The UK’s National Union of Students recently refused to condemn IS because to do so would be Islamophobic. Or rather, “””Islamophobic””” – one set of scare quotes isn’t sarcastic enough.

Hand-wringing delegates at the NUS blocked a vote to show solidarity with Iraqi Kurds and condemn Islamic State militants because they say it’s “Islamophobic”.

The bill called for the Union – which claims to represent UK students – to support unity between Muslims, condemn the bloody terror of ISIS (also known as the Islamic State), and support a boycott on people who fund the militants.

But the motion offended Black Students Officer Malia Bouattia, who said: “We recognise that condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for war

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Terry Sanderson has an enthusiastic, inspired post on Maryam’s conference on Secularism last weekend. He says it wasn’t like any other conference on secularism he’s ever been to.

It was a truly international event that made everyone there feel that they were engaged in a momentous worldwide call for change. It was just a start, but the passion generated was the kind that can move mountains.

To start with, there was a majority of women among the 250 delegates. They had come from all over the world, bringing with them some horrific stories of suffering at the hands of religion.

Many speakers from Muslim backgrounds told of the persecution and discrimination and the sometimes heroic resistance to it. Wherever there

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CFI’s legal honcho Nick Little gave me the link to Utah’s gun law.

(5) Unless specifically authorized by the Legislature by statute, a local authority or state entity may not enact, establish, or enforce any ordinance, regulation, rule, or policy pertaining to firearms that in any way inhibits or restricts the possession or use of firearms on either public or private property.

(6) As used in this section:

(a) “firearm” has the same meaning as defined in Section 76-10-501; and

(b) “local authority or state entity” includes public school districts, public schools, and state institutions of higher education.

See that there? PUBLIC SCHOOLS and STATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES are forbidden to restrict the possession or use of firearms on … Read the rest

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As you probably already know, yesterday evening Utah State made a statement saying that Anita Sarkeesian had canceled her talk scheduled today October 15. Here’s why:

Oct. 14, 7 p.m.
Anita Sarkeesian has canceled her scheduled speech for tomorrow following a discussion with Utah State University police regarding an email threat that was sent to Utah State University. During the discussion, Sarkeesian asked if weapons will be permitted at the speaking venue. Sarkeesian was informed that, in accordance with the State of Utah law regarding the carrying of firearms, if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue.

I’m just fucking stunned.

So that’s it – … Read the rest

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But one piece of good news – that is (as so often) one undoing of a piece of bad news. The Supreme Court blocked Texas’s horrible admitting privileges law, allowing 13 clinics to re-open.

The court’s order, staying a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that the law could go into effect, will allow more than a dozen of the clinics to resume operation, according to the group that challenged the law, the Center for Reproductive Rights.

…

The action will allow 13 abortion clinics that closed after the appeals court decision to reopen, said Nancy Northup, president of the center. “We’re absolutely thrilled.”

The group told the justices that “if the stay entered

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This is the terrorist email:

… Read the rest

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Ok can we stop talking about online harassment as just some big joke, or as drama or rage-blogging or doing it for the clicks or any other dismissive bullshit now?

From the Standard Examiner:

Utah State University plans to move forward with an event featuring a prominent Canadian-American author, blogger and feminist, despite threats of terror, a spokesman said Tuesday evening.

The decision came after several staff members received an anonymous email terror threat on Tuesday morning from someone claiming to be a student proposing “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if it didn’t cancel the Wednesday lecture.

The email author wrote that “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and

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Part of the point of #AnApostatesExperience was to provide a counter to the pablum put out by Reza Aslan. Heina talks about how unhelpful Reza Aslan is to ex-Muslims.

I read his No god But God when I was experiencing doubts but trying to stay Muslim. Even then, I found his trumping up of some highly uncommon “liberal”/”progressive” interpretations of Islam to be a bit disingenuous.

His views hardly represent any significant percentage of Muslims, let alone many. I [am] very much in favor of promoting reformist voices but not when they pretend the situation is anything other than it is or obscure the truth in any way.

Quite. The reformist Muslims I know are very realistic about the … Read the rest

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Peter Ford at the Christian Science Monitor excoriates the hypocrisy of Western journalists’ failing to report on the murder of Muhanad Akidi.

But you have likely never heard of Mr. Akidi. Why not? Because he was an Iraqi Kurd, not an American.

It is hard not to detect more than a whiff of hypocrisy here, in a part of the world where the United States is often accused of hypocrisy.

And the whiff is particularly rank when it comes from the media, which should hold itself to higher standards.

Only two online news outlets reported Akidi’s murder by Tuesday evening: The Russian news agency RIA Novosti and a small Belgian newspaper published in Flemish, De Standaard.

Akidi is the

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I saw this on Twitter yesterday but couldn’t find any news sources at all, so I delayed posting about it. Now there are news sources, such as the International Business Times.

