I’m wondering how much the potential for doing something useful in a movement for political change relies on a rejection of fantasy.

By fantasy I don’t mean an optimistic vision for the future, I don’t mean ideas about how things should be, I mean actual pretending that X is so when it’s not.

My hunch is that the answer is: a lot.

Many MRAs and other anti-feminists claim that feminism is largely based on fantasy, but that relies on the belief that women really are stupider and less competent than men, and that’s something of a fantasy itself.

Feminism isn’t the belief that women are magical god-like beings. It’s the belief that women are people coupled with the belief that people should have equal rights. It doesn’t require any fantasizing at all, and it doesn’t rely on ordering people to accept fantasies as describing reality. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to other movements for equal rights. The whole point of universal rights is to detach them from value judgments in order to make them apply across the board, no matter what.

I think a politics based on fantasy has some problems.

In hilarity news, Milo Yiannopoulos – who is a tweeter, not a journalist – crashed the White House press briefing on Friday to tell Obama that Twitter took his blue tick away.

Yiannopolous began by quoting Reddit founderAaron Schwartz, who argued that the importance of free speech also extended to social media sites, and brought up Obama’s previous statements denouncing university safe spacesand the coddling of college students.

“It’s becoming very clear that Twitter and Facebook in particular are censoring and punishing conservative and libertarian points of view…” he argued. “Is there anything the president can do to encourage Silicon Valley to remind them of the critical importance of open free speech in our society?”

Can Obama please please do something to make Twitter more welcoming to misogynist bullies?

“You obviously can’t enforce the First Amendment on private corporations,” Yiannopolous allowed. “But there seems to be a very clear trend. My verification check was taken away for making fun of the wrong group of people. Conservative commentators and journalists are being punished, being suspended, having their tweets deleted by Twitter. Facebook is removing criticism of immigration in Europe.”

“Are there any mechanisms the government can use to remind these companies that they have this responsibility, or do we just have to trust the market will punish them if they don’t?” he asked.

His verification check was taken away! That’s literally the worst thing that has happened to free speech since ever. How can the world have an intelligent conversation about whether or not women are stupid sluts if Milo Yiannopolous doesn’t have his blue tick?

So guess what François Hollande did on Friday – gave the god damn Legion of Honor to Saudi Arabia. To Saudi Arabia.

The French government was among the most vocal outside the Middle East in its condemnation of Saudi mass executions earlier this year, calling the kingdom’s killing of 47 people “deeply deplorable”.

Yet almost two months to the day after that statement was issued, President François Hollande awarded his nation’s most prestigious award to the heir to the Saudi throne, Prince Mohammed bin Naif.

Thus letting him know the French government didn’t really mean it about those 47 executions.

They tried to keep it a secret. There was a meeting with Angela Merkel the same day and that got lashings of coverage, but they drew a tactful veil over the high five to the Saudis.

That the Prince even received the award was only confirmed by Mr Hollande’s entourage on Sunday afternoon. Officials sought to play it down, telling Le Monde it was “common protocol” to issue visiting dignitaries with the honour.

But while in France the decoration was done, as media outlets put it, “with discretion”, the government-owned Saudi news agency SPA hailed the honour as recognition for the prince’s “great efforts in the region and world for combating extremism and terrorism”.

Nonsense. They don’t combat extremism, they promote it. They spend their oil money on funding Wahhabi mosques all around the world. They fund Wahhabi madrasas. They sue academics who criticize them. They sentence atheists and liberals to prison and torture. They are all about extremism. They are not nice people and they don’t deserve honors.

In its report from the Crown Prince’s visit, SPA said the two sides “reviewed bilateral relations between the Kingdom and France and ways of enhancing and developing them in all fields, particularly joint cooperation for combating extremism and terrorism”.

“The French President and the Crown Prince also discussed the latest developments in the Middle East and exerted efforts towards them in addition to the two countries stances towards them,” it said.

The visit was a “success”, said Saudi minister of culture and information Adel al-Toraifi, and included discussions of “investment”.

Neither report made mention of the refugee crisis, throughout which Saudi Arabia been accused of failing to take its fair share of asylum seekers. And given the “discretion” surrounding the visit, it is not known whether Mr Hollande felt able to bring up the Saudi human rights record.

Saudi Arabia hasn’t taken any asylum seekers.

Merde, France.

My god people are confused. This particular confusion is from a year ago but the brand of confusion is still everywhere.

