Now Medina:

A suicide bomber has killed four security officers and injured five others near one of Islam’s holiest sites in the Saudi city of Medina, according to the interior ministry.

The bomber struck as the officers were breaking their Ramadan fast near the Prophet’s Mosque, al-Arabiya TV says.

The mosque is the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad and Medina the second-holiest city in Islam after Mecca.

Blasts also struck two other Saudi cities on Monday.

Guess who the prime suspect is. No prizes for correct answers.

A series of deadly attacks worldwide were either claimed by, or blamed on, IS over the past week:

• A suicide gun and bomb attack targeted Istanbul airport on 28 June. The death toll rose to 45, with 240 injured.
• Attackers struck a cafe in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, last Friday night. Twenty hostages and two policemen were killed.
• And a massive truck bomb in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, on Sunday left at least 165 people dead.

Allahu akbar.

The New Republic points out that the right wing in the US has been encouraging ignorance and anti-intellectualism for decades and thus grooming a large chunk of the population to be unable to see through Donald Trump. Well yeah – it’s obvious, but worth saying anyway.

Not so long ago, in the days before Marco Rubio endorsed Trump, the Florida senator called him a “con artist.” It’s hard to imagine how anyone could dispute Rubio’s evaluation. The operations of Trump University alone paint the convincing portrait of a swindler. Yet the deeper question is how such an obvious mountebank could win the majority of a major party’s delegates. Is there something in the nature of the Republican Party and its conservative base that made them particularly vulnerable to Trump’s deceptions?

Well of course there is. Have we forgotten “the reality-based community” already?

In a sense, conservative voters have been groomed for Trump since the 1960s. As the historian Rick Perlstein wrote in The Baffler and The Nation in 2012, the American conservative movement has become more and more amenable to get-rich-quick schemes, snake-oil salesmen, and confidence men. Direct-mail barons like Richard Viguerie began raking in the dough in the 1960s by stirring up ideological hysteria and convincing an audience of senior citizens that only their small-dollar donation could fend off union bosses, abortionists, and gays. Of course, most of the money ended up with the fundraisers.

From the direct-mail bunco artists, it was a natural progression to conservative media selling ads to the most outlandish dream peddlers and conspiracy-mongers. After Perlstein subscribed to email lists for publications like Townhall and Newsmax, he started getting some strange notices, including “the 123-Cent Heart Miracle,’ the one ‘Washington, the medical industry, and drug companies REFUSE to tell you about.’ (Why would they? They’d just be leaving money on the table: ‘I was scheduled for open heart surgery when I read about your product,’ read one of the testimonials. ‘I started taking it and now six months have passed and I haven’t had open-heart surgery.’).”

If you’ve been trained to think that business is always and automatically honest and self-regulating, you’ve been trained to stop thinking in general.

In Perlstein’s words, “The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.”

There’s another factor at work here: The anti-intellectualism that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement for decades also makes its members easy marks. After all, if you are taught to believe that the reigning scientific consensuses on evolution and climate change are lies, then you will lack the elementary logical skills that will set your alarm bells ringing when you hear a flim-flam artist like Trump. The Republican“war on science” is also a war on the intellectual habits needed to detect lies.

They raised up a viper and now it’s biting them in the ass – and unfortunately it’s biting the rest of us too.

Now Nigel Farage has joined David Cameron and Boris Johnson in deserting the ship that they sank.

Nigel Farage says he is standing down as leader of the UK Independence Party.

Mr Farage said his “political ambition has been achieved” with the UK having voted to leave the EU.

Marina Hyde has some commentary on this scarper.

It is fair to say Nigel remains unaware of the difference in calibre between himself and a figure such as Theresa May (whatever your views on her). You sense he will be condemned to wonder furiously why the call to the top table doesn’t come, much as Liz Hurley may enquire furiously of her agent why she has been overlooked again for a role in favour of Meryl Streep.

