And then there’s Anheuser-Busch, with its oh so funny slogan for Bud Light beer: “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”

GEDDIT?

The slogan, which was captured in a photo and posted onto Reddit Monday, sparked a wave of anger from social media users who took to Twitter to blast the language for promoting a culture of rape.

What could possibly go wrong?

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

The Malay Mail Online went to a talk by Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia. HTM explained about rape.

Women are required to prove rape under Islamic criminal law, Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) said today as the hardline Islamist group claimed that most sexual assault cases involve false accusations.

HTM also told a seminar on hudud that Islam does not accept DNA evidence and that one of the ways of proving rape instead is by obtaining either two male witnesses, or one male and two female witnesses.

Because as we all know it takes two women to be as much value as one man.

“The danger is that if the woman wants to betray other people, she commits adultery with a man, but when she regrets it, she reports to the police saying she was raped,” HTM spokesman Ustaz Abdul Hakim Othman said at HTM’s headquarters here today.

“As you see, most rape cases involve people known to the victims, especially their boyfriends. So making out with the boyfriend is fine, and then she turns around and says she was raped when she regrets it.

The man will say it wasn’t rape; it was consensual. So Islam imposes careful conditions. You don’t just accuse a person of raping you, you have to come up with proof,” he added.

Yeah, cool, and the fact that it’s so very difficult to come up with “proof” of rape (let alone “proof” of rape by person X) is not a problem because most sexual assault cases involve false accusations, which we know because they just said so.

HTM’s Abdul Hakim stressed today that rape and adultery are separate offences under the Islamic criminal justice system.

“If an unmarried woman is pregnant, definitely she’s committed an offence but she must explain. So if we ask her and she says she was raped, she’ll be released because she’s innocent,” he told the seminar.

“Islam doesn’t accept DNA evidence because obtaining witnesses is one of the conditions. Even if you can prove that male DNA was in the woman’s vagina, it doesn’t prove rape because DNA can enter by accident. DNA is not proof of rape. Other evidence like wounds in the vagina that show penetration is still not proof that it’s rape,” the HTM spokesman added.

Why would anyone not want to live under a system like that?

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

Le Monde, February 24 – No, Charlie Hebdo is not obsessed with Islam.

What does it make fun of?

De qui se moquait le journal satirique Charlie Hebdo, avant que deux terroristes islamistes assassinent cinq caricaturistes et six autres personnes présentes à la conférence de rédaction du 7 janvier ? Est-il vrai que ce journal faisait preuve d’une « obsession » à l’encontre des musulmans, comme cela a pu être dit à la suite des attentats, notamment dans une tribune du Monde du 15 janvier 2015, à laquelle ont contribué plusieurs chercheurs ?

What did the satirical mag Charlie Hebdo make fun of before two Islamist terrorists assassinated five cartoonists and six other people at an editorial conference January 7th? Is it true that the mag displayed an “obsession” with Muslims, as was said after the attacks, including at a Le Monde forum January 15th to which several researchers contributed?

Well, look at the graphic. That doesn’t look like obsession to me.

Parmi les 38 « unes » ayant pour cible la religion, plus de la moitié vise principalement la religion catholique (21) et moins de 20 % se moquent principalement de l’islam (7). Les juifs, quant à eux, sont toujours raillés aux côtés des membres d’au moins une autre religion, comme l’islam dans le n°1057.

Among the 38 front pages that target religion, more than half are mostly Catholicism (21) and under 20% make fun mostly of Islam (7). The Jews, for their part, are always made fun of along with the followers of at least one other religion, such as Islam in number 1057.

Francine Prose and Michael Ondaatje please note.

Update: the “dont” at the top of the column on the right means “of which.”

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

Oh isn’t that sweet – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in love. Truly madly deeply.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday said the love and affection for the Saudi leadership and people could not be explained in words.

Pakistan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are tied in unbreakable bonds of religion and brotherhood and both the countries are standing shoulder to shoulder with each other.

Speaking at a function held in honour of Imam-e-Kaaba Shaikh Khalid al Ghamidi at Chief Minister’s House, he remarked that even if the world goes topsy-turvy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could not be separated from one another.

