Hizbullah versus Lebanon

I’m at a loss over who I’d like to see win in the recent fighting between Hizbullah and supporters of the Lebanese government.

On the one hand, although Hizbullah say they no longer want to make Lebanon into an Islamic state, there are no doubt still some very dodgy people in the Hizbullah leadership, with very dodgy religious agendas. And the more religion gets out of politics and retreats into the private sphere, the better it will be for the entire human species.

On the other hand, the fighting statrted because the Lebanese government wanted Hizbullah to scrap their secure telecom network, which provided telephone and Ineternet communications independently of the Lebanese government. I think everyone should have access to secure telecoms networks that are independent of governments.

War on Civil Liberties Suffers Setback

The government’s War on Civil Liberties suffered a setback today, as five men who had been convicted of the thoughtcrime offence of reading extremist literature were freed by the Court of Appeal:

The convictions of five young Muslim men jailed over extremist literature have been quashed by the Appeal Court.

Freeing the men, the Lord Chief Justice said there was no proof of terrorist intent. The lawyer for one said they had been jailed for a “thought crime”. A jury convicted the students in 2007 after hearing the men, of Bradford and Ilford, east London, became obsessed with jihadi websites and literature.

Why science is good and religion is crap

I’ve so far not commented on the debate regarding Dr Rowan Williams’ remarks on sharia law — it’s a debate that’s caused more heat than light, expecially in the popular press which has wilfully misrepresented Williams’ remarks. But I will pass on this tidbit from Quaequam blog:

The point which much of the media has ignored is that Williams has argued for a system of exceptionalism whereby we atheists (or, as he put it in his speech on Thursday, sterile positivists) must abide by the rule of law while anyone of faith can negotiate whatever opt-outs they wish. At the same time, of course, he insists that the Church should be established and retain its existing seats in the House of Lords. Gay marriage, and even same-sex registered partnerships, is apparently a threat that undermines the institution of marriage, yet we should at least be open-minded about the idea of Muslim polygamy. People of faith can say what they like about atheists, but atheists should be locked up for slagging off the religious. In short, he believes absolutely in equal rights with the modest proviso that the religious are more equal than the rest of us.

This I think gets to the nub of what Williams is arguing for. It’s obvious what the attraction of such a point of view is to a religious leader such as Williams; it is also obvious to any fair-minded person what’s wrong with it. Why should any belief system be priviledged over any other? The only reason is that some beliefs are correct, or at least more correct than other beliefs. For example consider:

Belief A: Strawberries are good to eat.

Belief B: Broken glass is good to eat.

It happens that one of these beliefs is more true than the other one. How do we know? By observing reality. Now there’s a special way of observing reality that consists of considering procedures which if carried out will give a different result based on with belief is true, and then carrying out those procedures. This way is called experimentation and it’s how science works.

Sometimes its impossible to do experiments — for example it would be unethical to force people to smoke cigarettes to see if doing so harmed their health — but what you can do is observe the health of smokers and non-smokers and use statistical techniques to infer a correlation. Correlation isn’t causation (of course) but it does strongly hint that something is going on.

Now consider another belief:

Belief C: The world was created with apparent age by my pet cat last Tuesday.

There are no experiments that can tell whether Belief C is true or false. Thus it is said to be unfalsifiable. This has two implications: first, we don’t know whether it is true or not, and secondly we don’t (or shouldn’t) care anyway, because all observable phenomena behave exactly the same regardless of whether it is true or false.

Society (and the state) should respect and priviledge those beliefs that have been shown by observation or experiment to be true — or at least that have the evidence in their favour (beliefs such as Belief A). So for example,it’s reasonable for the state to say smoking is bad for people and therefore to tax it highly and restrict its sale.

Regarding beliefs that are wrong or unfalsifiable (such as Belief B and Belief C), these should not be respected or priviledged in any way. In fact, it’s best for society to actively ridicule such beliefs, in order to reduce the number of people who believe them.

Update on Sayed Pervez Kambaksh

(see here for backstory)

According to the Independent, Pervez isn’t going to be executed after all:

The condemned student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh will not face execution, a senior government official in Afghanistan indicated yesterday. A ministerial aide, Najib Manalai, insisted: “I am not worried for his life. I’m sure Afghanistan’s justice system will find the best way to avoid this sentence.”

It was the clearest indication yet that the 23-year-old will have his death penalty revoked amid mounting international pressure on the Afghan authorities.

Mr Kambaksh was condemned to die by an Islamic court for insulting Islam. He was found guilty under sharia law after he distributed articles from the internet on women’s rights at Balkh university in northern Afghanistan, an act he claims was aimed at provoking debate. His family say he was not allowed a defence lawyer and the trial was in secret.

