.e., it could be easily talking about a land barrier), and even if you interpret as being about the halocline it has nothing interesting or informative to say about it (i.e., nothing about salinity, or diffusion, or temperature, or density, or depth). The halocline itself is an extremely obscure and uninteresting scientific fact, with no obvious practical value. So where are the interesting and useful scientific facts? Newton’s Laws! How to make gunpowder, or build a telescope! The Periodic Table! The Theory of Evolution! There is no interesting science in the Quran because there is no science at all in the Quran, despite the rather desperate and amusing efforts of apologists to associate the Quran with the prestige of Western science.
Hmm…, I suspect that Glenn does not believe in evolution. Glenn, am I wrong? Don’t link to some oddball scientist who has doubts. There are always a few of those, in any field. But the Theory of Evolution is as foundational and widely accepted in the scientific community as the theories of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, and I want to know whether you accept it.
This shows the value of an educational system run by the theocracy, who knows how to teach “science.” Turkey has the idea, they’re spending big lira to increase the number of Turks properly educated.
“The question is whether Dawkins has behaved in bad faith”
No it isn’t. The question is whether those who invited possibly the most famous atheist in the world to speak to Muslim girls behaved in bad faith.
To claim that the simple pointing out of a scientific fact in relation to a dodgy metaphor is a ‘betrayal’ and ‘sickening’ is a sad combination of naivety and paranoia.
Unless someone had misled them to believe he would turn up with a mat and a five-times-a-day habit they could not be surprised that what they got was a remarkably polite and honest man who questioned their beliefs.
To invite him and then to call his expression of his views a ‘betrayal’ is what is truly sickening.
“The verse in and of itself is insufficient proof of a miracle”
Interesting. Could you perhaps expand with some reliable, proven scientific evidence of such a thing?
“Imagine the effect this would have had on the girls……….and of course it made the lives of other Muslim women all the more difficult “
Interesting. Could you perhaps provide some reliable scientific research into how mind reading followed by a syllogism contributes to convincing argument?
Perhaps this is an opportunity to start a doctoral thesis of your own. You might even seek some support from Disney or Dreamworks.
When I first saw this J&M cartoon, I took from it two “givens”:
a) A woman (or indeed any human) is entitled to wear whatever clothing she wishes, and does not need anyone else’s permission.
b) In some countries, women are forced (by religious authorities) to wear certain clothing whether they like it or not.
And our esteemed Author has based this week’s cartoon on the disjunction between these two things, to the effect that (b) should be deplored by all right-thinking people, ie readers of the J&M strip.
And now I find that I was mistaken and the cartoon is actually all about whether or not Richard Dawkins started the Iraq War by mixing salt water and fresh water.
Laripu: Fascinating idea — functions like a kind of osmosis membrane in between religious fanatism and secularism, in that they tend to pass in opposite directions. Hard-core, hatted, curly-locked unemployable go wild one way and end up ruling *-El free of contribution; the other “extreme” ends up running US politics and pop culture.
Meanwhile, another influential old-time sect is also struggling with internal strife between adherents of this uncle or the other one 1000+ years ago, to the detriment of those closest to the action as well as much of uninvolved humanity.
And during all this mayhem, other scoundrels find opportunity to stir hatred and splite in the name of yet another variant of dieism.
If only those activists could be made to settle their disputes directly, on a remote island with wooden swords or wrestling naked Olympian style, the rest of us could return to useful work and lives.
But there’s always one fly, isn’t there.
Thank Doge for the oasis of Cock & Bull. Sanguine sanity & solid salinity.
Whatever, your view of the scriptures, there is no way anyone who reads the Open Letter could honestly describe it as merely “correcting several of his theological misconceptions” and the scholars share al-Baghdadi’s “underlying beliefs”.
I take that to mean that the scholars did not – in your opinion – argue that al-Baghdadi was acting on misreadings or misunderstandings of Islamic scripture, and that the scholars did not share his underlying beliefs.
And yet you then went on to state:
The Open Letter offers extensive scriptural proof to argue that the actions of ISIS have no legitimacy under the Islamic rulings on jihad,
So what would you call using Islamic scripture to show that al-Baghdadi was operating under mistaken interpretations of that same scripture if not ‘correcting his theological misconceptions’? Islamic law, as you show in that quote, must come from Islamic scripture, so if the scholars are using that scripture to show where the errors were made then they are by definition correcting what they contend were al-Baghdadi’s theological mistakes.
The last part of the quoted bit, where you disagree that the scholars share al-Baghdadi’s underlying beliefs, is flat-out false. They do not argue with the concept of Jihad nor make arguments against it, they merely claim that al-Baghdadi is not sticking to the rules of Jihad as they interpret Islamic theology. The underlying belief that Jihad is legitimate is accepted by both the scholars and al-Baghdadi: they both agree that the game can be played, they just disagree over the rules of play.
Son of Glenner, exactly my initial response too. Just goes to show how the stink of a red herring dragged across your path can lead you into the bushes!
Theology is the same as studying the surviving documentation for the titanic and trying to postulate what configuration of deckchairs may have prevented the ship slamming into several million tons of iceberg…
SoG — No worries. Unless you’ve said at some point that your father is a convert to Islam and that he stalks you on the internet, I can’t imagine why anyone would think GA was your father! 🙂
I think its fairer and more accurate for the last sentence of my last post to read:
You just have to read the executive summary of the Open Letter to realise Boudry & Coyne’s rendering is an egregious misrepresentation of the Islamic scholars’ position.
The Islamic scholars’ position .. is how relevant? Not very, and they know it. They support the religion with its unwholesome aspects, while wiping their consciences clean with pronouncements they know will be ignored.
So you’re not going to answer my critique of your own words on the subject, Glenn? I had nothing to say regarding the last part so re-wording it does nothing to negate my points, as I was showing how your defence of the scholars’ letter was faulty.
By the way, if you’re going to try to move the goalposts it’s a good idea to move the ones the opposition is aiming at, and preferably before they’ve scored a goal.
Acolyte. Isn’t “Islamic scholar” the best example of an oxymoron that there could possibly be? When arguing with my friends in the pub (historically alas) anybody who mentions Hitler or the Nazi’s immediately loses the argument. I reckon we can add the bible, koran, and jesus n mo to the list of automatic argument disqualification criteria…
Unrelated to the cartoon (apologies), but I no longer get email updates when new cartoons are posted. I can’t see a “subscribe” button – how do I fix this? My Patreon donations are still going through OK!
What? You’re forbidden to mention any person who professes religious belief? Is it the name, only, or would “a certain UK prime minister” also be disallowed, because there’s only one and he’s Anglican? I guess it would leave plenty of time for drinking.
^ Possibly. Haha. The pub argument has been changed forever by the smart phone and internet. Now, asserted facts can be checked in seconds. But the ensuing argument over the conflicting googled misinformation was usually more entertaining than the original argument!
“Reader Andy called my attention to this 23-year-old transcript of a lecture by Cambridge neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey: his plenary lecture to Amnesty International. That was nine years before Dawkins’s The God Delusion publicized the “child abuse” argument to the world. Surely Richard derived some of his views from Humphrey, for Humphrey’s are plain, courageous, and eloquent. Further, all of us who have John Brockman as an agent, including Dawkins, read stuff on Brockman’s website Edge, where this essay was published.
Humphrey’s lecture is the best thing I’ve seen written about why parents should not indoctrinate their children with religion, and I recommend it very highly. ”
Here is part of the transcript by the eminent Cambridge neuropsychologist:
“Let’s go help the Muslim boy who’s being schooled by the mullahs into believing that the Earth is flat, and let’s explore some of the ideas of scientific geography with him. Better still, let’s take him up high in a balloon, show him the horizon, and invite him to use his own senses and powers of reasoning to reach his own conclusions. Now, offer him the choice: the picture presented in the book of the Koran, or the one that flows from his new-found scientific understanding. Which will he prefer?”“What Shall We Teach the Children”Amnesty Lecture, Oxford, 21st February 1997, by Nicholas Humphrey
However, the Wikipedia article, History of Geodesy documents how Muslims developed and refined methods for calculating the Earth’s circumference starting in 830 AD with a group of scientists commissioned by the Caliph Al-Ma’mun (see below) …..all without the need for balloons!
“The Muslim scholars, who held to the spherical Earth theory, used it to calculate the distance and direction from any given point on the earth to Mecca. This determined the Qibla, or Muslim direction of prayer. Muslim mathematicians developed spherical trigonometry which was used in these calculations.[14]
Around AD 830 Caliph al-Ma’mun commissioned a group of astronomers to test Eratosthenes’ calculation of one degree of latitude by using a rope to measure the distance travelled due north or south on flat desert land until they reached a place where the altitude of the North Pole had changed by one degree. The measured value is described in different sources as 66 2/3 miles, 56.5 miles, and 56 miles. The figure Alfraganus used based on these measurements was 56 2/3 miles, giving an Earth circumference of 24,000 miles (38,625 km).[15]
In contrast to his predecessors who measured the Earth’s circumference by sighting the Sun simultaneously from two different locations, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973–1048) developed a new method of using trigonometric calculations based on the angle between a plain and mountain top which yielded simpler measurements of the Earth’s circumference and made it possible for it to be measured by a single person from a single location.[16][17][18] Al-Biruni’s method’s motivation was to avoid “walking across hot, dusty deserts” and the idea came to him when he was on top of a tall mountain in India (present day Pind Dadan Khan, Pakistan).[18] From the top of the mountain, he sighted the dip angle which, along with the mountain’s height (which he calculated beforehand), he applied to the law of sines formula.[17][18] While this was an ingenious new method, Al-Biruni was not aware of atmospheric refraction. To get the true dip angle the measured dip angle needs to be corrected by approximately 1/6, meaning that even with perfect measurement his estimate could only have been accurate to within about 20%.[19]
Muslim astronomers and geographers were aware of magnetic declination by the 15th century, when the Egyptian astronomer ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Wafa’i (d. 1469/1471) measured it as 7 degrees from Cairo.[20]”
Another important example of how prominent atheists have and continue to spread misinformation about Muslims and their religion. Very ugly people.
Atheist in China would no doubt find comfort in much of what these deplorable people write.
I do not see any connection between your (actually quite interesting) dissertation about early Muslim scholars and this gratuitous insult. That sort of crude remark would be unworthy even of M27Holts’ bar-room disputants, but might be forgiven in young children in a playground battle. Admittedly, it does not qualify as “of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature”, but it’s still bad form in my book. “Deplorable” is fair game, in context.
In fact, I think most people, whatever their philosophical beliefs, would concede that Richard Dawkins is a rather handsome man. (Not so sure they would think the same about Christopher Hitchens!)
Son of glenner, if you don’t like “ugly “, then lets settle for “evil”.
