State textbooks in Gujarat glorify Nazism, according to the Times of India.

Welcome to high school education in Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, where authors of social studies textbooks published by the Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks have found faults with the freedom movement and glorified Fascism and Nazism.

While a Class VIII student is taught ’negative aspects’ of Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, the Class X social studies textbook has chapters on ‘Hitler, the Supremo’ and ‘Internal Achievements of Nazism’. 

The Class X book presents a frighteningly uncritical picture of Fascism and Nazism. The strong national pride that both these phenomena generated, the efficiency in the bureaucracy and the administration and other ‘achievements’ are detailed, but pogroms against Jews and atrocities

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A 70-year-old man has been convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death in Rawalpindi.

Muhammad Asghar was arrested in 2010 after writing letters to various people claiming to be a prophet, reports say.

His lawyers argued for leniency, saying he has a history of mental illness, but this was rejected by a medical panel.

Disgusting in every way. So what if someone wrote a bunch of letters claiming to be a prophet? What a harmless inconsequential who could possibly care action. Giving him a ticket comparable to a parking ticket would be a ludicrous abuse of state power; sentencing him to death is just off the charts. Ignoring his mental illness for the sake of sentencing him to death … Read the rest

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There was an open meeting of the Cambridge Student Union last night at which the Liberal Democratic MP for Cambridge Julian Huppert gave a talk. Tehmina Kazi reports one thing he said (and is fine with my quoting her):

Best quote from Cambridge MP and highly-regarded Lib Dem Julian Huppert at last night’s Graduate Union talk: “The chances of Maajid Nawaz being deselected as a parliamentary candidate as a result of the petition are approximately… ZERO.”

GOOD.

It’s still bad that they issued that very un-liberal statement about not hurting people’s feelings by tolerating satire of their religions, but it’s good that they’re not scouting for a nice cliff to drop him off.… Read the rest

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You know how people keep telling us – over and over, with an air of patient “everybody knows this” superior wisdom – that “cunt” is not a sexist epithet in the UK? It’s used solely for men, so much so that it would sound weird to call a woman it? That it’s lost its original meaning i.e. female genitalia?

As in this comment by “Minow” on January 8 for instance:

What offensive word? “Cunt” obviously. The others wouldn’t be “offensive” enough to be worth mentioning.

No it was ‘bitch’ according to press reports. Nimmo is British and it is quite rare in Britain to use ‘cunt’ for a woman, it sounds a bit peculiar, like calling a woman a ‘cock’.

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Well here’s a good thing I didn’t know about – a talk that Charlie Klendjian of the Lawyers’ Secular Society (he was on that Big Questions episode, sitting I think next to Maajid) did in December, in which he does a fine job of needling Universities UK.

Well, well, well. Who would have known?

In the year 2013, in a western liberal secular(ish) democracy, segregation is not segregation
as long as it’s…driven by “genuinely-held” religious beliefs.

It’s a brave new world.

Talking of bravery, or rather the lack of it, I had never actually heard of “Universities UK” or
their Chief Executive Nicola Dandridge until a few weeks ago.

They really are exploring the outer reaches of the old saying

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Luke Brinker at Media Matters wonders if NBC will cover the role of US conservatives in Russia’s anti-gay crackdown.

As the Kremlin launched its anti-gay crackdown last summer, NBC News largely ignored the issue, even as it hyped the upcoming Winter Olympics. NBC’s silence on Russia’s law banning so-called “gay propaganda” - which the Kremlin followed by banning the adoption of children by parents from pro-equality countries – raised the question of whether the network’s financial interests as the games’ broadcaster would outweigh the imperative of informing viewers about egregious human rights violations against LGBT Russians. Still, NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus promised that NBC would “acknowledge” the crackdown. Meanwhile, assurances from anchor Bob Costas and NBC’s hiring

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There’s a thing called the British Muslim Awards, which I don’t think I’d heard of until now. But now I have. Why? Because they dropped the Quilliam Foundation as a finalist yesterday.

FINALISTS FOR THE ‘SPIRIT OF BRITAIN’ CATEGORY have been adjusted to the below:

Christian Muslim Forum

Muslim Jewish Forum

In light of recent activity, The British Muslim Awards, after careful consideration, have come to the decision that it can no longer promote the Quilliam Foundation as a finalist, and thus it’s nomination has been removed with immediate effect.
#britishmuslimawards

Bad, stupid, regressive move.… Read the rest

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The MAB has a formulaic blurb at the end of its horrible press release.

Notes to Editors:

MAB is a British organisation dedicated to serving society through promoting Islam in its spiritual teachings, ideological and civilising concepts, and moral and human values. MAB has local branches across the UK that provide a wide range of events and activities.

MAB actively seeks to dispel the misconceptions about Muslims and helps to act as a bridge to promote better understanding between the UK and the Muslim World.

You know what? No it doesn’t. It doesn’t do that at all. It does the opposite. It entrenches the misconceptions that Muslims must by nature be dogmatic and authoritarian and fundamentalist and touchily aggressive.… Read the rest

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The Muslim Association of Britain, which is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (so it’s even more reactionary and theocratic than the Muslim Council of Britain, which is saying something) issued a press release on Jesus and Mo a couple of days ago. It’s as mindless and bullying and illiberal as you’d expect.

Even the title is like that.

Abusive website promoted by prospective Liberal Democrat candidate

Jesus and Mo is not abusive. It’s a satirical comic strip; it satirizes religion. That’s not abusive.

