Tehmina Kazi talks about secularism and Islam, and how the former is good for the latter. She argues that secularism actually adds to the Islamic discourse, because there’s a long tradition of critical thought in Islam.
It makes sense you know. If all religions and none are treated equally, then people are more likely to feel safe discussing and exploring.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A Fox News station in Arkansas asks a question on its Facebook page. It asks: Is this method of restraining juveniles torture?
The Yell County Juvenile Detention Center uses this restraint mechanism called the “wrap system”. Some juvenile detainees call it “torture”. Now, the Arkansas Department of Human Services has sent a cease and desist letter to Yell County officials asking them to stop using the device. What do you think about the wrap system?
It supplies a photo of the “restraint mechanism”:
Yes, that’s torture. Thank you for asking.
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Fathima Imra Nazeer makes the point that I keep making: holy books say what they say, and there’s no magic that renders what they say universally harmless.
… Read the restWell-meaning Muslims claim that these Islamists have simply ‘misinterpreted’ the Quran. But have they?
As I wrote in a previous post, ISIS’s interpretation of the Quran is a very plausible one and this explains why ISIS has no trouble using the Quran as a recruiting tool.
Even according to Yusuf Ali, the very much mainstream and respected interpreter of the Quran, fighting for the cause of ‘truth’ is a duty for Muslims under a ‘rightly guided Imam.’ The definition of ‘truth’ and ‘rightly guided Imam,’ unfortunately, is not that clear cut.
For
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Meanwhile, in Tanzania, they’ve been killing “witches.”
Tanzanian police have charged 23 people with murder after seven villagers were burned alive on suspicion of witchcraft.
Though the attacks in Murufiti, a village in the western Kigoma region, happened on Monday, reports only surfaced with the arrests.
Five of those killed were aged over 60, the other two were over 40.
A Tanzanian human rights group estimates that 500 suspected witches are killed in Tanzania annually.
Five hundred. In just one country.
… Read the restWitnesses say some of the victims were attacked with machetes and their homes burned.
The son of one of the victims, Josephat John, told Tanzania’s Mwananchi newspaper: “When I returned home in the evening, I found the body of
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A British man spent 20 days in jail in Morocco for “homosexual acts.” He’s now been released and has returned to the UK and he reports that the experience was…a nightmare.
… Read the restHe said prison conditions were “horrendous”, with inmates as young as 10 and as old as 90 being held “for nothing”.
“I can hardly move my arm now, from 20 nights sleeping on the floor – I just want to go home and sleep in a soft bed,” he said.
He had no idea about the campaigning for his release carried out by his family, who said they were “ecstatic” about his return.
“I’m so proud of them – I couldn’t have a better family,” Mr Cole added.
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The great Khuldune Shahid has a satirical piece on Why He Hates Malala Yousafzai.
How much a Pakistani hates someone depends on how easy it is to hate them. And few individuals are easier to hate than Malala Yousafzai.
Here’s a girl, not old enough to have an ID card, taking on Pakistan’s biggest enemy without an iota of fear.
She takes a bullet to her head not fighting for a jingoistic agenda, but for something as universally celebrated as education. For her commendable bravery she gets global acclaim, speaks in front of a global audience at the UN, meets the American president and is pretty much the only positive coming out of this country in recent times.
So … Read the rest
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M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad reports on the hatred of Malala in Pakistan.
It wasn’t even reported as breaking news on Pakistani tv, Khan says.
Many Pakistanis would not even have known she was up for the award.
Indeed, Tariq Khattack, editor of the Pakistan Observer newspaper, actually condemned it, telling the BBC: “It’s a political decision and a conspiracy.”
“She is a normal, useless type of a girl.
Nothing in her is special at all. She’s selling what the West will buy.”
Wo, that’s revealing – normal girls are useless; it’s normal for girls to be useless. Girls are useless. Wham, that’s half of humanity dismissed. That’s why Malalas are needed.
… Read the restWhile many in Pakistan have praised her
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Dilip D’Souza at the Daily Beast tells us about Kailash Satyarthi and what he does and why it needs doing.
… Read the restIndia is feeling good today: the Nobel Prize for Peace has gone to our own Kailash Satyarthi, jointly with Pakistan’s Malala Yousufzai. Certainly something to make us proud. Yet the irony is that Satyarthi won it for his efforts, with his Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA, Save Childhood Coalition), to end the exploitation of children in India.
Not something to celebrate, that exploitation. If we pretend it’s happening in some far-off twilight zone where kids are oppressed and neglected, the reality is as in-your-face as the drenched kid who presses her face to a car window, her teeth chattering as
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Originally a comment by PZ Myers on That was before the money went into it.
It’s been this way since I was in high school.
Our football coach was a psychopath.
He took pride in his collection of paddle boards; every session of our gym class was accompanied by someone, or multiple someones, getting hacked for trivial infringements of his rules: you forgot your jock strap. You weren’t lined up with everyone right at the instant the bell rang. You came in last when running laps. If he was feeling punitive, the last ten kids would get wacked.