This is what Jerry Coyne wrote 3 months ago:
“Many of you must have had this experience: walking through the airport, say, and seeing a family of ultra-Orthodox Jews, with the little girls dressed like their mothers, and the little boys sporting sidelocks and yarmukes—all destined to grow up into lives exactly like those of their parents. Or you see a Muslim family, with the little girls wearing hijabs and “modest” clothing. Or Amish and Mennonites, with the children exact miniatures of the adults. And as with the clothing and hair, so the beliefs. Those children are doomed—doomed to adopt via indoctrination the religious beliefs of their parents. They will never be exposed to alternative points of view, will never have the chance for lives different from those of their religiously regulated and constricted community.
I find this ineffably sad, for this kind of religious (and cultural) indoctrination is nothing less than brainwashing. Famously, Richard Dawkins called it “child abuse”. And although that term angered many, including parents who assert the right to control their children’s religious beliefs, Dawkins was not wrong. It is abuse to limit the lives of children by filling their minds with religious nonsense as soon as they can understand language.”
These words were penned in an environment where Muslim children are being taken away from their parents who in turn have been photographed shackled on train platforms before being loaded onto trains destined for concentration camps where they are indoctrinated, tortured, raped and executed. From a Washington Post Opinion piece, a year and a half ago,
“NEW EVIDENCE is emerging that the Chinese campaign to exterminate the culture and traditions of Turkic Muslim people, chiefly Uighurs, in the Xinjiang region also includes a generation of children and young people. As their parents are hauled off to concentration camps — euphemistically called “vocational education” by the Chinese authorities — the children are being herded into special boarding schools and orphanages. At these schools, the children can check in but they cannot leave. The comprehensive effort to create a separate brainwashing and imprisonment system for children deepens the evidence that China is committing a cultural genocide.”
GA. Answer this question. No prevarication or weasel words. Do you think that The koran is the final and immutable word of a supernatural being you call allah. A simple yes or no will do. Thanks
… and their ideas and values are not compatible with a secular, liberal democracy.
What is happening in China is evidence for what would happen if people with the same values and ideas as expressed by Humphreys, Dawkins and Coyne were to gain sufficient influence in the West. It’s not like something similar hasn’t happened in the West before, is it.
Glenn Anderson is using the debating technique of “what-about-ery” by his remarks on the alleged (probably true) persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, as if that makes child indoctrination by Haredi/Islamic/Mennonite parents perfectly justifiable. In the well-known cliché, two wrongs don’t make a right!
I hope that most open-minded persons would agree that it would be better for children to learn about various religious (and political) viewpoints before making up their own minds.
I understand that, even in the strict communities mentioned in the Jerry Coyne quote, some brave young people have the courage to break free to lead new lives away from the community, despite the heartbreak caused to their familes – and to themselves. These decisions are difficult and painful – they are not taking an easy way out. Such young people deserve our respect and sympathy.
SOG. He is a dyed-in-the-wool islamist. And in his mind the islamic attrocities are “just” because his “god” needs the blood of infidels…and who is he to argue with gods word eh? China is a totalitarian state and their concerns about likely terrorist attacks are completely totalitarian in response to a threat of an organised religion with a god driven agender to take over wherever it can…unfortunately more tolerant states have to suffer from lots of its citizens slaughtered in the name of “allah”….
I have it direct from spiritual inspiration that the ancient Egyptian culture also had a fair notion of the global nature of Earth, as well as its dimensions. Proof: architecture of tombs letting sunshine into the holiest centre at certain times of the year.
Rumour has it that a certain deep-dug well up in the High Nile was illuminated only at Summer Solstice, but this event being absent further north enabled such advanced geographical calculations.
GA will doubtlessly acknowledge that this predates his singular source by millennia? I take that for granted, so no need to respond, really.
(My aunt was scholarly in Egyptology but is now alas unavailable for comment.)
M27Holts & Rrr: In all fairness, there was a passing reference to Eratosthenes as a (very much pre-Islamic) calculator of the Earth’s circumference in Glenn Anderson’s post (February 10, 2021 at 9:54 am).
It was Eratosthenes who is supposed to have noticed that that well was illuminated by the sun only at the Summer Solstice (at noon), as it was exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, giving him a starting point for his amazingly accurate estimate of the Earth’s circumference.
Glenn Anderson says:
February 10, 2021 at 10:07 am
Acolyte of Sagan
I don’t know what you were trying to say. Sorry
Liar!
My response to you was very clear: you obviously have a good grasp of the English language: to pretend not to understand what I said is a cowardly way of refusing to admit that you were wrong.
The problem with your argument is that most Muslims are not wanting to “break free” of their faith even when they have the opportunity to live in a stable and democratic multi-faith, multiculural environment, or whether they are professionals or tradies.
They are participating in the broader community while building mosques and raising children who go onto to universities and engage with the broader community. You add to this a significant number of women joining the faith of their own volition and after growing up in a non-Islamic environment, then it becomes obvious that the assumptions underpinning your narrative are wrong.
Unfortunately some people don’t like to acknowledge they are wrong and are prepared to resort to lies and fabrication. That is what we have here.
Glenn Anderson: Sorry if I did not make myself clear. I have no problem with people adopting Islam of their own free will, or Muslims practising their faith within a “stable and democratic multi-faith, multicultural environment” and “participating in the broader community”, so long as Muslims or anyone else are free to leave their faith, convert to a different faith, or ditch faith altogether. It’s called religious tolerance!
I believe that there was a time, at the height of Islamic civilisation, when your quoted mathematicians were measuring the Earth, that Islamic rulers happily tolerated Christians and Jews. I don’t know what they would have thought of atheists.
“Glenn Anderson is using the debating technique of “what-about-ery” by his remarks on the alleged (probably true) persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, as if that makes child indoctrination by Haredi/Islamic/Mennonite parents perfectly justifiable.”
You’ve grouped all Muslims into the same category as to very small, minorities within the Jewish and protestant religions respectively. Most people can walk into their local school and see Muslim kids learning along side non-Muslim children. They can go to universities and see the same. They can go into the work-places and find Muslims working along-side non-Muslims. They can go to the football, movies and so on. If Muslims thought yours was the lifestyle for them they would not be building mosques and repurposing discarded church buildings to meet the community’s demand for places of worship.
Clearly you’ve misrepresented Muslims and I’m suggesting that it because you are not willing to admit that the assumptions underpinning your narrative about Muslims are wrong.
It’s now become perfectly clear that to attempt to engage with Glenn in any adult and reasoned way is a complete waste of anyone’s time.
The only responses he is capable of are to ignore or sidestep anything which gainsays his fevered imaginings and just post more inconsequential burblings with what I imagine is an arrogant sneer.
My personal response from now on when I see his monica (I’m thinking probably really Aabid or Abdul) will be to ignore and move on.
I do not demand that Muslims should adopt what you call my “lifestyle”. If they want to build mosques or repurpose discarded church buildings, that’s up to them. (But just don’t expect me to build a mosque or worship in one!)
I have encountered some practising Muslims in my life and find them ordinary people just getting on with their lives and running their businesses. I could also say the same about some Sikhs, Jains and Hindus I have crossed paths with.
So, once again, you really don’t know me – so don’t misrepresent me!
Son of glenner. You followed Coyne down the rabbit hole in saying: “…as if that makes child indoctrination by Haredi/Islamic/Mennonite parents perfectly justifiable.” , so there was no misrepresentation. You’ve just decided to climb out of the rabbit hole.
“The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that one in five adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced at least one form of child abuse, whether emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or witnessing domestic violence or abuse, before the age of 16 years (8.5 million people).
In addition, an estimated 1 in 100 adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced physical neglect before the age of 16 years (481,000 people); this includes not being taken care of or not having enough food, shelter or clothing, but it does not cover all types of neglect.
An estimated 3.1 million adults aged 18 to 74 years were victims of sexual abuse before the age of 16 years; this includes abuse by both adult and child perpetrators.
Prevalence was higher for females than males for each type of abuse, with the exception of physical abuse where there was no difference.”
SoG: Thanks for the clarification — I missed it when Glenn referred to Erastothenes, or perhaps failed to connect those dots. There is a filter that tends to glaze over my eyes when exposed to too much brilliance of the Glenn sort. As Dad used to say: Weigh every word on a precise scale, except when faced with a boatload of gravel.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
May 3, 2023
So Mo is a cross dresser? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The edit feature seems to have gone away.
“the edit feature seems to have gone away”
So, proof-read & edit BEFORE hitting the Submit button! It’s not that difficult.
Spot On again
And, as if by magic, the edit feature has reappeared!
I note that, like Jesus, Mo has his usual pint of Guinness (halal?) in front of him.
How does one manage to drink a pint of beer, or any other drink for that matter, while wearing a full burka?
“How does one manage to drink a pint of beer, or any other drink for that matter, while wearing a full burka?”
Like the answer to most of life’s questions, youtube has the answers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQTIONbRuEU
SoG – “How does one manage to drink a pint of beer, or any other drink for that matter, while wearing a full burka?”
Next time you see one worn, have a close inspection. The very small hole in front can take a straw. Your case should not take long to come up in court.. .. .. ..
I feel their pain. I hate wearing a face covering whilst shopping. But at least it makes you shop a lot faster, thus giving me more time for doing my thing…
Thanks for the link, Peter Nason. Unfortunately, that video only shows how to eat or drink wearing a niqab face covering, which is easy to lift for eating or drinking, without revealing much of the face, as shown in the video. (I have actually seen women eating and drinking while wearing the niqab in that well-known Middle Eastern city, Birmingham.)
As far as I know, a burka encases the entire head and body, with only a small opening in front of the eyes (and even that opening is sometimes filled with some kind of wide-mesh grid). There may of course be some sort of hatch in front of the mouth that I am not aware of.
“(I have actually seen women eating and drinking while wearing the niqab in that well-known Middle Eastern city, Birmingham.)”
They do that in the Holy City of Toronto Canada as well. It looks a bit silly to me, pulling the bits of cloth away to stick a forkful in their faces—but such is the price of female religious freedom. If I’m a lucky voyeur I can catch a brief glimpse of naked Muslim lips on the careless sinners.
I was fortunate (if you want to call it that) to be in the upper-story restaurant at Al Faisaliyah Centre with my (male) friends. Being a somewhat cosmopolitan place, women were allowed to be in the same room, though well-distanced at their own table. Without wanting to be obvious about it, we took turns checking out how the ladies imbibed their coffee or sodas: they simply lifted up the niquab, discreetly, to take a sip.
I can remember travelling to a football game in yorkshire, england..when on seeing a group of muslim women , all burqa’d up for a night on the tiles..the coachload of fans began singing…”get your face out, get your face out, get your face out for the lads”….I thought it was funny at the time.
