Sometimes movie stars put their celebrity to good use.

Europe’s first academic centre to combat the brutality faced by women in warzones has been opened in London by Angelina Jolie, who called for “the empowerment of women to be the highest priority for the finest minds, in the best academic institutions”.

Jolie, a special envoy for the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), has just returned from northern Iraq, where she met some of the millions of refugees forced to flee from their homes due to Islamic State (Isis) violence. She said students of the centre on women, peace and security at the London School of Economics (LSE) had the chance to change the world.

That seems like a good thing to have.

The Hollywood actor, director and international women’s rights campaigner was joined at LSE by the former UK foreign secretary William Hague. The pair have worked together for three years on an initiative to prevent sexual violence in conflict.

A four-day summit hosted by Jolie and Hague in June last year, as part of the UK government’s Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict initiative, resulted in a protocol signed by 151 countries and the LSE’s centre on women, peace and security is the latest step in trying to combat the use of rape as a weapon of war.

The groundbreaking LSE centre on women, peace and security will gather key thinkers, activists, policymakers and academics together in order to better tackle intransigent global problems such as the prosecution of warzone rapists and women’s engagement in politics.

Thumbs up.

Asked after her speech why it had taken so long for sexual violence to gain the world’s attention, Jolie said: “My emotional response is: I have no idea. I find it abhorrent and it makes absolutely no sense to me that we know that girls are being are being sold into sexual slavery; that when a woman is raped she is forced from her community; that girls as young as nine are being married off.

“I cannot fathom why it has taken so long. I cannot fathom why it has ever been alright to treat women this way.”

Christine Chinkin, professor of law at LSE and head of the new centre, said it would provide an opportunity to further her long-term commitment “to ending the marginalisation of woman’s human rights in academia, including the right of women to be free from all forms of violence”.

Yessssssss – I would love to see that marginalization and normalization ended. Good luck to them.

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

One woman killed by an abusive husband.

Mumtahina Jannat was killed by her abusive husband, Abdul Kadir, in 2011 after surviving years of being drugged, beaten and raped by him.

The abuse had started since she married Kadir at the age of 16, and continued till her death at the age of 28.

She’d approached various doctors, case workers and lawyers, but didn’t receive the support necessary to leave her husband and have sole custody of her children.

Her niece Onjali Rauf, who founded an anti-abuse charity called Making Herstory after Jannat’s death, has now spoken out saying that one of the biggest problems was that professionals all dismissed Jannat’s abuse as “a typical Asian situation”.

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

That Washington Post article that Glenn Greenwald linked to – it’s by Michelle Boorstein yesterday, on the (cough) tensions between atheism and Islam.

On Wednesday, the father of the two women said one of his daughters had mentioned Hicks’ before and felt he was anti-Muslim. A week ago, he said, she told her family she had  “a hateful neighbor.”

“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice near Chapel Hill, told The News Observer.

Later on Wednesday, Hicks’s wife insisted that the shooting was only due to parking arguments and not to any bigotry. “I can say with my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or victims faith, but in fact was related to the long-standing parking disputes that my husband had with the neighbors. ” Karen Hicks said during a news conference.

Notice a problem with that? It was a fucking parking dispute. Who the hell murders three people over a parking space? Citing “long-standing parking disputes” really doesn’t do anything to fill the yawning void between a parking dispute, however longstanding, and murdering three people.

But reports that an outspoken atheist — most of Hicks’ many Facebook posts railed against religion — had attacked a family who were visibly Muslim (the women wore headscarves) tapped immediately into a conversation that has been going on since Sept. 11 about why several of atheism’s biggest figures have singled out Islam for criticism.

Among them are biologist and writer Richard Dawkins and neuroscientist Sam Harris, who have both triggered controversy with their comments about Islam.

And therein lies a whole different problem, which is that both of those examples of Atheism’s Biggest Figures are annoyingly crude and simplistic in what they say in public about Islam. Dawkins in particular thinks it’s useful to keep cranking out eye-poking tweets about Islam as a way to…whatever: fix it or lure people away from it or startle people into paying more attention to it. He’s wrong to think that’s useful. It’s the opposite of useful. It makes him look like a jerk who likes poking people in the eye, and by extension it makes all atheists look like that. This is one reason out of many I wish we had different, better Atheism’s Biggest Figures.

The tensions have been central enough that umbrella secular and atheist groups Wednesday were quick to release statements condemning the Chapel Hill killings. Ron Lindsay, president of the skeptics’ group Center for Inquiry[,] said atheists have in the past held conferences on the topic of Islam and tried to “reach out for dialogue” but the overtures have been viewed skeptically by Muslims.