Keen to get a clearer sense of the Farage diplomacy doctrine, I asked him: does he think the tone he took in the European parliament last week was a good negotiating tactic that will help the UK to get the best deal out of Europe? After all, for an MEP who must have spent a lot of time near airport bookshops over the past two decades, Nigel seems mystified by the tenets of even basic business manuals. Unless I missed the bit in Sun Tzu that explains that all battles are won by mugging off your opponents before you start.

Explaining the “context” of his artless and embarrassing rudeness, Nigel claimed that the session had been “the worst event ever in the history of the European project”. It was only right, he went on, “that they got just a tiny little piece of my mind”. That is certainly all he would have to spare. His failure to understand how avenues are being opened up for any future deal appears total. Any manoeuvrability is deemed “backsliding”. “If we start to concede in these negotiations now,” he explained, “we will get a rotten deal. We’ve got the trump cards.” Certainly the Trump cards. Perhaps he could use his new free time to pen Nigel Farage’s Art of the Deal.

Either way, according to Nigel, we are now going to see “the real me”, now he is no longer constrained by … by what? Decorum? Ukip’s famously rigorous party discipline? EU-based race discrimination legislation? It was rather unclear. Of all the Farage disguises, incidentally, Daffy Nigel is the least convincing. Was he going to get a seat in the Lords? “Oh gosh, I shouldn’t have thought so for a moment.” The main thing about his victory, he reminded listeners for the 2,345th time, was that “we were against the entire UK establishment”. Spoken like a man who had literally spent yesterday at a garden party at the home of newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, sitting opposite Liam Fox and Rupert Murdoch.

What does that remind me of? Oh yes, Donald Trump working up the crowds by railing at…the elites. Donald Billionaire Scam-artist Trump pretending to be a populist opposed to Elites.

A press release by One Law for All:

Today, an unprecedented number of women’s rights campaigners and organisations from Britain and internationally have submitted a letter to the Home Secretary raising serious concerns about the government’s ‘independent review’ into Sharia courts in Britain. The letter states that the limited scope of inquiry and its inappropriate theological approach will do nothing to address the discriminatory effect and intent of the courts on private and family matters: areas where, arguably, the greatest human rights violations of minority women in the UK take place.

Rather than taking a human rights approach, the government has constituted a panel and terms of reference more suited to a discussion in theology than one which serves the needs of victims whose human rights are violated.  By making these religious appointments, the government has lost a vital opportunity to examine the discriminatory nature of not only Sharia bodies but all forms of religious arbitration fora including the Batei Din.

The panel chair, Mona Siddiqui, for example, is herself a theologian. One of the scholars, Sayed Ali Abbas Razawi, is the joint secretary for Majlis Ulama-e-Shia, which sends delegations to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In his sermons, he has supported the death penalty in Islamic states, advised Muslims to go into government “and change the system” and says women dressed in “tight clothing” are “corrupted”. Another scholar, Qari Muhammad Asim, speaks of “men retain[ing] their wives in marriage” and sees women in relation to their male guardian: “Each women is someone’s mother, daughter, sister or wife”. He also trivialises violence against women by saying “women as well as men can be victims of domestic abuse”.

Both scholars advising the panel are on Imams Online. Khola Hasan, a judge at the Islamic Sharia Council, is a contributing editor to Imam Online. Clearly, Imams and Islamic scholars cannot investigate themselves.

“Women and Sharia Law: The Impact of Legal Pluralism in the UK” by Elham Manea published in May 2016documents the harmful and even life threatening consequences for vulnerable minority women in matters pertaining to the family.  Testimonials gathered by campaigners highlight some of the emotional, mental and physical effects of the courts on women and children.

The women’s rights campaigners are calling on the Home Secretary to establish a thorough and impartial judge-led human rights investigation, which will fully examine arbitration in family matters and whether violations of human rights are condoned or even promoted by Sharia bodies. Some examples are: women’s testimony being worth half that of a man’s, marital rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse, the age of consent, guardianship, forced marriage, honour based violence, ritual abuse, child custody and child protection, polygamy, divorce, sexuality, inheritance, inter-religious relationships, female dress codes and abortion. Broader issues such as the treatment of religious minorities including minority sects in Islam and decisions pertaining to apostasy and blasphemy must also be examined to understand the full range of threats faced by people affected by religious laws, and indeed, by the State promoting these laws.

