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

Originally a comment by iknklast on Anxious love.

Where I live, they not only bully you if you don’t like football, but they are currently bullying a woman who moved here from somewhere else (Michigan), didn’t care about football, and had no desire to root for Michigan, but now because of the abuse (and yes, it is abuse!) is rooting for her football team hard and strong. Everyone acts like she has done something evil by maintaining a lifetime loyalty to where she grew up instead of being a convert to “our” state team (who will remain unnamed for now). To live and work in this state is to be required to bow down to the dominant football culture.

The sad part is that they do not think people leaving this state for somewhere else are required to adopt that local football team, but to remain loyal to “our” team. Loyalty for life if you are a “******”; drop the loyalty of any other team, and become a “******” if you move here.

(The reason I do not name the team is that I am not only personally not a fan but actively loathe them, and it is not safe for me to be seen hating on the team…I kid you not!)

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

I was going to mumble about Jonathan Chait’s much-discussed lament about “political correctness” but then I got caught up in my own laments about football mania. Now that I’ve got most of that off my chest, I want to say a little about what I think is both banal and wrong about Chait’s piece.

Here’s one banal and wrong place.

The recent mass murder of the staff members of Charlie Hebdo in Paris was met with immediate and unreserved fury and grief across the full range of the American political system. But while outrage at the violent act briefly united our generally quarrelsome political culture, the quarreling quickly resumed over deeper fissures. Were the slain satirists martyrs at the hands of religious fanaticism, or bullying spokesmen of privilege? Can the offensiveness of an idea be determined objectively, or only by recourse to the identity of the person taking offense?

You can tell you’re supposed to curl a lip in disdain at the last clause, and that’s why I think it’s wrong, indeed fatuous. Of course “identity” can make a difference to whether one finds a particular “idea” offensive or not. What a damn silly question. The “idea” that women are kind of stupid is particularly “offensive” (except that’s the wrong word) to women. The idea that black people should be stopped and frisked as often as possible is particularly “offensive” to black people. If that’s “political correctness”…then deal with it. He wants us to say no; he wants us to say all ideas can be evaluated independently of thoughts about the identity of the evaluater. Well guess what: that’s easy for him.

Another fatuity:

After political correctness burst onto the academic scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it went into a long remission. Now it has returned.

Oh please. What he means is, he wasn’t noticing it so much after the early 90s, and now he is again. He doesn’t know it was in remission all that time. What Jonathan Chait notices isn’t necessarily the same as what is.

There’s a flat-out mistake:

At a growing number of campuses, professors now attach “trigger warnings” to texts that may upset students, and there is a campaign to eradicate “microaggressions,” or small social slights that might cause searing trauma.

That’s not the point about microaggressions at all. Nobody thinks they cause “searing trauma” – that’s what the “micro” means. The point is that they add up; the point is drip drip drip; the point is hostile environment. He doesn’t even know what it is that he’s lamenting.

And then there’s his mindless certainty that this is just a lefty thing.

Political correctness is a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate.

As if the right never does that? As if the right doesn’t do everything it can to redefine terms to its liking? Death tax, right to life, pre-born child, family values, sanctity of marriage, tax and spend?

And then there’s the way he ignores huge swathes of reality.

…the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old.

It also makes money. Every media company knows that stories about race and gender bias draw huge audiences, making identity politics a reliable profit center in a media industry beset by insecurity.

Here’s a news flash – stories about race and gender bias can come from people who think race and gender bias is good, and from people who think concerns about race and gender bias are bad. They can come from racists and anti-feminists. They can and they do. If he thinks “p.c.” is riding some huge wave of success – again, that may be because he doesn’t know, because he’s insulated. He’s not a target of racists or anti-feminists. He can afford to worry about the onslaught of “p.c.”

There’s a good deal more dreck, but frankly I’m getting bored. He’s not an interesting writer. But there’s one place where he contradicts himself from one paragraph to the next, and I can’t tell what he wants to say. See if you can parse it.

Political correctness appeals to liberals because it claims to represent a more authentic and strident opposition to their shared enemy of race and gender bias. And of course liberals are correct not only to oppose racism and sexism but to grasp (in a way conservatives generally do not) that these biases cast a nefarious and continuing shadow over nearly every facet of American life. Since race and gender biases are embedded in our social and familial habits, our economic patterns, and even our subconscious minds, they need to be fought with some level of consciousness. The mere absence of overt discrimination will not do.

