Via Muslim & Exmuslim Women for Secularism on Facebook
Hell yes, because women are exactly comparable to food that can be contaminated if it’s not wrapped. (But then why is that foodwoman in the photo letting her face and hands be contaminated? Gross!!)… Read the rest
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Originally a comment on Alex Aan is out of prison.
Christians are helping Alex Aan because Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia are increasingly aware that they are in the cross sights of Islam. Islam as defined by the majority of muslims who practise it, the laws which prop up its status as state religion affirming its supremacism over all other faiths and the political and civic figures who step out as the defenders of the religion of ”peace”. In Malaysia there is constant brainwashing and incitement of muslims at the Friday sermons (the official one delivered by a government department to all mosques in the country) and the results are frightening. Polls of ordinary malaysian muslims’ views on recent … Read the rest
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I guess the Alabama legislature took a look at what happened to Savita Halappanavar at University Hospital Galway, and liked what they saw. They want that to happen to Alabama women too. From the ACLU blog:
… Read the restAll miscarriages can be devastating. But, for women in Alabama, this nightmare could soon get a lot worse. This week, the Alabama Senate is set to consider a cruel bill (HB 31) that would permit the hospital staff, including any doctor, nurse, counselor, or lab technician, to refuse to participate in any phase of patient medical care related to ending a pregnancy, even if that is what a patient like this woman needs to protect her own health and future fertility.
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Turn the other cheek eh?
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Another good (meaning: reasonable) piece on The Veiling of Jesus and Mo, by Janice Turner in the Times. It’s paywalled, but it’s good to know it’s there anyway.
It’s about Newsnight’s terrible and ridiculous decision to hide the Mo of Jesus and Mo behind a black egg. Turner notes the absurdity of hiding the very subject of the segment. She acknowledges the risks involved in possibly pissing off “people who might kill us.” But.
Mr Nawaz’s frustration is understandable. In banning the image, the BBC cast him as the faux-Muslim, his opponents as the rational, majority voice that must be heeded.
And what, I would love to be able to ask a senior BBC executive, does that do … Read the rest
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A terrific article by Kenan Malik on Channel 4′s contemptible decision to throw Maajid Nawaz under the bus by siding with the “offended” brigade.
… Read the rest‘Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch’. So tweeted Maajid Nawaz, prospective Liberal Democratic parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, last night. He had every right to be incandescent. Channel 4 News had just held a debate about theJesus and Mo cartoons and about the campaign to deselect Nawaz for tweeting one of the cartoons, not finding them offensive. Channel 4 decided that they were offensive and could not be shown. It would have been bad enough had the channel decided simply not to show the cartoon. What it
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More from the “danger to community cohesion” crowd at Plymouth University. They had their demonstration against Usama Hasan Wednesday evening, and the Facebook page for that demo is full of poisonous commentary. It does a good job of illustrating why people like Maajid Nawaz and Usama Hasan (and Tehmina Kazi and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Irshad Manji and Tarek Fatah and Taj Hargey etc etc) are so desperately needed.
Top item on the page at the moment:
Hayley Kemp This is the kind of thing I would expect to see on an EDL twitter account – disgusting & offensive. Dr Usama Hasan (QF speaker on 29th) retweets trivialisation of domestic violence:
https://twitter.com/drusamahasan/status/421834533580075008
Tehmina is commenting on that thread, trying to … Read the rest
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… Read the restAlexander Aan, who was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on June 15, 2012 under the Blasphemy Law for publicly declaring himself an atheist on Facebook, was released from prison on Jan. 27.
Aan, a 30-year-old former civil servant, posted statements and pictures on the social networking site stating that he was a member of the Minang atheist Facebook group, which some considered insulting to Islam and Prophet Muhammad.
On Jan. 20, 2012, Aan was charged under Article 28(2) of the Electronic Information and Transaction Law for disseminating information aimed at inciting religious hostility and Criminal Code articles 156a(a) and 156a(b) for blasphemy and for encouraging others to embrace atheism.
Besides being sentenced to prison,
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Mo and Mo – a spinoff of and tribute to the great and wise Jesus and Mo.
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The National Secular Society shares the form letter it got in response to its open letter to Channel 4 about its wretched decision to paste a black egg over Mo when it reported on the childish fuss over Maajid Nawaz and Jesus & Mo.
The letter, from Steve Reynolds of Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries, reads:
As we are sure you can appreciate, this is a very sensitive subject for many viewers. Channel 4 News editorial staff gave great consideration to the issues involved and believe that they reached a fair and balanced judgement, weighing up the potential for offence to some viewers by showing the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed and the necessity of showing the cartoon in full.
But … Read the rest
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Doctors in Sweden and Denmark have recommended a ban on non-medical circumcision. Unfortunately they’re putting the age of consent at 12, which seems obviously too young, since minors are just that – they’re subject to their parents.
… Read the restThe recommendation is contained in a resolution approved by majority members of the Sweden Medical Association which covers about 85 per cent of doctors in Sweden.
Similarly, the Danish College of General Practitioners, which has 3,000 members, issued a statement that ritual circumcision of male children is equal to abuse and mutilation. About 87 per cent of Danish GPs favored the ban on non-medical circumcision.