That’s blindingly obvious but we have to keep saying it, 400 times a day if that’s what it takes. We have to, because the more the theocrats say things like that the more they drag … Read the rest

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At the ACLU blog, an exceptionally nasty example of theist bullying in the public schools.

…when my stepson, who has been raised a Buddhist, enrolled in the sixth grade at our local school, Negreet High, it became personal, and I could no longer turn a blind eye to the very real harms that occur when school officials violate the separation of church and state.

My stepson started at Negreet in the same class as one of my children. By the end of the first week of school, he was having serious stomach issues and anxiety. We couldn’t figure out why. In the mornings, my wife would pull over on the side of the road as they approached school so

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There’s no need to worry, it’s all taken care of.

Evidence of Harm by Religion:

Another source.

The reason atheists and skeptics get so upset when I say it’s good to cut down trees is that this world is all they have. If it gets completely wrecked, it’s all over for them. That’s what they believe . . . that life then ends. That’s unless Mother Nature or Father Evolution (whoever they believe made everything) makes some more trees, etc. Of course if it has to start all over again, they have to wait for around 4.5 billion years. That’s what they believe, and I guess that’s a little too long for them to wait. So they get

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Remember the cheering bit of news a couple of years back that Ireland had decided to close its embassy to the Vatican? Well stop being cheered, because it’s decided to take it back. It’s reopening the damn thing.

The Vatican Embassy will be housed in a separate building to the Irish Embassy to Rome, which is now housed in the Villa Spada, which housed the old Vatican embassy.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said new “modest” office accommodation will be found. Only one diplomat will be required to staff the new Embassy, and its focus will be on development aid.

Sources said the decision is a recognition of the change in papacy, and Pope Francis’s focus on overseas aid.

What … Read the rest

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Drat. I’m seeing people reporting that the LibDems have issued a statement saying “yes yes free speech but all the same respect respect respect and Maajid was a naughty boy” (that’s a rough paraphrase). The trouble is I can’t find a source for the statement, which is irritating.

Maryam quotes it in a post from a few hours ago.

It’s not surprising that the Liberal Democrats have again sided with Islamist values at the expense of Muslims, ex-Muslims and others.

Not surprising but frustrating nonetheless.

In the latest saga, they have decided to admonish their candidate Maajid Nawaz who has received death threats for merely stating the obvious: he – like many Muslims – is not offended by Jesus and

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The Islamist blog 5Pillarz has another reactionary bullying post about Maajid Nawaz.

After posting a caricature of Prophet Muhammad and Prophet Isa (peace be upon them) on Twitter last week, I can confidently say that the heat is now on Maajid Nawaz, writes Dilly Hussain.

Aw, that’s why understanding syntax comes in so handy. Whoever wrote that subhead managed to say that Dilly Hussain posted a caricature of Mo and Jesus on Twitter last week, which is clearly not what was intended.

It was only a matter of time before the founder of the despised (among mainstream Muslims) Quilliam Foundation was going to pull a stunt like this to gain brownie points among his secular liberal fan base.

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Al Jazeera America takes a look at forced marriages in the US.

Vidya Sri was a typical American teenager in the Queens borough of New York. She went to school, hung out with her friends and took dance classes. But all that changed when she was 18 and started dating her first real boyfriend, a sweet Irish Catholic boy.

That was in 1987. Alarmed that Sri was dating someone who wasn’t Indian, her father shipped her off to India to live with relatives. Nearly every day for four years, she was pressured to get married. It became a condition of her return to the United States. Finally, she gave in and married a man she did not know.

And … Read the rest

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Mo Dawah is doing something to restore my faith in the capacity of at least one or two people to refrain from going apheshit over pretend-insults like drawing a cartoon of what was that guy’s name again?

MoDawah @kingofdawah

We Must Not Allow Our Cohesion To Be Threatened By Those Who Threaten It By Saying It Is Threatened http://kingofdawah.tumblr.com/post/73709803602/we-must-not-allow-our-cohesion-to-be-threatened-by …

“I am the community leader of peace. So I urge the whole community to stay calm. Until my signal.”

You must not take things I say out of context or I’ll be offended. If you tell me to stop taking things you say out of context, also offended.

Going to start a petition to protest against people stereotyping me as

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I gather that yesterday on BBC Asian Network Mohammed Shafiq said that Jesus and Mo shows the two “having gay sex.” Author sent an email correcting this falsehood, and the network read it in full. Author tweeted the text of the email. (It’s been retweeted 104 times so far.)

There.

 … Read the rest

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Some of the people outragedinSevenOaks about Jesus and Mo pretend to think that it’s insinuating that Jesus and Mo are poofters. [gasp gasp gasp]

Insinuating how? My dear, they are shown in bed together. [**gasp**]

Well, Author points out Stan and Ollie.

… Read the rest

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Russia has made its first Olympics-related arrest of an LGBT activist. Way to go Russia.

A Russian LGBT activist has been arrested in Voronezh, 900km north of Sochi, for unfolding a rainbow pride flag during the Olympic torch relay.

Pavel Lebedev was grappled to the snow by Olympic security personnel and  taken into the police station “to clarify the circumstances of the incident”, according to a post by the group Straight Alliance for LGBT Equality on VKontakte (the Russian equivalent of Facebook).

Lebedev told AP: “Hosting the games here contradicts the basic principles of the Olympics, which is to cultivate tolerance.”

I love being wrestled to the ground by security personnel when they want me to clarify something. Don’t … Read the rest

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