Year: 2010

Juan Williams shouldn’t have been working for NPR in the first place. That’s not because he’s too Fox-y, it’s because he’s too thick. He doesn’t have an interesting mind, so he doesn’t have interesting things to say.

NPR quite likes that, up to a point – it doesn’t want its people to sound “too” intelligent or curious or thoughtful. I know that because almost none of them do. A Nina Totenberg probably couldn’t get hired there today – she sounds too sharp and too unplacating. NPR seems to want only people who won’t intimidate listeners by sounding possibly cleverer than the listeners are.

I suspect that’s why they liked Juan Williams in the first place – he has that warm, furry, cozy, slow, soporific note to his voice that nearly all NPR on-air people do. But it turns out he’s just soporific without being “nice.”

My first awareness of Williams (apart from knowing he wrote Eyes on the Prize – which was a pretty impressive credential) was when he replaced Ray Suarez on NPR’s show Talk of the Nation. I had been listening to that show pretty regularly, because Suarez was brilliant – he did a lot of homework, he was interested, he was curious, he could think on his feet, he gave a damn – he was just great. Williams was a shocking contrast. He obviously did no homework at all, he wasn’t curious, his questions were random and uninteresting, and he couldn’t even understand what his guests said. He would say, “So you’re saying X,” and while I ground my teeth in fury the hapless guest would say, “No, I’m saying Y,” and re-state what she had just said.

He’s just thick. He’s no good. NPR should never have hired him as an “analyst” in the first place. They should stop with the cozy approach and dare to hire intelligent people, however scare or intimidating they may sound. People like that will have no interest in being on Fox.

And as for Lauren Booth…

Journalist and broadcaster Lauren Booth, 43 – Cherie Blair’s sister – now wears a hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque whenever she can.

In other words she agrees that she is an inferior and a subordinate who lets a religion tell her to conceal most of her head; she fritters away a large fraction of her time every day talking to someone who isn’t there; and she has made herself subject to the death penalty in certain places if she should change her mind about this conversion lark. She must be dumb as a stump.

The more you look at this Global Peace and Unity stomach-turner, the more creepy it gets. Check out the supporters. Who are they? Islamist groups and cops. Period.

No really. The British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Forum of Europe, the Muslim Association of Britain, The Muslim Council of Britain, The Muslim Council of Scotland, The Muslim Council of Wales, UK Islamic Mission, and City of London police and Metropolitan police. That’s it.

Here’s some pleasant and thoughtful chat from the blurb under the UK Islamic Mission.

the UKIM is not only an organization trying to serve the Muslim community, but it is also an ideological movement, It aims to mould the entire human life according to Allah’s revealed Guidance, following the life example of His last Messenger, Mohammed (peace and blessings of Allah he upon him).

The efforts of the UK Islamic Mission (UKIM) are motivated by deep insights gained from the Glorious Quran and the Sunnah of our beloved Prophet, Muhammad (May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and are built on the hard lessons learnt from Muslim history.

And so on.

Or look at the seminars.

1 12:00:00 13:00:00 Applying guidance in everyday life Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad

2 13:30:00 15:30:00 Islam – Modern Challenges SheikhYusuf Estes

3 15:50:00 16:50:00 Giving Dawah in Troubling Times Imam Shabir Ally

4 17:00:00 18:00:00 Like a Garment: Advice Regarding Love and Marriage in Islam Sheikh Yasir Qadhi

5 18:20:00 19:50:00 The future of Islam in the United States Lessons for the British Muslims. Dr Jamal Badawi

Yet this shindig isn’t billed as an Islamic Peace and Unity Event, and in fact it refers to itself as a “multifaith gathering.” Chairman Mohamed Ali spells this out:

The GPU offers a crucial platform for interfaith dialogue and exchange of ideas towards fostering mutual understanding between people from every faith and background in a bid for greater community cohesion.

Does it? Is a jamboree that offers seminars in how to do things the Islamic way, and no other kind, the way to foster fostering mutual understanding between people from every faith and background in a bid for greater community cohesion? Does this Event make you want to cohere to the people throwing it?

Can you say Trojan horse? I thought you could.

Well…going down the list of speakers at the Global Peace and Unity Event, I find myself not at all eager to attend. I find myself thinking that it looks like an absolute nightmare.

More so than I would about a comparable Event packed with Catholic priests and bishops and scholars?

Yes, to be honest. More so.

Why?

Because most of them seem to represent a very very conservative form of Islam, or just plain Islamism, and I don’t want to live under Islam or Islamism, and I find it nightmarish that their kind of Islam and Islamism is so popular in the UK that it can draw 50 thousand people to an event of this kind. I hate and fear theocracy, and this Event is a More Theocracy Please Event. It creeps me out.

I wasn’t specifically invited to take this quiz, but I’ll take it anyway. Well not really take it – more like look at it. The point is to find out what gnu atheists think, and I think a lot of things, so maybe I think some things related to the quiz.

1) Why is there anything?
2) What caused the Universe?
3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?
4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?
5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?
6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?
7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)
8) Why is there evil?

1-4, I don’t know. 5, big question. Basically because of how the brain works – but there’s a lot more to say than that; it’s just that none of it includes the word “god.” 6, similar. 7, no, there’s no Moral Law.

8. Because we’re sentient, and conscious (cf 5 and 6), and mortal, and fragile. Bad things happen to us, and we think of them as bad, and we may think of some of them as evil. Bad things are how natural selection does the selecting. Legs too short? You’re eaten. Hearing dull? You’re eaten. Drought? You starve.

And then go on from there. Many centuries of experiencing this and talking about it with language and telling stories about it and writing books about it. We know a lot about it. We have a lot of feelings and thoughts about it.