Lindsay and other secular groups said Wednesday that the atheists’ particular focus on Islam has been triggered by the comments of big-name celebrities like Harris.

“I don’t think he’s an Islamophobe. But it’s fair to say in his writings that he portrays Islam as inherently more violen[ce]-prone than other religions and that has had an effect on some people, maybe an unintended [e]ffect. A lot of people tend to see Muslims in their mind a[s] more of a threat and tend to lump Muslims together,” Lindsay said. “To try and put things in focus, clearly we’re concerned about Islamic extremism, but we always make this clear, this is a small minority of Muslims.”

I’m tired of having to live with the unintended effects of Harris and Dawkins being provocative. I think they’re both clumsy at it; I think they’re both rude rather than wittily challenging, which I think is what they intend. I think they’re both very full of their own importance and prickly when disputed. I’m tired of having them as putative Leaders.

Meanwhile, a group of atheists is raising money to donate to a cause championed by one of the Muslim victims. Barakat, whose family was from Syria, had started a crowd-sourcing campaign to collect donations for the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation. His “Refugee Smiles,” focuses on providing dental care to refugees of the Syrian War in Turkey.

“There are conflicting reports about what the motivation was,” said Dale McGowan, executive director of the humanist nonprofit, Foundation Beyond Belief, a national organization based in Atlanta. “It doesn’t matter. It’s someone who identified with our community. We need to make a strong statement against the act.”

Quite right. The conflicting reports don’t matter: he was part of the atheist community and we need to repudiate the whole thing – the leader-worship, the male-centrism, the belligerent tweets, the hostility for its own sake. Enough already.

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

Glenn Greenwald tried to school Maajid Nawaz. That didn’t go well.

Maajid posted a screenshot.

@ggreenwald @SamHarrisOrg as if to say “those poor natives are just born like that and we must patronisingly defend everything about them”

Aka the racism of low expectations.

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

Pope pope pope. You really should learn to think before you speak. NPR says why.

Pope Francis said that couples who opt not to have children are being “selfish” as he spoke of a “greedy generation” that’s choosing not to procreate.

Think, pope pope. Slow down, stop talking, take a breath, and think.

Any luck yet?

Pope pope, you opted not to have children yourself. Officially. You look very fucking stupid saying things like that, given your own choices.

I know – you expect us to treat that as different, because it’s part of your ReLigIon. Nope. Not gonna do that. It’s not different, it’s the same, so you have no standing to go tut tut at everyone.

That’s before we get to the fact that it’s terrible advice at a time when the planet may be tipping into a rapid slide to drought and famine and mass extinction.

Speaking at his general audience in St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday, Francis talked on the joy of children and their importance in society, at one point reminiscing about his own mother.

“A society with a greedy generation, that doesn’t want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society,” the pope said. “The choice to not have children is selfish. Life rejuvenates and acquires energy when it multiplies: It is enriched, not impoverished.”

Except, of course, when the ice caps are melting and the rivers are shrinking and the coral reefs are dying and the crops are failing.

I suppose he thinks his buddy God will intervene at the last minute and reverse all that, and then we’ll want all those extra babies.

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

Peter Tatchell spoke at the “Sharia law, apostasy and secularism” conference in London last Saturday, the one that Maryam organized.

Although Sharia law is not the law of the UK, there have been repeated and on-going attempts by Islamists to apply Sharia principles in law and education, in a bid to make these public institutions Sharia-accommodating. This is a direct threat to human rights; most notably to the human rights of UK Muslims.

…

Speaker after speaker last Saturday warned of an Islamist agenda of stealthy, creeping, subtle Sharification. This involves sustained attempts by Islamists to pressure public institutions, in the name of religious freedom and multiculturalism, to make special allowances for their reactionary sectarian clerical values.

By Islamists, please note, not Muslims. Most Christians are not Christianists and most British Muslims are not Islamists.

The conference organiser Maryam Namazie made an impassioned plea:

“Islamism is an international far-right movement that has murdered innumerable Charlie Hebdos over several decades across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, including many Muslims who have dared to…live twenty-first century lives (that are) prohibited by the Islamists. Being a woman, a freethinker, being gay, being unveiled, improperly veiled, an atheist, going to school, driving a car, having sex, falling in love, laughing out loud, dancing….’offends’ them. Calling for civility, censorship, silence or ‘respect’ for the ‘offended’ is merely heeding the Islamist demand for submission (to clerical authority) at the expense of dissenters – whether (they) be Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia or Roya Nobakht in Iran.”