The law and not religion is the key basis for securing justice for all citizens. Campaigners urge the government to do the right thing and ensure that the same principles of human rights, equality before the law, duty of care, due diligence and the rule of law are applicable to all British citizens.

See the press release for notes and contact information.

It really is shocking that a government review of religious courts should be run by conservative theologians who are there to defend the whole idea. We already know that conservative theologians think that conservative theology should be in charge of everything.

Peggy Orenstein in Mother Jones:

I have spent three years interviewing dozens of young women about their attitudes toward and experiences with physical intimacy. On the one hand, girls would enthuse about pop icons like Beyoncé, Gaga, Miley, and Nicki who were actively “taking control” of their sexuality. Whereas earlier generations of feminist-identified women may have seen Kim Kardashian West’s “happy #internationalwomensday” tweet and accompanying nude selfie (Instagram caption: “When you’re like I have nothing to wear LOL”) as something to denounce, many of today’s generation talked about it as an expression rather than an imposition of sexuality—brand promotion done on her own terms.

As one college sophomore told me, she never feels more “liberated” than “when I wear a crop top and my boobs are showing and my legs are showing and I’m wearing super high heels.” She added, “I’m proud of my body, and I like to show it off.”

But that’s a very particular idea of “showing off” your body, and of being proud of it. What aspect of your body are you showing off that way, and what are you proud of? It’s not strength or health or ability. It’s hotness. That’s not the only thing a body is about, or for, or good at – and it’s not obvious in what way it’s “liberating” to single out hotness as the only significant aspect of one’s body worth being proud of.

And let’s be real: it’s not really “liberating” to wear high heels. Literally speaking it’s the very opposite of liberating, because it significantly impedes the wearer’s freedom of movement. The same applies, somewhat less obviously, to short skirts and crop tops. Sure, parading one’s hotness is liberating from repressive ideas about sex as shameful, but that’s only one form of liberation, and it’s not obvious that it’s still an urgent one now.

That’s Orenstein’s point, of course, but I wanted to zero in on that oddly limited idea of what it is to be proud of one’s body. But even if you do accept that idea, there are problems.

But a moment later it became clear that unless, through fortuitous genetics or incessant work, you were able to “show off” the right body, the threat of ridicule lurked. The young woman told me that a friend had recently gained some weight. It’s not that she couldn’t wear skimpy clothes, the woman explained. “But she knows how she would feel if there were asshole-y boys who were like, ‘She’s a fat girl.'”

Young women talked about feeling simultaneously free to choose a sexualized image—which was nobody’s damned business but their own—and having no other choice. “You want to stand out,” one college freshman explains. “It’s not just about being hot, but who can be the hottest.”

Well guess what: that’s not freedom. It may be a competition you want to enter, but don’t kid yourself that it’s freedom.

But as journalist Ariel Levy pointed out in her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, “hot” is not the same as “beautiful” or “attractive”: It is a narrow, commercialized vision of sexiness that, when applied to women, can be reduced to two words: “fuckable” and “sellable.” No coincidence, Levy added, that this is “the literal job criteria for stars of the sex industry.”

And there are other things to be, other criteria, and by god there are other industries. Being fuckable and sellable has a short shelf life, and anyway those qualities are passive. Be passive if you want to, but again, don’t confuse that with being a Strong Powerful Woman in Charge of Her Own Destiny.

H/t Stacy

Clive James puts it well – briefly, savagely, tragically, well.

After the death of Jo Cox at the hands of Thomas Mair, I found myself comparing two photographs and wondering if I hadn’t lived too long. One was of Jo Cox: radiant, intelligent, with no limit to the good she might have done. The other was of Thomas Mair, the face of her killer. Here was a face with nothing in it except an unspoken question: do you really want to go on living in a world where a twerp like me can take the life of a woman like her?

