Digital Soapbox

I’m a bit late with this news, it happened a couple of weeks ago, but it’s the end of the saga for the previous piece, so here it is now, along with a correction: it’s not Afghanistan, but Iraq where this took place.

The mother that tried to defend her daughter from her murderous husband and sons left the family and sought help with a women’s rights group in Iraq.

This group is itself a continuous target from fellow Iraqis who consider it anti-muslim and nothing short of treasonous. The women who run it live in constant fear of their lives.

The death threats poured in much faster and more frequently once poor Rand’s mother sought their aid. Credit to them, they didn’t turn her back out, but kept moving her from one safe house to the next, hoping to smuggle her out to Jorden and relative safety soon. During the final move that should have seen her safely out of the country she was gunned down in the street and killed.

To make an evil event worse, in the hospital, the women who’d been escorting Rand’s mother could hear the hospital staff talking about she’d been wrong to defend her daughter and that the mother’s death was “God’s Punishment”.

The islamic god it seems punishes women for looking out for their daughters.

We spend billions and our soldiers are killed and maimed trying to bring sanity to a country that appears to not want it.

The Guardian has an article about a father who murdered his 17 year old daughter because she had a crush on a British soldier and had been seen in public with him.

He killed her by pressing his foot into her throat. His sons, called by their horrified mother to restrain him, instead helped him finish her off. They dumped her in a grave, spate on her and congratulated themselves.

Why did he do all this? Because falling in love with a foreign, Christian, solder is so against Islam that “death was the least she deserved”.

The police are supposed to have been supportive of his actions and it seems there is to be no justice for poor Rand Abdel-Qader whose only crime was being born into a society that follows a religion that values it’s idiotic diktats more than it’s children.

This is the face of Islam that is rampant in Afghanistan, increasingly popluar in Iraq and encouraged and promoted in this country by our so-called ally Saudi Arabia. The unflinching murder of ones own daughter because she dared to fall in love.

The reason we bother? I’ve no idea. Our policy is hypocritical, we claim to be bringing prosperity and democracy to Afghanistan ostensibly to give “peaceful” Islam a chance (although the more one hears about Islam the more one has to wonder if there really is a such a thing), yet we play friendly with Saudi Arabia that has institutionalised an inacted into law what the people in Afghanistan practice despite the law.

It seems that the UK population as a whole is starting to accept that religion is not the force for good people once thought it was.

With recent trends suggesting that the number of people that actually believe in God down to somewhere around 35%-39%, with teenagers the value dropping to almost 20%, of the population as a whole, it seems that religion is seriously in decline and has been for years.

An interesting anomaly is that around 70% of the population still identify as Christian. How does that square with only 6% going to church and only 35% (in other words half of those identifying as  Christians) believing in God? How can you be a Christian and not believe in God.

Could it be that this represents a cultural change that’s taken place in the seven years since the 2001 census that gave us the 70% figure and the more recent polls (2007) that gave us the 35%-39% believe in God figure? Is this the difference between a “cultural Christian”  and an actual believing Christian? Or could it be that the social stigma of being an atheist or non-religious has decreased so far in the last half a decade that people now more readily identify as non-religious?

Or could it be something else, could it be that certain events in the last seven years have actually made people examine religion again in a different light; seeing that religion only appeared harmless maybe because the quality of our society and not some inherent aspect of religion?

One of the biggest recent ironies is that the Rowntree Foundation, set up by a Quaker (and ardent christian) 104 years ago to fight slavery has just completed a poll.

The responses may well have dismayed [Rowntree]. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.

Many participants said religion divided society, fuelled intolerance and spawned “irrational” educational and other policies.

One said: “Faith in supernatural phenomena inspires hatred and prejudice throughout the world, and is commonly used as justification for persecution of women, gays and people who do not have faith.”

Many respondents called for state funding of church schools to be ended.

There is hope for our society yet. Let’s hope that our politicians start realising this and stop listening to the religious leaders and groups as much as they do and start listening to the majority of the population who are not religious and not represented by those groups.