Far-right, not far-left. Right-wing, not left-wing.

Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters, saluted those who continue to “bravely challenge deadly religious far-right movements whose end game is to shut down secular democratic spaces and to terrorise us into silence. The time has come to….reject the politics of hatred, whether emanating from the racist far-right or the religious far-right.”

Another conference speaker, Marieme Helie Lucas, founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue, warned against:

“A growing restriction on our freedoms and civil rights in the name of religious tolerance; an endless abandonment of secular values….(and of) equal rights to all citizens – agnostics, atheists and believers alike. We are heading towards unequal rights and different laws for different categories of citizens – all condoned by ‘democratic’ states. The right to practice according to one’s own belief should not supersede universal rights.”

Hold that thought.

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

A really gruesome thought has occurred to me.

First, fair warning: I’m speculating about the motives of Craig Hicks in killing the three people in that Chapel Hill condo. I know it’s stupid to speculate about the motives of killers in the absence of knowledge…but that ship has sailed. People already are speculating about the motives, and if we – by which I mean we vocal atheists – stay silent we just come across as evasive or worse.

Plus there’s the fact that it looks like a hate crime against Muslims because Muslims, and there was anger at the fact that it wasn’t being reported.For that reason too I think we shouldn’t ignore it.

So I’m speculating; that is, I’m trying to think about what might be his motives, or perhaps more accurately what set him off.

We don’t know; we don’t know that he went to their condo to complain about parking and then flipped out, but that seems to be one likely explanation. It doesn’t seem to fit a planned murder of three people for the crime of being Muslim, or a planned murder of three or two people or one person for parking in his parking spot. We don’t know, but suppose the story is that somebody parked in his spot and he went to the condo to make another fuss about parking.

What has occurred to me is that when he went there he found a man, and two women in hijabs. Two. It has occurred to me that he could have flipped out because of the two women in the condo. He had encountered Deah Barakat and Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha before, but perhaps he’d never seen Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha before. I don’t suppose he got into a friendly chat with them about who’s visiting from out of town. It has occurred to me that he may have seen a second woman there and leapt to the conclusion that Deah was going in for polygamy, right there in the same condo complex with him, and flipped out.

I don’t know, obviously. It’s sheer speculation. But there is a big gap between going to someone’s door to complain about parking, and shooting three people in the head. A huge gap.

It is a horribly gruesome thought.

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

Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha’s best friend talks about her and about the murders. She’s very generous, and very level-headed.

As told to Latoya Peterson.

Words can’t really describe who she was. She’s such an amazing person. I feel like people always say that after they lose someone. This isn’t to boost her after her death—she really was a good person.

She always put others ahead of herself, just like her husband, Deah Barakat. I am the person I am today because of her. She’s a really sweet person, you never catch her angry. She’s patient, very loving, like her mom, she’s caring. She’s a good person. She was newly married and getting used to that life transition. She had just been accepted at Chapel Hill for dentistry.

Over the summer, Yusor went to Turkey. I’m a teacher at a small private school in Raleigh, and my school ran a collection drive for Project Refugee Smiles. My students were so excited to help. They collected so many toothbrushes and packages of dental floss that Yusor couldn’t carry it—she had to pay extra bag fees. She went with her mom to assist.

Not someone we could afford to lose, if you ask me.

I don’t know if I believe she was targeted for her beliefs. I don’t think so – I think the shooter, Craig Steven Hicks, is just an angry person. I know Yusor didn’t do anything to him – there’s no way she could have said even one thing wrong to him because she doesn’t get mad. She never says anything back even if someone yells at her. Her husband is even nicer, her sister is even nicer – none of them would have said anything to make someone that angry.

Three lives literally are gone just to justify…whatever he was thinking.

That’s what I mean by generous. Just an angry person – that’s a very unvindictive explanation.

I understand people look down on our religion. They think a lot of things, like we are terrorists. People don’t understand us Muslims are embarrassed of these people who are using Islam in bad ways to justify being cruel. Yusor and Deah represented a big part of our community—they were two good Muslims. Yusor believes in her religion. She is peaceful and she was raised well. She chose a healthy way of life. We weren’t extreme. We are the middle path. We aren’t strict on stuff outside of the head covering. I think there is a lot of misinterpretation of what Islam is.

I can’t understand why someone would hate them enough to kill them.

I read articles about this guy and they say he’s an atheist, but I don’t really know if that’s the connection the media makes it out to be. I’m not really sure if he thinks his act is justified.