Rutgers University assistant professor Brittney Cooper joined HuffPost Live on Monday to discuss the exclusion of prominent black LGBT activists like Pauli Murray, who helped in the the progression of the civil rights movement.

From her campaign to matriculate into the University of North Carolina to her countless articles on race relations, Murray was an influential civil rights activist. Even with her list of accomplishments, Murray, who was of mixed-race heritage, saw her complex gender and sexual identity muted in favor of “respectability politics,” Cooper said.

…

Murray is part of a long history of gender nonconforming activists who struggled with finding an identity outside of the gender binary, Cooper said. Murray preferred androgynous dress, had a short hairstyle and [might] have identified as a transgender male today, but she lacked the language to do so at the time.

Whisky tango foxtrot. A woman with short hair does not find an identity outside the gender binary by identifying as a male! Why do people keep getting that so backward? Gender is the collection of dopy arbitrary rules of the type “gurlz wear dresses and boyz wear jeans.” Ignoring the dopy rules is finding an identity outside the gender binary. Switching to the Other set of rules is not – it’s reinforcing the gender binary.

Also…the way this plays out for far too many people is so profoundly insulting. Jonah Mix said so at the time:

The evidence the article gives for Murray’s supposed transgenderism is little more than her appreciation for pants, short hair, female sex partners, and the name Oliver – which she gave only once, to white male police officers, and there’s no other possible reason why a woman would want five men with unlimited power over her to not realize she’s a woman. So attention, all you women out there: If you have short hair, wear pants, and stand up to authority with bravery and conviction – you know, those three incredibly unladylike behaviors – then you are very likely A SECRET MAN. Because a person of strength, intelligence, and slacks who is also a woman? What a crazy thought!

Let’s do it to all of them! Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte – they were all actually trans men! We know this because they did brilliant work, and that’s more of a guy thing. George Eliot and George Sand just came right out and used male names, so that just goes to show, right?

This endless search backwards through time to find evidence of transgenderism relies on the most viciously conservative ideology possible, in which women displaying any form of intelligence, power, strength, and courage – you know, those personality traits that feminism exists to say are not inherently male – become evidence of manhood. Queers, either intentionally or not, aid the patriarchy by erecting incredibly rigid definitions of womanhood and manhood in a self-serving quest to catch as many people outside the boundaries as possible. It never seems to occur to them that maybe, just maybe, they can only sustain their community by reifying the “gender binary” they claim to hate so much.

It’s incoherent. It babbles about escaping the rigid gender binary in the very act of reinforcing it. It embraces a contradiction as its core ideology.

Is this real advice or is it satire? I don’t know.

In trying to find the source I found advice from the Unitarian Universalist Association, which included this bullet point:

• Use words that encompass all genders rather than only two
  For example, “people of all genders” instead of “women and men”; “children” instead of “boys and girls”; “siblings” or “kindred” instead of “brothers and sisters.”

Hmm.

The things you happen on when stumbling around Twitter. I found an article by someone named Wardah Khalid, which says some strikingly unpleasant things about reformist Muslims and ex-Muslims.

The title, which may not have been her choice, is a bad start:

The Ayaan Hirsi Ali problem: why do anti-Islam Muslims keep getting promoted as “experts”?

That’s a stupid question. You can be opposed to X and be an expert in it. That’s not even unusual. Why shouldn’t people who are critical of Islam get promoted as experts?

And since she raised the question I tried to find out why she gets promoted as an expert, and I couldn’t find much reason. I think it’s probably because she’s a pro-Islam Muslim and that kind of thing is popular, just as reformist Muslims and ex-Muslims are (in different circles).

She starts with an Air Force white paper that she doesn’t like.

The writer is Tawfik Hamid a self-proclaimed “Islamic thinker and reformer, and one time Islamic extremist from Egypt.” He is currently a fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and is the author of a number of books on radical Islam.

And? Is that an illegitimate thing to be? She would reply yes, it is.

But it’s not just this one report or this one author. Hamid is part of a long line of “pseudo-experts” on Islam, and he represents a much larger problem in which fringe Muslim Americans pushing an anti-Islam agenda are promoted as legitimate experts, thus mainstreaming ideas that are both offensive and incorrect.

What is “fringe”? Who defines “agenda”? Who says what is “legitimate”? And as for “offensive” – it’s well known by now that not everything someone calls offensive is necessarily bad or harmful or even illegitimate. Islam is an ideology, one with enormous power over a great many people’s minds, so it has to be open to criticism. Wardah Khalid doesn’t get to make it off limits.

