Tag: secularism
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Insulting Islam
I came to know of Uthman Badar recently via the news that his talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, titled “Honour Killings are Justified”, had been called off. It’s certainly a provocative title. My instinct was not to take it at face value, and Badar himself said it would be “ludicrous”, but it’s difficult…
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The institution of specious reasoning
Stumbling across the ABC’s “Religion and Ethics” department, I discovered David Novak’s rather bluntly titled article: “No Right to Marriage for Same-Sex Couples“. It’s long, rambling and so far hasn’t attracted a lot of attention (judging from the solitary comment). Novak’s points are at least made clearly enough (though rather verbose), but in the end they…
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Uniculturalism
I don’t pretend to know what goes on in the minds of people who despise multiculturalism. Do they hold to a fantasy in which multiculturalism is some sort of government construct that prevents people from adopting the same culture? Presumably they must start from the premise that the different cultural practices of other people are…
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False security, false feminism and false secularism
There seems to be a growing school of thought in Western countries that the burqa (or other forms of Islamic headdress) should be banned, with several European countries (including Belgium, France and Spain) debating or already having passed laws against it. There are murmurings here too, by the Liberals’ Cory Bernardi and the Christian Democrats’…
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Biblical decline
I read that the National Biblical Literacy Survey 2009 in the UK has reported a poor showing for Bible knowledge. I can’t say I’m either terribly surprised or troubled by this; there are any number of other literary works more deserving of public knowledge, and at some level this must be reflected in the public’s…