Honestly, I don’t want to say, “Why her?” because I don’t want this to happen to anyone. What we’ve been feeling over the last 12 hours I don’t want anyone to ever feel.

More generosity.

I have so many questions for him.

She’s so young. Would you not let her blossom a bit more? What went through your mind? I mean, as you pulled the trigger you clearly killed people. You killed one, then you killed a second time, a third time. And you walked away from the scene. You took three young people. I don’t know if he has kids but how could you do that to someone’s child? And then just walk away. What is his motive? I wonder what would have happened if we were there? Would he have killed us all, since we were a bunch of hijabis? I can’t imagine. I have so many questions I don’t know how to word them all. And I want to know exactly what happened, all the details. I need to know.

There’s more. It’ll break your heart if you read it.

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

The Huffington Post has some more details on Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, and on Craig Hicks.

Barakat and Mohammad were newlyweds who helped the homeless and raised funds to help Syrian refugees in Turkey this summer. They met while running the Muslim Student Association at N.C. State before he began pursuing an advanced degree in dentistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mohammad planned to join her husband in dentistry school in the fall.

Abu-Salha was visiting them Tuesday from Raleigh, where she was majoring in design at N.C. State.

She was visiting. If she’d been in Raleigh she’d still be alive.

Imad Ahmad, who lived in the condo where his friends were killed until Barakat and Mohammed were married in December, said Hicks complained about once a month that the two men were parking in a vistor’s space as well as their assigned spot.

“He would come over to the door. Knock on the door and then have a gun on his hip saying ‘you guys need to not park here,'” said Ahmad, a graduate student in chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill. “He did it again after they got married.”

Both Hicks and his neighbors complained to the property managers, who apparently didn’t intervene. “They told us to call the police if the guy came and harassed us again,” Ahmad said.

“This man was frustrated day in and day out about not being able to park where he wanted to,” said Karen Hicks’ attorney, Robert Maitland.

And then there’s his favorite movie…

Hicks’ ex-wife, Cynthia Hurley, said that before they divorced about 17 years ago, his favorite movie was “Falling Down,” the 1993 Michael Douglas film about a divorced unemployed engineer who goes on a shooting rampage.

“That always freaked me out,” Hurley said. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all,” she said.

I’ve always avoided seeing that movie, because the premise revolts me, and this is why. Most people obviously don’t take that kind of inspiration from that kind of movie, but then there are the others…

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

The Charlotte [North Carolina] Observer reports that the father of the two women murdered in Chapel Hill says it was a hate crime.

…the women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice in Clayton, said regardless of the precise trigger Tuesday night, Hicks’ underlying animosity toward Barakat and Abu-Salha was based on their religion and culture. Abu-Salha said police told him Hicks shot the three inside their apartment.

“It was execution style, a bullet in every head,” Abu-Salha said Wednesday morning. “This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

Abu-Salha said his daughter who lived next door to Hicks wore a Muslim head scarf and told her family a week ago that she had “a hateful neighbor.”

“Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look,’” he said.

The police and prosecutors are still investigating.

Chapel Hill police found all three victims dead at the scene, after responding to a report of gunshots on Summerwalk Circle at 5:11 p.m. Tuesday. A woman who called 911 described hearing gunshots as she walked through the complex of apartments and condominiums adjacent to the Friday Center.

“I heard about eight shots go off in an apartment – I don’t know the number – about three girls, more than one girl, screaming, and then there was nothing,” the unidentified caller said. “And then I heard about three more shots go off.”

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

Mayim Bialik, the anti-vax tv star, has a Facebook post saying she is not either anti-vax so stop being poopy to her.

i would like to dispel the rumors about my stance on vaccines. i am not anti-vaccine. my children are vaccinated. there has been so much hysteria and anger about this issue and i hope this clears things up as far as my part.

It’s not rumors. I’ve read interviews in which she explains why she’s anti-vax. Tara Smith at Science blogs has more:

So did she really change her mind and her stance?

If so, why? Or is she just jumping on the “I’m not anti-vaccine” bandwagon like Jenny McCarthy and others who claim not to be anti-vaccine, but at the same time spew vaccine fear and misinformation? Are her kids fully vaccinated, or did they only have the ones she mentioned previously (such as polio for international travel)? Is she walking back statements that are basically anti-vaccine talking points, and removing her support of anti-vaccine doctors like Bob Sears and Lauren Feder (or her own pediatrician, Jay Gordon)?

I really hope so. But I won’t hold my breath, and take her statements that she’s “not anti-vaccine” with a big grain of salt. After all, that statement, itself, is often an anti-vaccine talking point.