A reminder of what is not being discussed: the woman’s perspective and a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space and simply mind their own beeswax:
Katie Russell: Without our consent
href=”https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/29/im-a-survivor-of-child-sexual-grooming-it-took-me-20-years-to-know-it-wasnt-my-fault”>I’m a survivor of child sexual grooming. It took me 20 years to know it wasn’t my fault
I’m a survivor of child sexual grooming. It took me 20 years to know it wasn’t my fault
More on the issues that will not be discussed:Two in five British women, and a fifth of men, have been sexually harassed at work or a place of study, a BBC survey has found. These women told the BBC about their experiences of sexual harassment at work:Harassment survey: ‘I’m a waitress but I feel like a sex worker’
The homepage for World Hijab Day . This is what their press release states:
“The overall mission of WHD is to create a more peaceful world where global citizens respect each other. Particularly, WHD focuses on fighting bigotry, discrimination, and prejudice against Muslim women. This is most crucial in these times where Hijab is being banned in some countries while in other countries, Muslim women are being targeted and harassed verbally and physically.”
So again they are responding to the behaviour of men who simply cannot respect woman’s choice in how she deals with predatory men and tries to defend her space.
So how do men respond? They belittle their cause and find fault using the plight of other women in Muslim countries as a pretext.
“somewhere, something else is wrong. therefore, your complaint is invalid”
i’m with misanthropopope – the connection is spurious. But in an idealistic fantasy vein … if the culture involved could just sort of disappear, both issues would disappear along with it, and Islam would be left to the Indonesians and other such less notoriously dysfunctional adherents.
I will confess to being a little concerned that ordinary women will grow to like the idea of underwear face. I mean, it sounds crazy, but since I don’t understand the attraction the Arabs have to concealment, it’s hard to say for sure that it can’t happen here, and that would be stinking shame. Extremely unlikely … I hope. Back in the ’70s I would have given fair odds to the end of the brassiere, but no such luck.
So Glenn, since you are a big fan of freedom of choice, would you agree that women should be free to go bare-headed if they want to, and that, even in conservative Islamic countries, to punish women for refusing to cover their heads is an immoral violation of their rights?
jb : As I said above, there is a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space and simply mind their own beeswax. I meant this to apply to all communities where women are insecure due to the poor conduct of men. Deal with the issue: men’s conduct and the need for boys to raised with a respect for women.
As for the cartoon its purpose is point-scoring to affirm whatever atheists want to believe about themselves (i.e., feed their ego). That’s the cartoonists brief. Its certainly not about telling atheists that maybe, just maybe, we’ve failure to deliver for women.
Glenn, I asked you a direct question, and you have not answered it. Again, do you think it is wrong for the authorities in Islamic countries to punish women who refuse to cover their heads in public? Your answer could be “yes”, or it could be “no”, or it could be some variation on “it depends on the circumstances”. But lamenting “a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space” is a lawyerly evasion that does not answer the question I asked.
This is a recurring argument. I myself have witnessed a lot of change in the workplace (regarding men’s interaction with women) since 1983. Clearly the monotheistic religions have failed to embrace the secular zeitgeist. Glenn…is that true or false…
jb : “do you think it is wrong for the authorities in Islamic countries to punish women who refuse to cover their heads in public”
Yes, now deal with the real issue: men’s conduct and how to raise boys so that they do not grow up to be drunken lads all piled into a bus travelling about town telling niqabis to show their faces, hijabis to show their hair, and the rest to show a bit of p***…. while onlookers sit back and have a bit of laugh.
Atheists have no credibility on this issue. Who were the leading advocates of conquest and war in the name of women’s rights and indeed civilisation? Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens said it would be worth the sacrifice of lives (not theirs of course). And where are they now? They moved on, enjoying the profits from book-sales and appearances to the applause of the their uncritical minions, while continuing to feed the frenzied mob (you guys) with their militant atheism and Western chauvinism (suggested reading: Foster, R., Megoran, N, Dunn, M. “Towards a geopolitics of atheism: Critical geopolitics post the ‘War on Terror’”, Political Geography, Vol. 60, Sept. 2017, pp. 179-189).
It’s time for atheist to admit their own failures, stop belittling and scapegoating religion, and address real underlying issues (or zip it).
Eh? I had to go back and look at the cartoon – it’s about burkas. The real issue? Burkas, it seems to me, but I tend to take things too literally I suppose.
Mens treatment of women, it’s an issue or perhaps a set of issues, and it seems like kind of a nutty leap from the subject of the cartoon. Recognizing that you’ve brought this up in a kind
[oops] … of atheists’ corner, are you thinking maybe it has something to do with religion? Like, religion is not known the world around for improving the woman’s lot so much, so maybe that’s another reason we ought to retire the priests and mullahs?
I don’t know, I really doubt religion or lack thereof has much to do directly with how people actually behave. But I suspect it does work perhaps even better than language to impede cultural exchange, e.g. the Arab world, a medieval cultural island.
Donn: Eh? I had to go back and look at the cartoon – it’s about burkas. The real issue? Burkas, it seems to me, but I tend to take things too literally I suppose.
Yes for you its about burkas, and burkas alone. Easy points.
Glenn. Perhaps we should have all become trappist monks rather than follow our football team and had the craic associated to it. Whether heckling those muslim women was funny or not is subjective obviously. But it did highlight a clash of culture. To suggest that instance was equivent to the manchester bomber is egregious me thinks…
Jesus and Mo is the antithesis of the scientific ethos. A scientific approach demands a self-critical approach. It would caricature atheists and theists alike; their failings and doubles standards. You’d see cartoons lampooning Dawkins and Harris along side Jesus and Mo. It would require engaging and learning from people you disagree with and holding your own beliefs up for scrutiny.
Instead, Jesus and Mo is intended to serve those who believe atheists are beyond reproach; their thoughts and actions are to be taken as always for the betterment of society and the “truth”. As such it is tailor made for those whose egos are fragile and demand constant affirmation of their cherished beliefs. It can only appeal to atheists who are dogmatic and not atheists who are sincere and hold themselves (before anyone else) to account.
thank you Glenn. I feel seen (in a good way) to the rest of you – women might as well have bags over our heads for all you notice what is really going on here
Are we aware of some failing or double standard exhibited particularly by atheists, that would be material for this elevated all inclusive version of a cartoon? Dawkins and Harris? I noticed an extensive work raking them over the coals for being convinced that we can’t live in peace with the Arabs, but since that’s an opinion that’s shared rather widely in the west among people of various religious persuasions, I take it as a sort of compliment that you expect more from prominent atheist writers. In any case, atheists are simply people who consider religion folly – it isn’t like an organized religion where someone like Dawkins represents all of us, so your argument is either with Dawkins or me, not with me because of Dawkins.
Wow! Well done, Glenn. You got there. It’s a satirical cartoon, isn’t it? It’s polemical in the good old tradition of Gillray, Cruikshank and Rowlandson. ( I know you like a learned reference). The former really should have turned out more stuff in support of Napoleon and King George in the interests of balance and scientific method, shouldn’t he?
I’m reminded of the letters in Private Eye cancelling subscriptions because the well known satirical magazine is satirical.
It’s always good to see a few ad hominem attacks from a claimed rational source and poor old Dawkins and co, as well as the ‘frenzied mob’ here, clearly deserve your ire for daring to earn a few bob from their publications or holding views which long ago took into account the opinions which you take such delight in quoting here at length.
Yobs will probably always be with us, albeit as a tiny minority, but their behaviour has nothing to do with the thrust of the cartoon which addresses a particular hypocrisy about the subjugation of women being dressed (sic) as freedom.
I do not doubt that some sort of Stockholm syndrome can lead some women to claim that body covering provides an escape from the ‘male gaze’ but that is a psychological problem which needs handling by means other than hiding under a blanket.
‘ Thank you for not not provoking my uncontrollable lust’ as per the tee-shirt is as apposite as ever, the covering of women being nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with male control. The fetishisation of female hair which obliges Iranian women to cover their heads but then spend fortunes on mascara and eye brow pencils must leave their men in paroxysms of desire. Or perhaps it’s just the wrong hair? Clearly, they do not find ‘freedom’ under the imposed scarves.
Remember, Glenn, the absence of ‘scientific ethos’ in a satirical cartoon is probably just par for the course.
Glenn. Hey. Yo is perfect. Even your shit smells like freshly baked bread…..pull the other one….its got an IUD on it…
Glenn wrote “…how to raise boys so that they do not grow up to be drunken lads all piled into a bus travelling about town telling niqabis to show their faces, hijabis to show their hair, and the rest to show a bit of p***…”
Well, I’ll tell you how I did it: First off, you model treating women as equals and show respect to women. My wife has a masters degree and is a highly respected (albeit woefully underpaid) professional; my kids know that what she does is more important than what I do.
You also make sure that they know that women are equally as capable and smart as men and, in fact, have contributed as much as men, historically. (We have these computers, WiFi, and smartphones specifically due to the contributions of women.) Then you have them involved with peers who are intelligent, erudite, and female so that they can see it on their level (such as the amazing young women on my son’s robotics team).
It also helps to be open about sex and talk with them about how to treat others and what sex is about so that when they finally get interested in it, they have the information they need to enjoy it and make sure their partners enjoy it as well. Talking honestly about things with your kids helps in many ways.
I will admit, however, that I’ve kinda dropped the ball on the whole equality-in-the-kitchen thing. I grew up with a sexist view of cooking (reinforced on what I’ve seen on telly) and may have passed on to my kids that cooking is a man’s job. (But I am trying to get my daughter to at least learn how to cook.)
Choirboy: “I do not doubt that some sort of Stockholm syndrome can lead some women to claim that body covering provides an escape from the ‘male gaze’ but that is a psychological problem which needs handling by means other than hiding under a blanket.”
Choirboy, this is interesting (although it does sound like sour grapes). Can you elaborate, perhaps with some serious research?
Thanks Uncle Roger. A nice, simple and dignified example of how men can have a positive impact on women’s lives. What greater honor is there for man than to nurture respect for women?
Glenn – I look forward to seeing your Dawkins & Hitch cartoon. Gonna be a hoot, I’m sure.
I noticed an extensive work raking them over the coals for being convinced that we can’t live in peace with the Arabs, but since that’s an opinion that’s shared rather widely in the west among people of various religious persuasions, I take it as a sort of compliment that you expect more from prominent atheist writers. In any case, atheists are simply people who consider religion folly – it isn’t like an organized religion where someone like Dawkins represents all of us, so your argument is either with Dawkins or me, not with me because of Dawkins.
Monty Python could make a year series plus block buster movie on just these words alone:
Have you been to Iraq recently?
Oh yes.
What did you see?
Not much, I blew the place up and there wasn’t much to see after that.
Oh I see. Why did you blow it up?
Well because we cann’t live in peace with the Arabs.
Oh why’s that?
We keep blowing them up.
Oh see, but did you think it might help if you didn’t blow them up.
No.
Why’s that?
Because we cann’t live in peace with the Arab.
Right. Oh by the way, “Are we aware of some failing or double standard exhibited particularly by atheists, that would be material for this elevated all inclusive version of a cartoon? Dawkins and Harris?
Very unlikely
Right, I see, Bye
Cheerio!