They will wrap their legs around each other and hold on for dear life as the world bounces and flips and lurches.

He pointed out that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited Saudi Arabia recently and held talks with Custodian of the two Holy Mosques King Salman, crown prince and other Saudi Leaders. He said the world saw two brothers meeting and speaking heart to heart like family members. He said earlier he visited the kingdom and held talks on important issues with the Saudi leadership.

Shahbaz said the meetings were a clear message for the enemies that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are tied in inseparable bonds and no one could cause any hurdle or differences between them.

He didn’t say anything about Raif Badawai, or Indonesian domestics, or beheadings, or women not allowed to leave the house without male permission and escort.

On the occasion, Imam-e-Kaaba said it was an important occasion as he was present among people with whom he has close relationship. He said the sentiments expressed by Shahbaz would always remain in his heart. He said after coming here he has realised the love of Pakistanis for him and Saudi Arabia. He said the relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are everlasting.

Would they like sheets and towels, or a silver coffee set?

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

Amy Schumer’s hit video Last Fuckable Day.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg

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

A heart-rending item in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, about girls at an Islamic school being banned from running.

Girls at Al-Taqwa College have been banned from running at sporting events because the principal believes it may cause them to lose their virginity, former teachers claim.

The schools regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, is investigating the allegations, which have been referred to the state and federal education ministers.

…

In a letter sent to the education ministers this week, a former teacher said female students were being discriminated against at the Truganina school.

“The principal holds beliefs that if females run excessively, they may ‘lose their virginity’,” the letter said.

“The principal believes that there is scientific evidence to indicate that if girls injure themselves, such as break their leg while playing soccer, it could render them infertile.”

He probably believe if they study too hard they will get “brain fever.”

The SMH has a picture of a sad letter from the students about their disappointment.

Concerned female students expressed their concerns in a handwritten letter to the principal, saying it was unfair that the cross country event had been cancelled.

“It was really shocking to find out it has been cancelled because of the excuse girls can’t run,” the students said.

“Just because we are girls doesn’t mean we can’t participate in running events. It also doesn’t say girls can’t run in the hadith (the sayings of Muhammad).”

The students said parents were annoyed by the decision and “think that girls and boys should both be allowed to participate equally.”

Another former Al-Taqwa College teacher backed the claims. “I was told the girls weren’t allowed to participate. The reason was they might over-exert themselves and lose their virginity or be rendered infertile.”

What about the boys? If they over-exert themselves, their balls explode. That’s a scientific fact.

H/t Kausik

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

Speaking of thought leaders…I was looking for something and happened on this article by Jerry Coyne in The New Republic last October. It’s a riposte to an article by John Gray, also in TNR, trashing Richard Dawkins. I can easily believe Gray’s is a crap article, because John Gray seems to specialize in crap articles. But I read the first paragraph of Coyne’s article, and found a claim that I think is absurd.

It’s not a good time to be Richard Dawkins, for he alone, like the scapegoat of Leviticus, must bear the brunt of everyone’s hatred of atheism. (Sam Harris sometimes serves as a backup goat.) Even though Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader”—his eminence among nonbelievers is purely a byproduct of his books and talks—he is the poster child for atheism, and everyone who hates atheists, including some other atheists, comes down on him.

The claim I think is absurd is that

Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader”

You must be joking!

I can easily believe it’s true that Dawkins has never said “I am an atheist leader” – but that’s not the only way of proclaiming oneself as a leader. Here’s the thing: RD set up a foundation for science and reason, with his own name in the title. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that is decidedly proclaiming oneself as a leader.

And he acts as a leader, too. He throws his weight around. He does what he can to exclude people he dislikes from conferences and rallies. He tells women how to feminist. He ranks degrees of bad in discussions with feminists about what they get to object to. He complains of witch hunts. He promotes his friends. He scolds the world on Twitter.

So, no. However unfair the John Gray article is, it’s not the case that Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader.”

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

Geoff Nunberg told us yesterday on Fresh Air about the fad for the word “disruption,” which I didn’t know was a fad. It reminds me of the fad-word in literary “theory” some years ago, “transgressive.” Same basic idea, innit – we’re new, we’re happenin’, we’re Rebels.

