ovo

“Join us for our 11th Annual Valentine’s Invitational! Dozens of artists contribute Valentine themed artwork to benefit a local non-profit. This year’s recipient in the Special Education PTA of Portland (SEPTAP).”

I have been making collages (of the paper, scissors and glue variety) since around 1978.  A few have been published in books, a very few have been given to friends, but never have I offered one for sale – until now.  An original collage by myself will have the honor of being included in this show.  I encourage anyone in the Portland area to attend.  Bid early and often to support this most worthy cause. On exhibit the month of February 2010.

Thursday, 4 February 2010, 6PM – 9PM

Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak St.
Portland OR 97205

(503) 274-1449

BBC News, Danish Police Shoot Intruder at Cartoonist’s Home:

The man had entered Mr [Kurt] Westergaard’s house armed with a knife and axe and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him. Mr Westergaard ran to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.

KR News, Charity cartoon rejected over terror fears:

TV2’s morning lifestyle programme Go’morgen Danmark was the latest in a long line of those trying to help the victims of the Haitian earthquake. The show organised an auction through auctioneers, Lauritz.com, and asked well known politicians and personalities to donate personal items for the charity fundraiser. A signed copy of Bill Clinton’s book dedicated to the head of the Social Democrats, concert and sports events tickets and a porcelain doll owned by Pia Kjærsgaard, head of the Danish People’s Party, are already listed in the auction. However, when cartoonist Kurt Westergaard – forever to be associated with the Mohammed cartoons and terror threats – was asked to submit a new drawing for the auction, the auctioneers refused to accept it. According to Mette Jessen of Lauritz, the decision was taken because of the latest attempt on Westergaard’s life when an alleged assassin broke into his house on New Year’s Day. ‘We must recognise that the terror threat is still of such a character that we can’t predict the consequences of a sale. We value the safety of our employees quite highly, which is why an eventual risk assessment was used in our consideration,’ she said. Westergaard was disappointed in Lauritz’s decision, saying it was just another example of how his name creates fear. ‘The drawing was in no way controversial, but it seems my name is. I’m sorry for the fear it causes people. When even my hairdresser, who is Muslim, told me with sadness that she didn’t dare keep me on as a customer for fear of reprisals, then there’s reason to be sad about this development,’ he said.

VOA News, Death of Gay Activist Brings Turkey’s Attitude Toward Gays Into Focus:

For 26-year-old Ahmet Yildiz, the choice to live openly as a gay man in Turkey proved deadly. Prosecutors say his father, charged with allegedly killing his son in what is being dubbed as the first gay honor killing, traveled more than 900 kilometers from his hometown to shoot his son in an old neighborhood of Istanbul.

FOXNews.com, Saudi Teen Sentenced to 90 Lashes for Cell Phone in School:

Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading country in the use of torture-by-flogging, and religious police keep a close watch over public behavior.

RFI, Playwright Petrol Attack Handed to Terrorist Police:

The 45-year-old was attacked on Tuesday night outside the theatre in Paris where her play is showing. Two men insulted her in Arabic and poured petrol over her. They then threw a cigarette at her, which failed to ignite.

MetaFilter, Malaysian Churches Attacked Over “Allah”:

Malaysian Catholic newspaper Herald was recently involved in a major lawsuit against the Malaysian government, stating that their constitutional rights were violated when they were stripped of their license to publish in East Malaysian indigenous language Kadazandusun. The ruling was overturned, amidst support by state ministers and protests by the Government, the Islamic Opposition party, and Muslim activists – some of whom have spent the past week attacking churches and convents through firebombs, Molotov cocktails, paint, and bricks thrown at glass.

MetaFilter, The Women of Afghanistan:

87 percent are illiterate. 44 years is their average life expectancy. 70 to 80 percent face forced marriages.

Sam Harris, Liberals Have More to Fear than Cheney (circa 30 January 2008):

Liberals need to realize that there are people in the Muslim world far scarier than Dick Cheney.

NYPOST.com, Art Therapy for Terrorists:

“There is no criteria for evaluation,” John Horgan, a Department of Homeland Security consultant, told the New York Post.