The United Nations international Declaration of Human Rights lies in tatters today. It should have been celebrating it’s 60th Anniversary this year, instead it’s lying broken and bleeding on the ground.

The Organisation of Islamic Conferences, with their allies China, Russia and Cuba, have forced through an amendment on the Freedom of Expression resolution.

As the International Humanist and Ethical Union reports:

UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression will now be required to report on the “abuse” of this most cherished freedom by anyone who, for example, dares speak out against Sharia laws that require women to be stoned to death for adultery or young men to be hanged for being gay, or against the marriage of girls as young as nine, as in Iran.

It’s a very bad day for human rights the world over and this amendment is a massive victory for those countries and regimes that wish to enslave their populations, be it with economic, political or religious ideology and denying them any chance to speak out and voice their discontent. It’s a gagging order.

The reasons for the vote, at least from the Sri Lankan delegate’s perspective are:

“The Sri Lankan delegate explained clearly his reasons for supporting the amendment: “.. if we regulate certain things ‘minimally’ we may be able to prevent them from being enacted violently on the streets of our towns and cities.”

In other words: Don’t exercise your right to freedom of expression because your opponents may become violent. For the first time in the 60 year history of UN Human Rights bodies, a fundamental human right has been limited simply because of the possible violent reaction by the enemies of human rights.

The violence we have seen played out in reaction to the Danish cartoons is thus excused by the Council – it was the cartoonists whose freedom of expression needed to be regulated. And Theo van Gogh can be deemed responsible for his own death.

Freedom of expression is that right which – uniquely – enables us to expose, communicate and condemn abuse of all our other rights. Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press we give the green light to tyranny and make it impossible to expose corruption, incompetence, injustice and oppression.”

Canada, The European Union, the United Kingdom (speaking for Australia and the United States), India, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala and Switzerland have all now withdrawn their support of the original resolution, in total 20 out of the 53 initial sponsors have now withdrawn their support.

The problem with allowing countries that deny basic human rights to their citizens to actually vote on human rights issues has been noted before by UN officials before. One has to wonder just how pleased the countries that passed this amendment were when they learned of the death of Sergio Viera de Mello.

“Just five months before he and more than 20 of his colleagues were killed by a terrorist bomb in Baghdad, the then High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, wrote:

“Membership of the Commission on Human Rights must carry responsibilities. I therefore wonder whether the time has not come for the Commission itself to develop a code of guidelines for access to membership of the Commission and a code of conduct for members while they serve on the Commission. After all the Commission on Human Rights has a duty to humanity and the members of the Commission must themselves set the example of adherence to the international human rights norms – in practice as well as in law…” “

Is it any wonder that if we allow regimes and countries that violate human rights with casual regularity the right to vote on resolutions that would threaten their very existence and authority that they would destroy those resolutions?  The Human Rights Commission appears now to be an entirely worthless and ineffectual body, instead of the champion for people everywhere that it should have been.

Perhaps it is time, as the article suggests, to form a new body.

I’ve been saying it for a while; Islam needs a reformation, a transformation that removes the horrible bits of it that encourage and convince people that Islam endorses the mistreatment of women and the need to murder anyone that criticises it.

It seems that Turkey has been listening, or more likely came to that conclusion themselves. According to the BBC’s Today programme yesterday (article, podcast) Turkish theologians have been working hard to verify and update the Hadith. The Hadith is the second most important and holy book in Islam. It is a collection of sayings that are attributed to Mohammed and form the basis of much of what is known as Sharia law.

The theologians have been pouring over the texts and have been trying to verify and trace the sayings and statements. What they’ve found is hardly surprising to anyone with an objective view of the matter; very many of the sayings are out of context, or were never even said by Mohammed; they were sayings and injunctions that reflected the needs of the society and rulers of the time, not, the theologians say, the core beliefs of Islam.

