I’m having a rather heated discussion with Mehdi Hasan on Twitter, with Oliver Kamm joining in, also the Ex-Muslims Forum and Alex Gabriel and a few more. What about? “Islamophobia” of course.

I started because Mehdi had been equating Maryam with fascists and the EDL earlier.

 A. S. Markland

@mehdirhasan@MaryamNamazie It’s still fallacious to link fascist (irrational) with liberal-atheistic (rational) criticism of religion.

Mehdi Hasan

Really? Tell that to the fascist EDL who have in the past invited Maryam and co to join with them. Goodbye.

Maryam Namazie

Don’t be silly. If anything the EDL is more like your Islamist brethren. Both are far-Right. I am against both. @mehdirhasan@asmarkland

Mehdi Hasan

@MaryamNamazie@

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Now there’s a stupid idea.

Pints of hearty ale flow freely as morris dancers frolic in the spring sunshine and gentlewomen recline under a weeping willow… dressed in traditional Muslim headscarfs.

OK, that last part may seem out of place with the hackneyed picture of merry England that is peddled to tourists.

But it is time for the hijab to be embraced as an integral part of national life, according to religious leaders.

‘We want to promote a new, relaxed and confident English national identity,’ they said in a St George’s Day appeal for unity.

Relaxed? They want to promote a new, relaxed English identity by embracing the hijab? What’s the hijab got to do with relaxed?

The hijab isn’t … Read the rest

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Willard Foxton, at the Telegraph of all places, asks a very good question.

If we can prosecute a man for selling fake bomb detectors, how are homeopaths still in business?

Why indeed?

Remember those fake bomb detectors? I remember blogging about that years ago. In fact [goes to find the posts] – yes, in It won’t work unless the operator is relaxed and Flashing lights, and a beeping noise. A bit from the latter:

Call me sentimental but I do think this is a quotation for the ages. It’s from the guy who made the ‘bomb detector’ thingy out of an antenna and a hinge and a plastic tag, and sold lots of them for $40,000 each, and

… Read the rest

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What about transcendence?

I don’t like the word. I’m suspicious of it.

James Croft and Tom Flynn just had an interesting discussion of that on Facebook, with contributions from me and Alex Gabriel and Valerie Tarico among others.

What do we mean by it? It seems to need some pinning down; once there is pinning down there is more agreement. Are we talking about Something Beyond, or are we talking about this world experiences that feel beyondish but in fact are still this world experiences? The second, as it turns out, but with different views of words like “transcendent.” James likes them, you won’t be surprised to know; Tom and I not so much.

Tom said one thing that echoed … Read the rest

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Another wonderful column from Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, this time “apologizing” to “the #MuslimahPride social media jihadis.”

It’s amazing what a week of introspection can do. I now realise how ridiculous it was of me to try and promote Western, postcolonial and imperialistic ideals like gender equality and human rights. I realise how foolish it was to stereotype everything by quoting your authentic religious commandments and regularly reported events in Islamic countries. I realise how obnoxious it was to think that demonstrating against stoning women to death was a better cause than protesting against shameless infidels. Last week’s letter was clearly a remonstration against the fact that women spoke out, not against the fact that they could’ve spoken out against

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Killing one child by praying instead of going to a doctor isn’t enough. True faith requires killing another one.

A couple serving probation for the 2009 death of their toddler after they turned to prayer instead of a doctor could face new charges now that another son has died.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible belong to a fundamentalist Christian church that believes in faith healing. They lost their 8-month-old son, Brandon, last week after he suffered from diarrhea and breathing problems for at least a week, and stopped eating. Four years ago, another son died from bacterial pneumonia.

Well that sounds like a nasty slow death.

At a hearing Monday, a judge told the couple they had violated the terms of

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Hello to you too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdciZ-4Mkhg

… Read the rest

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Oh the horror, Rowan Atkinson did an archbishop of Canterbury routine as part of Comic Relief. Cue Outraged of Basingstoke!

The monologue, which was broadcast on BBC1 before the watershed at 7.45pm, was the subject of 2,133 complaints to the BBC – making up the bulk of the 2,819 complaints received about the show overall.

…

The Atkinson sketch featured his Archbishop of Canterbury character – or “Arch” as he styled himself – underlining that he was not gay, using the phrase “arsing about” and the word “shagging”, and comparing One Direction to Jesus’ disciples.