Times Online, Iranian Dancer Afshin Ghaffarian Describes Ordeal at the Hands of Basij:

Ghaffarian is a dancer – an activity banned by Iran’s Islamic rulers and punishable by long prison terms. “If he had known that he would have beaten me even harder,” Ghaffarian said.

Robert Scheer, Bush’s Faustian Deal with the Taliban (22 May 2001 via archive.org):

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. That’s the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today.

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and etc.  “They’re making the last film… “

Yahoo News: Taliban blow up Pakistan girls school
Islamist militants opposed to co-education and subscribers to sharia law have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in northwest Pakistan in recent years.

The Nation: Woman sold in public auction in Pakistan – for $3,200
A 20-year-old girl was auctioned at village Badani Bhutto of Taluka Kashmore in consideration of Rs2,70,000 on Saturday. Azizan, daughter of late Allah Bux Bhutto, was divorced on the allegation of Karo-kari [roughly, adultery] some time back. She is stated to be mother of two children and was residing with her brother who held the open auction for her ‘sale’ at village Badani Bhutto.

BBC: Pakistan court orders ears and noses to be cut off
A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.

Mail Online: Muslim police chef defeated in ‘bacon roll’ tribunal faces £75,000 legal bill
Mr Khoja, 62, lost his claim in May after a police employee told an employment tribunal how she saw Mr Khoja eat bacon rolls and sausages.

Mail Online: Islamic militants stone man to death for adultery in Somalia as villagers are forced to watch
Mohamed Ibrahim appeals to Islamic militants not to carry out the execution as he is buried in the ground as his villagers are forced to watch.

BBC: Uganda bans female genital mutilation
Anyone convicted of the practice, which involves cutting off a girl’s clitoris, will face 10 years in jail, or a life sentence if a victim dies.

Spiegel Online: Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims
Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313 attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these attacks include terrorist incidents in the West — in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 — only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were Westerners.

ABC News: Torture Tape Implicates UAE Royal Sheikh
A video tape smuggled out of the United Arab Emirates shows a member of the country’s royal family mercilessly torturing a man with whips, electric cattle prods and wooden planks with protruding nails. A man in a UAE police uniform is seen on the tape tying the victim’s arms and legs, and later holding him down as the Sheikh pours salt on the man’s wounds and then drives over him with his Mercedes SUV.

BBC: Swiss minaret ban ’security risk’
“Provocation risks triggering other provocation and risks inflaming extremism.”

Death By 1000 Papercuts: How Easy to Build a Christian Church in Muslim Countries?
These countries are the largest in the Muslim world.

New York Times: Muslim Prayers Fuel Spiritual Rebuilding Project by Ground Zero
“We want to push back against the extremists.”

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] and etc.  There are photographs of Mohamed Ibrahim being stoned to death at the above link.  Go ahead, take a look.  Islam is the religion of peace, and there is no compulsion under the religion of Islam.  You just need to level-up your cultural sensitivity to their sacred traditions.  Respect their diversity.  Sure, men get tortured and stoned to death and have parts of their faces cut off, all with the cooperation and enthusiastic participation of the Islamic government.  And yes, women have their genitals mutilated and are sold as slaves.  But just because these people are different doesn’t mean we should fear or hate them.  We need to walk a mile in their shoes before we can judge them.  For heaven’s sake don’t provoke them – provocation risks triggering other provocation and risks inflaming extremism.  See, it’s our fault!  It takes a signature from the President of Egypt to build a Christian church in Egypt.  No Christian churches are allowed in Saudi Arabia at all.  Turkey and Algeria forbid existing Christian churches to be repaired and often order that they be torn down.  Indonesia allows Christian churches to exist providing no worship services occur there on Sundays.  Pakistan Christians generally meet in private homes.  No wonder Muslims are angry that the Swiss have banned the construction of new mosques in their country.  Whether it’s eating pork or building places of worship, Islam is a ‘do as I say not as I do’ sort of superstition.