Liberals believe (or ought to believe) that social progress can continue while we maintain our traditional ideal of a free political marketplace where we can reason together as individuals. Political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal. While politically less threatening than conservatism (the far right still commands far more power in American life), the p.c. left is actually more philosophically threatening. It is an undemocratic creed.

See what I mean? Race and gender biases need to be fought, but political correctness challenges that bedrock liberal ideal of a free political marketplace. Ok, so…what? Fight the biases, or don’t fight them? I can’t tell what he thinks he means.

Maybe it’s my gender biases playing up.

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

Some US doctors are dropping patients who refuse to get their children vaccinated. Good.

With California gripped by a measles outbreak, Dr. Charles Goodman posted a clear notice in his waiting room and on Facebook: His practice will no longer see children whose parents won’t get them vaccinated.

“Parents who choose not to give measles shots, they’re not just putting their kids at risk, but they’re also putting other kids at risk — especially kids in my waiting room,” the Los Angeles pediatrician said.

You know…kids who are there because they are ill, and don’t need to be exposed to measles or mumps on top of that.

The American Academy of Pediatrics says doctors should bring up the importance of vaccinations during visits but should respect a parent’s wishes unless there’s a significant risk to the child.

“In general, pediatricians should avoid discharging patients from their practices solely because a parent refuses to immunize his or her child,” according to guidelines issued by the group.

So they should put all their other patients at risk. Bad advice, if you ask me. Unethical advice. Better to respect the other parents and their children than to “respect” the no-vaxxers.

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

While we’re kvetching about football…I wrote a column for the previous-to-current Free Inquiry about my dislike of the sport and its cult. (US football this is, not association football aka soccer.)

What’s so annoying about it is the crackpot assumption that everyone is wildly excited about football when after all sport is only one branch of human activity, and football is only one branch of sport. I, for one, like the other football, a.k.a. soccer, and then there is lacrosse, jai alai, bowls, darts, bocce. . . . There are many sports, and I dislike the assumption that in America we’re all supposed to share the enthusiasm for American football. I dislike the social bullying aspect of it, just as I dislike the social bullying of public religiosity or nationalism or mass mourning when a movie star dies suddenly.

If that were all, though, it would just be one among my rich assortment of peeves. But it’s not all. Football is not treated as just an enthusiasm or an entertainment. It’s taken very seriously, as a shaper of character and a source of values: not just workplace skills like discipline and teamwork, but Character. This is assumed more than argued for, in much the same way it’s assumed that religion is a key source of values and character. But what reason is there to think that football fosters good character?

Then I say a lot about what reason there is to think that it does the opposite. I say a lot about it, but I could have said more. I focused on Ray Rice and on Jerry Sandusky and Steubenville and other examples of football’s rape culture. Then I point out a pattern.

Football isn’t alone in showing this pattern. Many institutions have chronic long-running problems of sexual abuse that is concealed or dismissed—the Catholic Church, the military, universities. They all deal with it in-house instead of via law enforcement, and they are all now dealing with exposure of the festering results. Institutions have power and status, and important people within institutions have power and status. Both institutions, and the people within them, use that power and status to protect themselves at the expense of underlings and outsiders.

I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by any of this. It’s all obvious and predictable enough:of course high status tends to confer immunity from the social pressure and sanctions that keep the rest of us in line. Of course people who have high status exploit that fact. Of course humans have always thought that important people should have extra freedom of action, so that they can exercise their importance. Homer starts The Iliad with aristocrats behaving badly, and not much has changed. We set up institutions to try to organize and channel some of these forces, but then the institutions themselves develop some of the arrogance and refusal to be accountable that the top people have always had. Football and the cult that surrounds it are an unpleasantly strong example of the process.

Given all that, and more—such as the concussion issue and the NFL’s attempts to minimize and deny it—I refuse to treat football as any kind of sacred cow. I hope the Seattle Seahawks lose every game and all the “12” flags disappear.

I look forward to your letters.

The last line should be read in the voice of Craig Ferguson.

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

A Kate Smurthwaite gig tomorrow at Goldsmiths College –

Kate Smurthwaite will be performing her stand up show Leftie Cockwomble for all to enjoy! The show is about free speech, language and the media with some very interesting views on the Daily Mail and Frankie Boyle…
Doors 7pm for 8pm start!