What they have been doing is something called Textual Criticism, a branch of literary science dedicated to discovering and removing errors from texts. It has been used extensively on the Bible, starting as far back as the 16th century (much earlier attempts were made, but they couldn’t really be considered anything resembling a science). It’s the reason we know now that the bible cannot be taken literally by any rational person, that it’s full of sayings and messages that were added centuries after the gospels or the passages they are found in were penned. Most textual critics studying the bible are Christians themselves, trying to understand their most holy book better; many are not always comfortable with what they find.

Christianity has never truly sat down and updated the bible though. Many of the changes would invalidate, or throw serious doubts on, many core beliefs of Christianity, such as the resurrection, or the virgin birth; all the events after the women re-enter the cave in Matthew did not exist in the earliest versions of that gospel, virgin was a mistranslation of the Jewish word for maiden, many passages have been altered to try and have them fit “prophecies” in earlier parts of the book.

Some things in the Bible though could be removed and really shouldn’t be. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, was never in any of the original texts, it was added much later, yet it’s one of the most memorable passages and certainly one of the best. Did Jesus (if he existed) really say that, or did someone think he ought to have said it and added it themselves?

If you’re interested in Textual Criticism of the Bible, I recommend reading “Misquoting Jesus“, it’s not a big book but it explains both what textual critics do and how they go about it, as well as showing what they’ve found when they started studying the bible.

Unlike Christianity which has no real counterpart to the Hadith (although Catholics might like you to treat their encyclopaedia that way), Islam relies quite heavily on the Hadith and how it interprets the Koran. It’s the Hadith that gives Muslims the incentives and instructions they need to do all those things modern, enlightenment values abhor. The changes those Turkish theologians are making to the Hadith seem to be going a long way to removing the nastier parts of Islam.

The main obstacle I see to this being accepted is that the power brokers in Islam, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, are not very likely to allow their power base to be simply whipped out from under them like that.

What I suspect is likely to happen is that either this effort will be buried and never achieve any momentum or that it will lead to a split in mainstream Islam similar to the split in Christianity that created protestantism.

The moderate Muslims will hopefully embrace the changed Hadith as finally vindicating what they knew to be true all along and will form the beginnings and hopefully an eventual avalanche that will revolutionise Islam for the better.

Ricky Gervais, comedian and actor, wrote an article recently on how he went from Christian to atheist in one afternoon

The listverse site has a great list of the 15 most common misconceptions about evolution. While possibly not in the order I might have chosen they are nonetheless well worth reading.

A quick random selection:

Evolution Supports “Might Makes Right”

In the 19th and early 20th century, a philosophy called “Social Darwinism” sprung up from misguided attempts to apply biological evolution to society. This philosophy said that society should allow the weak to fail and die, and that not only is this an ideal situation, but a morally right one. This enabled prejudices to be rationalized and ideas such as the poor deserved their situation due to being less fit were very popular. This was a misappropriation of science. Social Darwinism has, thankfully, been repudiated. Biological evolution has not.

and

Evolution is ‘just’ a theory

Scientifically speaking, a theory is a well substantiated idea that explains aspects of the natural world. Unfortunately other definitions of theory (such as a “guess” or a “hunch”) cause a great deal of confusion in the non-scientific world when dealing with the sciences. They are, in fact, two very different concepts.

All the same, PZ over at Pharyngula correctly points out:

[...] I have to nitpick a little bit. #6, “The theory is flawed,” gives the wrong answer — it basically tries to argue that the theory of evolution is not flawed. Of course it is! If it were perfect and complete we’d be done with it, and it wouldn’t be a particularly active field of research. The “flaws” that creationists typically bring up aren’t flaws in the theory at all, but flaws in the creationists’ understanding of the science, but let’s be careful to avoid giving the impression of perfection.

edit: fixed broken link.

I wrote a piece for LibDem Voice yesterday and it’s just been published.

Feel free to head on over and take a look.

Faded, but not forgotten, Nadia Eweida, the woman at the centre of the British Airways cross debate has received the results of the Employment Tribunal.

She lost.