My opinion counts for little, but here it is.  I’m encouraged by the Muslims described in the last link, those pushing back against their fellow Muslims.  I’m for the free exercise of religion and I’m for secular government. Christianity survived secularization and Islam can survive it as well.  If it cannot or will not, Islam deserves to die out.  Does it seem impossible that a religion could die out, particularly a globe-spanning religion like Islam?  Then spend a little time walking around in the graveyard of the gods to get a little perspective.  Every religion dies out given time.  And a little bit of a shove.

The Associated Press Sudanese teen flogged for wearing “indecent” skirt:

A 16-year-old Christian girl from southern Sudan said Friday she was lashed 50 times for wearing a skirt deemed indecent by authorities in the north who enforce a strict version of Islamic law. Silva Kashif said she was arrested by a plain-clothed policeman in a Khartoum market last week for wearing a skirt beneath the knee. She was convicted of offending public morality and received 50 lashes in the courtroom. “I was treated like a criminal,” Kashif said in a telephone interview. “I am confused what to wear. The trousers were an issue. My skirt was beneath the knee. What more can I do? I am Christian. My tribe and my customs permit me to dress like this.”

Foreign Policy, The Militarization of Sex:

Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community’s political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage. Mutaa is a form of “temporary marriage” only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: “I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]” and the man says: “I accept.” The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the “Party of God”-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained. [...] Zahra, a fully veiled 25 year-old Shiite woman who is completing her master’s degree in English literature, comes from a family of Hezbollah supporters and party members, and has been a lifelong Hezbollah member herself. She explained that she practices temporary marriage because it is a religious duty.”I take good care of myself, and make sure I look perfect every time I go into a mutaa marriage because I should please my husband, temporary or not,” she said. “It is my religious duty to do so. God allowed this kind of marriage for a reason, and I never question God’s wishes.”  Zahra is divorced and believes that Islam has acknowledged sexual desires for both males and females, which is why temporary marriage is permissible. “It is also a religious duty to fulfill your sexual desires,” she insisted, noting that temporary marriages with women whose husbands had been killed fighting Israel were especially encouraged. “[T]hose who satisfy widows of martyrs have more reward in heaven,” she said.

Christopher Hitchens, The “war on terrorism” didn’t cause the Fort Hood shootings:

The terrorists do not pause before deliberately blowing up the mosques and religious processions of those whose Muslim beliefs they deem insufficiently devout. Most of those now being tortured and raped and executed by the Islamic Republic of Iran are Muslim. All the women being scarred with acid and threatened with murder for the crime of going to school in Pakistan are Muslim.

Jim Verhulst and Emilio Morenatti, Terrorism that’s personal:

Schoolgirls whom the Taliban in Afghanistan sprayed with acid simply for going to class. [photo essay.]

Ashley Hayes, Expert Study on Extremism Might Have Prevented Fort Hood Shootings:

Shannen Rossmiller is angry that the study she worked with the Pentagon to create – unclassified at its inception – is now under wraps. She told CNN she is concerned political correctness trumped the study.

All articles continue at links.  Part of a series that never ends… [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and etc. “The most curious social convention of the great age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.” – H. L. Mencken, American Mercury March, 1930.

Olivia Lang, Hindu Sacrifice of 250,000 Animals Begins:

The government, which donated £36,500 to the event, has shown no sign of discontinuing the centuries-old tradition. An attempt by the previous government to cut the budget for animal sacrifice provoked street protests. Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival’s high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. “The goddess needs blood,” he said. “Then that person can make his wishes come true.”

BBC, Taking the Global Pulse of Healthcare:

Rahul Bose, a community worker in West Bengal tells a story [...] “There was this lady who came to my house at eight in the morning,” he says. “She had been bitten by a snake at four in the morning, but since there were no male members in the house, she was not able to leave the house. When I took her to the hospital, the doctors delayed treatment for two hours and so she died in my car.” Cultural attitudes towards women in rural areas, as well as problems of distances from health centres both prove major challenges for improving health.

Robin Hanson, Social Science Cuts Religiosity:

A new NBER paper compares college majors for their effect on student religiosity. Majoring in biological sciences, engineering, or vocational areas all increase religiosity about the same relative to not going to college. Majoring in education encourages religion even more, while majoring in physical science has about the same effect as no college. Majoring in humanities reduces religiosity relative to no college, and majoring in social science reduces it the most.

