From CFI:

30-year-old Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian writer and activist, was sentenced last year to seven years in prison and 600 lashes. Badawi’s crimes? Founding a website, Liberal Saudi Network, dedicated to fostering open discussion of religion and politics; and calling on his country to respect freedom of religion, belief, and expression, and women’s rights.

According to the Saudi court, Badawi was guilty of ridiculing Islam. In the midst of his appeals process, Badawi could soon be charged with apostasy. The penalty for apostasy in Saudi Arabia is death.

To make matters worse, a Saudi court recently jailed Badawi’s lawyer, Waleed Sami Abu Al-Khair, for his human rights activism.

There are global protests May 3.

In support of

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From the Washington Post, more on those “marriages” in Nigeria.

Village elder Pogo Bitrus told Agence France Presse locals had consulted with “various sources” in the nation’s forested northeast. “From the information we received yesterday from Cameroonian border towns our abducted girls were taken… into Chad and Cameroon,” he said, adding that each girl was sold as a bride to Islamist militants for 2,000 naira — $12.

The Washington Post could not independently verify such claims, and the Nigerian defense ministry didn’t immediately return requests for comment Wednesday morning. But if true, the news would add another terrifying wrinkle to an already horrifying set of events…

Oh I’m sure they were just grabbed to do a little mending for … Read the rest

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The sultan of Brunei is going ahead with the introduction of ferocious punitive “sharia” despite objections from people who aren’t savage theocratic monsters.

“With faith and gratitude to Allah the almighty, I declare that tomorrow, Thursday 1 May 2014, will see the enforcement of sharia law phase one, to be followed by the other phases,” the absolute monarch said in a royal decree on Wednesday.

Plans for the sharia penalties – which will eventually include flogging, severing of limbs and death by stoning – triggered condemnation on social media sites in the tiny sultanate earlier this year.

Well, Mohammed didn’t say anything about social media, so fuck all that.

67-year-old Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah – one of the world’s wealthiest men

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The true meaning of nobility.

… Read the rest

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H/t Ray… Read the rest

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That Telegraph article mentioned a “Sharia Law event at the Law Society’s headquarters on Chancery Lane, central London on June 24″ and provided a link but the link is a dud. However I found a link that works, and thus the event.

Developing services for Muslim clients – An introduction to Islamic Shari’a law for small firms

It’s not law. It’s not law. It’s not law. Stop calling it law. It’s not law.

Does your sole practice or small firm have a Muslim client base and practice in the following areas of law?

• Wills and inheritance.
• Family and children.
• Corporate and commercial (non-listed firms).

Do you want to better understand and serve the needs of your

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The Telegraph reported a few days ago that the Law Society will be giving a training course in sharia this summer.

Wtf?

A new training course being run by the Law Society this summer is described as an “introduction to Islamic Sharia law for small firms”.

What the hell. Sharia is not law in the UK. Period. In the UK, law is what is enacted by Parliament, it’s not any old thing that’s called “law” by one group or another. Sharia is a religious thing, not a legal thing. It’s not something the Law Society should be giving “training” in.

Critics said the fact that the Law Society was offering training in Sharia law created the “perception” that

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At the protest yesterday. Via Chris Moos.

… Read the rest

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In London yesterday. Via Chris Moos.

… Read the rest

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Hahahahahahahaha this is the funniest headline I’ve seen in awhile – it’s in the Independent -

Saudi Arabia criticises Norway over human rights record

You must admit.

Ok so what’s the problem? What rights are they neglecting? Prisoners’? Children’s? Foreigners’? Asylum seekers’? Those of the disabled?

No, none of those. It’s the rights of Mohammed and Islam that Norway has been neglecting. How are those human rights, you wonder? They’re…not.

Saudi Arabia has criticised Norway’s human rights record, accusing the country of failing to protect its Muslim citizens and not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed.

Hey, you know what? No country should do anything to “counter criticism” of Mohammed or any other religious figure.

The gulf

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New news from Nigeria – Monica Mark reports in the Guardian:

For two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed for news of his niece Saratu, who was among more than 230 schoolgirls snatched by Boko Haram militants in the north-eastern Nigerian village of Chibok. Then on Monday the agonising silence was broken.