These pseudo-experts typically argue some version of the idea that Islam is inherently violent and oppressive and needs to be reformed or defeated altogether. Their views are treated as legitimate by virtue of their religion; they are Muslim or formerly Muslim themselves, so they must know. This doesn’t just lead groups like the Air Force Research Laboratory to portray junk analysis as correct; it also promotes fringe ideologues as legitimate representatives of Islam and of Muslim Americans, when they are anything but.

But the whole idea of “legitimate representatives of Islam and of Muslim Americans” is an absurdity. Who could possibly represent all Muslim Americans? Obviously critics of an institution or ideology don’t “represent” all fans or adherents, but so what? That’s not what critics do.

It’s a bullying idea she’s working with, this idea that “fringe” means bad and wrong and not legitimate.

Most famous is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch-American author and former Muslim who argues for a complete reformation of Islam, calling it “the new fascism” and “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.” She demanded a Western-led war on the religion and was cited as a source of inspiration in the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Breivik, the right-wing shooter who killed 77 people and injured 319 in Norway. Hirsi Ali later sympathized with Breivik’s argument that he “had no other choice but to use violence.”

Ah well now we know not to believe a word she says, because that last claim is a much-circulated lie. Hirsi Ali did not sympathize with Breivik’s argument, and that’s a dirty way to fight.

A fellow laureate of the Lantos Prize is Irshad Manji, who argues that the entire religion of Islam requires reform.

Again – and? Why shouldn’t she argue that?

Zuhdi Jasser, the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, was relatively unknown to the Muslim American community until he testified at Rep. Peter King’s extremely controversial homegrown Islamic terrorism hearings in 2011, where he stated that Muslims are “long overdue for an ideological counter-jihad.” He claimed that Muslim American leaders, including imams, are contributing to radicalization by not actively campaigning against political Islam or for the separation of mosque and state.

And? Is that just obviously false?

Asra Nomani, the co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, has called for government intervention in mosques for alleged “gender apartheid” and has denounced the hijab in mainstream media by calling it a “misinterpretation of Quranic verses,” putting her at odds with major Muslim schools of thought, which she rejects. She testified at the fifth King hearing in 2012 on the alleged Muslim denial and deflection of extremism, which she states is directly tied to Islam. Despite her fringe beliefs, she regularly receives mainstream media attention as a purported representative of the Muslim voice.

No she doesn’t. On the contrary, she’s seen as a liberal, reformist voice, which is not representative – and how tragic is that?

All of these so-called Muslim “reformers” are not accepted by most of the Muslim American community, yet media and government present them as authentic and authoritative Muslim voices. So why, with so many other credible, authentic, respected Muslim Americans they could choose to speak on Islam and extremism, do the government and media continue to rely on this small handful of anti-Muslim zealots?

See what she did there? She called them anti-Muslim, when she hasn’t established that. Being critical of Islam is not being anti-Muslim.

The reality is, Wardah Khalid is a religious reactionary, using the vocabulary of liberalism to try to discredit reformers. Someone talking to her on Twitter used the hideous phrase “comprador intellectuals” – which is reminiscent of Murtaza Hussain calling Maajid Nawaz a porch monkey.

The Muslim Reform Movement on Facebook:

Hizbut Tarir Australia has been found guilty of discriminating against women for making them sit at the back of PUBLIC POLITICAL meetings following a suit raised by progressive woman activist, Alison Bevege. Bevege has since been viciously subject to slurs such as “Islamophobe” and “bigot” by Hizbut Tarir members.

She writes on her twitter (@AlisonBevege): “progressive ‪#‎Muslims‬ and non-muslims together win – no forced gender segregation”

Video report

The Sydney Morning Herald:

Controversial Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir has been ordered to stop forcibly segregating men and women at its public events after a NSW tribunal found the practice constituted sexual discrimination.

Former NT News journalist Alison Bevege sued the organisation and five of its members for sexual discrimination after she was forced to sit in a designated women’s and children’s section at a public lecture hosted by the group on October 10, 2014.

Ms Bevege, then a freelance journalist, told the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal she attended the lecture, titled “the politics and plots of the American led intervention in Iraq and Syria”, with the intention of writing an opinion piece and asking questions of the speakers.

Goodness, what a hussy, thinking she gets to ask questions at a public event.

She went with a male friend.