Jeanna Bryner, Teen Birth Rates Higher in Highly Religious States:

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests. The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise. Mississippi topped the list for conservative religious beliefs and teen birth rates, according to the study results, which will be detailed in a forthcoming issue of the journal Reproductive Health. However, the results don’t say anything about cause and effect, though study researcher Joseph Strayhorn of Drexel University College of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh offers a speculation of the most probable explanation: “We conjecture that religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”

Alex DeMetrick, Trial Postponed For Cult Members In Baby’s Death:

Home video of Javon Thompson and his mother Ria Ramkissoon doesn’t hint at the dark future awaiting them, when they became swept up in the religious cult of Queen Antoinettte. Authorities say cult members starved 1-year-old Javon Thompson because the boy did not say “Amen” after meals. His body was packed in a suitcase and taken to Philadelphia, where it was abandoned in a storage room.

Jennifer Viegas, Superstitious Beliefs Cemented Before Birth:

The propensity to believe in paranormal phenomena and superstitions appears to arise in the womb, suggests new research. The findings, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, further indicate that a reduced ability for analytical thinking may correspond with increased intuitive thinking, which has been associated with a belief in extrasensory perception (ESP), ghosts, telepathy and other paranormal phenomena. Author Martin Voracek claims his new study’s determinations “suggest (there are) biologically based, prenatally programmed influences on paranormal and superstitious beliefs.” [...] Prior research had determined that relative finger length, also known as digit ratio, can be a marker for individual differences affected by hormones. Men tend to have ring fingers that are slightly longer than their index fingers. In women, these fingers are usually about the same length, or the index digit is slightly longer. In some cases, however, women exhibit a digit ratio more associated with men, while men may exhibit the ratio associated more with women. The ratio is “a putative marker of prenatal androgen exposure, with paranormal as well as negative and positive superstitious beliefs,” Voracek explained, mentioning that exposure to testosterone and other male sex hormones in the womb are thought to underlie the observed differences. Voracek found that “higher feminized” digit ratio in men correlated with stronger paranormal and superstitious beliefs, “even when controlled for age, education, adult height and weight, and birth length and weight.” “Shorter feminized” digit ratios in women also correlated with a greater likelihood of superstitious beliefs, as did a woman’s lighter weight at birth. For both sexes, shorter body length at birth was associated with later beliefs in superstitions and the paranormal. The findings help to support the conclusions of Kia Aarnio and Marjaana Lindeman, both University of Helsinki psychologists who have extensively studied the propensity for paranormal and superstitious beliefs. They found that women are much more likely to have such beliefs, which the researchers attribute to “higher intuitiveness and lower analytical thinking.”

All articles continue at links. “The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous… Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame… True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force… But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them… He has no right to preach them without challenge.”- H. L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925.

Radley Balko, How to Get Ahead in Law:

Last June, District Attorney David Capeless of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, announced that he was dropping all charges against 44-year-old Bernard Baran, a man who has spent half his life behind bars on child molestation charges that the state no longer has the confidence to retry. Baran was convicted in January 1985 of molesting six children at a pre-kindergarten day care facility in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was released on bond in 2006 after an appeals court determined that his trial attorney had been incompetent and that the prosecution may have withheld key exculpatory evidence. Baran says that during his jail term he was raped and beaten more than 30 times, necessitating six different transfers to new correctional institutions. Such is the cost the prison system exacts on an openly gay man convicted of molesting children. Baran was one of the first people in the country to be prosecuted in the day care sex abuse panic of the 1980s, a bizarre nationwide hysteria fed by homophobia, fears of Satanism, and a wing of child psychology that used unproven interrogation techniques that critics say caused children to recount sexual incidents that never took place. In this case, prosecutor Daniel Ford, now a judge on the Massachusetts Superior Court, showed the grand jury that indicted Baran an edited video interview with the children. According to court documents, the video shows several kids alleging that Baran had sexually abused them. Edited out was footage in which some of the children denied any abuse by Baran, interviewees accused other members of the day care faculty of abuse or of witnessing abuse, and, most important, interrogators asked the same questions over and over – even after repeated denials – until a child gave them an affirmative answer. Some children were even given rewards for their answers. [...] In upholding the ruling that granted Baran a new trial, the appeals court added in a footnote that if the state wanted to retry him, Baran could file a motion for a hearing on Ford’s alleged misconduct. By dropping the charges, the D.A. avoided that hearing. “In my opinion,” says Boston civil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, “ the possibility of an embarrassing hearing into misconduct by a former prosecutor and now sitting Superior Court judge was the main reason, if not the reason, they decided to drop the charges. The appeals court opinion cut a bit too close to the bone for them.” So while Bernard Baran is free after 22 years of incarceration, there are no plans to look into the actions of the prosecutor, now a sitting judge, responsible for his conviction. Ford’s career trajectory indicates the backward incentive structure that prosecutors face: Convictions produce rewards, while abuse rarely comes with a penalty.