The skit was pre-recorded on a studio set but was played out to the live audience at BBC Television Centre, who audibly gasped at the

… Read the rest

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Huffington Post UK helpfully reported on the Twitter blowup, with lots of tweets - so much pleasanter to read than Storify.

I went back to the December NS piece in which Mehdi Hasan confirmed his belief in flying horses. Really he’s not talking about the flying horse in particular, but about how reasonable it is to believe in goddy things overall. It’s the usual shifty kind of thing.

In trying to disparage “faith”, Dawkins and his allies constantly confuse “evidence” with “proof”; those of us who believe in God do so without proof but not without evidence. As the Oxford theologian (and biophysicist) Alister McGrath has observed: “Our beliefs may be shown to be justifiable, without thereby demonstrating that

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News from Kansas.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has signed a sweeping antiabortion omnibus bill into law, reaffirming the state’s current ban on abortion at 20 weeks (without exceptions for rape or serious fetal anomalies), blocking tax breaks for abortion providers, expanding “conscience protections” for anti-choice groups and writing into state law that life begins “at fertilization.”

Because it’s imperative to do what we can to make sure women remain enslaved by their own bodies.

…states like Arkansas and North Dakota have moved the bar for judging antiabortion legislation so far to the right that Kansas’ 20-week ban seems “modest” when compared to North Dakota’s six-weeks and Arkansas’ 12 weeks. But make no mistake: The Kansas law is equally dangerous for

… Read the rest

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In El Salvador this time. (Blargh, what a name for a country, eh? Imagine being a citizen of The Savior. Gag me.) (And in this case, what a fucking bitter joke.)

According to a report from Amnesty International, a seriously ill and pregnant El Salvadorian woman may face jail time if she goes forward with a lifesaving and medically recommended abortion. Abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador.

The 22-year-old mother of one, identified only as Beatriz, is four-and-a-half months pregnant, but her doctors have confirmed that the fetus has anencephaly (developing without a brain and certain parts of the skull) and that the pregnancy is nonviable. In addition to the fetal diagnosis, Beatriz is experiencing critical

… Read the rest

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Atheism is because of something missing in the brain.

Autism associations around Turkey have reacted angrily after the head of Adana’s Health and Education Associations for Autistic Children reportedly said autistic children were “atheists due to a lack of a section for faith in their brains.”

“Autistic children do not know how to believe in God because they do not have a section of faith in their brains,” sociologist Fehmi Kaya reportedly said. “That is why they don’t know how to pray, how to believe in God. It is necessary to create awareness [or religion] in these children through methods of therapy.”

He also reportedly said atheism was a form of autism.

Ok I know this one. It’s theory … Read the rest

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Here’s a disgusting item. Trigger warning, and all that. Video from Burma, in which police look on while Buddhists trash shops owned by Muslims and kill a Muslim boy.

The footage, apparently shot by police officers, shows Buddhist crowds looting and ransacking a Muslim jewellery shop, cheering when Muslims are attacked, and setting fire to mosques and houses. Later, a man who has been set alight and is believed to be Muslim can be seen lying in the road, surrounded by a crowd of people. “Pour water on him,” a man in the crowd commands. “Let him die,” shouts another. “No water for him.”

Both Buddhist monks and police can be seen through much of the

… Read the rest

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An interesting question. American Atheists asked on Twitter:

Seeking input! What blog do you think best represents #atheists/#atheism positively? Doesn’t have to be an exclusively atheist blog.

But what does AA mean by ”positively”? I asked, in several doubtless annoying tweets, but AA had skipped off to other activities so I didn’t find out.

The word has come to be a blanket term for nice or not hostile aka not critical while “negative” has come to be a blanket term for nasty or critical or skeptical.

So you see why I asked. Organized, campaigning, activist atheists don’t necessarily see “not critical” as “positive”…so what are we talking about here?

Of course the candidate that came … Read the rest

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Allen Esterson has a wonderful article on a 2009 book by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, in which they claim that moral passion about the horrors of slavery was Darwin’s motivation for “determined pursuit of an explanatory theory for the transformation of species of which he became convinced as a result of his experiences during the Beagle voyage of 1831 to 1836.”

I once tried to read their 1991 biography of Darwin but I stopped fairly soon because it’s full of nudging innuendo about motives and agendas and complicity – you know the kind of thing. It was obvious bullshit, because it was always stuff they were reading in, not anything they demonstrated or offered … Read the rest

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