HBO’s Silicon Valley is back, with its pitch-perfect renderings of the culture and language of the tech world — like at the opening of the “Disrupt” startup competition run by the Tech Crunch website at the end of last season. “We’re making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases” — the show’s writers didn’t have to exercise their imagination much to come up with those little arias of geeky self-puffery, or with the name Disrupt, which, as it happens, is what the Tech Crunch conferences are actually called. As is most everything else these days. “Disrupt” and “disruptive” are ubiquitous in the names of conferences, websites, business school degree programs and business book best-sellers.

“Little arias of geeky self-puffery” – good one. It’s reminiscent of Tom Frank and the Baffler – the conquest of Cool.

Buzzwords feed off their emotional resonances, not their ideas. And for pure resonance, “disruptive” is hard to beat. It’s a word with deep roots. I suspect I first encountered it when my parents read me the note that the teacher pinned to my sweater when I was sent home from kindergarten. Or maybe it reminds you of the unruly kid who was always pushing over the juice table. One way or another, the word evokes obstreperous rowdies, the impatient people who are always breaking stuff.

For good and ill. You can disrupt oppressive hierarchies and illegitimate power and unjust arrangements…and you can disrupt campaigns to disrupt oppressive hierarchies and illegitimate power and unjust arrangements. Who is the disrupter and who is the disrupted? The game changes sides every couple of seconds. Sometimes you’re the obstreperous rowdy letting in blasts of fresh air, and sometimes you’re the target of obstreperous rowdies shouting you into silence.

Disrupt or be disrupted. The consultants and business book writers have proclaimed that as the chronic condition of the age, and everybody is clambering to be classed among the disruptors rather than the disruptees. The lists of disruptive companies in the business media include not just Amazon and Uber but also Procter and Gamble and General Motors. What company nowadays wouldn’t claim to be making waves?

And what social movement wouldn’t claim to be making waves? Feminism does, but so does anti-feminism.

Then he said something that startled me and made me laugh.

The wonder is that “disruptive” is still clinging to life out there. There’s a market in language, too, and jargon starts to lose its market share when its air of novelty fades. “Thought leader,” “change agent” and “disruption,” too — as the words get stale, they’re in line to be disrupted themselves by scrappy new buzzwords that can once again convey an illusion of fresh thinking. That’s why jargon always has to replenish itself, the same way slang does — though like slang, it takes a while to work its way from the cool kids’ table to the outskirts of the lunchroom.

Ohhhhhhh, “thought leader” is business jargon! I did not know that.

It makes sense, since the Global Secular Policy Whizbang is Edwina Rogers’s toy, and she comes from the World O’ Business. It makes sense, but it’s also that much more nauseating.

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

Kamila Shamsie writes about her lifelong friend Sabeen Mahmud.

“Be careful,” I said to my childhood friend Sabeen Mahmud when I saw her in London in 2013, soon after she’d received a death threat – neither the first nor last. “Someone has to fight them,” she replied.

…

Sabeen was always a woman made of different stuff, thanks in large measure to the two great influences of her life: her mother, Mahnaz (shot twice during the attack), from whom she inherited her socialist tendencies, and her friend and mentor Zaheer Kidvai (Zak) who introduced her to the idea of counterculture, via everything from Abbie Hoffman to revolutionary Urdu poets. While most of us at our elite school in Karachi lived in a fairly apolitical bubble, Sabeen was developing class-consciousness and identifying political heroes. Post-university, when most of her schoolfriends were choosing not to return to an increasingly embattled city, she decided to take another approach.

In 2007, the community space T2F (originally called The Second Floor, after its location in an office building) was born. It quickly became the city’s leading venue for concerts, readings, science courses, coffee drinking, art exhibitions, Pakistan’s first Civic Hackathon, and, of course, political activism. Everything that went on at T2F represented some facet of Sabeen’s own, astonishingly wide-ranging interests. While she was far from being a national figure, with every year, she and T2F gained prominence and credibility for fighting to make civil society matter – whether the issue was minority rights, opposition to religious extremism or freedom of expression – she brought these issues into T2F, taking to the internet and the streets in protest and solidarity.

