Poor Saudi Arabia. The BBC reports it doesn’t want Daesh luring away its people or bursting in to attack the Saud family itself. But how is it to go about resisting it when they have so much in common?

According to the Ministry of Interior, some 2,600 Saudis have joined extremist groups in Syria since 2011, around 600 of whom have returned. Last year alone, 400 were arrested in relation to IS activities inside the Kingdom.

“Extremist groups” – but the government of Saudi Arabia is an extremist group. There’s nothing mild or average about Saudi Arabia.

It is a relatively low number, says Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour Sultan al-Turki, but still a matter of deep concern.

“Whoever made [IS] made it for purposes and one of those purposes is really to attack Saudi Arabia,” he says.

“They know that our borders are very well-protected so their idea is to do their best through propaganda, like inspire young Saudis to carry out any terrorist act on their behalf.”

But Saudi Arabia carries out terrorist attacks on its own citizens. It beheads some of them, it whips some of them.

Last year Riyadh made it a crime to join IS. And it mobilised Saudi clerics, who now condemn the group as un-Islamic.

But that has not included any soul-searching of their own ultraconservative creed, one that advocates harsh Islamic punishments which have been taken to extremes by IS.

Precisely. If even the BBC admits it, it’s not much of a secret any more.

The recent sentencing of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi to 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam prompted Western comparisons between the ideologies of Saudi Arabia and Islamic State.

“This is the basic problem we have with media like yourselves in mixing apples and oranges,” countered the former intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal.

“Fahash is a terrorist group, it has no legal system,” he said, using an Arabic word for obscene that rhymes with Daesh.

“The kingdom is a state, it has a judicial system that traces its history even longer than English common law.”

Yes. Saudi Arabia is a state, and it has a judicial system. But it’s an absolutist totalitarian theocratic state, with a theocratic judicial system. It has the formal trappings, but the laws and practices are fascistic. And Daesh of course calls itself a state, indeed a meta-state, a caliphate. If you asked it it would no doubt assure you it has a judicial system. The outcomes are much the same.

Saudi Arabia’s puritanical version of Islam does share a strain of religious intolerance that IS has used to justify its killings of Shia and non-Muslims, says Jane Kinninmont, a London-based Middle East analyst.

“The tendency to declare other Muslims as ‘kafir’ or non-Muslim, that’s something you see advocated by some officially sanctioned and tolerated Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia,” she says.

Damn right. And all those Saudi-funded madrassas? You think none of their graduates have joined Daesh? It is to laugh. Saudi Arabia has spent billions in oil money to spread Islamist fanaticism around the globe, and now it’s quaking in its boots because Daesh is on its border. This is the world you built, you fucks.

The Kingdom’s frontline with IS, its northern border with Iraq, is demarcated with a double fence that undulates across a vast windswept desert, monitored by high-tech surveillance cameras.

Members of Islamic State did clash with a border patrol early this year, killing three guards. But the threat is more internal than external.

And the Saudis are not questioning whether their ideology is in any way to blame.

It’s good to see the BBC finally notice.

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

Hm. Time for some Stupid Posters, because I have seen some and I wouldn’t want them to go to waste.

You can see them yourself if you visit the Facebook page of someone who calls himself David Avocado Wolfe. Yes, he really does. He says he’s a  public figure, too. Well I don’t believe that.

Piffle. Not common sense at all. Think of all the African and Middle Eastern and Indian and Chinese foods the names of which I can’t pronounce properly – that’s hardly a reason not to eat them.

Nope. That’s not true.

“Pushes off the body’s dirty electricity”?

Please.

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

CFI has a statement on the horrific murder of Washiqur Rahman.

Barely a month following the brutal murder of our friend, freethought writer Avijit Roy in Bangladesh, and the near-killing of his wife Rafida Bonya Ahmed, atheist blogger Washiqur Rahman has been killed by a group of Islamic extremists in Dhaka. A young man at age 27, Rahman was far less well-known than Dr. Roy, but his public expressions of admiration for Roy, and his courageous criticism of religion were sufficiently threatening to these extremist thugs that they tried to silence him as they silenced Dr. Roy.