Tributes have been pouring in for Kurdish journalist Muhanad Akidi, who was reportedly murdered by IS militants yesterday [13 October].

His death was confirmed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party, who said he was executed at the Ghazlani military base.

This photo was on Twitter yesterday too.

News of the journalist’s death comes just days after reports that Iraqi cameraman Raad al-Azzawi was publicly executed near Tikrit.

The 37-year-old is believed to have been executed with a single shot, alongside his brother and two other civilians in the small

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John Walker points out in a post on #GamerGate that there’s no escape from being political. Claiming to be not political is political; there is no not-political ground to stand on. (Unless you have always lived alone on a desert island, but then how did you get there?)

There’s a new game out, called Koala Fighters XVII. It’s a game about an elite squadron of fighter pilots, who are taking on the menace of the invading koala hordes. In it, throughout, are cutscenes showing bare-breasted women being kidnapped by the evil koalas, threatened with torture and death, to be rescued by the amazing gang of pilot men.

The game is, obviously, brilliantly well made, featuring some of the best

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You’ve probably already seen that dopy crude article by Michael Luciano explaining that atheism don’t need no stinkin liberalism. PZ has a post about it.

My favorite part, by which I mean the part that makes me cringe with loathing the most, is the way it’s illustrated – right at the top, under the title, before there are any words.

It’s like a giant “eat shit, bitches, it’s men who run this show and if you don’t like it you can fuck off.”

Tyson and Dennett don’t belong, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali doesn’t really belong (although she does in a way, as the only woman this guy thinks belongs), but the rest are…what they are. Happy to exclude women, … Read the rest

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Update: I’m told that Noel Plum says he didn’t make money directly from this video.

Hahahahahaha – I Googled to find that piece where Sam Harris explained about the politically correct feminists, and in doing so look what I found – Noel Plum’s Patreon for the video he did about my take on Harris. He got $65.50 for it! That’s a lot more than I made for the post, I can tell you*. But we’re supposed to be the ones who “do it for the clicks,” remember? How come nobody ever says that about people like Noel Plum?

Sixty five dollars and fifty cents! I could buy a lot of Talenti gelato with that.

*Like, about 60 times … Read the rest

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Libby Anne has another great post on the way the more anti-feminist of the atheist guys use Islamist misogyny and abuse of women as a pretext for belittling women’s issues closer to home.

She starts with something Sam Harris said on that much-discussed Bill Maher program.

Liberals have really failed on the topic of theocracy. They’ll criticize white theocracy, they’ll criticize Christians. They’ll still get agitated over the abortion clinic bombing that happened in 1984. But when you want to talk about the treatment of women and homosexuals and free thinkers and public intellectuals in the Muslim world, I would argue that liberals have failed us.

I have to say, when I heard this bit my jaw just

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Another human rights defender charged with a “crime.”

Within two weeks of releasing leading human rights defender Maryam Al Khawaja from jail the Bahrain authorities detained another. On September 30 Nabeel Rajab was taken into custody for allegedly insulting the Bahrain regime on twitter.

Rajab has been exposing human rights violations by the U.S. ally for many years and spent from mid-2012 to mid-2014 in prison on trumped-up charges. He’s hit a nerve again, tweeting that Bahrain’s security forces act as an ideological incubator for ISIS. Bahrain’s military and police are drawn almost exclusively from the Sunni sect, with the majority Shia population virtually shut out of the services. Rajab’s September 28 tweet came days after news of a Sunni

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John Sargeant at Homo economicus blogs about Maryam’s Secular Conference 2014 which took place in London this past weekend.

Imagine a conference where over two thirds of the speakers are women. From across the world. Artists, professors, authors, journalists, human rights activists. One who feared having children because of the threat to their lives.

…

Moved when another recounts being abducted and held hostage the last time she attended such a conference as this; the fear from her voice pulling on your heart strings. Tears dripping onto your iPad as you blatantly tweet in your own name what is being said without a second thought of your own safety. That the song from a band in Indonesia called “Sister In

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Salman Rushdie gave a PEN/Pinter Prize Lecture the other day and used the occasion to talk about “jihadi-cool,” the Telegraph reported.

The so-called “jihadi-cool” image romanticises Isil, using rap videos and social networking to recruit followers – posing with AK-47s and bragging about their “five star jihad” in videos showing fighters lounging around in luxury villas as they urged the destruction of the West.

Rushdie defined “jihadi-cool” as “the deformed medievalist language of fanaticism, backed up by modern weaponry”, saying: “It’s hard not to conclude that this hate-filled religious rhetoric, pouring from the mouths of ruthless fanatics into the ears of angry young men, has become the most dangerous new weapon in the world today”.

I think he’s right. … Read the rest

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