Jane Harley explains at Comment is Free that Oxford University Press hasn’t banned pigs, it just…doesn’t want its education authors to mention them. (Scholars are entirely free to mention them, she says. Oh, whew.)

Given that our editorial guidelines that reference pigs and pork have been in place for as long as I can remember, little did I imagine that they would attract international headlines claiming that the Oxford University Press had banned sausages. To clarify, OUP does not have a blanket ban on pork products in its titles, and we do still publish books about pigs. Although there have been no recent changes to our guidance on this topic, these articles highlighted the fine balance needed when considering students’ cultural and learning needs.

*waves hand in the air* Question, question! We don’t know how long Jane Harley can remember. For all we know, she can remember the OUP editorial guidelines only up to two weeks ago when she started working there. We don’t know; she didn’t tell us. Saying “as long as I can remember” like that, as if we all knew each other, is silly.

And then, this notion about needing such a “fine balance” that you don’t mention pigs – that’s the very thing we’re questioning. We’re not convinced that students have “cultural and learning needs” that depend on not mentioning pigs. We know that’s what OUP intends, but that’s what we think is fatuous.

To address children’s learning needs, it is important that they also reflect the cultural context in which children are learning. In the UK, we take it for granted that we would not include references to sex, violence, or alcohol in our textbooks; to do so would be considered inappropriate and offensive to many. In order to make an impact around the world, there are other sensitivities that, although not necessarily obvious to some of us, are nonetheless extremely important to others.

Are there? And they include pigs? Not pork, but pigs? A religious taboo on eating pork translates to a taboo on the very mention of the live animal? I don’t like eating pineapples, but I don’t quail at the sight or thought of them.

It’s not clear to me that pigs can’t be seen as the very opposite of pork – pork is part of the corpse of a pig; a pig is a live animal. An animal isn’t the same as the meat you can take off its corpse.

While we should be mindful of these cultural sensitivities, a healthy dose of common sense is also required. Cultural taboos must never get in the way of learning needs, which will always be our primary focus. So, for example, a definition of a pig would not be excluded from a dictionary, and we wouldn’t dream of editing out a “pig” character from an historical work of fiction. We also maintain entirely separate guidelines for our academic titles which are relevant to scholarly rather than educational discourse.

Imagine my relief.

What we do, however, is consider avoiding references to a range of topics that could be considered sensitive – in a way that does not compromise quality, or negatively impact learning.

“Negatively impact” – oy. I take it back, I think we can be confident she’s been at OUP longer than two weeks; she’s got the corporate jargon down. God forbid she use the blunt word “damage” or “harm.”

So, for example, if animals are depicted shown in a background illustration, we would think carefully about which animals to choose. In doing so we are able to ensure children remain focused purely on their learning, rather than cultural characteristics.

Meaning, there shouldn’t be pigs in the background. But do they even know that pigs in illustrations bother anyone? I don’t know that.

Managing cultural sensitivities isn’t about reducing educational quality, pandering to minority views, restricting freedom of speech or self-censorship. It’s about ensuring the educational value of our publishing is able to navigate the maze of cultural norms for the benefit of students around the world. We want to ensure we can make the widest possible impact.

I suppose lobsters are forbidden too?

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

Nick linked to a piece by Mehdi Hasan so I just had to go read the whole thing. I do not like it. I never do like what Mehdi Hasan writes or says.

He frames this as an open letter to “Dear liberal pundit” – which is annoying. Should we reply “Dear conservative Muslim pundit”? Or should we play at being grown-ups.

The massacre in Paris on 7 January was, you keep telling us, an attack on free speech. The conservative former French president Nicolas Sarkozy agrees, calling it “a war declared on civilisation”. So, too, does the liberal-left pin-up Jon Snow, who crassly tweeted about a “clash of civilisations” and referred to “Europe’s belief in freedom of expression”.

In the midst of all the post-Paris grief, hypocrisy and hyperbole abounds. Yes, the attack was an act of unquantifiable evil; an inexcusable and merciless murder of innocents. But was it really a “bid to assassinate” free speech (ITV’s Mark Austin), to “desecrate” our ideas of “free thought” (Stephen Fry)?

Yes of course it fucking was, you buffoon. Do you think writers who criticize Islam feel safer today than they did on January 6th? Do you think the Charlie Hebdo massacre sent no message at all?

