Muslim Women’s Network UK has a statement on the murder of Asad Shah.

We at Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK) are shocked at the brutal murder of Glasgow shopkeeper, Asad Shah, which was carried out by another Muslim. This murder sadly highlights the rising religious bigotry within our own communities.

Muslim Extremists seek to not only polarise different communities but also try and bring discord within their own communities.  Some religious zealots will castigate anyone who does not share their version of Islam. Muslims in Britain are from different ethnic backgrounds and are diverse in their perspectives and practice of Islam. They come from all walks of life, are from different denominations of Islam and are from across the religious spectrum. An individual’s belief is his or her own personal concern.  No one should be bullied or have to fear for their safety when expressing their views.

MWNUK Chair, Shaista Gohir said: “The rise in religious sectarianism abroad is starting to have an impact in Britain’s Muslim communities.  For example, extremists are exploiting these to cause tensions between the minority Shia community and the dominant Sunni groups. Hate speech against the Ahmadiyyah community is also not uncommon.  It appears that such hate speech has now spilled over into violence with the murder of Asad Shah who was from this community.  Such incitement of hatred is not acceptable and must be robustly challenged.  Muslims cannot demand rights for themselves while at the same time displaying bigotry towards other minority groups.”

In recent weeks a few imams in the UK have acted irresponsibly by glorifying the actions of Mumtaz Qadri who murdered Pakistani politician Salman Taseer because he stood up against the persecution of Christians. Instead of hailing this man as a hero and martyr, they should be condemning the murder. This not only promotes intolerance but also sends the wrong message that it is acceptable to take the law into ones own hands and punish Muslims who disagree with your religious beliefs.  These faith leaders should also be challenged and organisations that they are associated with should show leadership and take action.

A member of the public has set up a support page for Mr. Shah’s family and more than £50000 has been raised so far.  You can also make a donation here.  If you or anyone you know is being subjected to hatred, bullying and intimidation, you can call our helpline for advice on 0800 999 5786 / 0303 999 5786.  Anyone who fears for their safety should contact the police immediately.

A Taliban splinter group says it did the Lahore bombing that killed more than 70 people (and more of the injured are expected to die).

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it had targeted Christians celebrating Easter, though police have said they are still investigating the claim.

There were scenes of carnage as parents searched for children amid the debris.

What a glowing advertisement for a religion: We Blow Up Children.

M Ilyas Khan of BBC News Islamabad offers analysis:

The bombing of the amusement park on Easter Sunday was the bloodiest attack on Christians in Pakistan since the 2013 Peshawar church bombing that killed more than 80 people.

But many believe there may be a wider context to the latest attack – 27 March was the deadline set by an alliance of more than 30 religious groups for the provincial government of Punjab to withdraw a new women’s rights law they oppose.

Ah, I see – so on the deadline a “religious group” aims its bomb at women and children playing in a park. “If the government won’t take your rights away, we’ll do it by killing you. Let’s see your fancy ‘rights’ now, bitches.”

And supporters of Mumtaz Qadri, a police guard executed last month for the 2011 killing of a provincial governor who advocated reform of the blasphemy laws, have also launched protests. They brought forward the customary 40th day mourning for Qadri by 13 days to coincide with 27 March and several thousand have now occupied a high-security zone in Islamabad to press demands which include the implementation of Sharia law.

God’s fascists taking over bit by bit.

The explosion, believed to have been carried out by one suicide bomber, hit the main gate to the Gulshan-e-Iqbal park in the early evening, a short distance from the children’s playground.

Officials said the device had been packed with ball bearings.

Read that slowly. Think about it.

Sarah Peace on the so-leftwing-it’s-rightwing idea that it’s colonialist to oppose FGM.

I was to find out that my brazen anti-FGM stance is ‘regurgitating the hideous colonial project that imposed itself on the rest of the world on a civilizing mission to rescue the women of the third world from its savage men’. The rationale I am told, is that even as a Nigerian born woman, I cannot speak for other less privileged Nigerian women, how much less, a white woman on behalf of ethnic minorities.

It was at Goldsmiths University that I came to witness this betrayal first hand, which ascribes brutality onto people from other places as part of culture but fashions itself so self-righteously.

Goldsmiths – well of course it was.

Goldsmiths, very much like SOAS seems to be the hotbed of this double standard reinforced by some academics and propagated by a faction of student activists. In December 2015, the feminist and LGBT societies at Goldsmiths left even their own members baffled by their decision to extend ‘solidarity’ to the Islamic society, whose members disrupted human rights campaigner Maryam Namazie’s lecture. They had deemed Namazie a ‘notorious Islamophobe’, for referring to the veil as ‘bin bags’. During the lecture, Namazie backed up her statement and reinforced the importance of continued opposition against traditions such as FGM which are an affront to women’s rights.

