Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Society

  • A New Forum

    Inayat Bungawala waxes ecstatic over the fact that a new online forum to discuss Islamic issues has been set up. "An opportunity to exchange views online with senior religious figures in Saudi Arabia ought not to be missed" as the byline to the Guardian article has it.
     
     
    Although I note that homosexuality was misspelled as homoseuality on the site – a simple oversight probably, and unfamiliarity with English perhaps, or the inability to get good typists these days. Anyway, it’s good to know that the answer comes from the Fatwa Department Research Committee – chaired by Sheikh `Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî. And I’m sure he’s a lovely man. So, what do they say?
    Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) made it clear that homosexuality is a sin and specified the punishment for the deed: “Whomever you find doing the act of Lût’s nation, then kill both parties.” [Sunan al-Tirmidhî]
     
    Here, our Prophet (peace be upon him) clearly states that the punishment for this sin is death.  
    Ah, I see. You do realise Inayat, that this does rather put a strain on my ability to have any sort of meaningful dialogue with your friends at the Islamtoday web site? Not that, I suspect, you give a damn about that. Anyway, moving on, let us return to the rest of the answer:
    Even if none of this evidence were available, homosexuality would still be forbidden, simply because Islam expressly forbids any sexual contact out of marriage.
    Oh, well, that’s clear then. But hang on, I am married. To a man. So homosexuality is OK then as long as it is within marriage?
    Allah, in the Qur’ân, also strictly defines whom we can marry. Allah states for the man all the women that he is prohibited to marry and then says that others are permissible, while continuing to refer to those with whom it is lawful by the feminine gender. Therefore, men are restricted to marrying women and women are restricted to marrying men.
    Bugger. I should just go and kill myself now. No, I’ve got a better idea, Inayat. You can take your Islamtoday web site and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. It has nothing to do with humanity, but everything to do with superstitious nonsense.

  • Learn Mandarin

    Stephen Walli, a colleague from the days when I used to represent the company I worked for in IT standards organisations, has a most interesting post on his blog. It contains his reflections on his recent visit to China. Bottom line, learn Mandarin now.
     
    He’s probably right, although I suspect that my capacity to learn Mandarin has long since gone. But perhaps I should re-read Lucian W. Pye’s slim volume: Chinese Negotiating Style – Commercial Approaches and Cultural Principles. I see that Amazon.co.uk is currently offering it at the princely sum of 50 quid. Clearly, market forces are starting to bite. I’m glad I got my copy long before the Chinese economic boom started to get serious.

  • Another Poll

    I see that there’s been another poll of 1,000 US citizens asking about some of their beliefs. Apparently, according to the news story, 250 of them anticipate that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur this year. There must be some mistake, surely? 25% of US citizens can’t be this deluded?
     
    I do hope that it’s a case of misreporting. There’s no sign of the poll as yet on the Ipsos web site, but I’ll keep an eye out for it to check the facts for myself…

  • My Epitaph

    Well, I think it has to be the opening sentence of Sam Harris’ response to the Edge challenge. I quote:
    No one has ever mistaken me for an optimist.
    Yup, that fits me like a glove. And while I luxuriate in the feel of that description, may I take this opportunity to direct you not only to Sam Harris’ reply to the challenge, but to other responses that seemed to me to have something pertinent to say about our brief strut on the world’s stage. Daniel Everett, for example, Geoffrey Miller, Simon Baron-Cohen, Clay Shirky, Martin Rees, or Gino Segre. Then there’s the current sniping between those who believe in string theory and those who don’t. Bring on the Large Hadron Collider, I say. Hopefully that will settle some arguments.
     
    But, at the last, no matter how pessimistic I may feel, I wouldn’t want to share the optimism of Rudy Rucker. It seems closer to Woo-woo than serious optimism.

  • Questions From The Edge

    The online magazine Edge asks a question of its contributors each year. The question for 2007 is What are you optimistic about? Why?
     
    The answers start here. And I wish I could share Daniel Dennet’s optimism, but I am much more pessimistic than he is.