It’s easy for Mehdi Hasan to be smug, isn’t it, because he knows no one is going to burst into his office or study and machine gun him to death.

Yes, the Charlie Hebdo massacre was indeed an attack on free speech. Of course it was.

Please get a grip. None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech. We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.

Yes, that’s right – and drawing the line at “anything critical of Islam” is miles and miles from the right place.

Consider also the “thought experiment” offered by the Oxford philosopher Brian Klug. Imagine, he writes, if a man had joined the “unity rally” in Paris on 11 January “wearing a badge that said ‘Je suis Chérif'” – the first name of one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. Suppose, Klug adds, he carried a placard with a cartoon mocking the murdered journalists. “How would the crowd have reacted?… Would they have seen this lone individual as a hero, standing up for liberty and freedom of speech? Or would they have been profoundly offended?” Do you disagree with Klug’s conclusion that the man “would have been lucky to get away with his life”?

I’m glad you asked me that. Yes, I do. Of course I do. No they would not have seen that lone individual as a hero, but also no, they would not have torn him limb from limb. Then again it’s an imaginary, so neither of us knows, so it’s not a particularly compelling argument.

Lampooning racism by reproducing brazenly racist imagery is a pretty dubious satirical tactic. Also, as the former Charlie Hebdo journalist Olivier Cyran argued in 2013, an “Islamophobic neurosis gradually took over” the magazine after 9/11, which then effectively endorsed attacks on “members of a minority religion with no influence in the corridors of power”.

That depends on which corridors of power we’re talking about. The ones in Jiddah, Karachi, Mogadishu? The ones in households where brothers and fathers and sons tell the women what to do? Gay bars? The offices of satirical magazines?

You ask Muslims to denounce a handful of extremists as an existential threat to free speech while turning a blind eye to the much bigger threat to it posed by our elected leaders.

A handful of extremists is an existential threat to free speech when it murders five journalists in one attack for doing something they don’t like. It’s a threat because it’s…you know, a threat. A literal, forceful threat. The fact that they’re a handful of extremists doesn’t make them less frightening, it makes them more so – anybody could do what they did.

Weren’t you sickened to see Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a country that was responsible for the killing of seven journalists in Gaza in 2014, attend the “unity rally” in Paris?

Somewhat, yes, but you know whose attendance grossed me out much more? The officials from Saudi Arabia who attended. Why aren’t you talking about them, Mehdi?

I feel dirty now.

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

Nick Cohen too is unimpressed by the pope’s assertion that we can’t insult religion. He’s also unimpressed by the “Charlie Hebdo had it coming” crowd.

After the Paris attacks, the novelist Will Self claimed moral equivalence. Those who say “freedom of speech is an absolute right” – no one does, incidentally – have “a religious point of view”. Mehdi Hasan, political director of the Huffington Post, agreed that freedom was fanaticism. He condemned “the hypocrisy of free-speech fundamentalists” and cited a thought experiment of an Oxford philosopher called Brian Klug. If an Islamist had joined the free speech rallies in Paris and applauded the murderers, Klug mused on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, he “would have been lucky to get away with his life”.

And yet, and yet – when’s the last time journalists shot up the office of some Islamists? Hmm? That would be never, wouldn’t it. Imagining such a scenario is not quite the same thing as actually being able to point to one, or fifty.

Think before you go along with the pope’s argument that violence is the “normal” response to insults to family honour. Once the law accepted it was. A husband could beat a wife, who failed to stroke his ego and confirm his superiority and the police would dismiss the case as a “domestic”. A man could kill a woman who had betrayed his honour and the courts would dismiss it as a crime of passion.

We don’t live there any more. And you know what? We don’t want to.

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

I ignore 99.999% of it, but someone brought this particular lie to my attention and I’m finding it unignorable.

Brive1987 ‏@brive1987 2 hours ago
@vtchakarova @mirandachale just forced myself to watch botched beheading of Burmese woman in Saudi. OMG.

Miranda Celeste Hale ‏@mirandachale 2 hours ago
@brive1987 @vtchakarova Oh god that’s so awful Even reading about it made me feel sick.