…
Even prior to the recommendation of the two medical groups, the Child Rights International Network in
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That 5pillarz place has another post about the Sinz of Maajid Nawaz, this one outdoing all the others I’ve seen in wit and polish and elegant subtlety of thought.
Maajid Nawaz believes in the right to offend. Well so do I, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih. And that’s why today I’m calling him a donkey (apologies in advance to all donkeys).
Good start. Joke and meta-joke; always a winner.
… Read the restFollowing his tweeting of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) and Prophet Isa (as) and the massive reaction to it, Nawaz wrote a ludicrous article in the Guardian claiming that he was trying to save Islam from being hijacked by extremists. In the risible piece which should be recycled as
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Nick Clegg has said again that Maajid Nawaz will not be dropped as a candidate, which is good. But in saying that he also said a lot of “I would never do that” bullshit, in other words basically agreeing that Maajid was a naughty boy. Not so good.
… Read the rest…the Lib Dem leader said: “He is not going to be dropped as a Liberal Democrat candidate. He has the right – as any Muslim, non-Muslim or anyone of any faith or none in this country has – to say things even if that causes offence to other people.
“It so happens that what he did does cause real offence to many, many Muslims in this country. All I would say
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And guess who’s on it, proudly modeling their Jesus and Mo T shirts?
Also Gita, and Nick. An excellent shortlist!… Read the rest
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Originally a comment by Gordon Willis on A right for all children, as mentioned in Islam.
It’s the problem with ideologists, whether they’re religious or secular, and it’s the same problem with rigid moralists, because they too are ideologists. They really believe that everyone has to be identical, that there is only one correct pattern for a human being, and everyone is required conform to it, by god, social realism or proper principles. Diversity is sin: that is, the existence of sin is proved by the fact that not everyone is the same, and some are so different as to be frighteningly incomprehensible to the simplistic mind.
Of course, they talk blissfully about individuality as a marvellous gift of … Read the rest
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The Federal National Council in Abu Dhabi passed a law last week that mothers have to breastfeed their babies up to the age of two. Yes a law, that they have to.
… Read the restSalem Al Ameri (Abu Dhabi) insisted that breastfeeding was a right for all children, as mentioned in Islam.
Dr Amal Al Qubaisi (Abu Dhabi) said that because labour laws already allow working women to take time to breastfeed, adding the requirement to the legislation showed consistency.
The clause was added to the law once it was passed to the council’s health, labour and social affairs committee for review.
Sultan Al Sammahi (Fujairah), a member of the committee, said it was the right of all children to be breast
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Thanks to Chigau, here is Author talking to Jeremy Paxman, Author in a shadow with his voice distorted to sound like Some Grey Bloke.
Paxman asks how Jesus and Mo started, and Author says he’d had the idea of a religious satire cartoon for a long time but it was the Danish cartoons fiasco that prompted him to start. ”Doesn’t that suggest that you deliberately set out to court outrage?” Paxman asked.
Whether it did or whether it didn’t, that’s not a reprehensible thing to do. Satire; comedy; outrage; they’re all permitted. There can be bad stupid satire and outrage done in a bad cause, but that doesn’t mean that all outrage is haram.
More talk, and back he came. … Read the rest
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Jesus and Mo Author was on Newsnight talking to Jeremy Paxman an hour ago – which I didn’t know until it was over, so I missed it, because the BBC doesn’t let people watch outside the UK. He was incognito of course, with the shadow thing and the spooky voice thing.
What we can see, though, is a segment from Channel 4 (yes them again) in which Mo Shafiq and his bully friends meet with the LibDems but are disappointed in their attempt to get Maajid Nawaz deselected.
On a happier note, they also talk to Mohammed Amin of the Conservative Muslim Forum, who says the threateners and shouters are the ones who are giving Muslims a bad name and … Read the rest
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Chris Muir reviews Maajid Nawaz’s memoir Radical.
There’s no getting around it. The Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, Maajid Nawaz, is a controversial guy. Described by Muslim crackpot Anjem Choudary as a ‘traitor to the faith’ and suggested to be a secret Islamist by Christian crackpot Glenn Beck, it’s clear he has ruffled more than a few feathers. In fact, it would take the entirety of this blog post to list the enemies he’s accrued – many of whom are a lot more dangerous than the aforementioned talking heads.
In spite of this, Nawaz has fiercely loyal supporters. Recently, after another Liberal Democrat activist, Mohammed Shafiq, spearheaded a campaign to have Nawaz deselected as the Lib … Read the rest
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Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society writes an excellent open letter to Channel 4 about the Black Egg censorship of the image of Mo, sending it via the Huffington Post UK.
… Read the restWe were surprised and extremely disappointed to see that Channel 4 News took the decision to cover up the image of Mohammed when showing the Jesus & Mo cartoon, and we are thus keen to elicit the rationale behind that particular editorial decision.
During the report, it was noted that this decision was taken so as not to cause offence to some viewers; however we would like to point out that by your making this decision you have effectively taken a side in a debate where a Muslim
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