A Cambridge archaeologist, Augusta McMahon, tells us more about Nimrud and why it mattered.

Ancient Iraq is famous for many global “firsts” – Mesopotamia gave us the first writing, the first city, the first written law code, and the first empire.

The people of Iraq are justifiably proud of this ancient heritage and its innovations and impact on the world.

The first writing. This thing I’m doing now – it was invented by the Mesopotamians.

Trashing Nimrud, McMahon says, is trashing the Iraqi people.

Nimrud was the capital of the world’s first empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire of the 1st millennium BC.

Lying 35km (22 miles) south of the modern city of Mosul in north Iraq, Nimrud covers some 3.5 sq km (1.35 sq miles), with a prominent “citadel” mound within the city walls, on which are clustered the main administrative and religious buildings.

These buildings include the enormous palaces of several Assyrian kings and the temples of Ninurta, the god of war, and of Nabu, the god of writing.

They had a god of writing.

The Palace of Ashurnasirpal, also known as the North-West Palace, was first excavated by the British explorer Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s. His excavations are the source of the winged bull gatekeeper statues currently displayed in the British Museum.

Layard also recovered large numbers of stone panels that lined the walls of rooms and courtyards within the palace. These panels are of a local limestone, carved in low relief with beautifully detailed scenes of the king seated at state banquets, hunting lions, or engaged in warfare and religious ritual.

Extended excavations at Nimrud were next carried out in the 1950s-60s by Max Mallowan, the husband of crime writer Agatha Christie.

Mallowan and his team reconstructed the complex plans of the palace, temples and citadel, and his excavations recovered rich finds of carved ivory furniture, stone jars and metalwork, as well as hundreds of additional wall reliefs and wall paintings.

Remember back in December when some Greenpeace activists stomped on the Nazca lines in Peru? I was very pissed off about that, too, and they didn’t even do it out of deliberate malice. Destroying ancient artifacts is a terrible thing to do.

Large parts of Ashurnasirpal’s palace were reconstructed by Iraq’s antiquities board during the 1970s and 1980s, including the restoration and re-installation of carved stone reliefs lining the walls of many rooms.

The winged bull statues that guard the entrances to the most important rooms and courtyards were re-erected.

These winged bulls are among the most dramatic and easily recognised symbols of the Assyrian world.

They combine the most highly valued attributes of figures from nature into a complex hybrid form: a human head for wisdom, the body of a wild bull for physical power, and the wings of an eagle for the ability to soar high and far and to see and prevent evil.

The Iraqi restoration project also led to the dramatic discovery of several tombs of the queens of the Assyrian empire. These tombs contained astonishingly rich finds of delicate gold jewellery and crowns, enamel ornaments, bronze and gold bowls, and ivory vessels.

The technical skill and aesthetic sense of the artisans responsible are unrivalled in the ancient world.

So it’s too bad that Daesh saw fit to smash it all. Really too bad.

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

Deutsche Welle reports that German Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel may have an uncomfortable trip to Saudi Arabia and its little neighbors in a few days, what with one thing and another.

From Saturday, he will be on a four-day journey through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar – all countries where Germany has significant business interests. Representatives from 140 German companies will be accompanying him.

Less exhilirating, however, is the fact that each of these countries is guilty of significant human rights atrocities in the name of Islamic law – including beheadings and brutal corporal punishment.

Oh, that. Well sure, but SIGNIFICANT BUSINESS INTERESTS.

The most notorious of these is Saudi Arabia, the first stop on Gabriel’s tour. Opposition parties have been making the usual appeals to Gabriel’s conscience in advance. Katrin Göring-Eckardt, parliamentary leader of the Green party, called on the vice chancellor to use his meetings to bring up the case of Raif Badawi, the DW prize-winning blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for allegedly “insulting Islam.” She also wants Badawi to be offered asylum in Germany. The socialist Left party MP Jan van Aken echoed the call and demanded that future weapons exports be made contingent on improvements in the human rights situation.