Bialik’s post doesn’t look like a change of mind at all. It looks like saying she’s not anti-vax and never has been, which is very different from saying she was and has now fortunately changed her mind.

And she has the gall to be miffed about what she calls “hysteria and anger.” Yeah gee why would anyone be angry that Hollywood celebrities use their fame to help promote an anti-vax stance that can help to trigger epidemics? Don’t forget, measles was eradicated in the US until the anti-vax bullshit got going.

Shame on you, Mayim Bialik.

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

Damn. Twitter is full of photos of the three murdered students and they’re heartbreaking. They looked so happy…

There’s also a Facebook for them set up by their families.

One post -

Yusor dancing with her father at her wedding. Her wedding was a little more than a month ago.

May Allah have mercy on the bride and groom in paradise.

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

Three students were murdered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina yesterday, two sisters and the husband of one of them. All three were Muslims, but the police are saying the shooting may have been to do with a parking dispute.

A 46-year-old man has been charged with murder in the shooting deaths of three students in an apartment near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

Police said “an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking” may have been a factor in the shootings Tuesday evening.

The suspect, Craig Stephen Hicks, turned himself in to police later in the night and is being held in the Durham County Jail without bond. He was cooperating with investigators, police said Wednesday morning.

You know what? He’s on Facebook. He’s a vocal atheist. I’m not FB friends with him but I have no fewer than 49 mutual friends with him, which is creepy as hell.

Ex-Muslims of North America posted on the subject an hour ago; a public post.

This is an atrocity and should be condemned as such, by Muslims and atheists alike. We, more than anyone, understand the dangers Islamism pose to individuals and to the world. But no matter what, opposition to Islamism CANNOT become opposition to Muslims. We stand in solidarity with the Muslim community – violence is never the answer.

It’s been becoming ever more apparent over the past few years (it was apparent to some people all along, and I’m not one of those people – I was wrong) that combative atheism is attractive to a lot of mean, belligerent, hostile, sadistic people. I still think a certain amount of combativeness is necessary for movements of social change, but…now I spy a danger, to quote Polonius or whoever it was.

About those three students whose lives were taken away from them -

The victims were Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.

Barakat was Mohammad’s husband; Abu-Salha was her sister, the school said.

Barakat was a second-year student at the UNC School of Dentistry, who was raising money on a fundraising site to provide dental care to Syrian refugees in Turkey.

He had been married for just over a month to Yusor Mohammad, who was planning to begin her dental studies at UNC in the fall, according to the school.

Abu-Salha was a student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Horrendous.

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

Here’s George Galloway being disgusting in 2008, that time he said a gay man was executed in Iran not because he was gay but because he committed “sex crimes” – on the basis of nothing whatever, apparently.

Outspoken London MP George Galloway has said that the boyfriend of Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for sex crimes.

The Respect politician made his claims on Channel Five show The Wright Stuff yesterday morning.

Mr Kazemi is claiming asylum in the UK.

He claims his boyfriend was arrested by police in Iran for being homosexual, forced to reveal the names of men he had relationships with, and executed.

The 19-year-old also said there was a warrant for his arrest as a result of his boyfriend’s confession and he would face execution if he was returned.

But Galloway said don’t you believe it. Galloway said it was a calumny on that nice Iran.

Mr Galloway, the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, is well-known for his trenchant views and belief that there is a media conspiracy to portray Iran in a bad light.

“This is being used as part of the on-going propaganda against Iran,” he told presenter Matthew Wright yesterday.

“All the papers seem to imply that you get executed in Iran for being gay. That’s not true.”

Yes it is. It’s been documented. For years.

Matthew Wright: His boyfriend was hung though, wasn’t he?

George Galloway: Yes, but nor being gay. For uh, committing sex crimes, uh, against young men.

MW: Right …

GG: I mean, I’m against execution for any reason in any place, but it is important to avoid that propaganda.

Even when it’s true, apparently.

Gay rights group OutRage! has challenged Mr Galloway to provide proof of his assertions.

“We are calling on George Galloway to explain the source of his claim that Mehdi Kazemi’s boyfriend had committed sex crimes and this was the reason he was executed,” said OutRage! spokesperson Brett Lock.

“Neither OutRage! nor any other human rights group has seen any evidence to suggest that Mr Kazemi’s partner was a rapist or sex-abuser.

“Mr Galloway’s claim that gay people are not executed in Iran is refuted by every reputable human rights body, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.”

Well they’re not on Iran’s payroll.

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