In re-reading Maryam’s talk and the comments on it I saw a link to a post by someone who attended the NSS Conference.
Nick was good, he says.
Nick was a fantastically eloquent and inspiring speaker – talking about self-censorship and imploring us to always be free to criticise “divinely inspired bigotry and facism”. His passion for free speech and how we should never be deterred from our right to it even in the face of threats of violence was fabulous, and evocative of Hitch in his refusal to back down to fascist terror threats in his robust rebuttals to religious lunatics. There is no greater compliment I can grant him than that.
But then there was Maryam…
Maryam’s talk was the highlight for me, Io, Narwahl and Chris as she delivered a devastating, passionate and ferocious salvo against islamo-fascism and the horrors of sharia law. I can’t do justice to how amazing she was, her presentation was a tour-de-force, and it was truly compelling and educational. I urge you all to read the talk in full right here. Go do it. Now. And only come back here when you are done.
You know, it was exactly the same at QED. She brought the fuckin house down. Everybody said she was the highlight.
He quoted a bit of what she said about sharia in Britain.
Shocking isn’t it? Maryam also urged everyone to stand up to this and to denounce anyone that would dare to call you a racist for questioning and criticizing islamists and sharia law.
I’m doing my level best.
There was an amusing bit about Dawkins’s talk.
Suffice to say it was about 40 minutes of trolling Christianity and it’s most peculiar sub-division, Mormonism. His presentation was typically sharp and witty, with his laying in to Mitt Romney a particular highlight.
Ah, I’d noticed he’d been tweeting about Mormonism and Romney a lot. Homework!
So anyway. Secularism, people. It’s not racism. Really, it’s not.