The show is FREE for Goldsmiths Comedy Society members and the Feminist Society*

£4 OTD for general public

*This is only valid if you have paid your membership and you will be asked for your student number OTD

Monday 02 February 2015

7pm – 11pm

Oh wait. It’s off.

What? Why??

Because of bullshit, that’s why. Kate posted the “explanation” publicly on Facebook.

Comedian Kate Smurthwaite has had her scheduled performance at Goldsmiths College cancelled after security officials said they “could not guarantee the safety of students”.

The issue arose from a group of students who objected to Kate’s widely-recognised support for the Nordic Model on prostitution. This arrangement, currently in place in Sweden and Norway, decriminalises those who sell sex and criminalises the purchase of sex. The students from the college’s Feminist Society (FemSoc) support legalisation of the sex industry and for this reason threatened to picket the event causing security to pull the plug.

Kate says “The strangest thing is that my show is not about prostitution. I don’t even mention it. In a massively ironic coincidence my show is about free speech, it’s power and uses and abuses. It is also about Saudi prisoner of conscience Raif Badawi who is now being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“I find it very strange that anyone would feel they couldn’t enjoy a comedy show unless they agreed with 100% of the political views of the person performing. Goldsmiths have recently hosted Phil Kay and Rob Beckett – did anyone ask them what they think about fox hunting or all-female shortlists?”

Goldsmiths Feminist Society initially held a vote on whether they should support Kate’s appearance with 70% voting in favour of the show going ahead. However the losing minority announced they were going to form a picket line anyway and used Twitter to invite others from around the UK to join.

In a message from the organiser at Goldsmiths Comedy Society, who arranged the show, Kate was told “I asked you because I obviously admire you and enjoy your politics and comedy, but I have already had aggressive messages from the FemSoc and meeting with their ‘leader’ about it all.”

The show, a final London performance of Kate’s one woman Edinburgh Fringe political show Leftie Cock Womble, had been scheduled for Monday (2nd Feb) night and tickets had been on sale for several weeks.

That’s some bullshit there.

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

More celebration of Super Bowl Day by attacking the sacred institution of Murkan Football. Josh Spokes is on a tear on the subject, thanks to people treating football fandom as some sort of marginalized minority identity. Friends are making informative comments on his on-a-tear posts, and I sought and got permission to quote a couple.

Hope Stansfield:

Here’s the thing: I grew up in a rural and impoverished town in the Midwest. Football was a cultural juggernaut. It was a tool the privileged and powerful in that town used to demonstrate and exact their dominance, while also paying lip service to the idea that they weren’t viciously racist and bigoted – after all, if you could play football and not call them out, they’d treat you like a person.

I’m capable of seeing and appreciating the beauty of raw athleticism and tactics. But the culture of football is toxic.

I’m disturbed by the sexism, racism, and homophobia of football culture. I’m also disturbed by the way in which injured players – including those with devastating brain injuries – are discarded like trash.

Mai Dao:

When I was in high school, you were ostracized, and in some cases even bullied if you didn’t support football culture 100%. The jocks and the cheerleaders were notorious for picking on the nerds, the Drama club people, and the rest of us misfits. The only nerdy ones who escaped this bullying were anyone who was into band, because of course they were integral to the games.

Josh:

Nothing was more effective at allowing boys to terrorize sissies like me as the enforced football games as part of gym. It was a walking HORROR.

I can only imagine. There was a good deal of subtle but real ostracism around sports at my school, and it was a tiny private academic girls’ school. I would have to multiply my experience by 100 to come close to the normal experience at a public high school.

I wonder if some fandom is unconscious appeasement. “Don’t beat me up – I love your game! I’m not a jock, but I love love love your game, I swear it!”

Give me ballet any day.

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

It’s Super Bowl day. Normally I get to ignore this, which is how I like it, but ignoring it is not possible this year as it was not possible last year, because the team based in the city where I live is in it, as it was last year. In the god damn Super Bowl. The Seattle team is in it, for the second year in a row, and “the fans” won’t let anyone forget it. There are footballteam-patriotism decals EVERYWHERE – literally. You can’t go anywhere on foot or by bus or car without seeing them constantly. They’re hung in windows, on the external walls of buildings, on car antennas; they’re on gigantic flags flown from the Space Needle, downtown buildings, houses. Even the god damn buses have their electronic destination signs programmed to flash the name and logo of the team in between the destination names.

This pisses me off.