When Dawah called together his extended family members to give an update, he asked that the most elderly not attend, fearing they would not be able to cope with what he had to say. “We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls. They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko

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A piece by channel4 news on April 25th:

Amid mounting public fury and an international outcry over the fate of 230 kidnapped Nigerian teenaged girls – now missing for nearly two weeks - the mother of one of the girls has warned that unless they are rescued urgently, she and other parents would likely be collecting their children’s dead bodies.

Speaking by telephone from Chibok, the town in north-eastern Borno state where the girls were kidnapped from their school in the middle of the night, a distressed Mrs Rahila Bitrus told Channel 4 News of her family’s anguish and accused the Nigeriangovernment of failing to act fast enough.

“They’d assured us they would rescue our children but today,

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Via Stepping Stones Nigeria

[It's Borno, not Burno]

#BringBackOurGirls Very little is known about what the authorities are doing to bring back the 200+ girls abducted whilst at school. Even the exact figure of the girls taken is different between reports. These are precious lives and, if you care, we need to keep the pressure on the Nigerian Government and international organisations to rescue these girls. Sign now at: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/over-200-girls-are-missing-in-nigeria-so-why-doesn-t-anybody-care-234girls

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A joint press release: ‘Wills without bigotry – protest against the Law Society’

About 70 protesters rallied outside the office of the Law Society to condemn their endorsement of discriminatory sharia law on April 28 2014. The protest was organised by anti-racist, feminist and human rights groups, namely One Law for All, Southall Black Sisters, Centre for Secular Space, and London School of Economics SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society. Chris Moos was the master of ceremonies of the rally.

At the protest, Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters called upon the Law Society to withdraw its guidance:

“Our message to you is this: Wake up: You are the Law Society and not a body advising on the … Read the rest

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We’ve noticed many times how jeremiads about religious freedom seem to go in only one direction – freedom to refuse service to gay couples, freedom to refuse to perform medically necessary abortions, freedom to shield child-raping priests from the law. Mark Joseph Stern at Slate points to an example from silence as opposed to jeremiad.

On Monday, the United Church of Christ brought a federal lawsuit against North Carolina’s marriage laws, which were amended in 2012 to ban gay unions. What interest does the United Church of Christ have in toppling the state’s homophobic ban? Under North Carolina law, a minister who officiates a marriage ceremony between a couple with no valid marriage license is guilty of a Class A

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Jessica Valenti points out one of the ways women are given special treatment.

When I argue with a sexist, there’s an inevitable point at which he will call me “sweetheart”. (I like to think of it as shorthand for “you’re winning”.) If I’m really making him feel foolish, he may resort to “bitch”. “Ugly” is the last refuge of the hopelessly destroyed.

I’ve been writing about feminism on the internet long enough that these names don’t really bother me. But nothing is more grating than when a man I don’t know – in comments, Twitter or real life – calls me “Jessie”.

I don’t know if I find the diminutive the most grating item, but I do find it … Read the rest

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The BBC’s correspondent in Nigeria, Will Ross, reports on the agonizing wait.

Almost two weeks after they were driven away from their boarding school in the town in the middle of the night, parents are desperate for news of their daughters.

[Oops, editor needed. That should be "Almost two weeks after their daughters were driven away from their boarding school in the town in the middle of the night, parents are desperate for news of them."]

 A resident of the small town of Gwoza in the remote north-east said on 25 April she saw a convoy of 11 vehicles painted in military colours carrying many girls.

This will be of little comfort to the parents as it suggests at

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Pablo Flores pointed out another Facebook page about street harassment, this one started by a young woman in Argentina. My Spanish is minimal and rusty but I can get some and anyway there’s the Translate button. Acción Respeto: por una calle libre de acoso.

Here’s a cartoon posted there:

 … Read the rest

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Here’s a sad finding from sociologists in gender studies – girls view sexual violence as normal.

(April 2014) – New evidence from the journal Gender & Society helps explain what women’s advocates have argued for years – that women report abuse at much lower rates than it actually occurs. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 44% of victims are under the age of 18, and 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to police.

The study, “Normalizing Sexual Violence: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse,” will appear in the June 2014 issue of Gender & Society, a top-ranked journal in Gender Studies and Sociology. The findings reveal that girls

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