Though the pair separately entered the lecture hall at the KCA Centre in Lakemba, when Ms Bevege attempted to join her friend in the men’s section “to be closer to the action” a female usher insisted she sit with the other women at the back of the room.

She told the tribunal that from the women’s section she struggled to read captions on a digital presentation accompanying the lecture and occasionally had to “crane my head to see.”

She doesn’t need to see. The men need to see, so that they can participate and even ask questions, but the women don’t.

While no representatives from Hizb ut-Tahrir attended the hearing, spokesman Ismail al-Wahwah disputed Ms Bevege’s account in documents supplied to the tribunal, claiming “she made no protestations at the time about such arrangements.”

Mr al-Wahwah said the segregated seating was “not a compulsory imperative” and Ms Bevege would have been allowed to “choose her own seat selection had she requested.”

While the separation of men and women was “a fundamental consideration in Islam” the event’s segregated seating plan was done as a practical measure, he said.

“The presence of women and children, and the noise that necessarily results from a child’s presence, necessitates seating away from the speakers.”

Because obviously the children aren’t going to sit with the men, and the men aren’t going to take care of any part of the childcare duties. Obviously women and children have to be bundled together and ostracized so that the men can get on with the important stuff.

“More importantly, having women and children closest to the fire exits is a safety priority we take very seriously.”

Right. Also women and children might go blind from the bright lights up front, don’t forget that one.

In its decision on Friday, the tribunal held Ms Bevege’s evidence was credible and found she was treated unfavourably on the grounds of her sex in contravention of section 33 of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

It found her experience was “diminished” because “the men’s section did offer better seats than the seats in the women’s section because those seats were closer to the stage, speakers and the screen.”

Apparently the fundamental insult isn’t even worth discussing.

I cringe that this is my country. (I’m not very cis-American.) Donald Trump talks about the size of his penis in campaigning for president.

It’s “yuge” — or at least that’s what Donald Trump wants you to believe.

The leading contender in the GOP’s race for president made sure the size of his hands — and his manhood — were front and center during the Fox News debate on Thursday night.

“Nobody has ever hit my hands before. Look at those hands,” Trump said while holding them up, spread-fingered in a bid to address previous suggestions by rival Sen. Marco Rubio. “He referred to my hands — if they’re small, something else must be small.”

He added: “I guarantee you there’s no problem.”

Make it stop.

And then there’s India. Reuters via the Guardian:

India has denied visas for a delegation from the US government agency charged with monitoring international religious freedom.

The delegation from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom had been scheduled to leave for India on Friday for a long-planned visit with the support of the US state department and the US embassy in New Delhi, but India had failed to issue the necessary visas, the commission said.

The Indian embassy in Washington hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Last year, despite a much-heralded fresh start in US-India ties under Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, the United States ran into problems arranging visits by the head of its office to combat human trafficking and its special envoy for gay rights.

Well there’s your problem right there – Modi is a Hindu nationalist, not a secularist or a liberal. He doesn’t believe in religious freedom.

A state department official referred queries on the visa issue to the Indian government, but highlighted remarks by president Barack Obama on a visit to Delhi last year, in which he made a plea for freedom of religion in a country with a history of strife between Hindus and minorities.

In its 2015 report, the bipartisan USCIRF said incidents of religiously motivated and communal violence had reportedly increased for three consecutive years.

It said that despite its status as a pluralistic, secular democracy, India had long struggled to protect minority religious communities or provide justice when crimes occur, creating a climate of impunity.

Because it’s not really a pluralistic, secular democracy in practice.

Non-governmental organisations and religious leaders, including from the Muslim, Christian, and Sikh communities, attributed the initial increase in violence to religiously divisive campaigning in advance of the country’s 2014 general election won by Modi.

The report said that since the election, religious minorities had been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups.

In that context, the withheld visas are not a big surprise.

Mehreen Zahra-Malik reports at Reuters:

A powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam on Thursday declared a new law that criminalizes violence against women to be “un-Islamic.”

Thus throwing a massive spanner into the project of liberal secular Muslims who argue that it’s violence against women that’s un-Islamic.

The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last week, gives unprecedented legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of women’s shelters.

But since its passage in the Punjab assembly, many conservative clerics and religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Muslim holy book, the Koran, as well as Pakistan’s constitution.

That’s such an astonishingly ugly and indefensible position to take. Those conservative clerics and religious leaders are saying that the Koran is cool with violence against women, or perhaps even that it mandates it. Do they really want to say that?