Good. Make it hot for them.

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

I watched part of a thing on the Smithsonian Channel last night about the excavation of an unusually near-intact woolly mammoth in Siberia. It’s interesting.

At the beginning where they showed the excavation and what a lot of the mammoth there was, we got lots of shots of all the exciting bits there were. At one point there was excited exclamation about the freshness of the meat (which sounded odd – I’d expect “tissue” rather than “meat”), and we got to see a bit of mammoth flesh (or “meat”) that was pink instead of grey or ice-color. Then another guy showed us another, bigger bit, and he moved it back and forth a little, and then…he took a bite of it.

I laughed uncontrollably for at least ten minutes; it was eye-mopping and breath-depleting and like running up a hill.

Whaaaaaaaat?

Since when do people snack on the 40,000-year-old carcasses they’re excavating? I thought they were doing sciencey research, not digging up lunch.

One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, I swear.

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

There seems to be quite a lot of good news for Raif Badawi today.

Desmond Tutu has sent a note to King Salman.

A human rights lawyer based in London has taken on his case and Waleed’s, pro bono, according to Nicolya Christi on Facebook.

And there is this -

It will be out April 1.

I’m hoping there will be an edition in English. I’ve done some string-tugging to that effect.

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

The UNESCO Director General has a statement on the vandalization of Nimrud.

“I condemn in the strongest possible manner the destruction of the archaeological site of Nimrud site in Iraq. This is yet another attack against the Iraqi people, reminding us that nothing is safe from the cultural cleansing underway in the country: it targets human lives, minorities, and is marked by the systematic destruction of humanity’s ancient heritage,” said UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova.

© Creative Commons Nimrud Lamassu’s at the North West Palace of Ashurnasirpal, Iraq

“We cannot remain silent. The deliberate destruction of cultural heritage constitutes a war crime. I call on all political and religious leaders in the region to stand up and remind everyone that there is absolutely no political or religious justification for the destruction of humanity’s cultural heritage

“I call on all of those who can, especially youth, in Iraq and elsewhere, to do everything possible to protect this heritage, to claim it as their own, and as the heritage of the whole of humanity.

“I appeal also to all cultural institutions, museums, journalists, professors, and scientists to share and explain the importance of this heritage and the Mesopotamian civilization. We must respond to this criminal chaos that destroys culture with more culture.

“I have alerted the president of the Security Council as well as the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The entire international community must join its efforts, in solidarity with the government and people of Iraq, to put an end to this catastrophe.

Likewise, UNESCO is determined to do whatever is needed to document and protect the heritage of Iraq and lead the fight against the illicit traffic of cultural artefacts, which directly contributes to the financing of terrorism. At stake is the survival of the Iraqi culture and society.”

The city of Nimrud (Kahlka), was founded more than 3,300 years ago. It was one of the capitals of the Assyrian empire. Its frescos and works are celebrated around the world and revered in literature and sacred texts. The Iraqi government has confirmed that the site was attacked by armed extremists using bulldozers on the 5th of March.

Where in the Koran does it say bulldozers are permitted?

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

The BBC has more on the destruction of Nimrud.

IS began demolishing the site, which was founded in the 13th Century BC, on Thursday, according to Iraqi officials.

The head of the UN’s cultural agency condemned the “systematic” destruction in Iraq as a “war crime”.

IS, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, says shrines and statues are “false idols” that have to be smashed.

“They are erasing our history,” said Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani.

They really aren’t “false idols” now; they’re ancient artifacts. They’re history, they’re art, they’re mythology, they’re archaeology, they’re anthropology, they’re part of the rich exciting story of human creativity. They don’t have to be smashed. There’s no human need that smashing them meets. Smashing them is a power move. IS is all about power for a few male fanatics to force all 7 billion of us to live in a bare theocratic hell.

Nimrud lies on the Tigris river, about 30km (18 miles) south-east of Mosul, which IS controls.