But they will find that just as was the case with the murder of Dr. Roy, the power of the ideals and principles Washiqur Rahman championed will now only become a more potent force, and the hateful and backward ideology of his killers will be exposed to the world. Violent Islamic extremists think they will scare their critics into silence and submission, but their barbarity will only serve to strengthen the unity and resolve of those who believe in the fundamental right to free expression — which includes the right to criticize, question, and reject religion.

The rest.

The American Humanist Association also has a statement.

The American Humanist Association mourns the tragic death of Bangladeshi blogger, Oyasiqur (Washiqur) Rhaman, who was brutally murdered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, for advocating freethought and progressivism.

Rhaman was described by his friends and fellow bloggers as a humanist and atheist. On social media, he criticized religious extremism and expressed solidarity with Avijit Roy, another humanist blogger and Bangladeshi-American who was killed only a few weeks ago for espousing secular views. The vicious nature of these two murders underscores the oppression and harassment faced by humanists around the world. The American Humanist Association reaffirms its commitment to free speech and to ending the prejudice against humanists and other nonbelievers by advancing secular values and human rights and opposing blasphemy laws.

In the wake of these appalling tragedies, the American Humanist Association is continuing to demand that U.S. Senators and Representatives hold hearings on the global persecution of humanists and other nontheists by religious fundamentalists. A copy of the letter sent to legislators can be viewed here.

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

Some people protested

Student associations protested.

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

The Huffington Post has a video from a few days ago on “Muslim women” saying why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is all wrong about Islam. Quel shock. From the abstract:

Activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been extremely vocal in her critique of Islam. In her new book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, she details her issues with its teachings and even declares “Islam is not a religion of peace.”

*gasp* You don’t mean it! She even says Islam is not a religion of peace???! How can she possibly think such a thing, given all the peace spread by Islam right now? Think of those three peace-loving men who chopped Washiqur Rahman to death a few hours ago.

I get that people don’t want to pick on Muslims but let’s be reasonable, ok? Of course Islam is not a religion of peace.

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

An Indiana business owner went on the radio to say he’d gotten an early start on the discriminating against people even before the governor signed Indiana’s RFRA into law.

The business owner, who would not give his name or the name of his business, said he had told some LGBT “people” that equipment was broken in his restaurant and he couldn’t serve them even though it wasn’t and other people were already eating at the tables. “So, yes, I have discriminated,” he told RadioNOW 100.9 hosts. The hosts were surprised the owner said he was okay with discriminating.

“Well, I feel okay with it because it’s my place of business, I pay the rent, I’ve built it with all my money and my doing. It’s my place; I can do whatever I want with it,” he said. “They can have their lifestyle and do their own thing in their own place or with people that want to be with them.”

So he can keep out the Nigras and the Jews and the wetbacks and anyone else he doesn’t like, because this is god’s country.

Georgia. Nineteen other states, including nearby Kentucky and Illinois, have adopted religious liberty laws.

These laws try to codify some of what was established when the Supreme Court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case last year.

Let’s keep this up. Maybe soon we too can be talking about the latest atheist blogger who’s been murdered by fanatics wielding meat cleavers.

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

Originally a comment by themadtapper on As when you find a trout in the milk.

“It’s not about discriminating against gay customers, it’s about protecting religious liberty!”

Ok, so give me an example of what kind of scenario this law is supposed to help in.

“Well, maybe a florist doesn’t want to provide flowers for a gay wedding.”

So, the scenario in which this law, which totally isn’t about discrimination, is supposed to help in is a scenario where someone wants to turn away a gay customer?

“No! The florist just doesn’t want to participate in something that’s against their religion!”

So the scenario isn’t about discrimination or turning away gay customers, it’s about not having to participate in commerce with gay people?

“No! It’s about not having to participate in gay weddings!”

But the only way they’re connected to the wedding at all is by selling things to the gay people having a wedding.

“Exactly, and they don’t want to do that!”

So, they don’t want to do commerce with gay people that are having weddings and want to be able to turn them away?

“Dammit man, it’s like you’re not even listening to me!”

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

Still in Indiana – Purvi Patel was sentenced today. Think Progress has details.

Purvi Patel was arrested in 2013 after she went to the emergency room to seek medical treatment for heavy bleeding. After initially denying that she had been pregnant, she eventually told the staff that she had a premature delivery at home, believed the fetus was not alive, and placed it in a bag in a dumpster on her way to the hospital. Her doctors called the cops, who questioned Patel while she was still in the hospital, searched her cell phone records, and recovered the fetus.