It’s bossy and intrusive and coercive. I don’t share the enthusiasm for football, and they shouldn’t be forcing it on me. This is partly just that it bores me and I don’t personally like it, yes, but it’s not only that. There’s a lot wrong with football itself or/and with the passion for it. It’s violent, for a start; not incidentally violent but violent as part of the game itself. It causes head injuries, which the NFL has concealed and lied about for years. It has a rape problem. It sucks up money and resources and attention that would be better used elsewhere. It’s exceptionally male and macho, and thus hostile to women. It’s used to make boys who don’t like it and/or aren’t physically built to play it feel inferior…and weak and girly, which, again, is hostile to women. It’s not some harmless neutral Fun Thing; it’s way more than that, and most of the more is bad stuff.

So, this xkcd is crap.

No.

If it were some weirdo sport I could see the point. But football? Give me a break. It’s not the case that people who don’t care about football have power over people who do care about football. I wish – if I did have power I would make everyone take those stinking flags down. No. Football is power; it’s all about power; it shouts power the second the players run onto the field looking like tanks with legs.

I hope the Patriots win. I detest football patriotism, so I hope the Patriots win.

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

Plain? Really? I gotta tell you, I don’t see it. Unless the standard is

1. the most gorgeous woman on earth
2. all other women

I don’t see how Colleen McCullough qualifies as “plain.”

We already know I don’t consider it necessary to announce in news items about women that they are or are not “plain” in the first place, but even putting that aside for the moment ad arguendo, I still don’t see how Colleen McCullough qualifies as “plain.”

Jezebel shares this photo:

I.don’t.see.the.plain.

The Huffington Post UK:

Seriously? Who looks at that and thinks “plain”?

She aged well, too. Check out the photo by Quentin Jones for the SMH in 2013. Take a quick look at the Google images search. The more pics I see, the less sense “plain” makes.

tigtog at Hoyden About Town shares a beauty -

THERE IS NOTHING PLAIN ABOUT THAT.

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

Colleen McCullough was a best-selling novelist, and more.

Before becoming a full-time author, McCullough was a researcher at Yale medical school. And in between her time in New Haven and her global literary pursuits, she established the neurophysiology department at Syndey’s Royal North Shore hospital. She published her first novel, Tim, in 1974; her last, Bittersweet, in 2013. She was still working on a sequel when she died yesterday, at age 77, in a hospital on Norfolk Island.

But who cares about all that, amirite? Was she hot?? Was she gorgeous, was she thin, did she wear clothes well, did she decorate the place? Or did she fall down on all that?

The second sentence of her obit in a rag called the Australian comes clean on her aesthetic failure:

Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless a woman of wit and warmth.

Well now how can that be? If you’re a woman who is plain of feature and certainly overweight, then obviously you’re also witless and cold. That’s god’s plan – you have beautiful women who are also warm and clever, and you have ugly women who are hostile and boring. It’s more fair that way.

Men, of course, are allowed to look like unmade beds. That’s god’s plan too.

Think Progress is scathing, although not really scathing enough.

This is the sort of idiocy you’d think someone at the paper might catch. An editor, perhaps. Someone on the copy desk. Literally any human who saw it. But nope, here it is, and we can’t even blame the punishing publish-first-think-later evils of the internet, for as you can see from the highlighted image above, this appeared in a Traditional Legacy Print Newspaper Made From Only The Finest Trees.

Well at least Twitter is making lemonade of this, under the hashtag #myozobituary.

I love Craig Ferguson’s.

Although a shouty malodorous vulgarian he nevertheless enjoyed most episodes of house hunters international. #MyOzObituary

But there are a lot of good ones. All by the beautiful of course; the other kind can’t do funny.

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

Originally a comment by Dave Ricks on What does Silicon Valley think of women?

The Newsweek cover works for me as satire, and I’ll explain in terms of syntax or form. By syntax, I mean a claim is equally valid in the active or passive voice. By form, I mean (for example) that jazz musicians call the chord changes to I Got Rhythm “rhythm changes” and (for example) most of the Charlie Parker tunes I know off the top of my head are launching pads to improvise over “rhythm changes” being a 32-bar AABA form.

All of us can instantly parse a single-frame editorial cartoon that shows a bad person behaving badly. My analogy here is to the active voice, to show (for example) a greedy narcissistic Wall Street person gaming the system for personal gain but a net loss to society. That syntax or form says, “This person is behaving badly.”

