Author: Ophelia Benson

The Telegraph informs us that Anjem Choudary has plans to “announce a fatwa” on Malala Yousufzai later this year.

What?

Anjem Choudary lives in London on state benefit and issues periodic “announcements” of this and that as if he had an army at his command. What does it mean for some random asshole to say he has plans to “announce a fatwa” on a teenage girl he doesn’t know? I could say I have plans to move into a penthouse on Central Park West, but that wouldn’t make it happen.

Whatever. Choudary has been getting attention from the media by saying ludicrously murderous things for years. It’s a thing.

Later this month, hardliners plan to gather at the notorious Red Mosque in Islamabad to denounce her as an apostate, accusing her of turning her back on Islam.

Anjem Choudary, who lives in East London and is one of the founders of al-Muhajiroun, which was banned in 2010, said the conference would announce the fatwa.

Although apostasy carries the death sentence according to Islamic law, he insisted he was not calling for Malalaﾒs death.

“It’s not a death sentence,” he said. “It’s about what is the reality of what’s taking place and how she is being used as a tool for propaganda by the US and Pakistan, and for the crimes they are committing.”

This just in.

Police Montréal‏@SPVM

D.Markuze was arrested for social media harassment (breach of probation). Thanks to those who helped with the investigation #Mabus#SPVM

Well hallelujah.

India is still in a committed relationship with censorship. The Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray died on Saturday, and Bombay was shut down by way of farewell.

On Sunday, the police in Palghar, in Thane district, on the outskirts of Mumbai, arrested Shaheen Dhadha after she posted a status update on Facebook that questioned the shutdown, also known as a bandh. A local daily, the Mumbai Mirror, reported that Ms. Dhadha, 21, had written, “People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that.” The police also arrested her friend who “liked” the post, whom NDTV identified by her first name, Renu.

Got that? The head of a far-right Hindutva political party died, Bombay closed down for 30 hours as a result, and a young woman posted on Facebook questioning the closing down. She was arrested and so was someone who clicked “Like” on her post.

It’s madness.

The two women, who were sentenced to 14 days in jail by the court, received bail after a bond of 15,000 rupees ($270) was paid, reported NDTV.

The Times of India reported that a mob of 2,000 Shiv Sena workers vandalized her uncle’s orthopedic clinic in Palghar. Repeated calls made to the Dhada orthopedic hospital in Thane went unanswered, while Harshal Pradhan, a Shiv Sena spokesman, said that he was unaware of the incident.

Religious fascism everywhere we look. Golden Dawn, Shiv Sena, the priests in Ireland, the zealots in the US, Boko Haram, the mullahs in Iran…It’s everywhere.

The new issue of Free Inquiry is out. It has a special section on the Women in Secularism conference. I did an article for that section, based on my part at the conference but not restricted to it. It is online.

The basic idea is that the stereotypical idea of women is not very well suited for overt rebellion against god.

The main stereotype in play, let’s face it, is that women are too stupid to do nontheism. Unbelieving in God is thinky work, and women don’t do thinky, because “that’s a guy thing.”

Don’t laugh: Michael Shermer said exactly that during a panel discussion on the online talk-show The Point. The host, Cara Santa Maria, presented a question: Why isn’t the gender split in atheism closer to 50-50? Shermer explained, “It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it; you know, it’s more of a guy thing.”

It’s all there—women don’t do thinky, they don’t speak up, they don’t talk at conferences, they don’t get involved—it’s “a guy thing,” like football and porn and washing the car.

Dude, your shit was in our way. It’s as if you’ve never heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy. That seems impossible for a skeptic, but there you go – dudely skeptics seem to misplace their skepticism when explaining why you don’t see so many women in the Atheist Clubhouse. No, it’s not because it’s more of a guy thing; it’s because so many people think it’s more of a guy thing and keep saying so and keep forgetting about the many many women who do stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, be intellectually active about it. (Can you say “do be”? No. But sometimes you need to, so I do it anyway.)

It’s not more of a guy thing. Move the fuck over, and you’ll find that out.

We’ve got new people joining Freethought blogs – it’s going to be great.

Lalala I can’t wait to say who they are but I have to, we don’t say until their blogs are up and running, lalala I can’t wait.

You’ll be thrilled. I guarantee it.

(Well. When I say “you” I mean people who read B&W because they like it – not because they agree with every word of it, but because they like it as opposed to hating it. I don’t mean people who read it solely because they hate it and more especially me, and are monitoring it for things to spit bile at – thus increasing my hit count and causing millions of dollars to flow directly into my wallet every day. Those people aren’t “you.” You people reading this because you hate me with an obsessive hatred – you won’t be thrilled. The guarantee doesn’t apply to you. No refunds.)

Stay tuned.

A festive Sunday morning in Indonesia in 2006, with coconut cakes and Javanese music and lots of women in hijabs and lipstick. They were there to chop up the genitals of 248 little girls.

It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or “female circumcision” that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and  several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.

The foundation pays the parents to slice up their daughters’ genitals.

At the mass  ceremony, I ask the foundation’s social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: “It is necessary to control women’s sexual urges,” says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. “They must be chaste to preserve  their beauty.”

Otherwise, they get all crusted over with ugly because of the oozing disgusingness of women’s sexual urges.

…far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. This year, the gathering took place in February. Hundreds of girls were cut. The Assalaam foundation’s website described it as “a celebration”. Anti-FGM campaigners have proved ineffective against a rising tide of conservatism.

…

Although Indonesia is not a country where FGM is widely reported, the practice is endemic. Two nationwide studies carried out by population researchers in 2003 and 2010 found that between 86 and 100% of households surveyed subjected their daughters to genital cutting, usually before the age of five. More than 90% of adults said they wanted the practice to continue.

Between 6 and 100%. I wouldn’t have guessed that if you’d asked me beforehand. That’s almost up there with Egypt. It’s also in the most populous majority-Muslim country – the third most populated country on earth. That’s a lot of chopped-up women.

This thing on Facebook…

I don’t keep up with everything. I should but I don’t. A friend mentioned Eric Dondero to me and I had to resort to Google, because I hadn’t kept up. He’s pretty funny.

 Republicans around the country are responding to President Obama’s reelection in a variety of ways — among them: anger, depression, finger-pointing. But nobody had the same reaction as Eric Dondero, a former Ron Paul aide who blogs at LibertarianRepublican.net. In a post yesterday, Dondero, reasoning that the only recourse to Obama’s victory is “outright revolt,” laid out the terms of the “personal boycott” against Democrats which he plans to maintain for the rest of his life and which he hopes his followers will as well. What does the boycott entail? Cutting all ties with Democratic family members, friends, and lovers; refusing to work for a Democratic boss; spitting on the ground when a Democrat talks to you; and possibly shitting on your Democratic neighbor’s lawn, among other things.

That last one would be really hard to do! Think about it. You’d have to set the alarm for, like, 2 in the morning, because if you tried it at 11 or midnight, you just know some nocturnal nabe down the street would be walking a dog and the dog would totally run over to you while you were squatting there, and knock you over and jump around and bark while the human shouted “WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?!!” It would be soooo embarrassing. You’d have to move out. So you get up at 2 and go over to the neighbor’s lawn – and force yourself to shit? Yeah good luck with that.