When probed on the matter, a representative of the Goldsmiths LGBT society responded that as a white person, she “cannot condemn FGM because of my colonial past.” Is this putative desire to carry the burdens of the past squarely on one’s shoulders echoed among feminists?

Some of them, yes. I wrote a furious post in 2008 about some on the Women’s Studies mailing list.

Back to Sarah Peace:

Germaine Greer once argued that attempts to outlaw FGM amounted to ‘an attack on cultural identity’, stating: “one man’s beautification is another man’s mutilation.” Greer was widely condemned, almost unanimously. Nearly 20 years on, some fields of study in academia including critical race and gender theory are reawakening the same argument albeit from a postcolonial perspective – the difference now being that a generation of ethnic minority students have themselves, bought into this defeating narrative. The narrative becomes upturned, and any cause that contravenes the ugly history of colonialism is one they would sign up to, regardless of the implications.

This pattern of taking an apologetic stance is increasingly expressed on the far-reaching left, reinforcing the idea that concerns of gender based violence become a separate issue to feminism if the perpetrator is brown or black. The issue is deemed as ‘their own problem’, inherent to their culture, which should be left to them.

Rather the way the Final Solution was the Jews’ own problem which should have been left to them, I suppose.

It is possible that lecturers are finding it increasingly difficult to swim against the wave of regressive thought endemic to courses in humanities, nevertheless students should be presented with the plural sides of the debate. There was no mention of African feminists who have dedicated their lives to banishing FGM, such as the [late] Ghanaian activist Efua Dorkenoo, who worked tirelessly for 30 years and pioneered the global movement to end the practice, along with Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi, a vocal abolitionist. In the diaspora, campaigners of African heritage include Mona Eltahawy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Amal Farah, Nahla Mahmoud, Bogaletch Gebre, Alishba Zarmeen, Jaha Dukureh, Hibo Wardere, Salimata Knight, Mona Walter,Sainab Abdi, Leyla Hussein, Nimko Ali and many others too numerous to list.

Unlike veiling, FGM is not a category to which we can apply surplus doses of cultural relativism or justification by brandishing theories of orientalism and notions of colonial resistance. If we truly stand for universal human rights, we must demand better from our institutions.

Universal human rights of course are what lefties of the Goldsmiths type don’t stand for, and that’s what makes them so right wing under the left wing makeup.

The Andrew Wakefield “documentary” is no longer part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

In a statement, Robert De Niro, a founder of the festival, wrote: “My intent in screening this film was to provide an opportunity for conversation around an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family. But after reviewing it over the past few days with the Tribeca Film Festival team and others from the scientific community, we do not believe it contributes to or furthers the discussion I had hoped for.”

I don’t know what that “an issue that is deeply personal to me and my family” shit is supposed to mean. That’s an annoying thing to say, and I wish he’d left it out. Vaccination is personal to everyone, and it’s also impersonal to everyone. It’s not Special to the family of Robert DeNiro, and his being a movie star doesn’t make it so. Vaccination is a very public issue, and people who start thinking of it as “deeply personal” are likely to go on to think of it as something they get to opt out of, because they’re so special…while they depend on other, not-special people to go on vaccinating so that the no-vaxxers can still benefit from herd immunity.

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said on Saturday that he believed “the entire board as well as Mr. De Niro have learned a lot in the last several days.”

“My hat is off to them for listening, thinking about it, discussing it and responding,” he said.

Nevertheless, Dr. Schaffner said, it was troubling for scientists that a film promoting “discredited ideas” got so close to a forum as prestigious as the Tribeca Film Festival.

For scientists and also for all the rest of us, who prefer not to see a measles epidemic thanks very much. And yeah – it’s good that they pulled it but they shouldn’t have included it in the first place.

“It gave these fraudulent ideas a face and a position and an energy that many of us thought they didn’t deserve,” he said. “We’re all for ongoing reasonable debate and discussion, but these are ideas that have been proven to be incorrect many, many, many times over the past 15 years.”

And they’re harmful. They’re not just wrong, they’re harmful. Measles can kill.

People pointed out that the film’s presence on the schedule gave it credibility, and now Wakefield can play the “banned by BigPharma” card.

Doctors and infectious disease experts also spoke out. “Unless the Tribeca Film Festival plans to definitively unmask Andrew Wakefield, it will be yet another disheartening chapter where a scientific fraud continues to occupy a spotlight,” Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said in an interview on Friday.

As the criticism mounted on Friday, Mr. De Niro defended the film, saying that he and his wife, Grace Hightower, have a child with autism and that “we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined.”