To Donn, Choirboy, and the guy jumping up and down for attention:
You guys are a crack up. Maybe I should take up take up suffolk blue’s suggestion and write my own script. The material is so good. Keep it coming!
Glenn, you are quite right to condemn those damned atheists, George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair for blowing Iraq to pieces on flimsy evidence and then launching the ‘war on terror’. I just wonder what prompted them to masquerade as a Born Again Christian and a convert Catholic while making references to ‘crusades’.
Choirboy:
Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and Harris and Hitchens the Iraq invasion in 2003: (suggested reading: Foster, R., Megoran, N, Dunn, M. “Towards a geopolitics of atheism: Critical geopolitics post the ‘War on Terror’”, Political Geography, Vol. 60, Sept. 2017, pp. 179-189).
By the way, Choirboy, have you been working on your “Stockholm syndrome ” thesis? Doctorate in psychology perhaps?
I might be able help. I did look for references to “Stockholm syndrome ” and “Muslims” and there are some really super intellectual neo-Nazi sites that share your views…but I guess you are already aware of them.
Glenn. A simple question; was the invasion of Iraq launched by the Born Again Christian, George W Bush and the convert Catholic Tony Blair?
The “he started it” thing in the Middle East goes back a century. It isn’t hard to find culpable parties, but it’s the laughable that of all the possibilities, we’re supposed to blame atheists. The problem really is that atheists have what little influence they have, only in the West, and in the Middle East they’re on pretty thin ice. I see that when asked about atheists, 63% of Egyptians polled in 2011 were for the death penalty; in Saudi Arabia atheists are officially terrorists.
See … in order to put out a funny cartoon, you have to lampoon some blind spot that everyone will recognize in the character and more importantly the people he or she represents. Your attempt to imply that 1) atheists are bloodthirsty imperialists aimed at 2) the innocent, peaceful inhabitants of the Middle East … is not going to meet that standard, so I’d suggest you look for another idea.
@Glenn Anderson, you have been heard, and understood. Not just by rebecca and Roger. Thank you for speaking up. There has previously been made the argument that prominent atheists have been culpable in propagating unscientific views about LGBTQ2+ topics, but today you have carried the torch regarding feminism v. atheism. Conceptually, ideas that should not be at odds, given the history of religion and women’s freedom. That there are some (atheists or otherwise) who quite obviously refuse to see their culpability or behaviour as also problematic, is not your failure Anderson. But documenting and highlighting it illustrates the problem, and may help those who come afterwards.
To be clear, using an example above, drunkenly hollering at someone, an opinion about their attire, is atrocious behaviour. Yes freedom of expression etc… but it doesn’t make a person less of an ass for behaving like one. From the context it was unknowable for us why the women were dressed as they were. For them to be accosted by men for their attire, serves to show that this problem has neither gone away, nor does it actually depend on how much or little skin is exposed. (seemingly it’s a no-win situation) The problem is that people were raised to think it was ok to harass strangers. (Consider, how it would feel to be screamed at by loud seemingly angry hooligans, from a moving bus. If anger and fear aren’t perceived, try more empathy.) Yes we need to speak up if there is a problem, but to make change, that voice must be respectful.
I was going to write, “the problem is people telling others others how to behave,” but that’s circularly self defeating. The wiccan rede comes close, “do as you will, so long as it harms none,” but again, the requirements of life preclude never harming other life except for many plants. Maybe a self-defeating rule is useful, as it shows how challenging it can be to know and demonstrate where the limit of acceptable behaviour is.
The best we can do as parents, is to raise our children to be better than we are.
[1] Edit button or no, any errors that remain are my own. We are all human in a flawed world. Mistakes get in. I am ok with that.
today you have carried the torch regarding feminism v. atheism
He has? Could the connection be put in simpler terms for the obtuse?
Glenn says: “A reminder of what is not being discussed: the woman’s perspective and a failure to raise men to respect a woman’s space and simply mind their own beeswax”.
When my country’s head of state, an elected female President, visited Pakistan on a state visit some years back, she was forced to wear a veil. She did not want to. But she HAD to. It was made very clear to our delegation that failure to do so would trigger a diplomatic crisis.
So tell me, Glenn:
Was *her* woman’s perspective being honoured?
Did these men running the Pakistani state respect *her* woman’s space?
We couldn’t *they* simply mind their own beeswax and let her wear whatever she wanted?
Hm. Perhaps the “men in black’s” good natured semi-drunken pun on a well sung 70’s/80’s chant was “atrocious behaviour”…I can well imagine Glenn bristling with salacious outrage and thinking to himself “by-god that abedi character showed those unequal women and girls of the west what real hatred of women can achieve”…and Glenn, unlike you I have spoken to at length to a geezer who’s wife was blown to pieces…so save your philosophical navel gazing and trying to blame a coach load of mancs for provoking the next muslim atrocity….
It’s not about blaming the “coach load of mancs” for the next muslim attocity. It’s about pointing out that an idea that one person gets to tell another how to dress is wrong. If that’s a country telling another countries representative or it’s own people how to dress, or if that is a drunk ass on a coach screaming at women on the street, they’re both in the wrong. Neither one being more wrong makes the the other ok. Despite that, they both point at each other’s behaviour as why they’re right to be telling women how to dress. And in all of this it is mostly men making these decisions. But this is again a man writing and I could really use an editorial check from an actual feminist, preferably female, to be more sure it’s on track.
And though this wasn’t written to reply to @Donn specifically, I hope that helped clarify.
A little more on the atheism v. feminism. Some atheists have spoken out against a women’s right to choose her dress as hijabs and burqas become more popular in the west. They don’t phrase it that way, but the effect is the same. What they completely miss, is that even if a person gains the freedom to dress how they please by escaping a regime, they may still have internalized the old ways to such an extent that although they know they can dress differently, it still would cause anxiety and fear for them to be out in public in a different form of clothing.
The irony being that now that /everyone/ has to cover their face and the world hasn’t imploded, it’s proven we can operate just fine that way.
“Some atheists have spoken out …“, while so have people of various religious convictions. It’s like blaming atheists for eating meat.
Why we’re here, is the repression in the Islamic Middle East, where women are forced to wear these concealments. That’s the punch line to the cartoon. And where likewise there’s notoriously little freedom of conscience etc. You can bet on atheist opposition to that – freedom of choice is a fundamental value here, whether of religion or of what kind of hat to wear or whatever.
It would be easy to get suckered into a discussion of whether burkas might be bad news in the west, but that can wait until we’re clear on the question of whether atheism has anything to do with it.
I should add, that a web search for atheism vs. burqa/burka/hijab turned up no instances of atheist intolerance in the west, and various instances where atheism was connected with freedom from concealment in the Middle East.
The human race is hundreds of thousands of years old, and in almost all times and places men and women have been able to freely look each other in the face. I consider the restriction of this freedom to be a sad, burdensome, and highly objectionable custom! That said, I am also a strong supporter of people’s right to live by their own customs, and if it is the custom in some Muslim communities to live this way then as far as I’m concerned that’s their call, just as it’s our call in Western societies to require that people wear clothes in public. (I am aware that some here have an issue with the latter requirement, but I don’t share it).
Given that we have the right to make and live by our own rules, I also see nothing wrong with Western societies banning the burka, and refusing to allow migration from countries where benighted customs are widespread. In fact I would see it as sanity!
As for Glenn, I think his criticisms of the cartoons are tendentious. It is commonplace for religious Muslims to defend the burka by claiming it is a defense against sexual harassment, but this is a bad argument, and a bad faith argument. It is a bad argument because even if it were true that the burka shielded wearers from harassment, it might still be the case that the downsides of the burka vastly outweighed this benefit, and that it should still be banned. It’s a bad faith argument because the religious Muslims who make it don’t actually care about sexual harassment, what they care about defending their own religious customs.
Likewise with the attack on the “new atheists” like Dawkins and Harris. Again, even if it were true the primary cause of the (disastrously mistaken!) Iraq war was a feeling (shared by large numbers of believers as well as nonbelievers!) that “we can’t live in peace with the Arabs”, and even if it were true that this feeling was widespread among the new atheists, it wouldn’t follow that the new atheists had any special responsibility for the war (it’s not like they have a lot of political clout!), or that Islam is a non-problematic religion of peace that we should welcome into our homelands.
Glenn in interesting. My guess is that he is a well educated Western convert to Islam, and that this is something he wants to conceal. If he were to tell me otherwise (in particular that he isn’t a Muslim) I would believe him, but at this point I’m not expecting to hear any straight talk.
I think he’s a victim, of a thousands of years of propaganda that we need gods to give us moral guidance to keep evil at bay – which is sure to trouble him, if, as one does, he has lost faith in the preposterous. He’s here because, perhaps unconsciously, he feels we have the answer, and he’s frustrated because he can’t see it.
jb: “…and that it should still be banned”
duh!
More material for my script. Thankyou jb
Jb, depending on the context, costs may well outweigh the benefits. However, wearing the niqab is the woman’s call. No niqabi has asked my advice so don’t be disappointed if they don’t stop you in the street to ask for your opinion.
Thinking about how dangerous it could be wearing a niqab in a Western country, I was reminded of a true story about a marine veteran who described how he was barely able to restrain himself from breaking a niqabi’s neck when he saw her at his local supermarket. The interesting part is what happened next: ‘That was me’ “Former U.S. marine who planned to bomb a mosque before suddenly converting to Islam offers chilling insight into alleged Christchurch shooter’s beliefs”
One lesson we may draw from this story is if we oppress others then we are oppressing ourselves. The marine says the turning point for him was seeing that his anger threaten to alienate him from his 6 yo daughter. From that point he resolved to learn about Islam.
We’d all do better to learn from one another so we can improve our own lives and deal with issues such how to raise our boys. Deal with the real issue so women can go about their business in peace and security.
jb: My guess is that he is a well educated Western convert to Islam, and that this is something he wants to conceal.
This is a double “duh!”, eh jb
Another lesson we may draw from this story, is that Islam appears to have a certain appeal for nut cases. (Not that I intend to demean that soldier – far from it, his craziness is an all too common story among people returning from the front – but that doesn’t mean that’s an account of ordinary sane reaction.)
I actually found the complete life story of the marine (above). It is part of an oral history project by Ball University. It’s 1.5 hour so only for those with the time and inclination to learn: Richard McKinney oral history . Here is the shorter version (5 min): “I Wanted To Kill Muslims — Now I Am One”. Its all about the critical importance of learning for peace.
Donn: “Another lesson we may draw from this story, is that Islam appears to have a certain appeal for nut cases.”
Donn everyone of us is a bit of ‘nut case’. Its whether we are prepared to admit it and get on with the healing by addressing own own issues, rather than projecting them on to others.