Eweida it seems was not the martyr to christianophobia she was painted by the evengelical christians, the Bishops and even the then prime minister that spoke out on her behalf.

She was a religious bigot. Who, as the tribunal said,

“… generally lacked empathy for the perspective of others … her own overwhelming commitment to her faith led her at times to be both naive and uncompromising in her dealings with those who did not share her faith.”

She insisted on special privileges, although the contract she signed to work for BA clearly outlined her responsiblities. She wanted her own way, basically she wanted to force BA to bow to her religious will.

This extended to her colleagues on a regular basis, and encouraged a number of complainst against her, as the tribunal noted:

“Either giving them religious materials unsolicited, or speaking to colleagues in a judgmental or censorious manner which reflected her beliefs; one striking example was a report from a gay man that the claimant had told him that it was not too late to be redeemed.”

When it comes to religion, far too many believers lose any sense of reason or proportion; and far too many people of influence will be swayed to support the bigots by their shared faith not the merits of the case. The blacklash that this case caused against BA because of one bigoted woman’s outcry shows us just how damaging religious belief can be. In today’s world, luckily, it wasted only lots of money. In previous centuries it might well have started riots or a war. Such is the power of religion and why it’s influence needs to be curbed.

There is hope though for our society, it’s interesting to note that the BA Christian Fellowship group did not support her and that the religious think-tank Ekklesia said the following with respect to this case:

Like many of the other claims of discrimination being made by Christians, this has turned out to be false. People should be aware that behind many such cases there are groups whose interests are served by stirring up feelings of discrimination of marginalisation amongst Christians. What can appear to be a case of discrimination at first glance is often nothing of the sort. It is often more about Christians attempting to gain special privileges and exemptions.

The sad thing though is that, despite being a bigot, Eweida does have a point. Why should Muslims and Sikhs be allowed to wear veils and turbans, public expressions of their faith, when Eweida was not allowed to wear her cross in public? You could argue that there is no requirement in the bible for expression of faith through ornamentation or decoration, yet a simple cross on a chain is a lot less intrusive than a hajib or a turban, or bangles. Religious symbols of any kind should find no acceptance in any workplace, other than a church maybe. In the hands of bigots like Eweida they become clubs to beat over the heads of others.

Trying to accommodate all the various religious groups has turned workplaces into battlegrounds with mixed-faith “prayer” rooms the flash points and the martyred faithful wielding lawyers like weapons. It should be possible for employers to declare their work place secular, to say that everyone should leave their beliefs and the symbols of those beliefs at the door. If people are unable to accept those conditions, and the conditions of their contract, be it uniform codes, having to handle alcohol or pork, having to sometimes work on a Sunday, then they should apply for a job that does allow them to work in a manner and under conditions they can accept.

Not written much for a while, so here’s a quick summary of two recent events.

Things are not looking good for the US. Hopefully after the disaster that was Republican government these last eight years, the US will elect a Democrat for their president. If not, then the front-runner Mike Huckabee has plans to amend the US constitution to turn the US into a religious state. We can all see how well that works in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Congratulations though to the students and teachers of La Sapienza, Rome’s main university. The teachers and students protested over the Pope’s stance on science (he’d written when he was a Cardinal, that it was right to persecute Gallieo for daring to suggest the Earth orbited the sun) and he has been forced to cancel a speech he was meant to give. It’s a great victory for science and rationality over idiocy.

Jesus may have kicked the money changes out of the temple so they promptly moved to the US and set up mega churches (stopping only briefly in Italy to cover the Vatican in gold). It seems that a US senator has finally noticed  that these organisations are making millions, their owners living in oppulent decadence and still receiving massive amounts of tax subsidies and dispensations. These religious scum are using the hopes and wishful thinking of people to make a killing, both figuratively in the amount of money they rake in, and literally in the money they extort from the poor and needy who believe them. If ever anyone needed proof that religion is nothing but a money making scam, then the Vatican and especially the mega churches are all the proof you need.

Anyone for an indulgence?