Religious Tolerance, The Baran Sexual Abuse Case:

The Bernard Baran indictment appears to have many factors in common with dozens of ritual abuse cases which surfaced during the 1980s and early 1990s. Bernard is a homosexual. That has proven to be a tremendous personal liability, because of the high level of homophobia in American society. On 1983-AUG-1, Bernard Baran was hired as a teacher’s aide by the West Side Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) in Pittsfield, MA. Pittsfield is located near the extreme western border of Massachusetts, very close to the state of New York. The uncle of one of Baran’s students complained to the ECDC that he did not want a homosexual teaching his nephew. Shortly after this complaint, he and his sister-in-law called police and said that the boy had accused Baran of molesting him. On 1984-OCT-6, Baran was charged with sexually assaulting two three-year-old children at ECDC. The number of charges reached nine after most of the 160 children at the ECDC were interviewed. Baran was 19 years of age at the time. On 1985-JAN-30, he received a sentenced of 3 concurrent life terms. Because of his age and slight build, he was easy pray for other inmates. “During his first four years, he was raped and physically assaulted 30-40 times. He has suffered serious eye injuries and many broken bones. [...] In all probability, he is innocent. In fact, the criminal acts for which he was charged probably never happened. However, the children (now in their twenties) probably retain “memories” of the abuse that were implanted in their minds as a result of improper interview techniques.

Articles continue at links.  See also the Free Baran archive.  I lived in a small town as a teenager in the 1980s.  I read books, including books on taboo subjects.  I played role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.  I listened to music that wasn’t to be found on the radio.  I was very aware that a satanic panic was occurring in the United States, and that I could be caught up in it for my interests.  I could be accused of the kind of nonsense that Baran was caught up in.  I found two strategies that worked well in keeping myself safe.  Those strategies were knowing when to be public about my interests and when to be private.  Being public (including publishing OVO) meant that any argument I was a secret agent for evil would be weak.  Being private meant that what the do-gooders didn’t need to know about they never knew about.  But it was my dumb luck that the do-gooders didn’t try especially hard.  Now I’m an adult and it turns out reading those books, playing those games and listening to that music didn’t do me or anyone else any particular harm.  Turns out the good guys were the bad guys and the bad guys were innocent.  I’m the one who stuck by my guns.  The judges and therapists and police and teachers and clergy who made bank on the satanic panic are the ones who tucked tail and shuffled into an underground tunnel.   I don’t deserve any particular reward for what I did.  But were this a just world, they would be held accountable for what they did.  Bernard Baran spent half his life in prison to satisfy the blood lust of those who serve an invisible monster that lives in the sky.  And that’s one of the reasons I’m public about my interest in the withering away of religion under the twin suns of scorn and reason.