If you are accusing others of not being able to get along with you, its most likely you who cannot live with others. Instead of blaming others for being different from you — using them as scapegoats for your own anxieties— chill, take a deep breath and say ‘things have gotta change’! That’s what the marine did. So just deal with it.
jb: Likewise with the attack on the “new atheists” like Dawkins and Harris. Again, even if it were true the primary cause of the (disastrously mistaken!) Iraq war was a feeling (shared by large numbers of believers as well as nonbelievers!) that “we can’t live in peace with the Arabs”, and even if it were true that this feeling was widespread among the new atheists, it wouldn’t follow that the new atheists had any special responsibility for the war (it’s not like they have a lot of political clout!), or that Islam is a non-problematic religion of peace that we should welcome into our homelands.
Actually, public opinion at the time was against the war. The demonstrations went into the millions and were coordinated globally. I remember it vividly. The leaders simply ignored the majority and Dawkins and Harris supported them in making the case for war. They are warmongering, then and now.
wikipedia documents the “Opposition to the Iraq War”:
“Opinion polls showed that the population of nearly all countries opposed a war without UN mandate, and that the view of the United States as a danger to world peace had significantly increased”
And, as for listening to the experts:
“Richard Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council for both the latter part of the Clinton Administration and early part of the George W. Bush Administration, criticized the Iraq War along similar lines in his 2004 book Against All Enemies and during his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. In addition to diverting funds from the fight against al-Qaeda, Clarke argued that the invasion of Iraq would actually bolster the efforts of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals, who had long predicted that the U.S. planned to invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern country.”
So ‘New Atheists’ ignored expert opinion to pursue their (very lucrative) personal agendas. And it turned out like the experts said it would.
Lets be careful here. Dawkins supported the Afghanistan invasion, along with Harris and Hitchens. It was Harris and Hitchens who argued the case for the Iraq war
I still don’t get what this has to do with atheism in general. Atheists are not driven to incite violence against Middle Eastern countries because they have no God to teach them better, they just draw the same conclusions anyone would from reading about Middle Eastern culture, suicide bombers etc. And genocide in the case of Iraq. It’s possible to have a “lively discussion” over what mistakes have been made in the Middle East, but we should be clear that, like the problem with harassment of burka wearers, it has nothing in particular to do with atheism.
Donn and jb, I did a search and couldn’t match Dawkins with the notion of “we cannt live in peace with the Arabs” but I found this conversation between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris:
“Sullivan: The Wall is not what makes it a prison camp. On top of the Wall, they occupy and control that entire region, and maintain checkpoints that burden and enrage many of the inhabitants. And remember, again, and this is where we have to go back to history, when you say the Israelis only want to live in peace with their neighbors, is that why 1948 is regarded by any non-Israeli in the region as a “catastrophe”? Was that living in peace with their neighbors? That was a terroristic campaign of expulsion, of ethnic cleansing, and of mass murder. That’s how Israel was founded. And many of the people living in Gaza and on the West Bank are the descendants of refugees from that original act of ethnic cleansing. One problem of the debate in the U.S. is that this vital piece of context is so often removed, and so we have an utterly ahistorical understanding in which the motives of one side become unintelligible.
Harris: The problem with invoking history in this discussion is that you have to decide when to start the clock. You could go back further than 1948—and many Jews would have you go back 2,000 years, pointing to the fact that this is their ancestral homeland, as evidenced by the history of the diaspora. The Jews were kicked out of Palestine and hunted and hounded and ghettoized and murdered for millennia—which would seem to justify the decision to return them to their homeland, provided it could be done in a way that wouldn’t ruin the lives of other people.
Sullivan: Well, the problem is that other people happened to live there already in the land assigned to newcomers—and they regarded their lives as ruined. They were the majority, and they were not Jewish. This is the most recent big event in the history of that part of the world—and the Palestinians had almost no say in any of it. So to claim that we just have to accept this as a given and that any complaints about the deep wound in that part of the world are somehow illegitimate or to be bracketed off from the core discussion seems to me to miss the whole point of the conflict.”
And it goes on. So is this what you are referring to? Its a waste of time discussing burkas, women’s rights and so on if your real agenda is geopolitical.
It’s what I was referring to when I said “he started it” in the Middle East goes back a century. Whose agenda? Are you saying the Author, atheists in general, and/or people who oppose repressive cultural misogyny are bent on conquest on behalf of Israel, or any such thing? Come on, Glenn – talk about taking a deep breath – we need some logical rigor here.
Having read GA recent regurgitation of nonsense selected to sate his confirmation bias. I see his primary solution is for everybody to convert to Islam…sic…
I’ve just looked through a few months of cartoons. I’m looking for “satire” directed at Moses based on the actions of Jews or their scripture. Is there any to find?
Ok, so why is there no “satire” directed at Moses based on the behavior of religious Jews or their scripture?
I have enjoyed J&M for years and also enjoyed reading the comments, gently mocking “the sincerely held beliefs of millions” as stated under NOTE at the bottom of the page. The forum has so far been friendly and entertaining. I have appreciated the writings of Darwin Harmless, M27Holts, Son of Glenner to name just a few, and even if I don’t agree with everything written I haven’t felt the urge to put in my two cents’ worth. But I have to react now – since January 20th, the narrative has been dominated by Glenn Anderson, who must only recently have discovered the site, revealed by his comment today on Moses. He is doing his best to destroy the atmosphere.
I googled “Glenn Anderson” and “atheist” and found a Glenn Anderson on Quora answering the question “What is the best example of a debate to beat atheists and win them?” like this:
One idea is to hit the atheist in the head with some sort of heavy, blunt object, damaging their temporal lobe (I’m not sure if left or right matters, so just get both). This part of the brain is known to influence religion. In fact, instances of Hyperreligiosity can be attributed to temporal lobe epilepsy.
Not sure it’s the same Glenn Anderson.
Debate by percussion. I feel it now.
So, no answer to my simple question, then, Glenn.
Here it is again; was the invasion of Iraq launched by the Born Again Christian, George W Bush and the convert Catholic, Tony Blair?
Iho,
I’ve enjoyed the company and the relaxed atmosphere but if I’m causing a long-term visitor like yourself grief then perhaps I’ve outlived my welcome.
I just find it odd that an atheist website intended to gently mock “the sincerely held beliefs of millions” would self-censor when it comes to one of the three main monotheistic religions, particularly when the battle remains to be won against ‘cancel culture’. Very odd.
Choirboy: “Here it is again; was the invasion of Iraq launched by the Born Again Christian, George W Bush and the convert Catholic, Tony Blair?”
Can you give me a clue? (sorry couldn’t resist a gentle mock of my own)
Glenn, thank you. That will do nicely!
I must admit to missing j&m for the last few weeks, got a bit caught up in the whole pandemic worry. So I came back half an hour ago to find my favourite polite gentle religion mocking forum has been infected by a C.O.V.I.D (confirmed overt virulent islamic dipwit ) called glenn.
How did it get in and has the author tried antibiotics to cure the infection? I have seen this type infection on other polite sites defending Q anon, stolen votes and every other type of nonsense. “Hijabs are a big victory for women” is just another daft conspiracy theory that nobody sane could ever support. I won’t mention this annoying buzzing noise again, if everyone else ignores the noise it should just wander off.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for, where Moses comes in, but one thing you might try to bear in mind is, this cartoon is funny. That’s a phenomenon you probably can’t really relate to directly, but you can perhaps understand something about it at an intellectual level.
Mockery of Jesus, Mohammed and Moses is funny, but for various reasons that come out of our experience with these characters. The subject of a cartoon is often some appalling religious folly that took place in our world. Moses generally appears here as a sort of irritatingly politically correct intellectual, because that’s funny. Jews have not been particularly known for forcing their religious beliefs or practices on anyone, so casting Moses as another like J & M wouldn’t be funny.
Of course there’s an extra element here, in that the Author puts himself at real personal risk by mocking Mohammed. I can’t speak for him on the motivation for that, but I doubt the cartoon would be here if it weren’t for a perceived need for the West to defy this threat. But out of that simple motivation has sprung an interesting and funny body of work that is well set up to poke some things that need poking.
Anyway. I’m busy contemplating my next drink in the bar that I constructed in my double garage. I raise my glass of Hobgoblin to all as we await the end to this horrid virus…and get back to our usual water holes..
Donn
The cartoons are not that funny to me because they do not caricature the real criminals but instead ascribe their actions to the teachings and the teachers despite the historical evidence to the contrary. Two wrongs do not make a right.
I might sort of agree – we’re talking about medieval culture that represses women here, right? and there’s reason to think it isn’t entirely Mohammed’s fault, even though his religion is so strongly associated with it in the popular eye. But it’s hard to make a good case for that … I was going to say (again) what about those Indonesians, but then I had to check, and sure enough there’s a conservative Moslem element there pushing for marriage with no dating, requires women to clothe themselves like nuns, etc. Whatever Mohammed “taught” us that his angel whispered in his ear, Islam seems to fit hand in glove with repressive medieval culture.
Perhaps our Glenn here has missed where Mo is repeatedly declared to be but a body-double of the unnameable entity of much peas? It does tend to reduce some desperate tension and enable a sense of humour (where one is compatible with host tenor) in its place. YMMV.
From scripture:
https://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/lost/
From behaviour:
https://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/slice/
Because it’s fucking funny:
https://www.jesusandmo.net/comic/suit/
Please try to get over yourself just a little, Glenn.
And – Glenn – if you’re sweating over the attitude towards those “teachers”, forget it. For unbelievers, the person behind this is practically irrelevant. Was there even a Jesus, or how many of them were there? Well, who cares. We’re stuck with a reality today that’s centered around these characters, and to us they represent that; whether they even really existed or not is immaterial, because at most they were just like any ordinary religious swindlers. And yeah, we know they didn’t get in bed together.
Aye. Donn. Jesus probably did not exist. And Mohammed a “teacher”. Like I said. Pull the other one…its got a bacon butty on it….
Donn: I was going to say (again) what about those Indonesians, but then I had to check, and sure enough there’s a conservative Moslem element there pushing for marriage with no dating, requires women to clothe themselves like nuns, etc.
I think I found the news item you were referring to: “Growing Trend in Indonesia: ‘Marriage without Dating”.
The “conservative Moslem element” you referred to are in fact professional women who have given up on dating and are organising a match through an intermediary. No-one is forcing anyone to do anything. In fact it is the opposite. To quote from the article:
“But Pujiartati saw it as a way to ditch dating that went nowhere and be a devout Muslim at the same time by avoiding pre-marital touching and sex: “Why should I choose something that wastes my time and doesn’t please God?” she said.”
So exactly what is the problem with this? We have professional women making a personal choice.
What are you suggesting? They be forced to date and sleep with the guy? As I’ve said a couple of times, its none of our beeswax.
Let the women make their own choices. Why should they be disparaged simply because they don’t please the Uncle Donns, jbs and Choirboys of this world?
Choirboy says these women suffer from Stockholm syndrome and jb says they should be forced to uncover. In my opinion, its you guys that that have the psychological issues. I really do think there is a bit of sour grapes: disparaging something you you cann’t have, because you’re simple not the type guys these women want to mix with.