That’s pretty much what I kept thinking. It’s what we all have occasion to think so much too often. It’s what one can’t help thinking when seeing a photo of Hitler – a twerp like him, and all those millions. The world seems to be arranged that way, and it’s not a good arrangement.

Clive James has been haunted by the thought all his life. The arts were his refuge, but…

Just recently, writing an article about the great European works of art, I put in a sentence about Bernini’s sculpture of his lovely young mistress Costanza Bonarelli, and I’m still wondering why I didn’t take the sentence straight out again, because the terrible truth is that, when he discovered that she had been falling into bed with his randy brother, he hired a thug to ruin her beauty. The thug slashed her face, but Bernini was the culprit.

On the one hand, his anger that she had sex with someone else; on the other hand, her face carved up by a criminal. There’s a mismatch there. A terrible, horrifying, unintelligent design mismatch.

Kindness, in the end, makes the difference. Monet was callous to women and Renoir told him so. Renoir was kind to his models, and outside his studio the street filled up with mothers waiting to speak to him about the possibility of him marrying their daughters. He did his best to be fair. Balanchine, a genius, should have done the same, but when he fell for his young star ballerina Suzanne Farrell and she fell for someone else, he ruined her career. Later on, she forgave him. He was lucky she didn’t shoot him.

Kindness makes the difference, and egotism gets in the way of kindness. We can’t help feeling our own pinpricks more sharply than the agony of others, but we can at least try to correct for that error.

The murderers at the Holey Artisan Bakery wanted to get famous.

Sumir Barai was hiding in the washroom when one of the gunmen shouted “Bengali people, come out.”

“You don’t need to be so tense,” one of the men told them. “We will not kill Bengalis. We will only kill foreigners.” At that, Mr. Barai’s gaze flicked to the floor of the restaurant, where he could see six or seven bodies, apparently shot and then sliced with machetes. All appeared to be foreigners.

The gunmen, he said, seemed eager to see their actions amplified on social media: After killing the patrons, they asked the staff to turn on the restaurant’s wireless network. Then they used customers’ telephones to post images of the bodies on the internet.

That’s a pretty detail, isn’t it? Murder as photo op? I bet the guys who knocked down the World Trade Center wished they could see themselves on tv afterwards – or maybe they thought they would see themselves on tv afterwards, with Mohammed patting them approvingly on the shoulder.

Even as they killed the foreigners, the attackers were unfailingly polite and solicitous with the restaurant staff and other Bangladeshis, Mr. Barai said.

They took the staff into their confidence, complaining that foreigners, with their skimpy clothes and taste for alcohol, were impeding the spread of Islam. “Their lifestyle is encouraging local people to do the same thing,” a militant said.

Hey here’s an idea – why don’t those guys and the post-Brexit foreigner-haters get together and build their own foreigner-free utopia? They have so much in common, despite the differences in religion and language and fashion.

Mr. Barai recalls being puzzled by the attackers, who spoke cosmopolitan Bengali, and even some English, when conversing with the foreigners.

“They were all smart and handsome and educated,” he said. “If you look at those guys, nobody could believe they could do this.” In the predawn hours, the militants lectured their captives on religious practices, instructing the kitchen staff to say regular prayers and study the Quran.

Early in the morning, the gunmen released a group of women wearing hijabs and offered a young Bangladeshi man, Faraz Hossain, the opportunity to leave, too, said Hishaam Hossain, Mr. Hossain’s nephew, who had heard an account from the hostages who were freed.

Mr. Hossain, a student at Emory University, was accompanied by two women wearing Western clothes, however, and when the gunmen asked the women where they were from, they said India and the United States. The gunmen refused to release them, and Mr. Hossain refused to leave them behind, his relative said. He would be among those found dead on Saturday morning.

Murdered by men who were all smart and handsome and educated.

And speaking of the need to talk about racism and hatred and what they lead to, the NY Times takes us back to the days when Donald Trump was busy being a birther. I remember those days, and I remember rolling my eyes and paying no further attention, because who the hell cares what Donald Trump says about anything? Remember that innocent time? I still think it’s a waste of life to pay any attention to him, of course, but now we’ve been forced to, by gullible people who think he’s interesting and correct.