Brive1987 @brive1987 · 2 hours ago
@mirandachale @vtchakarova it was on Benson’s blog and is on liveleak. I’ve decided not to avoid “real Islam” but I think others should :/

Miranda Celeste Hale ‏@mirandachale 47 minutes ago
@brive1987 She posted the *video* on her site? JESUS. Wtf? I mean, I fully agree w/you that we shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand & should

Shermertron ‏@Shermertron 52 minutes ago
@brive1987 @mirandachale @vtchakarova Too bad the ppl calling her a racist for her stance on Islam won’t watch it,…

Miranda Celeste Hale ‏@mirandachale 51 minutes ago
@brive1987 not ignore the Islamic elephant in the room, but that can be done w/o seeing the vids & her posting it is kinda fucked up

I did not post that video on my blog. I didn’t look for the video, let alone post it. I don’t want to think about the video. Of course I didn’t fucking post it. “Brive” told a huge disgusting lie.

Sorry for the interruption. Back to ignoring the 99.999%.

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

Speaking of sausages, and outrage, and women seen cooking sausages on tv, and outrage, and outrage, and outrage, the Oxford University Press has given one of its authors a friendly nudge to avoid writing the words “pig” or “pork” in a projected book.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, presenter Jim Naughtie said: “I’ve got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people.

“Among the things prohibited in the text that was commissioned by OUP was the following: Pigs plus sausages, or anything else which could be perceived as pork.

“Now, if a respectable publisher, tied to an academic institution, is saying you’ve got to write a book in which you cannot mention pigs because some people might be offended, it’s just ludicrous. It is just a joke.”

Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood said: “I absolutely agree. That’s absolute utter nonsense. And when people go too far, that brings the whole discussion into disrepute.”

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

And today in Niger – the protests against Charlie Hebdo continue, with extra added church-burning.

At least two churches have been set on fire in the capital of Niger amid fresh protests against French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

Saturday’s protests began outside Niamey’s grand mosque with police using tear gas a day after at least four were killed in the second city of Zinder.

The French embassy has warned its citizens to stay indoors.

Charlie Hebdo doesn’t hang out at the church.

In Niger, a former French colony, hundreds of demonstrators gathered at Niamey’s grand mosque, shouting “God is Great” in Arabic.

At least two churches were set on fire – similar to Friday’s demonstration in Zinder where protesters also raided shops that were run by Christians.

The French cultural centre in Zinder also came under attack.

God is great so let’s burn down the churches. Makes all kinds of sense.

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

Speaking of the US rivalry with Saudi Arabia over who can inflict the most sadistic punishments, the Death Penalty Information Center gives us some examples of botched executions. Not all; just some.

Be warned – obviously this is not pleasant reading.

NOTE: The cases below are not presented as a comprehensive catalogue of all botched executions, but simply a listing of examples that are well-known.  There are 44 executions listed: 2 by asphyxiation, 10 by electrocution, and 32 by lethal injection, and 1 attempted execution by lethal injection.

1. August 10, 1982. Virginia. Frank J. Coppola. Electrocution.

   Although no media representatives witnessed the execution and no details were ever released by the Virginia Department of Corrections, an attorney who was present later stated that it took two 55-second jolts of electricity to kill Coppola. The second jolt produced the odor and sizzling sound of burning flesh, and Coppola’s head and leg caught on fire. Smoke filled the death chamber from floor to ceiling with a smoky haze.[1]

The next one is also an electrocution and it’s nightmarish. Why is this supposed to be a relatively “humane” method?

3. Sept. 2, 1983. Mississippi. Jimmy Lee Gray. Asphyxiation. Officials had to clear the room eight minutes after the gas was released when Gray’s desperate gasps for air repulsed witnesses. His attorney, Dennis Balske of Montgomery, Alabama, criticized state officials for clearing the room when the inmate was still alive. Said noted death penalty defense attorney David Bruck, “Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while the reporters counted his moans (eleven, according to the Associated Press).”[3] Later it was revealed that the executioner, Barry Bruce, was drunk.[4]

One more.

18. March 10, 1992. Oklahoma. Robyn Lee Parks. Lethal Injection. Parks had a violent reaction to the drugs used in the lethal injection. Two minutes after the drugs were dispensed, the muscles in his jaw, neck, and abdomen began to react spasmodically for approximately 45 seconds. Parks continued to gasp and violently gag until death came, some eleven minutes after the drugs were first administered. Tulsa World reporter Wayne Greene wrote that the execution looked “painful and ugly,” and “scary.” “It was overwhelming, stunning, disturbing — an intrusion into a moment so personal that reporters, taught for years that intrusion is their business, had trouble looking each other in the eyes after it was over.”[27]

We rival Saudi Arabia.