Many of the artefacts found there have been moved to museums in Baghdad and overseas, but many remain on site.

BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir says the attempt to destroy Nimrud is already being compared with the Taliban’s demolition of the Bamiyan Buddha rock sculptures in Afghanistan in 2001.

Don’t forget the tombs in Mali.

Aljazeera

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

IS is still busy destroying Assyrian sites and their artifacts.

Islamic State fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Iraqi government said, in their latest assault on some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures.

A tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul said the jihadis, who dismiss Iraq’s pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, had pillaged the 3,000-year-old site on the banks of the Tigris river.

…

“Daesh terrorist gangs continue to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity,” Iraq’s tourism and antiquities ministry said, referring to Isis by its Arabic acronym.

“In a new crime in their series of reckless offences, they assaulted the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy machinery, appropriating the archaeological attractions dating back 13 centuries BC,” it said.

Added to the list that includes the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Timbuktu tombs.

Nimrud, about 20 miles south of Mosul, was built around 1250BC. Four centuries later it became the capital of the neo-Assyrian empire – at the time the most powerful state on Earth, extending to modern-day Egypt, Turkey and Iran.

Many of its most famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by archaeologists, including colossal winged bulls, which are now in London’s British Museum, and hundreds of precious stones and pieces of gold, which were moved to Baghdad.

I know those winged bulls at the British Museum.

Their real name, according to Wikipedia, is Lamassu.

A lamassu (Cuneiform:

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

A press release from Amnesty International –

WASHINGTON–On the eve of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL 6th District) and James McGovern (D-MA, 2nd District) have sent a bipartisan letter to Saudi Arabia’s new ruler, King Salman. The letter urges the new King to free all prisoners of conscience—including blogger Raif Badawi and attorney Waleed Abu al-Khair—and to allow women, religious minorities and peaceful political reformers to freely express themselves and fully participate in public life in Saudi Arabia.

The letter garnered 67 congressional signers and endorsements from 17 women’s, human rights, religious freedom, and advocacy organizations, including Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch.

“Saudi Arabia’s new King has a critical opportunity to enact major human rights reforms and free prisoners of conscience such as blogger Raif Badawi and attorney Waleed Abu Al-Khair,” said Steven W. Hawkins, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA. “Sixty-seven members of Congress have already raised their voices in support of human rights in Saudi Arabia. Now, Secretary Kerry must do the same when he visits the Kingdom tomorrow.”

The imprisonment of blogger Raif Badawi and Waleed Abu al-Khair, as well as the ban on women driving, the restrictions of the male guardianship system, and so-called “anti-terror” laws that have criminalized peaceful expression, have all brought Saudi Arabia’s human rights record to the forefront of the U.S.–Saudi relationship. By signing this letter, U.S. representatives are urging King Salman to end the imprisonment of peaceful critics, violations of women’s human rights, religious persecution, and the crackdown on advocates and reformers.

Well good. Let’s hope the Saudis don’t just throw it away and forget about it.

Endorsing Organizations

Amnesty International USA, International Christian Concern, Christian Solidarity Worldwide-UK, In Defense of Christians, Human Rights Watch, Project on Middle East Democracy, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain, US National Committee for UN Women, Women’s Action for New Directions, Women Thrive Worldwide, Peace X Peace, Equality Now, PEN American Center, Center for Inquiry, National Organization for Women Foundation, Universal Muslim Association of America, Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia

The letter can be read at:

http://amnestyusa.org/pdfs/LetterCongressToWhiteHouseSaudiArabiaMarch2015.pdf

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

Another atheist woman who says no thanks to the atheist “movement” because it’s such a shit-show.

But as defensive as I’ve gotten with believers, I’ve never actually been tempted to join an atheist group. Partly, that’s because it’s hard to avoid the white men ruining it for the rest of us by using atheism as just another platform for a macho power struggle. Atheism offers no guarantee of other shared ideas or philosophies – and when white male atheist leaders and communities act racist, Islamophobicand misogynistic, I find myself wishing that there were another way to describe my non-beliefs.