Patel maintains that she did not abandon a living baby. “I assumed because the baby was dead there was nothing to do,” Patel later told law enforcement officials. “I’ve never been in this situation. I’ve never been pregnant before.”

Her lawyers said the pregnancy resulted from a sexual relationship with a married co-worker, and Patel didn’t want her conservative Hindu parents — who raised her under the assumption that she shouldn’t have sex outside of marriage — to know about it. They also said Patel didn’t realize how far along her pregnancy was, and was shocked to see what the fetus looked like when she experienced the premature delivery.

State officials, meanwhile, contend they have evidence to suggest Patel attempted an illegal abortion after purchasing abortion-inducing drugs online. They say she intentionally tried to end her pregnancy — even though a toxicologist testified there was no trace of the drugs in her bloodstream — and then abandoned her living child after the termination was unsuccessful.

In February, an Indiana jury deliberated for less than five hours before finding Patel guilty of both charges brought against her: one for “fetal murder of an unborn child” and one for “neglect of a dependent.”

What?

What?

What?

How is it possible to convict someone of two charges which contradict each other? How could she have neglected a dependent she had already murdered? Or murdered an unborn child if it lived to become a dependent?

Indiana’s “feticide” law, the statute that allowed state officials to bring the charge of murder against Patel, was not intended to be applied to women themselves. It was originally enacted as a way to crack down on illegal abortion providers. However, Paltrow pointed out that Patel’s case fits into a chilling trend: Even though abortion opponents say that the mounting legal restrictions against the procedure are not supposed to target women, it’s becoming clear that some women are winding up behind bars anyway.

Maybe especially so when they’re not pale and middle-class and prosperous? Just a hunch.

She was sentenced this morning.

Purvi Patel was sentenced Monday to 41 years in prison on charges of feticide and felony neglect of a dependent after an Indiana jury in early February found her guilty of the charges. She was ordered to serve 20 years in prison after receiving a 30-year sentence on the felony neglect charge, with an additional ten years suspended.

Patel received a six-year sentence on the feticide charge, but that will be served concurrently with the 20-year sentence. She will spend five years on probation when she is released from prison.

God bless America.

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

Garrett Epps at the Atlantic explains how the Indiana RFRA is different from (and worse than) the Federal one and all but two state ones.

[T]he Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.

The extras matter. They’re there for a reason.

Of all the state “religious freedom” laws I have read, this new statute hints most strongly that it is there to be used as a means of excluding gays and same-sex couples from accessing employment, housing, and public accommodations on the same terms as other people. True, there is no actual language that says, All businesses wishing to discriminate in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, please check this “religious objection” box. But, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

So—is the fuss over the Indiana law overblown?

No.

The statute shows every sign of having been carefully designed to put new obstacles in the path of equality; and it has been publicly sold with deceptive claims that it is “nothing new.”

Being required to serve those we dislike is a painful price to pay for the privilege of running a business; but the pain exclusion inflicts on its victims, and on society, are far worse than the discomfort the faithful may suffer at having to open their businesses to all.

I have seen people passionately arguing that business owners have an absolute right to run their businesses as they see fit and that that totally does include refusing to serve people for whatever reason they feel like. Nope. If you open the door, you open the door. If you don’t want to serve all who walk in the door, then don’t open the door.

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

The Guardian on the slaughter of Washiqur Rahman.

A blogger known for his atheist views has been stabbed to death in Bangladesh, in the latest of a series of attacks on independent writers in the developing south Asian nation.

Not stabbed, no. That sounds comparatively gentle – compared to what they actually did to him. He was chopped, not stabbed. He was chopped in the eyes, and the chin, and the neck.

Local police chief Wahidul Islam told Agence France-Presse the victim had been “brutally hacked to death this morning with big knives just 500 yards [460 metres] from his home at Dhaka’s Begunbari area”.

That’s the word: hacked. Not stabbed.

The suspects have so far been identified only as Zikrullah, said to be a student at a religious school near the city of Chittagong, and Ariful Islam, who police say was studying at the Darul Ulum religious school in Dhaka. Police are hunting a third man.