Thanks Acolyte of Sagan
Yeh the’re funny.
While some people have helped make a valuable contribution on one point, it seems clear that the purpose of their continued participation is not for productive dialogue. I will happily admit my mistakes (well, maybe not always happily, but I will discuss them). Those of you harrassed by their increasingly juvinile argument, to you I appologize for having encouraged their further contribution.
What’s happened to the Iraq War being the responsibility of atheists?
I asked the question about who actually launched it twice. The first time it was conveniently ignored and the second sidestepped with a childish facetious remark.
Sometimes silence is much more revealing than words.
Glenn, here is the clue you requested. The Iraq War was launched by the Born Again Christian, George W Bush and the convert Catholic, Tony Blair. (recommended reading; what I just wrote)
Christopher Hitchens certainly wrote in favour of it and although I disagreed with it I’m not sure that seeing first hand as he did the bloated gassed bodies of men women and children that I might not have been swayed a bit.
The difference is that he was not being hypocritical as he made clear that as an atheist he espoused no religious belief in turning the other cheek; unlike the two actual perpetrators of the horror.
Bush and Blair, however, the declared believers in ‘love thy neighbour’, ‘do unto others’, ‘seventy times seven’, ‘turn the other cheek’ were more than happy to incinerate babies from 40,000 feet from the comfort of their armchairs; and to provide the world with a ringside seat.
Still, those good old Christians in the States do like a good old electric chair or a gas chamber, especially if they can get hold of a poor black man!
Hypocrisy in excelsis!
I will not pursue the suggestion that their mutual belief in ‘The End of Days’ might have played a part but I suspect you might well be with them on that. (Recommended reading; most of the guff you’ve burbled so far.)
And you have the effrontery to attach blame for all that to atheists!
(Recommended reading; King Lear – ‘You should not have been old before you were wise!’)
‘The real issue…’ as you tried to assert way back before making a ridiculous link to the war, is not, ‘men’s conduct and how to raise boys…’. It is the hypocrisy of using controlling impositions upon the way women dress in the name of religion and claiming that as freeing them. Banning women from driving reduces their chances of road accidents. Clearly a thoughtful way of keeping them safe but there seem to be plenty willing to risk imprisonment to assert the right anyway.
The Ayatollahs are ageing and the scarves are being draped over traffic bollards. Presumably these misguided youngsters will look back nostalgically at the freedom that covering their beauty afforded them when these symbols of religious hypocrisy are finally consigned to the dustbin of history.
By the way, Glenn, the resort to Nazi comparisons is, to paraphrase, ‘ the last refuge of a scoundrel’ (recommended reading, Dr Samuel Johnson)
Glenn, no-one on this site (I’m guessing) wants to force women in Muslim countries to do anything, certainly not to have sex with anyone. As you said, it’s not our business.
As a general issue: though, religions have a tendency to engage in a piety spiral (aka purity contest, and similar terms). That happens in politics too, but here we’re talking about religion.
When that happens, eventually the ultra religious, those at the peak of the piety spiral, eventually try to change the behavior of those who are insufficiently devout. It has happened in every religion, and it proceeds first by shaming, then by legal means, and finally by violence.
Since you mentioned Jews, they’re not immune to this nonsense. In America, the great majority of Jews are of the Reform sect which means that many of them are almost indistinguishable from atheists. (I’ve been told by an elder of a nearby Reform synogogue that half the congregation were actually atheists, just there for the cultural and community stuff. He was trying to get me to join, but my wife is German and I wasn’t buying it.) So the majority of American Jews are not currently engaging in a piety spiral. In Israel, that is somewhat reversed. The Ultra-Orthodox have political power and create situations that secular Jews dislike.
It’s because of the piety spiral, that ends up hurting everyone, that we want extremely religious countries to be less so. And I don’t care what individual women decide to do with their vaginas. I care that laws may be passed that tell non-religious women what they can and can’t do with their vaginas.
Glenn discovers that there is a conservative Muslim element in Indonesia after all, and behold, it is a triumph for female self-determination! He even has a link to prove it!!!
Interestingly though, if you Google “indonesia muslim fundimentalism”, the top links tell a rather different story about the influence of conservative Islam in Indonesia:
Faith Politics on the Rise as Indonesian Islam Takes a Hard-Line Path
Indonesia’s Moderate Islam is Slowly Crumbling
How Saudi Arabia’s religious project transformed Indonesia
As usual, Glenn is arguing tendentiously towards a predetermined conclusion, which is that Islamic customs, including the ones that strike Westerners as highly objectionable, are all just really really good.
You know, I think I’m starting to lose interest in trying to have a conversation with someone who won’t be straight about anything…
Hmmm, usually my comments show up right away. Did I type my credentials wrong or something?
Yeah, I must have, or there was some kind of glitch. Here’s my comment again — please delete the botched version:
Glenn discovers that there is a conservative Muslim element in Indonesia after all, and behold, it is a triumph for female self-determination! He even has a link to prove it!!!
Interestingly though, if you Google “indonesia muslim fundimentalism”, the top links tell a rather different story about the influence of conservative Islam in Indonesia:
Faith Politics on the Rise as Indonesian Islam Takes a Hard-Line Path
Indonesia’s Moderate Islam is Slowly Crumbling
How Saudi Arabia’s religious project transformed Indonesia
As usual, Glenn is arguing tendentiously towards a predetermined conclusion, which is that Islamic customs, including the ones that strike Westerners as highly objectionable, are all just really really good.
You know, I think I’m finally losing interest in trying to have a conversation with someone who is never straight about anything…
Laripu : It’s because of the piety spiral, that ends up hurting everyone, that we want extremely religious countries to be less so.
Yes I agree. But it works both ways. Atheists can impose their own “piety spiral” and it is playing out in its most extreme form in China right now.
In Western countries the coercion takes the form of ridicule and clothing regulations under the pretext that these women do not have rational grounds for their choice of lifestyle. Some prominent atheists are playing a critical role in nurturing this toxic atmosphere.
If you have time watch this video . Dawkins is interviewing girls from a Muslim school and they are trying to describe a passage in the Quran which reads as follows:
Quran 25:53: “And it is He who has released [simultaneously] the two seas, one fresh and sweet and one salty and bitter, and He placed between them a barrier and prohibiting partition.”
Back in the TV studio, in front of a live audience, Dawkins recounts:
“They told me that salt water and fresh water don’t mix. The reason? Because it says that in the Quran (laughter from the audience). Alas I lacked the presence of mind to turn to the teacher sitting next to me and say ‘Will you please at the very next science lesson get some salt water, get some fresh water and mix them and see what happens” (applause).
What Dawkins does not acknowledge is that what the girls were describing is consistent with the halocline effect
“A halocline can be easily created and observed in a drinking glass or other clear vessel. If fresh water is slowly poured over a quantity of salt water, using a spoon held horizontally at water-level to prevent mixing, a hazy interface layer, the halocline, will soon be visible due to the varying index of refraction across the boundary.”
Dawkins is a scientists and he would have had to have been aware of the halocline effect. Imagine the effect this would have had on the girls as they sat at home watching in anticipation of their appearance and as it gradually dawns on them that Dawkins has betrayed their trust and ridiculed them in front of a nation-wide television audience. It’s sickening and of course it made the lives of other Muslim women all the more difficult.
You can read more about this amazingly fascinating subject on Anwar Bilal’s blog: http://captaindisguise.blogspot.com/2012/02/sea-barrier-miracle-claim-debunked.html
Thanks Donn. The verse in and of itself is insufficient proof of a miracle, but even Anwar Bilal does not go so far and claim it is inconsistent with science. The question is whether Dawkins has behaved in bad faith.
This is not an isolated instance of bad faith by leading atheists. Another example is from a recent article by Boudry & Coyne (2016) who interpret Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi, 2014 issued by 120 scholars in the following way
” In an open letter to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, more than 120 Islamic scholars and jurists take issue with the horrific practices of the self-proclaimed caliph. But the letter reveals that they share many of his underlying beliefs. The scholars attack the caliph on almost purely exegetical grounds, correcting several of his theological misconceptions (despite his doctorate in Islamic theology at the University of Baghdad). For instance, they point out that waging jihad is permissible only with parental consent (not fulfilled in the case of many ISIS fighters), that the jihadists’ desires for martyrdom must be pure, and that one should bear in mind important theological distinctions between “wicked evildoers” and “unbelievers,” as well as between idolaters and “People of the Book” (in relation to the genocide of the Yazidi minority) (Open Letter to Al-Baghdadi, 2014).
Whatever, your view of the scriptures, there is no way anyone who reads the Open Letter could honestly describe it as merely “correcting several of his theological misconceptions” and the scholars share al-Baghdadi’s “underlying beliefs”.
The Open Letter offers extensive scriptural proof to argue that the actions of ISIS have no legitimacy under the Islamic rulings on jihad, that they amount to “warmongering and criminality” by (1) waging war without any legitimate reason (“safety, freedom of religion, having been wronged, and eviction from one’s land”), and (2) in a manner that violates all the rules of conduct for jihad through treachery, killing of non-combatants (innocents and prisoners of war), mutilating the bodies, destruction of places of worship and so forth. They even go so far as to provide evidence that their actions and appearance is consistent with a group that the Prophet forewarns Muslims to avoid (see the appendix).
So Boudry & Coyne’s rendering is a fabrication but one that will be accepted to be the truth given their status and popularity among atheists.
Reference:
Boudry, M., & Coyne, J. (2016). Fakers, fanatics, and false dilemmas: Reply to Van Leeuwen. Philosophical psychology, 29(4), 622-627.
Atheists need to be as skeptical about what they are being told by fellow atheists as much as anyone else, especially if they are trying to argue the case for ongoing conflict and irreconcilable differences.
Sorry about the double posting above. I wonder why that particular comment didn’t show up immediately, like they usually do? Maybe too many links?
For some reason my last post appeared as ‘anonymous’ but still no answer to my simple question. Check mate in two moves, I think.
Interesting that the only cartoons that Glenn concedes as funny are the anti-Semitic ones he’s been led to.
And now a load of specious claptrap about the halocline effect in a metaphor which, ‘in and of itself is insufficient proof of a miracle’. Really? Wow!
I wonder why the great communicator who whispered this into the prophet’s ear specified ‘simultaneously’ but omitted any use of a carefully deployed spoon. Obviously when reading about two seas coming together ‘simultaneously’ most readers will imagine one running directly underneath the other to create a horizontal separation, a phenomenon of which little else is spoken in Barnsley. (recommended reading; Vic Feather)
It’s too daft to laugh at! (Reference; my dad)
If the metaphor is about anything it is presumably a pretty clumsy attempt to persuade the gullible that nature imposes unbreakable separations created by the Imaginary Friend. (Horizontal of course – not the ones normally experienced by humans)
Dawkins is being lambasted for promoting the idea that we cannot live together- purely for personal gain and because he is an atheist and yet when presented with this ‘sacred’ metaphor about natural separation he shoots himself in the foot by undermining it with science. (He didn’t, of course. He said he wished he had)
And the consequences of this wickedness? A generation of poor young Muslim women
suffering terribly from the betrayal of a well known atheist upon whose every word they are known to hang.