When you rival Saudi Arabia in the violence and cruelty of your judicial punishments, something is wrong.

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

Saudi Arabia postponed Raif’s next 50 lashes yesterday, but on Monday they beheaded a woman in public, without anesthetic and taking three blows to do it.

Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Burmese woman who resided in Saudi Arabia, was executed by sword on Monday after being dragged through the street and held down by four police officers.

She was convicted of the sexual abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter.

A video showed how it took three blows to complete the execution, while the woman screamed “I did not kill. I did not kill.” It has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content”.

There are two ways to behead people according to Mohammed al-Saeedi, a human rights activist: “One way is to inject the prisoner with painkillers to numb the pain and the other is without the painkiller,” he told the Middle East Eye.

“This woman was beheaded without painkillers – they wanted to make the pain more powerful for her.”

So that’s how Saudi Arabia rolls. Not that we do much better here in the US.

In Saudi Arabia a number of crimes, including murder, rape, adultery and armed robbery, can carry a capital sentence.

Beheading is considered one of the more humane punishments the authorities can mete out, a firing squad and stoning are other methods open to judges.

The beheading doesn’t sound so very humane…

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

Yes really: sausage outrage. No, not the sausage=penis kind of outrage, the other kind.

Reham Khan, the former BBC presenter who recently married ex-cricketer and politician Imran Khan, has sparked a backlash in Pakistan after footage emerged of her cooking and selling pork sausages.

There they go again – she “sparked outrage.”

The 41-year-old TV star, who is herself of British-Pakistani decent, can purportedly be seen frying the religiously restricted meat at a country fair in West Sussex for the BBC South Today show in 2011, The Times reports.

In Islamic dietary jurisprudence, the consumption of pork is considered ‘haram’, or ‘unlawful’.

In what? “Dietary jurisprudence”? What the fuck is that? Jurisprudence refers to actual law, real world law, secular law, law that applies to everyone within the borders. Religious boffins would love to make their rules as binding as real laws, but in places that aren’t Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, they can’t. I have to wonder why the Independent is presenting a religious taboo as if it were a genuine state law.

During the film, which, alongside other footage apparently showing Khan wearing “revealing” outfits, has been prolifically viewed in Pakistan over the last week, she is reportedly seen learning how to make and prepare the meat dish by two-time national sausage making champion David Bell.

The horror.

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

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid, writing in Pakistan’s Friday Times, calls it deceitful to claim that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo and other murderous outbursts “have nothing to do with Islam or Muslims.”

The barefaced deceit gets the backing of the liberal left of the West, that gets extra brownie points for speaking up about the self-inflicted ‘marginalisation of Muslims’, most of whom continue to avoid befriending ‘Jews and Christians’ because their scripture ostensibly prohibits it.

And so when the Charlie Hebdo office was attacked in Paris last week, everything from France’s occupation of Algeria over half a century ago to the economic disparity between Muslims and non-Muslims in the country was touted as the raison d’etre. Fingers have been pointed everywhere except at the awkward truth that the majority of Muslims around the world, and their version of Islam, endorse killing ‘blasphemers’.

I don’t know if it’s actually the majority, but the number is clearly not small enough.

It is the same version that is practised, among many other Muslim countries, in Saudi Arabia, where Islam originated and where the entire Muslim world goes to offer pilgrimage. The same country, facing which all Muslims offer salat; where Raif Badawi, a liberal blogger, has been punished with 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam’ – the same ‘crime’ that Charlie Hebdo’s satirists committed. The same crime that is officially punishable by death in 13 countries – all Muslim states.

If there were a worldwide survey about the punishment that Charlie Hebdo journalists deserved for drawing and promoting those cartoons, the answer of the majority of the Muslim world is common knowledge, should we prefer being honest about it. And when the majority of the Muslims and almost all of the Islamic clergy are ‘misinterpreting’ the text identically, obviously the intelligibility of the scriptures comes under scrutiny.

That’s why holy books are such poison. It’s because the belief that there is such a thing as a “holy book” is such poison.

By that logic all Muslims and their scriptures would be ‘asking to be’ attacked by orthodox Christians for refusing to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the son of God, or for the ubiquitous bile being spewed against Hinduism, especially in Pakistan.