In the birther movement, Mr. Trump recognized an opportunity to connect with the electorate over an issue many considered taboo: the discomfort, in some quarters of American society, with the election of the nation’s first black president. He harnessed it for political gain, beginning his connection with the largely white Republican base that, in his 2016 campaign, helped clinch his party’s nomination.

In other words he used racism to make himself a candidate popular with racists. He’s a terrible human being.

And starting in March 2011, when he first began to test the idea that a reality television star with no political experience could mount a campaign for the presidency, Mr. Trump could not stop talking about it.

“Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” he asked on ABC’s “The View.” “I want to see his birth certificate,” he told Fox News’s “On the Record.” And on NBC’s “Today Show,” he declared, “I’m starting to think that he was not born here.”

The more Mr. Trump questioned the legitimacy of Mr. Obama’s presidency, the better he performed in the early polls of the 2012 Republican field, springing from fifth place to a virtual tie for first.

In other words he peddled a stupid, malicious, racist lie for the sake of his own greedy ambitions, and the major media helped him do it.

Now, Mr. Trump almost assiduously refuses to discuss the topic, which, according to several people close to him, was always more about political performance art than ideology.

“I don’t talk about that anymore,” Mr. Trump told the MSNBC host Chris Matthews after a Republican debate last year.

Raising questions about the president’s birth certificate — and even threatening to send a team of investigators to Hawaii — had served its purpose, raising Mr. Trump’s political profile and, whether he knew it or not at the time, providing him with the rudimentary foundation upon which he built his 2016 campaign.

He even skirted close to birther innuendo after the massacre in Orlando, Fla., last month, calling in to “Fox & Friends” to insinuate that Mr. Obama might sympathize with Islamic extremists. “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands,” Mr. Trump said.

Anybody got a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to send him?

The BBC reports that 20 people have been killed in the Bangladesh attack. Tasneem Khalil said an hour ago that a new ISIS statement puts the figure at 22 “crusaders” and 2 police officers.

More from the Beeb:

At least nine Italians and seven Japanese were among those killed.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said one other Italian was still unaccounted for. Many of the Italians reportedly worked in the garment industry.

Japan said eight of its nationals were in the cafe. One was among 13 people rescued but the other seven died.

All were consultants for Japan’s foreign aid agency and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said they “were giving their all for the development of Bangladesh”.

The army had initially said all hostages killed were foreigners, but later reports said some Bangladeshis also died.

But apparently they were “crusaders” too.

Bangladesh’s Daily Star newspaper said the gunmen tortured anyone who was unable to recite the Koran. They provided meals overnight for only the Bangladeshi captives, it said.

“It was an extremely heinous act,” Ms Hasina said in a televised statement. “What kind of Muslims are these people? They don’t have any religion.”

Yes they do. Religion isn’t another word for kindness or mercy or treating people decently. People take from religion what they want to take, and that means that people who love violence and cruelty look for that in their religion, and they can always find it. People who love kindness find that in their religion, and people who love hatred and cruelty find that.

The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder at the scene:

The Holey Artisan Bakery is known as a bustling cafe popular with expats and wealthy locals.

“There is an open-air terrace overlooking a lake,” Dhaka Mayor Annisul Huq tells me.

“That’s why it was so popular. It was so serene. I can’t believe that this has happened to my Dhaka, I simply cannot.”

But it’s happened in Dhaka before. Ahmed Rajib Haider was stabbed to death in Dhaka. Avijit Roy was hacked to death with machetes in Dhaka. Oyasiqur Rhaman was hacked to death with machetes in Dhaka. Niloy Neel was hacked to death with machetes in Dhaka. Faisal Arefin Dipan was hacked to death with machetes in Dhaka. This is a thing that has been happening in Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh all too often.

The attack began when eight or nine armed men burst into the cafe at about 21:20 (15:20 GMT) on Friday and opened fire.

Media reports quoted witnesses as saying that they shouted “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is great”.