It’s sad. The “movement” could have been good, but it took a wrong turn and then a whole bunch of wrong turns and here we are – a big swathe of atheists repulsed by organized atheism.

The piece is from January, by the way. The situation has improved out of all recognition since then.

Hahahahaha totally kidding, no it hasn’t.

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

So people set up a Twitter account for Galloway’s victims.

A Twitter account has been set up to offer free legal advice to those apparently being sued by George Galloway.

…

A number of people reported being sent a letter written by lawyers acting on behalf of the Respect MP, informing them that they need to pay over £6,000 each, according to The Times.

In response the @SuedByGalloway account has sprung up purporting to put people in touch with solicitors and lawyers who can offer them free legal advice on the issue.

Those behind the account – who wish to remain anonymous – told the Huffington Post UK: “We are doing this because we are disgusted with the way Galloway is threatening and intimidating people on Twitter thus attempting to stifle free speech and free expression.”

There has been a lot of response.

One of the lawyers helping those behind the account is Mark Lewis of Seddons Solicitors who has past form helping people defend against libel claims who normally wouldn’t be able to pay the legal costs.

He confirmed his involvement to the Huffington Post and said: “It must have been very frightening for individuals to get demands for £5000 plus VAT for the legal costs for sending one letter.

“Someone has to stand up to this type of demand. I have advised that a report be made to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority in respect of such action.”

Quite right. And the next day, so it came about.

A legal firm acting for Respect MP George Galloway will be reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), it has emerged.

…

Lewis, who was a leading figure in the News of the World hacking scandal confirmed to the Huffington Post UK that he would be making a complaint to the SRA on behalf of three clients on Wednesday.

Informing Legal Cheek the costs demanded in the letters “could never be justified”, he said: “A lawyer’s duty is to stand up for people who cannot otherwise defend themselves from very threatening demands. Mr Galloway’s solicitors claimed £5,000 plus VAT for standard letters on top of damages. That is horrific and brings the solicitor’s profession into disrepute.

“Mr Galloway’s spokesman says that the letters weren’t shown to the client before they were sent. This is a matter of practice and the SRA must investigate.”

Dreadful man. I hope he is humiliated and baffled.

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

Well this is just a damn disgrace – Robert Kennedy Junior wants to show Oregon state senators a movie about mercury-containing preservative in some vaccines. Why? Because

He plans to urge them to vote against a bill that — with an amendment — would eliminate nonmedical exemptions from Oregon’s school immunization law.

The invitation came via emails to senators on Monday. Sens. Laurie Monnes Anderson, D-Gresham, Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, D-Beaverton, and Tim Knopp, R-Bend, confirmed to the Statesman Journal that they were invited to the screening.

Knopp said on Tuesday that Kennedy reached out to him on Sunday — presumably because Knopp is leading the opposition against Senate Bill 442 — and said he was interested in talking with the senators about the bill.

During a measles outbreak in Oregon, he plans to do this. It’s a disgrace.

“He’s very concerned about parental consent on this issue,” Knopp said. “He’s opposed to the bill with the amendments and wanted to talk to some senators.”

In the email that was obtained by the Statesman Journal, Kennedy writes that lawmakers and their staffers are invited to the screening of the documentary “Trace Amounts” at Cinebarre in downtown Salem and that he plans to hold a question-and-answer session afterward.

“I consider this issue so important not just for Oregon but for the entire country that I wanted to make the trip to Salem to further educate lawmakers,” the email reads.

He considers it so important to persuade legislators to let parents continue to put their children and everyone else at risk of a preventable disease. How public-spirited of him.

Kennedy wrote a book published last year about thimerosal, which has been phased out of most vaccines, except for flu shots. He argues that thimerosal is associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there’s no evidence of that.

Well Robert Kennedy Junior doesn’t need evidence; he’s a Kennedy.