Would the apologists be consistent in their argument if Hindu or Christian extremists started butchering Muslims because they disrespected their God? What about the nonreligious folk – the nonbelievers that have eternal hellfire sanctioned for them by almost every religious scripture? Should they retaliate with violence after taking offence at the fact that the deity absolutely despises them?

All religions are offensive to every other religion.

And that’s why secularism is needed.

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

You know all that kakk about the new pope being a kinder gentler pope? It was kakk all along. I knew that.

He’s back to telling us teh gayz will ruin everything. Of course he is.

Francis arrived in the Philippines on Friday for a five day trip and spoke to thousands in the heart of Manila, the country’s capital city. While speaking on the issue of same sex marriage on Jan. 16, Francis went into attack mode. “The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage,” Francis told the crowd. “These realities are increasingly under attack from powerful forces, which threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation.”

Yup – because when it’s two women or two men, what becomes of the hierarchy? It goes poof. Very very threatening, this idea of marriage between equals.

Or not. It’s just threatening to an antiquated and illiberal idea of marriage – and that’s a good thing.

But of course no pope is going to think so. You don’t get to be pope that way.

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

Wonderful. There was a protest against Charlie Hebdo in Niger today – at which four people were killed. That’s a fabulous reason to die.

At least four people have been killed in violent protests against French magazine Charlie Hebdo in Niger’s second city of Zinder, officials say.

A number of churches and the French cultural centre were among several buildings raided and set alight.

Over a picture. A picture of a bearded guy in a turban, with a tear on his cheek. That’s worth killing people and setting churches and cultural centers on fire.

One policeman and three civilians were killed in the protests in Zinder after Friday prayers, a police source told Reuters.

“Some of the protesters were armed with bows and arrows as well as clubs. The clashes were very violent in some places,” the source added.

Agence France-Presse quoted a minister as saying dozens of people had been injured.

Local residents told Reuters that demonstrators had set fire to churches and raided shops that were run by Christians.

“The protesters are crying out in local Hausa language: Charlie is Satan – let hell engulf those supporting Charlie,” a local shopkeeper said by telephone.

Love, peace, solidarity, mutual aid, friendship, joy.

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

The Telegraph reports that IS have apparently taken literally the injunction to throw the children of Lot (you know what they got up to, nudge) off a high place. There are photos.

Photographs have emerged that appear to show members of the Islamic State group in Iraq throwing a man from a building in punishment for being gay.

The graphic images, seemingly taken in the northern Isil controlled city of Mosul, show a man being pushed to his death before a large crowd that had gathered in the main square below.

One photograph, taken from the top of the building, shows the man from behind, blindfolded and with his hands tied across his back, being pushed to the ledge by his executioner.

In another photo, a jihadist, his face covered with a balaclava, is shown reading out the apparent sentence that was ruled in the extremists’ “Sharia court”.

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

Originally a public Facebook post by Lama Abu-Odeh on January 13, published here by permission.

Ok let’s do these legally. Supposing you pass a rule in France that says any humorous depiction of prophet Mohamad is banned. Based on the idea that life for French “Muslims” is hard because of French racism and any such depiction of the prophet is in itself racist and will only make the effects of the racism worse. You want to make life easier for them so you ban it. What have you achieved? Let’s think of the winners and losers of such a ban.

One primary winner of course are the religious within the “Muslim” camp who find such depictions offensive. Great victory for them and a great concession from the Secular French. The French lose, they win. The French press will have to be self-conscious about its representation of Muslim religious icon, self-censure or face the consequences.

Ok, now think harder, who else loses? Well, the secularists, skeptics, agnostics, atheists within the Muslim community itself.

Religiosity of the kind that gets offended and commits violence as a result is a recent phenomenon within the French “Muslim” community. The community is internally varied and is vibrant with struggle over questions of secularity and assimilation and types of assimilation, not to speak of serious conflicts between men and women especially with relationship to the libertarian sexual mores of the French. All of these people lose because the religious within them win – a rule like that will have a disciplinary effect within the “Muslim” community itself because the religious will invoke in it conflicts and struggles over power, prestige and privilege within the community. The rule at heart is anti-secular, and anti-assimilationist, and deeply particularistic. The rule then would empower all those who represent those values vis a vis those who don’t, or are half-hearted about them, or beginning to question them etc.