But there’s another syntax or form that some people have trouble parsing, like (for example) The New Yorker Obama fist bump cover (with the US flag burning in the fireplace). The object of the satire is the bullshit I heard on the radio and read online in Obama’s first Presidential election that Obama is a Muslim (delivered with the implicit understanding that Muslims are anti-American). In this syntax or form, the satire mocks anybody who would think the things shown in the cartoons. In a cartoon with this this syntax or form, really:
• The Obamas are NOT Islamist militants.
• Christiane Taubira is NOT a monkey.
• Boko Haram’s rape victims are NOT demanding welfare money.
• Women in Silicon Valley are NOT faceless.

I respect Anne @6/8 for italicizing a preference for cartoons to show the subject of satire directly, like a preference to use the active voice over passive voice. The Newsweek cover says, “Women are disrespected by Silicon Valley”, and someone could wish for the same claim in the active voice, “Silicon Valley disrespects women”. I respect Anne @6/8 for italicizing a preference that stops short of saying one syntax or form is invalid or unethical, which some commenters seem to say here.

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

Chris Moos draws up a catalogue of the more wrongheaded responses to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He counts five of them:

the reflexive smearer, the moral relativist, the condescending bonhomme, the politician-cum-theologian and the winner of the competition, the Islamist abuser.

The reflexive smearer says the CH cartoonists and CH were and are racist.

As David Paxton points out, this usually came with an attempt at “root-causism“, a contextualisation of the murders in “wars against the Muslim world”, and an in-depth investigation of the alleged views, sensitivities and ‘culture’ of the murderers.

Since most British commentators have no understanding of French satire, politics, or culture, they naturally did not afford the same courtesy to Charlie Hebdo. As a result, the French publication that has done the most to fight the fascist Front National, the Catholic Church, and anti-immigrant policies is presented as a “racist” publication that “had it coming”.

But but but…Edward Said something something colonialism something subaltern something something Orientalism.

2) The moral relativist – “Publish anti-Semitic cartoons, or you are a hypocrite”

False equivalences and whataboutery were the natural favourites of the moral relativist. For this to work, they simply needed to argue that Charlie Hebdo cartoons are racist or anti-Muslim (see above), then point to hate speech laws, and jump to the conclusion that those only protect Jews, not Muslims. As Glen Greenwald has bitterly complained, “why aren’t free speech crusaders calling for publication of anti-Semitic material in solidarity?”.

Let’s see…because Charlie Hebdo was and is not comparable to Der Stürmer? I think that’s why. That’s why I’m not, certainly.

Then there’s the equating of criticism of Islam with attacking Muslims. Then there’s explaining how fabulous Islam is.

My friend Kiran Opal has even invented a new word for this phenomenon: “kuffarsplaining“, or “telling Muslims (or ex-Muslims) that you, as a Western Non-Muslim, knows what Islam ‘really says’”.

By conclusion, this means of course that the murderers were not doing what they said they were doing – murdering the Charlie Hebdo journalists to “avenge the prophet Mohammed“.

Well what would they know about it?

And then there are the Islamists themselves. There is Dilly Hussain, for instance…

[I]n the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the iERA has teamed up with Dilly Hussain from 5pillars to launch a new campaign called “Don’t hate, debate!“.

Dilly Hussain starts off the video:

“In light of recent events in Paris, which has (sic!) led to the unfortunate death of ten journalists, again Muslims find themselves at the centre of attention regarding the whole freedom of speech debate and whether the prophet Mohammed should be satirised. […] How did freedom of speech become the right to offend, or the freedom to insult? And what does that mean for the basic interactions between humans?”

Indeed, how has freedom of speech become the “freedom to insult”? Luckily, Dilly Hussain, is in the best possible position to answer that question. When he is not editing articles for 5pillars, Dilly Hussain feels free to abuse, insult, humiliate and harass those who do not share his brand of Islamism. As with all Islamists, his preferred targets are Muslim minorities, Muslims who reject Islamism, and particularly Muslim women.

In Dilly Hussain’s world, “monkeys have [a] more legitimate claim to Islam than Ahmadis“. Women who question his quest for a “caliphate”, where non-Muslims are second-class citizens and women can be stoned for adultery, are referred to as “fat cows”, “fatties”, “pissheads, drunken liberal garbage” and “coconut sellouts“.