Why would anyone ever want to worship a god who approves violence against any set of people? Why would anyone ever want to worship a god of hatred and domination?

The 54-year-old council is known for its controversial decisions. In the past it has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, and it supported a law that requires women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard.

The council’s decision this January to block a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off girls as young as eight or nine has angered human rights activists.

“Controversial” isn’t the right word for those decisions. Immoral, misogynist, sadistic, abusive are better fits.

Fazlur Rehman, the chief of one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam, said the law was in conflict with both Islam and the constitution of Pakistan.

“This law makes a man insecure,” he told journalists.

And that’s all wrong, because it’s women who should be insecure, and beaten, raped, married off in childhood, denied education, killed at whim. Men must be secure in their power to inflict all that with impunity.

If the conservative clerics and religious leaders are right that that’s Islam, then Islam is a horror.

More from Sheffield University ASH. A later comment on that Facebook thread explaining why they were afraid to invite Maryam to speak:

Ellen Woods I ran this society several years ago (with a fairly “hardline” approach) and we had an ever increasing membership. I am frankly embarrassed by this statement.
I met Maryam Namazie at an event with Sheffield Humanist society a few years ago as well as rallies in London and think she, and everything she stands for, is fantastic.
I have honestly no idea who runs or is involved in the University society now but I apologise on behalf of myself and previous members. What a shame.

And a reply by the ASH Secretary, who is probably the author of the post, since the clumsiness of language is similar in both:

Jack R. Dowling If you’re done with your puffed up sophistry, Ellen, I’ll be happy to correct you.
We have seen great success with students and active membership since the society has been going in the direction outlined in our statement. And this is partly due to dropping the ‘hardline’ approach you seem to be quite proud to tout.
I have also met Maryam, and agree with her on many things; she was an ally, not an enemy. And we would have been very happy to have her to speak.
Unfortunately she has a narrative of victim hood which you all seem to have bought into quite nicely.
You’re talking to one of those people now, Ellen. And I’d like to apologise to you too. I’m sorry that the idea of promoting ideas of humanism and interfaith is an affront to you. Fortunately you aren’t here anymore; not a member who’s concerns we would take on board. So no harm no foul as I see it.

Confused, rude, and fatuous, all at once.

It’s sad for the ASH students of Sheffield.

Surprised not surprised – it turns out that contraceptives reduce the abortion rate. Women’s Health reports:

The new analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, which was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reveals that the unintended pregnancy rate declined by a whopping 18 percent between 2008 and 2011, bringing it to the lowest it’s been in 30 years.

The study’s authors also found that 42 percent of unintended pregnancies in 2011 ended in abortion, as compared with 40 percent in 2008—meaning that although the number of abortions has declined (due to the lower rate of unintended pregnancies), the proportion of unintended pregnancies that end in abortion has actually remained about the same (and even increased slightly).

“These findings provide significant new clarity for the U.S. abortion debate,” Joerg Dreweke, author of the Guttmacher policy analysis accompanying the study, said in a press statement. “We now know that abortion declined primarily because of fewer unintended pregnancies, and not because fewer women decided to end an unwanted pregnancy.”

Women are so obstinate, aren’t they? Insisting on deciding for themselves whether they want to be pregnant or not?

 

Another study recently revealed that when low-income women were denied access to Planned Parenthood clinics, their use of long-acting reversible contraceptives dropped, and their rates of unintended pregnancies rose dramatically.

“In short, supporting and expanding women’s access to family planning services not only protects their health and rights, it also reduces abortion rates,” Dreweke said. “The clear implication for policymakers who wish to see fewer abortions occur is to focus on making contraceptive care more available by increasing funding and stopping attacks on all family planning providers.”

On the other hand if the goal is to remove all autonomy from women, keep whittling away at abortion rights.

That icon of progressivism and social justice, Caitlyn Jenner, wants to be Ted Cruz’s trans ambassador.

To The Advocate, Jenner revealed that she wants to be Cruz’s “trans ambassador” should he become president. Here’s the relevant excerpt from Dawn Ennis’s Jenner profile:

Jenner reveals she met Cruz prior to her transition, more than a year ago, “and he was very nice.”

“Wouldn’t it be great, let’s say he goes on to be president,” she tells me in relating a conversation on the tour bus. “And I have all my girls on a trans issues board to advise him on making decisions when it comes to trans issues. Isn’t that a good idea?” she asked me.