John Dolan, Lord Byron the eXile’s Patron Saint (via):

[Lord Byron] chose to be noisily “immoral” not because he was any worse (or any better) than the average aristocrat of his time but as a weapon against the moralism of Wordsworth. I don’t mean “moralism” in a normative sense – God no. I remember sifting through the elderly Wordsworth’s letters looking for any comment at all on the Great Famine which was extirpating the Irish, and finding only one remark, in which the great moralist earnestly prays that England will not weaken, ie provide any aid whatsoever. It’s one of the curiosities of English literary history that you’ll never find the least particle of compassion for the Irish in “moral” poets like Wordsworth. Only the “mad, bad and dangerous” Byron mentioned the slaughter of 1798, attacking the PM, Castlereagh, for “dabbling [his] sleek young hands in Erin’s gore” and, as Pope would have recommended, delivering an extra kick to his enemy’s corpse in this epitaph: “Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”

Some years ago, while I was at the local one o’clock club with my toddler, I was approached by a young lady with a clipboard. She was involved with a new government initiative called Sure Start, she explained, and wondered if I would mind answering a few questions. She didn’t ask many, because after I had responded to her early query about my postcode, she explained politely that my child wouldn’t qualify for the programme anyway.  That was fair enough, except that my street has a very broad socio-economic mix. While my own household is certainly not “deprived”, there are a lot of families on the street who are in a quite different position. When I pointed this out to her, she flicked her eyes down her list, and confirmed that on my short road there were indeed a lot of postcodes that did come within the ambit of the project. I found this level of detail to be impressive and reassuring.

As I say, this was a while back, and Sure Start has changed since that time. It now offers universal as well as targeted services, and the present plan is to have a Sure Start children’s centre in every community by next year. Yet this week Iram Siraj-Blatchford, who is a professor of early childhood education at the Institute of Education, warned a parliamentary inquiry into Sure Start that expansion of the programme would dilute its progress. “If you improve quality for everyone,” she said, “you can actually extend the gap.”  Therein lies the problem with the idea of equal opportunity for all. Some people are simply better placed to take advantage of opportunity, and if equality of outcome is what you are looking for, then the way to achieve it is by offering the greatest opportunity to the least advantaged, and – here’s the snag – vice versa. [...]

The more unequal your society is, the less well a comprehensive education system is likely to work. The experiment was conceived at a time when people felt unduly optimistic about increased social equality, which means it was, at best, badly timed and, at worst, simply misconceived.  When Siraj-Blatchford says that “if you improve quality for everyone, you can actually extend the gap”, she is really saying that if you give help to a range of people, whether they are in particular need of it or not, the intervention is simply going to equip even better those who were more likely to win the battle for scarce resources in the first place.

Article continues.  I am an advocate of offering as much equal opportunity as possible in education.  This is a sufficiently difficult task in itself to not complicate the matter by confusing opportunity with outcome.  When a student breaks out of limited expectations placed on them the effort to provide equal opportunity pays off.  There are no means to insure equal outcomes.  Measuring equal opportunity by equal outcome is an error.

The Telegraph:

Miss [Dalia] Mogahed, appointed to the President’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was “oversimplified” and the majority of women around the world associate it with “gender justice”. The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party. The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world. Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir’s national women’s officer, Nazreen Nawaz.

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular “man-made law” and the West’s “lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism”. They called for Sharia Law to be “the source of legislation” and said that women should not be “permitted to hold a position of leadership in government”. Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that “promiscuity” and the “breakdown of traditional values” were what Muslims admired least about the West. She said: “I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media. The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance. The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases.” [...]

Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with “maximum criminal punishments” and “laws that… to many people seem unequal to women,” but added: “Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood.” The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir’s website.

Miss Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and moved to America at the age of five, is the first veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House. Her appointment was seen as a sign of the Obama administration’s determination to reach out to the Muslim world. She is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a project which aims to scientifically sample public opinion in the Muslim world. During this week’s broadcast, she described her White House role as “to convey… to the President and other public officials what it is Muslims want.”

Article continues at link.  Wikipedia confirms Miss Mogahed’s role in President Obama’s Council.  Miss Mogahed was on this television program due to her leadership role in the United States government.  There are a limited number of ways to interpret the simultaneous nature of Miss Mogahed’s leadership in government and her faith which prohibits women having leadership in government.  She could consider Islam to be a two-tiered superstition, with one rule for other women and another rule for herself.  Or she could consider it acceptable to tell a lie to non-Muslims as long as Islam is advanced through that lie.  In the West these acts are called hypocrisy, lying, propaganda, manipulation, treason, betrayal, machiavellian, etc.  In the Muslim world, these are called Taqiyya [neutral] [pro] [con].