Oregon has the nation’s highest nonmedical vaccine exemption rate for kindergarteners, at about 7 percent. However, there are numerous enclaves in local communities where the exemption rates reach double digits. That has been alarming for public health and medical professionals, who say a certain level of community immunization rates need to be maintained to prevent against disease outbreaks.

Ah but Robert Kennedy Junior knows better; he’s a Kennedy.

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

Priyamvada Gopal adds more to the picture of the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh and the documentary and the reactions against it. I’ve disagreed with Gopal in the past and thought I was going to again, but in the end she makes good points.

She does some rather annoying sneering at Udwin on the way there though.

Udwin’s elevation to the status of free speech martyr and the ensuing controversy is likely to boost the viewing figures in Britain for a film that she describes as having been made through enormous personal sacrifice. She has stressed her abdication of home comforts to travel with Conradian determination to explore “the blackest recesses of the human heart”. Indian feminists, on the other hand, have expressed unease – not only with the timing of the documentary’s broadcast which might, they fear, result in a further trial by media of the accused, already fast-tracked through the judicial system because of the public outcry, but also with some of the premises both of the film and the associated “Daughters of India” global campaign against sexual violence to be launched next week at a star-studded New York screening.

As the leading feminist campaigner and Secretary of the All-India Progressive Women’s Association, Kavita Krishnan, notes, Indian anti-rape protestors themselves have unambiguously rejected the patriarchal language which denotes women as daughters, wives or sisters entitled to protection in that capacity rather than as human beings who will assert themselves and resist attacks on their bodies and rights.

Indian women’s rights campaigners – who, as it happens, have been active and vocal on the question of rape for decades before December 2012, even if that miserable event galvanised a wave of impressive fresh protests – frequently find themselves wedged between Indian patriarchs who deny that rape is a serious problem or blame it on westernisation, and the well-meaning but often ill-informed “maternalism” of some western feminist quarters that lay the blame on a particularly retrograde mindset in India.

Oh yeah? I know plenty of Indian feminists who lay the blame on a particularly retrograde mindset in India. I’m a little surprised that Gopal doesn’t seem to know any.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not claiming that the US has a fabulous track record on this issue. Ha – what a sour joke. But I have a hard time imagining a US defense lawyer boasting that he would gather the whole family to watch as he set fire to his daughter for messing around. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there are such lawyers, and they’re just not reported in the media. But in any case, there’s no shortage of Indian feminists who are outraged at the mindset that says men get to punish women who go out at night by raping them and yanking their intestines out.

But then she does go on to make a worthwhile point. (Worthwhile by my lights, yes.)

Rape can be a perfectly modern weapon that is intimately connected to other systems of privilege, exploitation and inequality, including, in the Indian context, caste oppression, religious chauvinism, resource appropriation (including that of mineral-rich land from indigenous tribal communities by multinational corporations) and the vicious economic inequalities fostered by an unfettered capitalism prosperity that has yet to bring basic shelter and nourishment to millions.

To talk about rape in terms of a savage cultural psyche locked to the past is to miss the dense wood for the most exotic trees if that discussion does not examine how the same government appealed to now by Udwin is backed by Hindu right-wing political groups which allegedly wielded mass rape as a weapon against Muslim women in Gujarat in 2002 where Modi was chief minister. (One Hindu supremacist recently called for even dead Muslim women to be raped). To not note the ways in which rape has been systematically used to keep Dalit women and communities “in their place” by upper-castes threatened by change is to fail rape victims.

I don’t see any obvious tension between the two, but the reminder is useful.

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

Leslee Udwin is appealing to Narendra Modi not to ban her documentary about the gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh – but of course Modi is not the guy to undo that kind of ban. Modi is a Hindu nationalist, a right-wing patriot; of course he’s not going to listen to some liberal woman from the UK who is sullying India’s good name.

Shortly before her statement was released, the parliamentary affairs minister, M Venkaiah Naidu, declared: “We can ban the film in India. But this is an international conspiracy to defame India. We will see how the film can be stopped abroad too.”