  • Up To A Point, Queen Beatrix

    I didn’t hear it myself, but apparently Queen Beatrix’s Christmas message this year underlined the importance of free speech. But then she went and blew it by adding that of course no one has the right to insult anyone else. Er, then it isn’t really "free speech" is it, Beatrix? Silly woman.

  • Sometimes…

    …I wonder why can’t we just lighten up a little? There’s a rather depressing firestorm broken out in a small corner of the Blogosphere over transgender. In particular whether transgendered people support the patriarchy or not. A good, but rather worthy, discussion of the minutiae can be found here.
     
    Basically, from my point of view, either we treat transgender people as people or we don’t. And depressingly, there are a number of people, who call themselves feminists, who don’t. Pot, kettle, black, sistas.
     
    But, by way of lightening up, as a result of exploring the various discussion threads, I came across this totally politically incorrect, but oh so brilliant video from the Scissor Sisters: Filthy Gorgeous.
     
    Thank god for art, and outrageous camp. Amen.

  • North Pole, Alaska

    Jon Ronson is an excellent writer who seems to specialise in describing the stranger shores of the human species. His The Men Who Stare At Goats, for example is a book both hilarious and chilling about some of the bizarre characters in the US military. Well worth checking out.
     
    If you’ve never read any of his stuff, then here’s an excellent introduction in today’s Guardian. It’s an article in which he describes his visit to North Pole, Alaska. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Ronson’s deadpan descriptions of the people and the place are terrific, in all senses of the word.

  • Natural Family Planning

    As the old joke says, the majority of those who use natural family planning turn out to be parents… Never a truer word was spoken… And don’t even begin to ask about the appallingly stupid dandelions versus thornless roses that also figure in this vacuous nonsense.

  • Die, Blitcon Zombie Meme, Die!

    That bizarre piece by Ziauddin Sardar that I mentioned recently has garnered support from (to me) an unexpected quarter: Sunny Hundal. Fortunately, J. Carter Wood from Obscene Desserts is at hand to unpick the arguments.

  • Rosa Parks Lives…

    Same old, same old… Meh, what can I say? It’s my species… But why is it usually the male that is the mishuggenah?
     
    (hat tip to Onegoodmove for the link)

  • The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow

    Mind Hacks has an entry on Professor Temple Grandin. It includes a link to the BBC Horizon programme made about her. Unlike many of recent Horizon programmes, this particular episode is well worth watching. Grandin is a fascinating individual, and her insights from her position of standing somewhat outside of the "normal" human perspective are valuable and revealing.

  • Terminus In Sight

    How will you react upon seeing your death come into view? It’s a question I’m often asking myself these days. I hope that I will be able to approach it with a similar reaction to Coboró’s father.

  • Mind Your Language

    The current events in Ipswich are depressing enough, but what makes me want to fling a boot through the TV screen at the moment is the way it is being reported.
     
    Somebody in the BBC TV News department has had the slimy idea of having the TV News anchorman do his broadcast from outside the police headquarters every night. He’s backed up by TV news journalist Richard Bilton doing his best Uriah Heep impersonation giving reports that reek of false emotion in order to pump up the story.
     
    And the language that everyone uses… It degrades the women ("girls"), whilst simultaneously pumping up the perpetrator(s) into mythic proportions ("the ripper"). A couple of examples: "Prayers will be said at the weekend for the prostitutes and their familes" and the chief investigating officer who refers to the murdered women as "girls", but to the perpetrator(s) as "person or persons unknown". Italics mine. He also "pointed out that due to their transient lifestyles he could not be sure what most of them were wearing on the nights they vanished". That’s simply gratuitous. If I lived alone, and vanished one night, it would be unlikely that the police would be able to state with confidence what I was wearing on the night I vanished either, but I certainly don’t live a "transient lifestyle".
     
    Luckily, I’m not the only one who has noticed the use of language. Twisty, as usual, has her finger on the patriarchy’s pulse.

  • The Five Rules of Blogging

    Jan Pronk states the five rules of blogging. He’s absolutely right. I don’t always live up to his excellent example. But then, I’m not in the situation that he is. I don’t have the courage or the ability.