A ‘hoot’? Not ‘arf! (Reference; Sid James)
Hey, it got interesting again! The Sea Barrier Miracle is an excellent example of a particular type of fallacious argument made primarily by Muslim apologists (but occasionally by fundamentalists of other religions as well). It works like this: Let’s say the Quran has 6,000 verses. And let’s say (for the sake of the argument) that Western science has one million scientific facts. It follows that there are six billion ways to combine one Quranic verse with one scientific fact. Most of those combinations will be obvious nonsense, but just by chance a small number will, if you squint real hard, kinda, sorta make sense. The apologists seek out these random correspondences and then trumpet them as examples of the Quran miraculously anticipating Western science.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a deeply stupid argument, one that will convince no one aside from committed believers (like the moron with the eggs in the video about Dawkins that Glenn linked to). Even the best correspondences are vague to the point of meaninglessness. The Quranic verse about the two seas has multiple possible interpretations (i.e., it could be easily talking about a land barrier), and even if you interpret as being about the halocline it has nothing interesting or informative to say about it (i.e., nothing about salinity, or diffusion, or temperature, or density, or depth). The halocline itself is an extremely obscure and uninteresting scientific fact, with no obvious practical value. So where are the interesting and useful scientific facts? Newton’s Laws! How to make gunpowder, or build a telescope! The Periodic Table! The Theory of Evolution! There is no interesting science in the Quran because there is no science at all in the Quran, despite the rather desperate and amusing efforts of apologists to associate the Quran with the prestige of Western science.
Hmm…, I suspect that Glenn does not believe in evolution. Glenn, am I wrong? Don’t link to some oddball scientist who has doubts. There are always a few of those, in any field. But the Theory of Evolution is as foundational and widely accepted in the scientific community as the theories of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, and I want to know whether you accept it.
This shows the value of an educational system run by the theocracy, who knows how to teach “science.” Turkey has the idea, they’re spending big lira to increase the number of Turks properly educated.
“The question is whether Dawkins has behaved in bad faith”
No it isn’t. The question is whether those who invited possibly the most famous atheist in the world to speak to Muslim girls behaved in bad faith.
To claim that the simple pointing out of a scientific fact in relation to a dodgy metaphor is a ‘betrayal’ and ‘sickening’ is a sad combination of naivety and paranoia.
Unless someone had misled them to believe he would turn up with a mat and a five-times-a-day habit they could not be surprised that what they got was a remarkably polite and honest man who questioned their beliefs.
To invite him and then to call his expression of his views a ‘betrayal’ is what is truly sickening.
“The verse in and of itself is insufficient proof of a miracle”
Interesting. Could you perhaps expand with some reliable, proven scientific evidence of such a thing?
“Imagine the effect this would have had on the girls……….and of course it made the lives of other Muslim women all the more difficult “
Interesting. Could you perhaps provide some reliable scientific research into how mind reading followed by a syllogism contributes to convincing argument?
Perhaps this is an opportunity to start a doctoral thesis of your own. You might even seek some support from Disney or Dreamworks.
When I first saw this J&M cartoon, I took from it two “givens”:
a) A woman (or indeed any human) is entitled to wear whatever clothing she wishes, and does not need anyone else’s permission.
b) In some countries, women are forced (by religious authorities) to wear certain clothing whether they like it or not.
And our esteemed Author has based this week’s cartoon on the disjunction between these two things, to the effect that (b) should be deplored by all right-thinking people, ie readers of the J&M strip.
And now I find that I was mistaken and the cartoon is actually all about whether or not Richard Dawkins started the Iraq War by mixing salt water and fresh water.
Silly me!
Laripu: Fascinating idea — functions like a kind of osmosis membrane in between religious fanatism and secularism, in that they tend to pass in opposite directions. Hard-core, hatted, curly-locked unemployable go wild one way and end up ruling *-El free of contribution; the other “extreme” ends up running US politics and pop culture.
Meanwhile, another influential old-time sect is also struggling with internal strife between adherents of this uncle or the other one 1000+ years ago, to the detriment of those closest to the action as well as much of uninvolved humanity.
And during all this mayhem, other scoundrels find opportunity to stir hatred and splite in the name of yet another variant of dieism.
If only those activists could be made to settle their disputes directly, on a remote island with wooden swords or wrestling naked Olympian style, the rest of us could return to useful work and lives.
But there’s always one fly, isn’t there.
Thank Doge for the oasis of Cock & Bull. Sanguine sanity & solid salinity.
Son of G, somehow I distrust the claim of how Dawkins, or even moreso Hitchens, mixed a spirited grog. Ergo, consequences thereof.
Glenn, re. the Boudry/Coyne article, you said:
I take that to mean that the scholars did not – in your opinion – argue that al-Baghdadi was acting on misreadings or misunderstandings of Islamic scripture, and that the scholars did not share his underlying beliefs.
And yet you then went on to state:
So what would you call using Islamic scripture to show that al-Baghdadi was operating under mistaken interpretations of that same scripture if not ‘correcting his theological misconceptions’? Islamic law, as you show in that quote, must come from Islamic scripture, so if the scholars are using that scripture to show where the errors were made then they are by definition correcting what they contend were al-Baghdadi’s theological mistakes.
The last part of the quoted bit, where you disagree that the scholars share al-Baghdadi’s underlying beliefs, is flat-out false. They do not argue with the concept of Jihad nor make arguments against it, they merely claim that al-Baghdadi is not sticking to the rules of Jihad as they interpret Islamic theology. The underlying belief that Jihad is legitimate is accepted by both the scholars and al-Baghdadi: they both agree that the game can be played, they just disagree over the rules of play.
Son of Glenner, exactly my initial response too. Just goes to show how the stink of a red herring dragged across your path can lead you into the bushes!
Theology is the same as studying the surviving documentation for the titanic and trying to postulate what configuration of deckchairs may have prevented the ship slamming into several million tons of iceberg…
Wow ! Not been here for a while * Now more than 100 posts .. .. ..
90% of them from Glen.
Glen: Talk to a grownup.
Just had an awful thought! Some of you may be wondering if Glenn Anderson is my father, on account of my nom-de-plume. He is not!
Glenn Anderson is not my father and I am not the son of Glenn Anderson.
“Glenner” was a nickname of my now deceased father, who was called neither “Glenn” nor “Anderson”, although both are perfectly respectable handles.
(If GA can talk about “beeswax”, I can use the term “handle”.)
SoG — No worries. Unless you’ve said at some point that your father is a convert to Islam and that he stalks you on the internet, I can’t imagine why anyone would think GA was your father! 🙂
I think its fairer and more accurate for the last sentence of my last post to read:
You just have to read the executive summary of the Open Letter to realise Boudry & Coyne’s rendering is an egregious misrepresentation of the Islamic scholars’ position.
The Islamic scholars’ position .. is how relevant? Not very, and they know it. They support the religion with its unwholesome aspects, while wiping their consciences clean with pronouncements they know will be ignored.
So you’re not going to answer my critique of your own words on the subject, Glenn? I had nothing to say regarding the last part so re-wording it does nothing to negate my points, as I was showing how your defence of the scholars’ letter was faulty.
By the way, if you’re going to try to move the goalposts it’s a good idea to move the ones the opposition is aiming at, and preferably before they’ve scored a goal.
Acolyte. Isn’t “Islamic scholar” the best example of an oxymoron that there could possibly be? When arguing with my friends in the pub (historically alas) anybody who mentions Hitler or the Nazi’s immediately loses the argument. I reckon we can add the bible, koran, and jesus n mo to the list of automatic argument disqualification criteria…
Unrelated to the cartoon (apologies), but I no longer get email updates when new cartoons are posted. I can’t see a “subscribe” button – how do I fix this? My Patreon donations are still going through OK!
M27Holts: When you are finally able to resume pub arguments, it might be a good idea to add D J Trump to your list of disqualification criteria.
SOG. He is already is under the set of “POTUS” as they have to be a religious (nomimally at least) to get elected so are immediately disqualified.
What? You’re forbidden to mention any person who professes religious belief? Is it the name, only, or would “a certain UK prime minister” also be disallowed, because there’s only one and he’s Anglican? I guess it would leave plenty of time for drinking.
^ Possibly. Haha. The pub argument has been changed forever by the smart phone and internet. Now, asserted facts can be checked in seconds. But the ensuing argument over the conflicting googled misinformation was usually more entertaining than the original argument!
The best for last.
In October last year, Jerry Coyne introduced what he described as a superb article against the religious indoctrination of children in the following terms:
“Reader Andy called my attention to this 23-year-old transcript of a lecture by Cambridge neuropsychologist Nicholas Humphrey: his plenary lecture to Amnesty International. That was nine years before Dawkins’s The God Delusion publicized the “child abuse” argument to the world. Surely Richard derived some of his views from Humphrey, for Humphrey’s are plain, courageous, and eloquent. Further, all of us who have John Brockman as an agent, including Dawkins, read stuff on Brockman’s website Edge, where this essay was published.
Humphrey’s lecture is the best thing I’ve seen written about why parents should not indoctrinate their children with religion, and I recommend it very highly. ”
Here is part of the transcript by the eminent Cambridge neuropsychologist:
“Let’s go help the Muslim boy who’s being schooled by the mullahs into believing that the Earth is flat, and let’s explore some of the ideas of scientific geography with him. Better still, let’s take him up high in a balloon, show him the horizon, and invite him to use his own senses and powers of reasoning to reach his own conclusions. Now, offer him the choice: the picture presented in the book of the Koran, or the one that flows from his new-found scientific understanding. Which will he prefer?”“What Shall We Teach the Children”Amnesty Lecture, Oxford, 21st February 1997, by Nicholas Humphrey
However, the Wikipedia article, History of Geodesy documents how Muslims developed and refined methods for calculating the Earth’s circumference starting in 830 AD with a group of scientists commissioned by the Caliph Al-Ma’mun (see below) …..all without the need for balloons!