Yeah good luck with that.

In her appeal on Wednesday, Udwin said: “India should be embracing this film – not blocking it with a kneejerk hysteria without even seeing it. This was an opportunity for India to continue to show the world how much has changed since this heinous crime. Sadly … the banning of the film will see India isolated in the eyes of the world. It’s a counterproductive move.”

For India as a whole, yes. For Modi’s party, maybe not so much.

India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh, told parliament that the government would ensure that “under no condition should this documentary be telecast … no one should show it on electronic media.”

The government would also block the dissemination of the film on any other platform, such as a web portal or on social media, he said.

Singh assured parliament that the Indian government was already exploring ways of stopping the worldwide broadcast. A notice had been sent to BBC4, which will show the film on Sunday in Britain, he said. “We will not allow anyone to leverage such unfortunate incidents [the 2012 Delhi rape] for commercial benefits,” he added.

A notice? What sort of notice? “We demand that you not show this documentary”? What does he mean they will not allow? They can’t not allow. They have no say in the matter.

It’s all just pandering to the constituents, no doubt, but it’s repellent all the same.

However, a BBC spokeswoman confirmed that India’s Daughter would be broadcast as planned. “This harrowing documentary, made with the full support and cooperation of the victim’s parents, provides a revealing insight into a horrific crime that sent shockwaves around the world and led to protests across India demanding changes in attitudes towards women,” she said.

“The film handles the issue responsibly and we are confident the programme fully complies with our editorial guidelines. The BBC will broadcast Storyville – India’s Daughter, in the UK on BBC4. The documentary has the backing of a number other public service broadcasters; however, the BBC is only responsible for transmission of the film in the UK.”

The film is also due to be broadcast in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Canada.

But not the US, it would appear. I suppose PBS is too squeamish, or maybe it spent the whole budget on Downton Fucking Abbey.

The controversy over India’s Daughter has demonstrated how deeply divided India is on how to deal with violence against women.

The film is facing both vociferous criticism and support inside and outside parliament. “We have to confront the issue that many men in India do not respect women,” said Anu Aga, an MP and one of the country’s few top female industrialists.

“What the man [Mukesh Singh] spoke reflects the views of many men in India. Why are we shying away from that? Let’s be aware of the view and not pretend all is well.”

It’s about ethics in private bus driving.

Sunita Krishnan, a campaigner against rape who, like Udwin, is a rape survivor, described India’s Daughter as “a mirror for introspection”.

“It’s a fact that rapist language has been heard from prominent leaders in the country also,” she said. “By exposing a criminal’s mindset you’re not glorifying a rapist. The film is a platform for collective condemnation of such mindsets.”

I’m guessing Modi and his friends don’t want a platform for collective condemnation of such mindsets. Just a hunch.

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

Nick Cohen informs us that Tell Mama is being torn apart by Islamists usurping Tell Mama’s liberal message.

Tell Mama is Britain’s most prominent opponent of anti-Muslim prejudice. It monitors everything from criminal assaults to everyday abuse. The far right loathes it, and the Conservative press sells the grotesque pretence that the group exaggerates prejudice to divert attention from the horror of Islamist violence.

But attacks from the right only wound. Tell Mama’s ‘friends’ in the Muslim community have turned out to be far more dangerous and are threatening to destroy the organisation. ‘I am on a knife edge,’ one activist told me. ‘I may just leave. I’m so fed up.’

There’s the presence of Islamists in Baroness Warsi’s Whitehall working group on anti-Muslim hatred, for one thing.

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell Mama and a former adviser to Nick Clegg, told the Sunday Telegraph he was so concerned ‘about the kinds of groups some of the members had connections with, and some of the groups they were recommending be brought into government’ that he left Warsi’s committee.

Warsi is attempting to push Fiyaz Mughal back into line, Nick says.