“Those who killed him differed on his ideologies about religion. He was not an atheist. He was a believer. But the way he followed religion was different from the way radical groups insist,” Biplob Kumar Sarkar, deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan police, told the Guardian.

However, Tamanna Setu, a friend of Rahman said: “He used to write a satirical column on facebook about against believers. He was an atheist. His killing has to be connected to his writing.”

…

Ibrahim Khalil, a fellow blogger who knew Rahman through events they organised, said Rahman was a “progressive” who wrote against religious extremism and repression of ethnic minorities.

“I can say he was a very humble man,” Khalil said.

The Dhaka Tribune reported that the dead man was a member of eight Facebook group pages including Atheist Bangladesh.

Rahman, who worked at a travel agency as an IT manager, is the third such blogger to have been murdered in the Muslim-majority country in the past two years.

How to silence a whole country.

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

The IHEU on the brutal murder of Washiqur Rahman in Dhaka a few hours ago.

Washiqur Rahman’s Facebook banner declares “#IamAvijit”, after the leading secular and humanist blogger, Avijit Roy, who was murdered a month ago in Bangladesh.

This morning Washiqur Rahman himself was killedin similar circumstances: a machete attack by assailants on the streets of Dhaka. The brutal attack took place close to Rahman’s home. Police have reportedly taken two men into custody who were detained at the scene.

Bob Churchill, Director of Communications at the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) comments: “We are deeply saddened that yet another rationalist voice has been so brutally silenced in this vile backlash against atheist bloggers. Our thoughts are with Washiqur’s family and we stand in solidarity with the many individual thinkers and writers from Bangladesh who exercise their right to discuss religion — Islam in particular — frankly and critically. This is a human right, freedom of expression, and it should be respected and protected in Bangladesh, as it should be respected and protected everywhere.”

Asif Mohiuddin, who was also the victim of a machete attack in 2013, but survived and now lives abroad, described Washiqur on his Facebook page as a “humanist” and a true wit. He told the IHEU: “He was a good friend. We spent hours over tea discussing blogs a few years ago. He had a great sense of humor, his satires were amazing. I named him the George Carlin of Bangladesh! Personally he was very polite, a nice human being. He wanted with all his heart, a true secular country, where everyone can practice their freedom.”

They go on to give extracts from Washiqur’s writing. Read them.

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

The BBC reports on the brutal murder of Washiqur Rahman.

Two students at an Islamic seminary have reportedly been arrested.

Last month, Avijit Roy, a US-based writer who had criticised religious intolerance, was killed in a machete attack while he was visiting Dhaka.

His death sparked fresh concerns for freedom of speech in Bangladesh, where several secular-minded writers have been targeted by militants.

Bangladesh is a death-trap for writers who promote religious tolerance and freethinking.

Mr Rahman was killed on a busy street in Dhaka. Two of the suspected attackers, armed with meat cleavers, were caught near the scene.

The suspects told police they had targeted Mr Rahman because of his anti-Islamic writing, a police official told the Associated Press news agency.

Rejecting Islam is forbidden in Bangladesh. The penalty for disobedience is brutal murder.

Mr Rahman blogged under a pen-name, Kucchit Hasher Channa, or Ugly Duckling. According to the Dhaka Tribune newspaper, he had criticised irrational religious beliefs.

Imran Sarker, the head of a network of activists and bloggers in Bangladesh, told AFP news agency that Mr Rahman was “a progressive free thinker”.

Asif Mohiuddin, a Bangladeshi blogger who survived an attack in 2013, said he had often talked to Mr Rahman about “criticising fundamentalist groups”.

“I liked him for his satire, his sense of humour. He was a wonderful blogger and I’m very… upset right now,” he said.

Life is a horror movie.

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

Taslima tweeted this photo.

Madrasa students Zikrulla & Arif killed Washikur Babu today. Killers said it’s their duty as muslims to kill freethinkers.

She also shared photos of Washikur Rahman’s hacked corpse. She wants everyone to know what that murderous violence looks like, so that we can imagine what it feels like.

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

Oh god no not again – another atheist blogger hacked to death by men with machetes in Dhaka.

Washikur Rahman, an atheist blogger, was hacked to death on a busy street in the centre of Dhaka on Monday morning, a police official said.