  • Tired and Emotional

    I have to admit that I found much to smile about in this story. We are all human after all. I’m laughing with the Bishop, not at him. After all, who could resist this quote:
    "I’m the Bishop of Southwark. It’s what I do."  
    Priceless.

  • Living A Lie

    Following on from Ted Haggard’s fall from grace last month, it now emerges that another evangelical pastor in Denver has quit after revealing that he is gay. And while I confess to feeling a slight tinge of schadenfreude in the case of Haggard because of his virulent anti-gay rhetoric, the overwhelming feeling I have after reading the report on Reverend Barnes is sadness.
     
    • Sadness that this man has punished himself throughout his life for feelings that he cannot accept:
    "I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy… I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away".
    • Sadness over the pain that this non-acceptance has now brought about to his wife and family. 
    • Sadness that some of the nails in his self-imposed coffin were hammered in by his father:
    ‘In their only talk about sex, Barnes said his father took him on a drive and talked about what he would do if a "fag" approached him. Barnes thought, "’Is that how you’d feel about me?’ It was like a knife in my heart, and it made me feel even more closed."’
    • Sadness that he remains trapped in a self-made cage, and one whose bars are continuing to be made afresh by his beliefs and the beliefs of the community in which he lives, and has, until recently, served:
    ‘Barnes described struggling with what he believes is the biblical teaching that homosexuality is an abomination. Over the years, he grew to accept that "this is my thorn in the flesh."’  
    I can’t help but feel that the sum total of human happiness would be a lot greater if people didn’t obsess over who sticks what in where. People are more than their genitals. Speaking of which, the Intelligent Designer wasn’t showing too much intelligence when s/he decided to put the entertainment complex in the middle of the sewage works…

  • A Well-Deserved Fisking

    J. Carter Wood, over at Obscene Desserts, delivers a well-deserved fisking to an opinion piece written by Ziauddin Sardar. I read the piece by Sardar in the Guardian, and thought it was bizarre. The byline to the article was, I kid you not, "Amis, Rushdie and McEwan are using their celebrity status to push a neocon agenda", which instantly made me think that I had fallen down some sort of intellectual rabbithole.
     
    Luckily, J. Carter Wood is at hand to helpfully point out that it’s not me. Sardar’s article is even more bizarre than I realised.
     
    And the really depressing thing? The Guardian states, at the end of Sardar’s article, that "Ziauddin Sardar has been appointed a commissioner of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights". Gawd help us. I have fallen down that rabbithole after all.

  • Continuing the Discussion

    Following on from the Beyond Belief conference last month, it looks as some some of the participants have been continuing their discussion over at the Edge site. Worth stopping by and reading the contributions, I’d say. The sparring between Sam Harris and Scott Atran looks particularly good. I’ve now got a copy of Atran’s In Gods We Trust, but it’s currently sitting on an ever mounting pile of books to be read, I’m afraid. 

  • The War On Christmas

    No, not the rather tiresome complaints by cultural conservatives in the US complaining about the secularisation of Christmas, or indeed the Archbishop of York complaining about the systematic erosion of Christianity from public life.
     
    Nope, here in The Netherlands we have our own particular war on Christmas. To be exact, it’s a war between two versions of St. Nicholas. Ladies and gennelmen, I give you, in the red corner: Sinterklaas; and in the other red corner, the non-Dutch challenger: Santa Claus.
     
    Sinterklaas is celebrated on the 5th December. But recent years have seen a blurring with the non-traditional usurper figure of Santa Claus. This year, the town of Noordwijk, instead of holding a traditional parade of Sinterklaas with his retinue of Zwarte Pieten (Black Peters), had a parade with Santa Claus. Cue 1,400 protest mails, and the disapproval of the Vereniging tot Behoud van Sinterklaas (the Association for the Preservation of Sinterklaas).
     
    Actually, I have a sneaking support for Sinterklaas over Santa Claus. It is something unique to The Netherlands and Belgium, and it will be a pity to see it being pushed aside by something that is just the same as everywhere else. That’s just boring. And I admit I take a gleeful pleasure in the political incorrectness of the Zwarte Pieten.