While pressure was applied in private, a public campaign began on Twitter under the hashtag ‘Don’t Tell Mama’. It urged Muslims to wreck the organisation by boycotting it. Tell Mama’s critics accused it of being soft on the ‘heretical’ Ahmadi sect, soft on liberal Muslims who say cartoons of Mohammed don’t offend them, and soft on Jews.

In other words, liberal. Islamists don’t want no stinkin liberal.

Tell Mama knows a truth that it has taken my generation of liberal leftists half a lifetime to learn: there are two far rights in Britain. The group documents the behaviour of mainly white racists: thugs who spit at women in headscarves. But because it believes in universal values, it works with all who are victims of bigotry. Tell Mama’s board includes a Muslim support group for lesbians and gays, and Peter Tatchell, that indomitable fighter against homophobia, is also on it. Just as Tell Mama attacks prejudices against Muslims, so it defends homosexuals when Muslim clerics compare them to murderers and paedophiles.

Universal values and universal rights.

…the group’s enemies care nothing for consistent principles. They want others to condemn hatred against Muslims from white extremists, but not Muslim extremists’ hatred of Ahmadis, liberal Muslims or Jews.

Tell Mama may win through. But the people I’m talking to sound as if the stress is too much for them. If they go under, we will measure the triumph of sectarianism in yet more demands for double standards and restrictions on free speech, and yet more excuses for terror. In ways too few appreciate, however, we will also measure the awful consequences for British Muslims. In the East End of London, just down the road from where I am writing, the unemployment rate among Bangladeshis is astonishingly high. Hardly anyone talks about it, because blocks of British Asians are now identified as ‘the Muslims’, men and women interested only in religion.

It’s a deflection, in other words. Poverty and unemployment don’t matter, as long as no one is “offended” by a cartoon. That’s bad politics any way you look at it.

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

Originally a comment by Nini Thomas on “In our culture, there is no place for a woman.”

“India’s daughter” is being banned, great job by our government, kudos!!! Looks like this has invoked more furor than the rape case. The views expressed by the rapist is not new, these views have been expressed by so many people across India. This just goes on to prove that our so called culture is more worried about Log kya kahenge (What will others say!!).

We have had so many candle light marches, but it has failed to light our hearts and remove the darkness in our mindsets.

Our biggest achievement as a country was the successful mission to Mars, I hope that this mission helps us get a better insight on how men think and feel… maybe next mission should be to Venus to know where things are going wrong for women.

Even today I have seen mothers telling their little boys as young as 5 years, “Boys don’t cry, Boys don’t cook” and the words of wisdom for girls are “ Don’t play with boys, don’t talk loudly, help your mothers in the kitchen etc.”
I don’t have anything against girls entering kitchen, or talking softly, but are we not engraving this gender divide in our families by saying so…

Even today if a women is married off, and she has to by all means reduce the amount of time she spends with her family, after all she no longer belongs to that house. I know women who say that they don’t like going to house town for vacation because, they need to spend more time in husband’s house, and if they wish to go to their house, it’s a favor and not a right.

Women should not express opinion on any topic when men are talking. It is a sad truth that working women are not as liberated as it looks, they shoulder dual responsibility; work at office, come back and do the work as a housewife, mother and wife. In case she can’t handle it, she can quit the job and sit at home, after all her salary is supplementary and not so important. When will we understand that job does not always boil down to money, it much more…but when will we understand.

Yes I do have lot of fury within me, but it’s for me to decide how I vent it out, either I burn the whole world, or mold the next generation by inculcating better values in my children. Fathers, respect your wife… Respect other women in your life – mother, sister etc…. Mothers, be an example to your daughter, and show to your son’s how they should treat women.

Women time to rise and say I don’t want to be treated like a down trodden, I don’t need reservations, I will rise and stand, yes it’s right to raise your voice, we don’t need others to talk for us, we need to dust off a lot of age old taboos, and open our minds and say “No one can screw our lives, we have control over it”!!!!

Indian culture has no place for women is a statement which encapsulates the views of how women are looked at….

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