“Police on duty near the spot caught two attackers red-handed with three machetes as they were fleeing the scene after the incident,” police official Humayan Kabir told Reuters.

A fellow writer said Rahman wrote against religious fundamentalism on Facebook and across other social media sites using a pen name, although this could not be confirmed by police. The alias used by Rahman is said to be “Babu” (ugly duckling).

“He is a friend of mine and a fellow warrior. He was an atheist and a believer in humanism,” fellow blogger Asif Mohiuddin, who survived a brutal attack by Islamists in January 2013, told AFP via Facebook from Berlin.

swear words

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

This is horrifying. Nushin Arbabzadah says religious violence has become normalized in Afghanistan.

The brutal lynching of Farkhunda, has revealed a number of significant issues regarding the state of Islam in Afghanistan.

The most crucial is that a fanatic strand of Islamic has become normalized, and accepted by a mainstream audience. The imam who incited the violence, the mob who lynched Farkhunda, the bystanders who filmed it — they were not the disenfranchised. They were ordinary Afghans, members of the middle class, including shop keepers. The initial public reaction was approval, expressed by public figures representing the spheres of culture and education.

They included a female deputy culture minister, who said, in reference to the murder, that nothing can stand in the way of the pure faith of the people. Rahel Musavi, a presenter on Tamadon TV, provided another public message of support saying, “She deserved to burn in the fire of the people’s anger.” And then there was the sermon of the imam, Ayaz Niazi, whose message can be summed up as follows: The people who killed Farkhunda were correct and the police have no right to arrest them. If they do, the people have the right to stage an uprising.

 

That kind of thing makes me absolutely despair of human beings. Educated people think deference to religion matters more than not setting a woman on fire.

A key characteristic of this version of Islam is that is encourages lawlessness. Niazi told the mosque audience, that their religious sensitivity is the supreme source of legitimacy, overriding the legitimacy of the state and law enforcement. But to what extent? According to the sermon, it would seem that the believer is entitled to kill first and ask questions later. Even if it turns out that the believer was wrong, the supremacy of his religious emotions are such that police has no right to arrest him. In other words, religious sentiment, not religion, is the supreme force and the prime source of legitimacy in Afghanistan. This was what Niazi was endorsing.

And she adds that he’s considered a moderate Muslim.

Many Afghans continue to believe that the supreme law is their own religious emotions. This belief is not natural, it’s carefully cultivated and sustained through collective effort. Some comply out of fear, others out of populist motivation, others because they are ignorant. Afghan activists are some of the few who have opposed the message. In return, they have received threats. The nature of these threats is summed up by the following statement that a TV personality working for a religious channel said that Farkhunda’s burning will be a lesson to the other whores.

Yes, it’s definitely a lesson to us whores.

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

Mandy Brown comments on the ruling in Ellen Pao’s suit against Kleiner Perkins.

The law has been constructed in such a way that only extremely blatant discrimination counts. More subtle sexism (and racism) can hide behind all kinds of gender- or race-neutral justifications which can never be wholly dismissed. So Pao wasn’t passed up because she was a woman, but because she wasn’t likeable. She wasn’t fired because of her lawsuit, but because she didn’t have what it takes. She was both too pushy and not pushy enough. She wasn’t a “thought leader.”

The message here is you can discriminate all you want so long as you aren’t completely stupid about it.

“Thought leader”? That made me jump. I didn’t know it was a catchphrase; I thought it was something special that Edwina Rogers dreamed up for the Global not-Global Secular Thingummy. Thought leader. Lead me to your thought thinkings. Lead me into the sunny uplands of skilled thoughting. But not about gender bias or stereotype threat or double binds or always having to be better and still not getting the promotion – none of that kind of thoughting. Only the approved kind – lead me to that.

The Times quotes Peter Fenton, an investor at Benchmark, in response to the ruling: “I really worry more that there will be a chilling effect on the risk-taking appetite toward getting diversity into venture. Kleiner took the risk and look what happened.” Ho boy. Let’s unpack that. Kleiner did not “take a risk” in hiring a woman; Kleiner hired a demonstrably competent and talented woman who even by their own testimony seems to have been pretty damn good at her job. The notion that every woman you may hire has some measurable risk associated with her—as if we’re all ticking discrimination lawsuit timebombs—is itself discrimination. The “risk,” if there even is any, isn’t located in the women a firm may or may not hire, but in the structure of their own organization.