Sigh. They’ve been openly discussed and examined, Bob. People with the right kind of knowledge have found that Wakefield committed fraud in that discredited study. It’s a technical subject, and technical subjects, unlike political and ethical ones, don’t need public discussion to get things right. The discussion and examination happened years ago, the findings were published, there is no need to keep discussing.

Ah this is nice – Cubans in Havana are lining up in their tends of thousands for a free concert by the Rolling Stones, who used to be banned as “decadent.”

Fans travelled from many parts of Cuba and other countries to witness what some described as a historic moment.

“It was forbidden. We couldn’t have the Beatles or some singers from Latin America. Now we are allowed to hear what we want to hear,” a fan told the BBC.

“The visit from Obama [earlier this week], and now the Rolling Stones. It’s just unique and historic. So, yeah, nice to be here,” said another one.

The Rolling Stones released a short video saying their concert was a sign of change in Cuba.

“Time changes everything. So we’re very pleased to be here,” said Mick Jagger.

“It would have been surprising for this to happen 10 years ago,” he added.

At least a million people are expected to watch the British band’s first concert in Cuba from 00:30 GMT (20:30 local).

The Beeb has lots of happy photos.

Alice Dreger has posted an open letter to Tony Valenzuela, ED of the Lambda Literary Foundation.

She thought a tweet telling her about the nomination was a joke at first, because this nominating for an award and then rescinding the nomination routine has happened before. Dreger wrote about it in her book.

In my book—as in the earlier article that led to the misery that led to me to doing that book—I had traced out what happened in 2003 to J. Michael Bailey’s book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, when it had been named a finalist for a “Lammy”: A group of transgender activists upset with Bailey for writing about autogynephilia—a sexual orientation that reasonably motivates some natal-male’s transition to women—had launched a campaign against the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Deirdre McCloskey objected to Bailey’s book, the then ED Jim Marks asked the committee to vote again and they voted to keep it on the finalist list.

McCloksey and her two chief collaborators in the smear campaign on Bailey, Lynn Conway and Andrea James, upped their efforts. As I and Dr. Anne Lawrence (a transgender woman) have explained, the real “problem” was that Bailey’s book put forth ideas about women like McCloskey, Conway, and James that they didn’t want disseminated. They wanted to kill the book to stifle the ideas and stories in it, presumably also to stop others from talking about autogynephilia.

At the time of this mess, writer Victoria Brownworth, who was on the committee, said she saw the withdrawal as akin to censorship. But facing increasing harassment, the committee voted a third time, one vote flipped, and Bailey’s book had its finalist status withdrawn.

Harassment works. Bullying works. People are harassing Alice on Twitter right now, such that she has stopped looking at notifications.

Naturally, given the shitstorms I’ve been in with Bailey’s detractors since I showed in excruciating detail what they did to try to shut him up with a host of patently false charges, I had been assuming my book would never be named a finalist for the same award. Why would the Lambda Literary Foundation take that risk, particularly given that Andrea James had relentlessly harassed Jim Marks online even long after it was all over?

But it was true: my book was named a finalist in the non-fiction category. Learning it was real, I felt enormously honored and happy. I thought this was a sign that perhaps the foundation had decided that there was no way to make everyone in the LGBT world happy, and I’d done good enough work that even if some were unhappy, my work—on the Bailey book controversy, on the abuse of intersex children, on attempts to medically prevent lesbianism with prenatal treatments—was well worth recognizing.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have reasonable disagreements? I’m not talking about unreasonable disagreements, I’m not talking about making common cause with people who think all Xs are scum – but reasonable disagreements.

When I wondered who might have advocated for the book to receive a Lammy, I am happy to say that so many people I respect came to mind: Jim Marks, Victoria Brownworth, Dan Savage, Anne Lawrence, and others. The more I thought about it, the more finalist status made sense to me. Why should the Foundation, thirteen years after it was harassed unjustly, do anything other than march on without cowardice?

So I joyfully answered the congratulatory email I received from Lambda and started making plans to attend the awards ceremony in New York. Not too surprisingly, Conway and James soon launched a campaign against my book’s finalist status, but I pretty much ignored this. I figured the Foundation knew this would happen and was prepared to weather the storm.

But no. You caved. And quickly—much more quickly than the Foundation did under Marks in 2003. In spite of all the LGBT people who have actively praised my book, who have thanked me for the work, you quickly caved to a small group of bullies who have proven time and time again that they will do anything they can to get attention and to force everyone to adhere to their singular account of transgenderism, even when it negates the reported childhoods of gay and lesbian people, even when it denies the reality of many transgender people and attempts to force them into closets because of their sexual orientations.