I can’t think of a single thing to make this any less horrible.

This was a woman equally at home soldering wires, discussing Urdu poetry, playing cricket, attending every progressive political demonstration in Karachi, singing the back catalogue of Pink Floyd, and being my self-proclaimed “geek-squad for life”. In 2013, she took on the religious fundamentalists by countering their “say no to Valentine’s Day” propaganda with posters saying “Pyaar hone dein” (Let there be love). Later that same year, she helped form a human chain around a church in solidarity with Pakistan’s Christian community after an attack on a church in Peshawar.

Those of us who loved and admired Sabeen now find ourselves asking: why?

I can’t think of a single answer.

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

Originally a comment by freedmenspatrol on Very much a part of many white Southerners’ identity.

For quite some time, white Southerners actually refused to observe the national Memorial Day. In various places they also didn’t celebrate the Fourth of July. Not so many wave the flag or the other totems as have done in past generations, but plenty of white Americans still do. It’s worked deep into how the culture operates, inside and outside the South. The Second Klan controlled Indiana and Oregon for a while. White Northerners could be absolutely vicious even when they had slavery around for contrast, passing laws excluding black Americans from even living in entire states and demanding those present leave.

It’s what we get for developing our ideas of freedom in the context of the evolving slave society in the Chesapeake. Freedom became white, slavery black, and black Americans thus permanent outsiders. It didn’t matter that they fought in the Revolution (for the last time until the Emancipation Proclamation, in fact) and black voters helped ratify the Constitution. A free black person was just a weird exception that roused considerable fears, never one of “us”. Whites had built an an “us” on their skin color, where all imagined themselves equal not by their material condition, not by their personal talents or potential, but rather by the peerless achievement of not choosing for themselves black skin.

This no longer informs us as much as it once did, but we have a long way to go to raze the house that slavery built. Some of us will fight that effort all the way to the bitter end, as they have before. That probably doesn’t mean armies again, but it didn’t take armies to reduce freedpeople back to near-slavery either. White terrorism suffices.

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

There’s such a thing as Confederate Memorial Day. I did not know that. It’s today in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Woohoo. Is there also a Hooray for Slavery Day? A Glorify Racism Day? A Steal Other People’s Labor Day?

Alabama closes its government offices today in observance of Confederate Memorial Day, along with Mississippi and Georgia. On May 10, South Carolina government offices will close in observance of the state holiday.

Of the 11 Southern states that made up the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, few agreed on what date was best for remembrance once the war officially ended in 1865.

I suggest the 32d of December, myself.

State officials still mark Confederate Memorial Day on their calendars, but it makes sense why they may not want to embrace the holiday publicly, said John Neff, director of the Center for Civil War Research at the University of Mississippi and a scholar of Civil War death and remembrance.

Dating back to 2000, the debates about whether states should fly the Confederate battle flag could be partially to blame, he explained. Several Southern states were embroiled in these fights, holding legislative votes and public referendums that revived the Confederacy as a politically sensitive issue.

That year in South Carolina, state legislators agreed to remove the Confederate battle flag from the capitol dome in Columbia. In a 2001 statewide referendum, a majority of Mississippi’s voters chose to keep the Confederate battle flag emblem on the state’s banner as it remains today. In 2003, Georgia rid itself of the Confederate battle flag from its state flag, following a legislative action and a public referendum.

All those words, yet PBS never manages to spell out why things Confederate are “a politically sensitive issue.” [whispers: it’s because of slavery.]

“It seems odd in many ways, but you don’t have to live in the South very long to know this is a deep connection that many people still feel,” he said.

Many people across the South claim the Confederacy as part of their heritage, he said.

“I can say this is very much a part of many white Southerners’ identity. This is how they feel connected to their place, their time, their families,” Neff said. “I think it’s going to be a long, long time before there’s no one in the South that feels those connections.”

We get it, and that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it. It’s part of many white Southerners’ identity, and that fact is fraught with all kinds of horrors.

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