“You’re going to be Ted Cruz’s trans ambassador?”

“Yes, trans ambassador to the president of the United States, so we can say, ‘Ted, love what you’re doing but here’s what’s going on.’”

She wasn’t joking.

I don’t see what could possibly go wrong.

The new issue of Free Inquiry is online, and my column is one of the items not subscribers-only this time. It’s about the odd fact that we consider Islamic State an enemy while we consider Saudi Arabia a valuable ally. (By “we” of course I mean Anglophone countries at government level.)

Saudi Arabia is officially an ally of many liberal democracies, yet it spurned the UDHR in company with newly apartheid South Africa and authoritarian communist states. This should seem stranger to us than it does. The hostility toward human rights of apartheid South Africa eventually made it a pariah state, and its pariah status in turn forced an end to apartheid. The stark absence of human rights in the Soviet Bloc eventually helped cause it to crumble. Why has nothing similar happened to Saudi Arabia? Why has global outrage not made something similar happen to Saudi Arabia? Why were conditions in South Africa and East Germany treated as human-rights issues while those in Saudi Arabia were not? Why now is the Islamic State a dreaded enemy while Saudi Arabia is still an ally? I would really like to know.

The two are not radically different, after all. Islamic State beheads people, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State enslaves women, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State kills people for “apostasy” and “blasphemy,” and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State considers Sharia law absolute and binding, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State hates the Jews, and so does Saudi Arabia. Islamic State considers itself a legitimate state, and so does Saudi Arabia.

More.

More on the University of Sheffield Atheist Secular & Humanist Society, and that post on their Facebook page.

We are in no way abandoning Maryam Namazie. This year the society has shifted it’s focus from hard line atheism as it tends to stagnate numbers and decrease membership, to focus on humanism, which has had the opposite effect. We had a slow start in this and managed after a lot of hard work to be invited to events ran by the CU and Isoc. These are important because we feel that better relations mean they will feel more comfortable joining events that we host, making the society more diverse and the atmosphere more comfortable. We would be terrified of hosting Maryam and having her expirience what happened at Goldsmith’s after the society had enjoyed some success with Isoc, and having invited her feeling confident that the atmosphere would be a welcome one from all in attendance not just SASH members.

We would be delighted to host her at the University if this is something that is unlikely to happen. We really really don’t want her to feel undervalued or in some way unwelcome. The only thing unwelcome is the treatment she has expirienced at Goldsmith’s.

Yes but the right way to deal with that is not to refuse to invite her to speak. That just gives the Goldsmiths Isoc what it wanted: to shut her up.

Also…what exactly is the source of the terror in

We would be terrified of hosting Maryam and having her expirience what happened at Goldsmith’s after the society had enjoyed some success with Isoc, and having invited her feeling confident that the atmosphere would be a welcome one from all in attendance not just SASH members.

Is it terror of yet more bullying of Maryam? Or is it terror that Isoc will be mad at them, and all their efforts to make friends with Isoc will be for naught? It looks as if it’s the latter – and that’s pathetic.

Why do they want to be friends with Isoc in the first place? Islamists and atheists / humanists are not natural friends. Why is this ASH group trying so hard to be not an ASH group?

Maryam responded to that silly post.

The issue is not about an invitation to me. The point is that you are saying you cannot invite me to your uni at the suggestion of a student because of what happened at Goldsmiths University Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society. What happened? The ISOC there tried to cancel my talk, came and intimidated and even threatened the audience and I am to blame? You forgot to issue a statement of solidarity with the ISOC like the Goldsmiths Feminist and LGBTQ+ societies. Are you saying if I come, your ISOC might have to behave badly? And if so, why am I to blame for it. The politics of cowards. Always siding with Islamist narrative at the expense of dissenters.

She got a reply as silly as the post was:

We are simply saying that we do not know what will happen. There have been some incidents that suggest there are some members who may react in a negative way. They also may not. In order to find out, we wanted to improve relations between the Islamic Society to create a conversation that allows for us to ask whether issues may occur.

We in no way condone that behaviour and are obviously actively trying to prevent it from happening to you again at this university.

Rather as if Jews had tried to “improve relations” with the Nazis to create a conversation that allowed for them to ask whether the Nazis were planning to murder them all. Isoc is an Islamist organization, so of course it’s not going to be friendly to Maryam’s views. There’s no need to crawl to them to find that out, and crawling to them won’t make them any more likely to be reasonable about anything.