It’s tragic.

I wonder if Tony Valenzuela will even reply. I wonder what he can possibly say.

Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon:

There are not two sides to every story. Not every issue requires us to legitimize an opposing view. Like, for instance, when the other perspective is totally crackpot. For example, if you’re a disgraced fraud, maybe you’re really not the best source for information about vaccines.

Totally crackpot and harmful as well. The crackpot in question is Andrew Wakefield.

This week the Tribeca Film Festival announced it’s debuting a provocative new documentary with the flamboyant name “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Controversy.” The film’s description promises, “Digging into the long-debated link between autism and vaccines, ‘Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe’ features revealing and emotional interviews with pharmaceutical insiders, doctors, politicians, parents, and one whistleblower to understand what’s behind the skyrocketing increase of autism diagnoses today.” It is directed by Andrew Wakefield. Yeah. That Andrew Wakefield.

The one who’s done more than anyone else to bring back measles.

In 2000, measles had been considered virtually eliminated in the U.S. — and in 2014 there were 644 measles cases spanning 27 states — more than than the previous four years put together. In Orange County the same year, 41 percent of kindergarteners were not vaccinated. Oh and here’s the thing: In 2011, Wakefield’s stunner of a report was fully retracted as “an elaborate fraud.” The British medical journal BMJ’s editor said at the time that “It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors. But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.” Wakefield is now barred from practicing medicine in the UK.

Now that’s a guy who actually merits no-platforming.

From last month – the Independent reports on a Danish aid worker who rescues Nigerian children who’ve been abandoned because someone thinks they’re “witches.”

An aid worker whose rescue of an emaciated two-year-old boy made headlines around the world has spoken about how she gave up everything in Denmark to help “the witch children of Nigeria”.

Anja Ringgren Lovén was pictured offering water and biscuits to a small and very thin little boy called Hope, who had been abandoned by his family because of local superstitions about witchcraft.

Ms Lovén took Hope in, and he is now one of 34 children being cared for at the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) which she founded with her husband David.

Brace yourself.

Speaking in an interview with the Huffington Post, Ms Lovén said she first saw the problems created by superstition in rural Nigeria when she travelled there alone three years ago and met children “who had been tortured and beaten almost to death because they were accused of being witches and therefore left alone on the street”.

…

“Being rejected by your own family must be the loneliest feeling a child can experience, and I don’t believe that anyone can imagine how that must feel like.”

…

“We rescue and we give love and support to the vulnerable children accused of witchcraft in Akwa Ibom. But to put an end to superstition, exorcism and black magic performed by pastors and the so-called witchdoctors, advocacy work must be carried out,” she said.

Also some law-enforcement would be useful.

Some nasty posturing self-righteous goon on Twitter is claiming to be one of the people who sabotaged Kate Smurthwaite’s Goldsmiths show yesterday, starting with a “statement” (actually just some screen grabs of a bunch of assertions) about how right they are and how much good they did by sabotaging Kate’s show.

Have you ever seen the like?

The goon is complaining that Kate didn’t RT that ridiculous “statement” and that no one is publicizing it so I told the goon I would publicize the fuck out of it. Here I am doing that now. There it is, in all its brainless glory.

First there’s the brazen claim that they didn’t intend to silence Kate by making sure she had no audience, because she could have gone ahead and performed to an empty room. Then there’s the snotty insinuation that she’s used to performing to empty rooms. (Absolute bullshit. As I’ve said before, I’ve seen her perform: the place was packed, and the audience laughed itself sick.)

Then there’s the insulting claim that “this was a form of peaceful protest against someone who’s [sic] views we find abhorrent.” It is not peaceful protest to grab up all the free tickets to a gig so that no one else can go! And it is not anyone’s job or duty or even right to prevent people from attending a show on the strength of a claim that the performer’s views are “abhorrent.”

And then it’s just a pack of lies. Kate’s not any of the things this scumbag calls her. Kate’s comedy doesn’t harm vulnerable people. Kate’s on the side of vulnerable people.

If this is the left, we’re all fucking doomed.

The CBC reports (on its former employee):

Jian Ghomeshi has been acquitted on four counts of sexual assault and one count of choking by an Ontario Court judge who says the “deceptive and manipulative” evidence of the complainants raised a reasonable doubt in the guilt of the former CBC Radio host.

In a searing rebuke of the complainants, Judge William Horkins said the evidence from all three not only suffered from inconsistencies, but was “tainted by outright deception.”

“The harsh reality is that once a witness has been shown to be deceptive and manipulative in giving their evidence, that witness can no longer expect the court to consider them to be a trusted source of the truth,” Horkins said.

That will encourage more women to report rapes. Not.