“You just don’t understand” is sometimes presented as a way of saying “you just don’t agree” by people who consider themselves to have a direct line to immutable and obvious truth.  Because they hold the immutable truth, and because truth is obvious, anyone who disagrees must not understand.  If they understood, they would agree.  But no one has a line to immutable truth, and truth is not obvious.  “You just don’t understand” is the mistaken notion that exposure to a claim will magically cause the observer to adopt it.  We all can err.  There is no ultimate foundation of truth claims to build on, but we can build on the practice of identifying our errors and not repeating them.  No particular group has a monopoly on the “you just don’t understand” ruse.  Feminists use it and so do fundamentalists.  It’s used on the left and the right.  Believers use it and atheists use it.  No matter how many people use it (and I admit I have in the past), this ruse is not a proof of the claim in question.  It is an attempt to evade criticism and introspection.  When lives are at stake, it is contemptible.

Regarding Sharia law as gender justice or justice for women, I will defer to the experts.  Experts like Tulay Goren and Yasmine Larbi-Cherif and Ayman Udas and Sabina Akhtar and Aasiya Hassan and Sahar Daftary and Lidia Motylska and Sandeela Kanwal and Morsal Obeidi and Hatin Surucu and Banaz Mahmood and Aqsa Parvez and Caneze Riaz and Uzma Rahan and Samaira Nazir and Hina Salem and Methal Dayem and Sazan Bajez-Abdullah and Rudayena Jemael and Hesha Yones and Ibtihaz Hasoun and Fadime Sahindal and Zahida Peeveen and Ghazala Khan and Dua Khalil and Rim Abu Ghanem and Sabia Rani and other experts and these experts as well and another group of experts and more experts.  If you’re not at work and have a strong stomach, you can even see images and videos of experts as they earn their expertise.

The Wikipedia entry on Hiz ut-Tahrir appears even handed.  Unlike the Telegraph, it does not identify Hiz ut-Tahrir as extremist.  It confirms the group “wants combine all Muslim countries in a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, ruled by Islamic law and with a caliph head of state elected by Muslims.”  Wikipedia claims Hiz ut-Tahrir is opposed to violence and has a focus “on ‘ideological struggle’ to establish its vision of the caliphate in the minds of Muslims.”  This is the democracy that Hiz ut-Tahrir claims to be dead-set against, and so what they are opposing when they oppose democracy is unclear.  Perhaps they intend to use democracy to get in power, then destroy democracy?  It’s happened before.  Perhaps they oppose violence until they get into power, then… ?  That’s happened before too.

Miss Mogahed is the first veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House.  In the United States is is neither forbidden nor compulsory for a woman to veil herself in most (not all) situations.  Miss Mogahed may be projecting her own liberties (oh, those lethal liberties) on women in the Muslim world.  Hiz ut-Tahrir is less confused on the issue: Article 116 of their draft constitution makes the veil obligatory for women.  Debating the veil is a low-hanging fruit in the West.  It’s easy to fight for the right to wear a veil when it’s an option and you can pretend your options are shared elsewhere.  It’s also a good distraction from more pressing concerns for women in Islam.  Issues like Muslim girls being able to go to school without being blown up, poisoned or burned with acid.

I prefer the lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism to anything the Muslim world is offering up in the 21st Century.

BBC: Tens of thousands of people in Mali’s capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage. [...] One of the most contentious issues in the new legislation is that women are no longer required to obey their husbands.

Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women’s Associations said the law goes against Islamic principles. “We have to stick to the Koran,” Ms Dembele told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme. “A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband. It’s a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law – the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country – the real Muslims – are against it.”

When tens of thousands of Muslims at one location (and unknown numbers at other locations) protest for less individual rights and responsibilities, when a national leader goes on the record equating Islam with poverty and illiteracy (as if these were virtues), I am less able to understand how anyone can see Islam as compatable with the West. I am less able to understand how anyone can see the fundamentals of Islam practiced by a majority as a misinterpretation of Islam practiced by a minority. I understand less each day.

“when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.” Thus the West dies and the Muslim world wins.

Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book