Of course, just because he’s not going to be executed, doesn’t mean he’s going to be freed.

(via Harry’s Place)

Afghan human rights

A man in Afghanistan is sentenced to death:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

Kambaksh should be immediately freed, and the judge who passed this sentence sacked — or better still, put to death himself. But if, on the other hand, this sentence is carried out, then Britain needs to seriously look at what we are doing in Afghanistan: why should British troops risk their lives for such a barbaric government? If the people of Afghanistan want to live in the dark ages, I suppose that is their choice, but Britain should not spend blood and money helping them.

If you want to help save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the Independent has a petition, and there is also a facebook group.

(via Slashdot)

Equal but different? Yeah, right

The UN wants Saudi Arabia to give rights to women:

Women in Saudi Arabia should be allowed more basic freedoms, according to a UN anti-discrimination committee.

It says the practice of needing a man’s permission to marry, work, travel or be educated should end. In a report, the committee also says there should be more laws offering protection to women.

But the Saudi government, in submissions before the report was published, said there was no discrimination against women.

If the Saudi government thinks anyone will believe that, they are more stupid than I thought. But apparently the Saudis have strange ideas about equality:

Overall the UN is very critical of Saudi Arabia’s approach to women’s rights. It even expresses concern about the Saudi state’s understanding of the idea of equality - saying similar rights for men and women is not the same as equal rights.

Equal but different, eh? Isn’t that what the apologists for apartheid said?

It might be a good idea for UN states to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia. Doing so would not be enormously effective, since Saudi’s main export is oil. But it would be a signal that their social attitudes are not considered acceptable by civilised people.

Want to buy a bear?

Mohammed Bear for sale:

For sale due to a change in the school curriculum.

Mo is a delightful little bear who all children would love, but not some adults.

Condition: As new, but by time of delivery may have 40 scratch marks on back.

Any proceeds to Prisoners Abroad http://www.prisonersabroad.org.uk/

Insulting religion

Some people don’t like it when you insult their imaginary friend. For example:

The BBC reports that Gillian Gibbons has been sentenced to 15 days in prison for “insulting religion”. The religion in question which has so exercised the slow-witted mullahs of Sudan is known as “Islam”, a 7th century personality cult invented by an illiterate camel trader with a penchant for warfare and pre-pubescent girls. Think of L Ron Hubbard in a tent.

Or:

While we wait for news from Sudan, another example of religious protectionism rears its ugly head in Turkey. There a prosecutor is seeking to press charges against the Turkish publisher of Dawkins’ The God Delusion for inciting religious hatred and assaulting “sacred values”.

Which is odd, when you think about it. Assume for one moment, that you are God, creator of the universe, and omnipotent and omniscient ruler of said universe. Would you really be bothered if some insignificant mammals on some insignificant little rock in an insignificant little corner of your universe said something nasty about you? You’d have to be a pretty insecure deity to be so. So I suspect that when theists are outraged at blasphemy, they are merely projecting their own pathetic insecurities.

What nice people the Saudis are

What nice people the Saudi government are:

An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped.

The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes - she was in an unrelated man’s car at the time of the attack. When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.

Of course this is largely the result of Wahhabism, the so-conservative-it-makes-the-dark-ages-look-enlightened form of Islam that is the state religion of Saudi Arabia.

(via Liberal England)

The thought processes of Mad Mel

Steven Poole examines the thought processes of Mad Mel, or rather, what passes for thought:

One of the things that excited [Melanie Phillips] last week was an article by Daniel Pipes, describing a book by Timur Kuran which argues that “Islamic economics” was invented so as to:

minimize relations with non-Muslims, strengthen the collective sense of Muslim identity, extend Islam into a new area of human activity, and modernize without Westernizing.

“Melanie” cites this passage with glee and immediately glosses it thus:

In other words, Islamic finance is a political and ideological weapon which was devised as a means of subjugating the west to Islam. [emphasis added]

Probably “Melanie” just read “extend Islam into a new area” and shut off what remains of “her” brain, intepreting it according to her apocalyptic obsession with Islam invading the west. Of course the passage in Pipes’s article clearly means extending Islam into the area of finance, not into the area where “Melanie” lives. As to how anything could really work as “a means of subjugating the west to Islam” while at the same time hoping to “minimize relations with non-Muslims”, we are in the dark. Perhaps they will use robots as intermediaries?

On the subject of robots, I wonder how long it is before a political commentator on the Internet — one with loony ideas may be easier to program — is revealed to be an AI Turing Test project. Or maybe Mel is one such already.