Oh come now. Be fair. Hiring a woman is pretty much like hiring a hungry bear. Women aren’t normal. They aren’t like everyone else. You don’t know where you are with them. They’re always flipping out, or spilling milk on the floor, or being way uglier than you wanted them to be. They’re nothing but risk. With men you know where you are.

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

Remember Amal Farah on The Big Questions?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOYR1_1Zzw

The Daily Mirror talks to her.

The police came to her door and told her her mother was a jihadist.

In the seven years since the two last saw each other, her mother had become a pivotal member of Al Shabab, the Somali jihadists ­behind the Westgate mall ­massacre in Nairobi.

Known as Mama Shabab, she ­allegedly ran a safe house for suicide bombers and Western fighters recruited into the militant Islamic organisation.

The police officers told Amal, 34, to Google her mother’s name if she wanted to know why she was in trouble.

So later on she did.

“There were all these ­pictures of people injured by ­suicide bombs.

“As I read about what she’d done I felt so alone. I couldn’t just turn to my colleagues and say, ‘Guess what? My mum’s a wanted terrorist .’

“I couldn’t believe my own ­mother was involved. I cried non-stop for days after that.”

Can you imagine it? I can’t…only the edges of it maybe.

At the age of six she was made to wear the hijab, a headdress.

When she was ten her family fled Somalia after being granted refugee ­status in Canada.

But any hope of a Western ­upbringing was quashed after she was enrolled in a strict Islamic school.

She said: “Suddenly I was wasn’t ­allowed to play with my male cousins. We weren’t allowed to listen to music. Anything that was deemed frivolous, anything that took you away from the ­importance of Allah, was forbidden.”

Everything good in life is forbidden, so that you can pay all your attention to something that isn’t there.

But she got out.

It was only when she began ­studying for a ­degree in molecular ­biology that a new world opened up.

“It was a ­revelation,” she said. “I met ­atheists, Christians, Jews, Hindus – they challenged me about my views, and I about theirs. It was an ­incredible sensation to be able to ­discuss ideas without fear.”

She felt in her heart that to be true to herself she could no longer call ­herself a Muslim.

Recalling the day she broached the subject with her family, Amal said: “My mum’s first words were, ‘You’re going to hell!’ Then my uncle flew over from Saudi Arabia and for three days I was locked in the house and forced to listen to him.”

It didn’t work, so her mother cut all ties, and then moved to Dubai. That’s the last time Amal saw her.

Then she married a Jewish man.

Death threats followed soon after.

She revealed: “It was frightening. I was sent death threats telling me to come back into Islam or else. I became paranoid. Leaving my house and going to work made me scared.”

Since finding out about her mother, Amal has become a member of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, ­speaking against radical Islam, and of One Law For All, a campaign group.

Her life now is one that she never thought she would have as a child.

She says: “All my dreams have come true. I have a wonderful family, an ­incredible husband and I just feel so ­fortunate. Sometimes I pinch myself. It’s the life I never thought I’d have.”

But she misses her sister. She also misses her mother, but doesn’t plan ever to see her again.

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

Nick Cohen reviews Nigel Farage’s campaign biography and finds yet another “get me I’m an outsider” phony.

Farage is an attack dog who poses as an underdog. He’s the small-minded man who pretends he’s the friend of the little guy. He writes as if he were a dissident in a dictatorship: a lone and persecuted voice, who has suffered for telling truth to power. The results are occasionally hilarious. The BBC and press are always out to get him, even though most of the Conservative press supports Ukip’s policies, and the BBC never has him off air.

They promote him, but they don’t cuddle and squeeze him.

Farage’s vainglorious anecdotes are accompanied by a long, low moan about how he could have made “an enormous amount of money” if he had not chosen to leave the City and enter politics. So relentless is the self-pity, so often does Farage play the victim card, that there are times when this book feels like the Home Counties equivalent of a martyrdom video.

Hasn’t he read the memo? He’s supposed to be thick-skinned and resilient. A thick-skinned resilient outsider underdog.

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