That’s what I mean about religion. “God is great” means different things to different people. To some it means “God is great and wants you to be kind and generous and helpful.” To others it means “God is great and you people are vermin that need to be eradicated.”

One thing you can do is wear a safety pin.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council said on Monday there had been a 57 per cent rise in reports to an online hate crime reporting sitebetween Thursday and Sunday compared to a month ago.

The majority of attacks appear to be aimed at immigrants, or people perceived to be immigrants, and are along the lines of “We voted Leave, you’re going home”.

Like many people, Allison, an American woman living in London, toldindy100 she was dismayed by the outpouring of racist abuse following the Leave vote. But she’s also come up with a clever way to tackle it.

She’s started a new campaign asking people to wear an empty safety pin as a badge to symbolise solidarity against racism – and let any potential targets know that the wearer is a friendly face.

It’s a good idea.

Wikimedia Commons

A London council sticks a feminist library with a massive rise in rent. Emma Thatcher, a volunteer at the library, tells the story.

For more than 30 years the Feminist Library has had a home in Southwark, London; now we face eviction by the council. Seemingly, this is because the council wants to maximise profits at the expense of culture, history and community.

The library collection was started by a group of volunteers in 1975 and documents the women’s liberation movement – not just in the UK but internationally – in all its inspiring, messy, complex glory. It inspires me every day to understand how women before us have come together to fight for social change, share knowledge, and support each other.

They visit schools and host public events.

But this one-of-a-kind library is now under threat from market forces. In December last year we were shocked to receive a notice increasing our rent and service charges from £12,000 to a total of £30,000 per annum. We wrote to Southwark council asking that they work with us to implement this increase gradually, giving us a chance to up our fundraising. They refused to negotiate or even meet with us, meaning that we were faced with eviction on 1 March – ironically the first day of Women’s History Month.

In response we launched an emergency campaign, with a petition that received 15,000 signatures in its first week. Supporters gathered for a “read-in” – reading texts of feminist classics outside Southwark council’s budget-setting meeting.

As a result, Southwark council gave us a six-month extension; we now have until the end of October to find a new home. The council has been forced to offer us some support – but they have made it clear this is help to leave, not help to stay, and that any tenancy they give us will treat us as commercial tenants, subject to market rent and with no protection against any increase this entails.

The building was given to the council by the GLC (the Greater London Council) in 1984 for ethnic groups and anti-racism initiatives.

We are now calling on the council to respect women’s history and help the library find a new, affordable home. In February 2016 Southwark pledged to support the community and cultural heritage in their New Voluntary Sector Strategy. This paper “highlights the need for a thriving voluntary and community sector that mobilises community action and makes best use of community resources, skills, knowledge and spaces”. We cannot understand how their treatment of the Feminist Library is consistent with approving this report.

The move by the council is part of a process of gentrification in the borough – notably with the nearby Elephant Park development and the destruction of the Heygate and Aylesbury estates – and in the wider city, where many other organisations have been forced out of their premises to make way for luxury flats, shops and bars.

Boo on Southwark council.

For more information about the library’s fundraising efforts click here.

I hope the library can survive.

Bangladesh is being torn to pieces some more today.

A Hindu temple worker has been killed by three men on a motorcycle, local police have said, the latest of dozens of brutal attacks in Bangladesh.

Shaymanonda Das was preparing for morning prayers at a temple in the south-western district of Jhenaidah when he was attacked.

Police said he was hacked on the neck several times with machetes.

Meanwhile in Dhaka:

Gunmen have stormed a popular cafe in the diplomatic area of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, taking a number of hostages, officials say.

Several foreigners are among those being held by eight or nine men in the city’s Gulshan district, they add.

A police officer has been killed and at least five others injured in a gun battle, a spokesman said.

Take that, Nigel Farage, you smug ignorant git.

Wondering what Farage deems to be a "proper job". #definitelynotprocrastinating #thanksmicrosoftword #eu #brexit #ukip #voteremain

A photo posted by Luki Sumner-Rooney (@luki.sumner) on Jun 29, 2016 at 8:30am PDT

H/t David Colquhoun