He was the football coach. He got away with it. Grading gym was easy, too: if you were varsity on one … Read the rest
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From almost a year ago, November 2013 – associations of private schools in Pakistan banned Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography.
… Read the restIronically, educational officials in Pakistan (who work in the very segment of society that Malala wants to improve) have prohibited her memoirs from classrooms across the country. (Tens of millions of Pakistani children attend fee-based private schools since public schools are in such poor shape).
Adeeb Javedani, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association, told Associated Press that Malala’s book will not be available in any libraries at its 40,000 affiliated schools. He also asked the government to ban it from all school curricula. “Everything about Malala is now becoming clear,” Javedani said. “To me, she is representing the
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This is one big reason I don’t like Sam Harris. It always has been (since he became someone to like or not like, that is). I went to his blog to look for his post on liberals and Islam, and in the process of looking (which I haven’t completed yet because I paused to say this) I read the first sentence of the first post.
From time to time one discovers a person so good at his job that it is almost impossible to imagine him doing anything else.
It’s just odd, and stubbornly clueless, that even now, even after a big disagreement with a lot of feminists about the way he talks about women, he does that. I … Read the rest
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The New York Times has a whole lot more on the Sayreville football team and the “bullying and harassment” that got the season shut down. Seven players are accused of “hazing of a sexual nature.” It also has more on the pathetic football-worship in Sayreville and the way it motivates grown-ass adults to minimize the hazing.
The charges were announced by Andrew C. Carey, the Middlesex County prosecutor, in a joint statement with Chief John Zebrowski of the Sayreville Police Department.
Richard Labbe, the district superintendent, released a statement.
… Read the rest“As should be evident by now, the Sayreville Board of Education takes this matter extremely seriously,” Mr. Labbe said, “and thus will continue to make the safety and welfare of our
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Originally a comment by Blanche Quizno on But football is a necessity of life.
My 6’4″ son went out for football last year and, when he realized how much time it would require, he voted for his studies instead and quit the team. A half a dozen other young men then quit the team – it’s like they didn’t realize they COULD quit or something. In fact, one of his friends, who had just the week before talked of hoping to be team captain that year, quit a few days after my son did. That really shocked me – “football player” had been a huge part of his apparent identity/persona. I remember him telling me that, at the end … Read the rest
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So tweeted Brianna Wu, along with a series of explicitly threatening tweets she received, and
The police just came by. Husband and I are going somewhere safe.
Warning: explicit sexualized violence.
Can we take this seriously now?… Read the rest
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Daniel Anderson at the Lawyers’ Secular Society draws on Kant for thoughts on the Law Society’s Sharia guidance. In his essay on enlightenment, Kant wrote that enlightenment is having the courage to use your own understanding, instead of being so cowardly and lazy that you leave it to others to understand for you.
… Read the restKant goes on to further state that the failure to think for ourselves, as human beings, will lead to the rights of fellow human beings to be trampled upon.
The failure to think for ourselves will lead us to distrust others and so hand over complete control to a select few:
The guardians who have kindly taken upon themselves the work of supervision will soon see
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Hero. Remember her name: Nalin Afrin. General commander of Kurdish forces defending city of #Kobane against ISIL scourge.
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Talk about “fetal personhood”…
… Read the restThis spring, Alabama Republicans passed an extreme new law that would force minors who want to have an abortion without a parent’s permission to undergo a grueling court trial—and it would give judges the right to appoint a lawyer for the fetus. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court to block the law, prompting national headlines.
…
Alabama’s new law sets up time-consuming inquisitions. It requires district attorneys to cross-examine minors who want an abortion without parental approval, and it allows DAs and lawyers for fetuses to call witnesses to testify against the pregnant girls. Under this measure, a judge can adjourn bypass hearings for long periods of time,
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The Catholic Herald reported a couple of weeks ago that the Vatican had arrested an archbishop for sexually abusing young boys.
… Read the restVatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi released a statement yesterday regarding the case of former archbishop Józef Wesołowski, a Pole who served as nuncio to the Dominican Republic until August 2013.
The Vatican announced in June that a canonical court had investigated Wesołowski on charges of sex abuse in the Dominican Republic and concluded by dismissing him from the clerical state, depriving him of all rights and duties associated with being a priest except the obligation of celibacy. Wesołowski would face a criminal trial under the laws of Vatican City State, the Vatican said at the time.
Yesterday, Fr Lombardi
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Malala was in chemistry class, learning about electrolysis, when she got the news that she’d won the Peace Prize.
… Read the restYousafazi, who received a standing ovation when she made a powerful address to the United Nations on her 16th birthday, express hope that the leaders of Pakistan and India would come together on education and asked for them to jointly attend the award presentation in December.
“I’m proud that I am the first Pakistani and I am honored that I am the first young woman or the first young person to be receive this award,” she said in a press conference from Britain, where she is still receiving treatment for her injuries. “I’m thankful to my father for not clipping
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