But Dilly Hussain’s greatest outbursts of hate are reserved for Muslim women, who he calls “Muslims” in inverted commas, or simply “airheads“. On the other hand, Muslims who challenge Islamists are “Uncle Tom sell outs” (see also here), “chamchas” (ass-kissers), the racist term “coconuts” (see also here), “apostates” (which is an implicit death threat for many Muslims) or “najus” (ritually unclean).

Nice guy.

And this is the quintessential response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Islamists ask for respect, while awarding none. They ask for historical figures to be immunised from satire, while mocking and denigrating anyone who does not share their beliefs. They humiliate anyone who opposes them, but ask for the right not to be offended.

If there is one lesson from the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it is this one: Islamists do not want to debate, they want to hate.

No amount of smearing, relativising, condescending, kuffarsplaining, or self-censorsoring will change that.

Defending the Kouachi brothers is not defending Muslims, it’s insulting them. It implies that they are connected. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

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

Another win for the bullies. The Telegraph has the story.

An artwork depicting high-heeled shoes on Islamic prayer mats has been removed from an exhibition after a Muslim group warned of possible violence in the wake of the Paris attacks.

Via Facebook

The French-Algerian artist, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, withdrew the work from an exhibition in a northern Paris suburb with a large Muslim population after an Islamic group told local authorities it could provoke “uncontrollable, irresponsible incidents”.

It is considered disrespectful to step on Muslim prayer ma[t]s with shoes.

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

Haroon Riaz, to quote his blurb at the Nation, is a Rawalpindi-based independent blogger and believes in promoting free speech and secularism. Comrade!

He points out that what’s happening to Raif could so easily have happened to him or you or me. I know. Boy do I know.

He says hardly anyone is talking about Raif in Pakistan.

[W]hat does this tell the world about us? Or about our leaders who took the trouble of protesting against the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, but would dare not even think about the flogging of the Saudi blogger.

That those are some fucked-up priorities.

I know it is dangerous and sensitive to talk about anyone who has allegedly blasphemed, but let us put this case this way.

Let’s not even waste our time with the question whether Raif Badawi insulted Islam or not, and whether he should be punished for it or not, without giving up the defense of his right to.

But what if the law of the land requires your free expression about your society to be punished like this? Especially when half of the people in Pakistan want the country to turn into Saudi Arabia and the other half wants it to become Iran.

I don’t know what if. I can’t imagine what I would do.

What if you were arrested and publicly flogged for wondering why Ahmadis are persecuted in Pakistan?

What if you were penalized for wondering why Hazara and Shia are being targeted and publicly naming the culprits?

What if you were wondering about the unjust theocratic influences on the law and the constitution, and thereforeon the society?

What if questioning the theocratic parts of your constitution would put you on a trial for treason?

The kind of opinions that could so easily be projected to be insulting to religion and, therefore, the religious figures, you never know.

Raif Badawi’s opinions were not too different to these seemingly innocuous political inquiries.

Exactly. The humane and liberal thoughts are ferociously punished, while the sadistic torture of humane and liberal thoughts is state policy. It’s sick. It’s a sick inversion of how humans ought to act and live.

There is a reason why Raif Badawi matters so much.

It could have so easily been you and me.

Take care of yourself, Haroon.

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

Fridays are prime time for Islamist violence – sometimes after prayers, as with the flogging of Raif Badawi, and sometimes during prayers, as yesterday at a mosque in Sindh province.

Funerals have taken place in southern Pakistan for the victims of a suicide attack on a Shia mosque during Friday prayers which police say killed at least 60 people.

Dozens were also wounded in the attack in Sindh province’s Shikarpur district, making it one of the worst sectarian attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

Sunni militants linked to the Taliban said they carried out the attack.

They were careful to do the worst damage they could.

“The bomber selected a place in the mosque that would cause huge destruction,” Raja Umar Khitab, a police official in Sindh’s counter-terror department, told the AFP news agency.

Mr Khitab said the bomb contained steel pellets, ball bearings and shrapnel to maximise the damage.

This god hates people.

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

Zineb El-Rhazoui was in Montreal the other day to talk about and fundraise for Charlie Hebdo.

According to El-Rhazoui, the most elementary defence against the rise of fundamentalism is to hammer home the point that religion holds no sway with the state .

“Secularism as far as I know, is the only way to permit everyone to live in the same society, even if people are different,” said El-Rhazoui.

“Islam needs to submit to secularism and it also needs to get a sense of humour.”