“The Muslim scholars, who held to the spherical Earth theory, used it to calculate the distance and direction from any given point on the earth to Mecca. This determined the Qibla, or Muslim direction of prayer. Muslim mathematicians developed spherical trigonometry which was used in these calculations.[14]
Around AD 830 Caliph al-Ma’mun commissioned a group of astronomers to test Eratosthenes’ calculation of one degree of latitude by using a rope to measure the distance travelled due north or south on flat desert land until they reached a place where the altitude of the North Pole had changed by one degree. The measured value is described in different sources as 66 2/3 miles, 56.5 miles, and 56 miles. The figure Alfraganus used based on these measurements was 56 2/3 miles, giving an Earth circumference of 24,000 miles (38,625 km).[15]
In contrast to his predecessors who measured the Earth’s circumference by sighting the Sun simultaneously from two different locations, Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973–1048) developed a new method of using trigonometric calculations based on the angle between a plain and mountain top which yielded simpler measurements of the Earth’s circumference and made it possible for it to be measured by a single person from a single location.[16][17][18] Al-Biruni’s method’s motivation was to avoid “walking across hot, dusty deserts” and the idea came to him when he was on top of a tall mountain in India (present day Pind Dadan Khan, Pakistan).[18] From the top of the mountain, he sighted the dip angle which, along with the mountain’s height (which he calculated beforehand), he applied to the law of sines formula.[17][18] While this was an ingenious new method, Al-Biruni was not aware of atmospheric refraction. To get the true dip angle the measured dip angle needs to be corrected by approximately 1/6, meaning that even with perfect measurement his estimate could only have been accurate to within about 20%.[19]
Muslim astronomers and geographers were aware of magnetic declination by the 15th century, when the Egyptian astronomer ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Wafa’i (d. 1469/1471) measured it as 7 degrees from Cairo.[20]”
Another important example of how prominent atheists have and continue to spread misinformation about Muslims and their religion. Very ugly people.
Atheist in China would no doubt find comfort in much of what these deplorable people write.
Acolyte of Sagan
I don’t know what you were trying to say. Sorry
Glenn Anderson: “Very ugly people.”
I do not see any connection between your (actually quite interesting) dissertation about early Muslim scholars and this gratuitous insult. That sort of crude remark would be unworthy even of M27Holts’ bar-room disputants, but might be forgiven in young children in a playground battle. Admittedly, it does not qualify as “of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature”, but it’s still bad form in my book. “Deplorable” is fair game, in context.
In fact, I think most people, whatever their philosophical beliefs, would concede that Richard Dawkins is a rather handsome man. (Not so sure they would think the same about Christopher Hitchens!)
GA. Why no mention of Eratosthenes the greek philosopher and astronomer…and probably first geezer to calculate the diameter of the earth…
Son of glenner, if you don’t like “ugly “, then lets settle for “evil”.
This is what Jerry Coyne wrote 3 months ago:
“Many of you must have had this experience: walking through the airport, say, and seeing a family of ultra-Orthodox Jews, with the little girls dressed like their mothers, and the little boys sporting sidelocks and yarmukes—all destined to grow up into lives exactly like those of their parents. Or you see a Muslim family, with the little girls wearing hijabs and “modest” clothing. Or Amish and Mennonites, with the children exact miniatures of the adults. And as with the clothing and hair, so the beliefs. Those children are doomed—doomed to adopt via indoctrination the religious beliefs of their parents. They will never be exposed to alternative points of view, will never have the chance for lives different from those of their religiously regulated and constricted community.
I find this ineffably sad, for this kind of religious (and cultural) indoctrination is nothing less than brainwashing. Famously, Richard Dawkins called it “child abuse”. And although that term angered many, including parents who assert the right to control their children’s religious beliefs, Dawkins was not wrong. It is abuse to limit the lives of children by filling their minds with religious nonsense as soon as they can understand language.”
These words were penned in an environment where Muslim children are being taken away from their parents who in turn have been photographed shackled on train platforms before being loaded onto trains destined for concentration camps where they are indoctrinated, tortured, raped and executed. From a Washington Post Opinion piece, a year and a half ago,
“NEW EVIDENCE is emerging that the Chinese campaign to exterminate the culture and traditions of Turkic Muslim people, chiefly Uighurs, in the Xinjiang region also includes a generation of children and young people. As their parents are hauled off to concentration camps — euphemistically called “vocational education” by the Chinese authorities — the children are being herded into special boarding schools and orphanages. At these schools, the children can check in but they cannot leave. The comprehensive effort to create a separate brainwashing and imprisonment system for children deepens the evidence that China is committing a cultural genocide.”
GA. Answer this question. No prevarication or weasel words. Do you think that The koran is the final and immutable word of a supernatural being you call allah. A simple yes or no will do. Thanks
Following up on my previous post, the behaviour of Humphreys, Dawkins and particularly Coyne, in light of his recent comments, is sick, ugly and evil.
… and their ideas and values are not compatible with a secular, liberal democracy.
What is happening in China is evidence for what would happen if people with the same values and ideas as expressed by Humphreys, Dawkins and Coyne were to gain sufficient influence in the West. It’s not like something similar hasn’t happened in the West before, is it.
Glenn Anderson is using the debating technique of “what-about-ery” by his remarks on the alleged (probably true) persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, as if that makes child indoctrination by Haredi/Islamic/Mennonite parents perfectly justifiable. In the well-known cliché, two wrongs don’t make a right!
I hope that most open-minded persons would agree that it would be better for children to learn about various religious (and political) viewpoints before making up their own minds.
I understand that, even in the strict communities mentioned in the Jerry Coyne quote, some brave young people have the courage to break free to lead new lives away from the community, despite the heartbreak caused to their familes – and to themselves. These decisions are difficult and painful – they are not taking an easy way out. Such young people deserve our respect and sympathy.
SOG. He is a dyed-in-the-wool islamist. And in his mind the islamic attrocities are “just” because his “god” needs the blood of infidels…and who is he to argue with gods word eh? China is a totalitarian state and their concerns about likely terrorist attacks are completely totalitarian in response to a threat of an organised religion with a god driven agender to take over wherever it can…unfortunately more tolerant states have to suffer from lots of its citizens slaughtered in the name of “allah”….
I have it direct from spiritual inspiration that the ancient Egyptian culture also had a fair notion of the global nature of Earth, as well as its dimensions. Proof: architecture of tombs letting sunshine into the holiest centre at certain times of the year.
Rumour has it that a certain deep-dug well up in the High Nile was illuminated only at Summer Solstice, but this event being absent further north enabled such advanced geographical calculations.
GA will doubtlessly acknowledge that this predates his singular source by millennia? I take that for granted, so no need to respond, really.
(My aunt was scholarly in Egyptology but is now alas unavailable for comment.)
M27Holts & Rrr: In all fairness, there was a passing reference to Eratosthenes as a (very much pre-Islamic) calculator of the Earth’s circumference in Glenn Anderson’s post (February 10, 2021 at 9:54 am).
It was Eratosthenes who is supposed to have noticed that that well was illuminated by the sun only at the Summer Solstice (at noon), as it was exactly on the Tropic of Cancer, giving him a starting point for his amazingly accurate estimate of the Earth’s circumference.
Rrr – Same with my mummy.
Liar!
My response to you was very clear: you obviously have a good grasp of the English language: to pretend not to understand what I said is a cowardly way of refusing to admit that you were wrong.
Son of Glenner
The problem with your argument is that most Muslims are not wanting to “break free” of their faith even when they have the opportunity to live in a stable and democratic multi-faith, multiculural environment, or whether they are professionals or tradies.
They are participating in the broader community while building mosques and raising children who go onto to universities and engage with the broader community. You add to this a significant number of women joining the faith of their own volition and after growing up in a non-Islamic environment, then it becomes obvious that the assumptions underpinning your narrative are wrong.
Unfortunately some people don’t like to acknowledge they are wrong and are prepared to resort to lies and fabrication. That is what we have here.
Glenn Anderson: Sorry if I did not make myself clear. I have no problem with people adopting Islam of their own free will, or Muslims practising their faith within a “stable and democratic multi-faith, multicultural environment” and “participating in the broader community”, so long as Muslims or anyone else are free to leave their faith, convert to a different faith, or ditch faith altogether. It’s called religious tolerance!
I believe that there was a time, at the height of Islamic civilisation, when your quoted mathematicians were measuring the Earth, that Islamic rulers happily tolerated Christians and Jews. I don’t know what they would have thought of atheists.
Son of glenner
To illustrate my point consider your own words:
“Glenn Anderson is using the debating technique of “what-about-ery” by his remarks on the alleged (probably true) persecution of Uighur Muslims in China, as if that makes child indoctrination by Haredi/Islamic/Mennonite parents perfectly justifiable.”
You’ve grouped all Muslims into the same category as to very small, minorities within the Jewish and protestant religions respectively. Most people can walk into their local school and see Muslim kids learning along side non-Muslim children. They can go to universities and see the same. They can go into the work-places and find Muslims working along-side non-Muslims. They can go to the football, movies and so on. If Muslims thought yours was the lifestyle for them they would not be building mosques and repurposing discarded church buildings to meet the community’s demand for places of worship.
Clearly you’ve misrepresented Muslims and I’m suggesting that it because you are not willing to admit that the assumptions underpinning your narrative about Muslims are wrong.
It’s now become perfectly clear that to attempt to engage with Glenn in any adult and reasoned way is a complete waste of anyone’s time.
The only responses he is capable of are to ignore or sidestep anything which gainsays his fevered imaginings and just post more inconsequential burblings with what I imagine is an arrogant sneer.
My personal response from now on when I see his monica (I’m thinking probably really Aabid or Abdul) will be to ignore and move on.
Glenn Anderson: Please do not misrepresent me.
I do not demand that Muslims should adopt what you call my “lifestyle”. If they want to build mosques or repurpose discarded church buildings, that’s up to them. (But just don’t expect me to build a mosque or worship in one!)
I have encountered some practising Muslims in my life and find them ordinary people just getting on with their lives and running their businesses. I could also say the same about some Sikhs, Jains and Hindus I have crossed paths with.
So, once again, you really don’t know me – so don’t misrepresent me!
Son of glenner. You followed Coyne down the rabbit hole in saying: “…as if that makes child indoctrination by Haredi/Islamic/Mennonite parents perfectly justifiable.” , so there was no misrepresentation. You’ve just decided to climb out of the rabbit hole.
While your out, here is reminder about what real child abuse looks like.
Child abuse in England and Wales: January 2020
“The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that one in five adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced at least one form of child abuse, whether emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or witnessing domestic violence or abuse, before the age of 16 years (8.5 million people).
In addition, an estimated 1 in 100 adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced physical neglect before the age of 16 years (481,000 people); this includes not being taken care of or not having enough food, shelter or clothing, but it does not cover all types of neglect.
An estimated 3.1 million adults aged 18 to 74 years were victims of sexual abuse before the age of 16 years; this includes abuse by both adult and child perpetrators.
Prevalence was higher for females than males for each type of abuse, with the exception of physical abuse where there was no difference.”
SoG: Thanks for the clarification — I missed it when Glenn referred to Erastothenes, or perhaps failed to connect those dots. There is a filter that tends to glaze over my eyes when exposed to too much brilliance of the Glenn sort. As Dad used to say: Weigh every word on a precise scale, except when faced with a boatload of gravel.
Mockingbird: Hahaha, that was truly brilliant! 😀
Coincidence does not excist! Right after watching the happenings here in the C&B from my little corner here, I came across this:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/second-strike.
So I returned here to share it with y’all. The other comics on smbc are also good (imnsho).
^
Crap, posted under the wrong strip! Should have been the next one…