But you’ve done something else. You’ve passed this rule following an incident involving gun-toting angry men who then proceeded to kill twelve people and declared they did it for the prophet. Ok, so instead of asking yourself as a progressive interested in empowering the French “Muslim community” – what is happening to the French Muslim community that angry men who kill are the ones avenging the racism? – as opposed to activists mobilizing the public around progressive issues you recognize – and instead of worrying about the implications for the emergence of this violent oomph among the young men – you reward it. Rewarding it means validating it as a practice within the community. It is now a socially validated way of settling internal conflict – between generations, between men and women, between the secular and the religious within the “Muslim” community. Religious rage as a means of settling disputes is now validated.

What else have you done? Your very generous multiculturalist gesture symbolized by the ban has settled the very question of “who is a Muslim” within the community. Not only does the offended Muslim find himself empowered within the community by the rule, but he stands now to speak for and be representative of the French “Muslims” in toto with the outside world. The French can now securely state: The Muslims of France are offended by the humorous representations of their prophet. Ewww.

What else have you done? well, by empowering the offended religious Muslim with his underlying rage, you have alienated those assimilated French Muslims who nevertheless insist on their membership in the community. You have given them a powerful reason to exit – to dissociate – to disown – to leave. Who wants to be around angry men who get offended by pictures???

You say you don’t want to be an Islamophobe? So why are you being so hateful to all these other Muslims then? Whatever have they done to you???

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

And here is Christiane Amanpour talking to Sarah Khan of Inspire about whether or not Muslims have to be “offended” by images of the prophet.

(Spoiler: no, they don’t.)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy3RGe2BdAY

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

Imagine my surprise and delight yesterday to turn on Fresh Air (the NPR interview show) and find that the guest was Maajid Nawaz. It’s a terrific interview, in which he covers a lot of ground and says valuable things. That’s one thing about Fresh Air – it gives people a lot of time.

At age 16, Nawaz was transformed from a disaffected British teenager to an Islamist recruiter when he joined the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Nawaz continued his college studies and spent a year abroad in Egypt, where he continued his recruiting. As a result, he was imprisoned for four years, starting in 2002.

It was while in prison, surrounded by several prominent jihadist leaders, that Nawaz realized he wanted to take a different path. He was reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm and came to a new understanding of “what happens when somebody tries to create a utopia.”

“I began to join the dots and think, ‘My God, if these guys that I’m here with ever came to power, they would be the Islamist equivalent of Animal Farm,” Nawaz says.

Yes. They would create a hell on earth.

He says he began to see that it’s “impossible to create a utopia.”

“I’m living up close and seeing [the radicals’] everyday habits and lifestyle, I thought, ‘My God, I wouldn’t trust these guys in power,’ because when I called it, back then, and said, ‘If this caliphate, this theocratic caliphate, was ever established, it would be a nightmare on earth,'” Nawaz says.

Yes it would – especially for women, gays, apostates, atheists, secularists, people with a sense of humor. Life in a system that treats that many people like shit is a nightmare even if it treats everyone else well – which a theocratic caliphate wouldn’t.

One of the things they talk about is the anger and threats he faced a year ago for tweeting that he wasn’t “offended” by the Jesus and Mo cover in which Jesus says “Hey” and Mo says “How ya doin?” In order to explain that he told about being on that Big Questions in which he supported the woman in the niqab and her right to wear it even though he disagrees with it, and about Chris Moos opening his shirt to reveal the Jesus and Mo T shirt underneath, about Chris’s asking the niqab woman if she supported his right to wear the shirt and her saying no she did not. That’s why he tweeted what he did – he wanted to clarify that Muslims don’t have to try to impose their rules on everyone else and that they don’t even have to be “offended” when people don’t obey their religious rules.

I recommend listening to the whole thing.

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

Here’s a marvelous, blistering piece by Zineb El-Rhazoui in reply to the December 2013 one by former Charlie Hebdo editor Olivier Cyran saying CH was racist. Seth Ackerman at Jacobin translated it. Zineb el-Rhazoui is religion editor of CH.

She learned from Cyran’s piece that she’s a racist.

Being of French citizenship, I was anxious to identify, before the malady could advance any further, which races were likely to activate my white-woman antibodies.

She flips sarcastically through many possibilities, then zeroes in on the real one.

I didn’t have to make it far into the piece to be reassured that his diagnosis was more precise: my racism, thank God (that idiot), is only aimed at Muslims, and I  contracted this dangerous syndrome from the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo.

An occupational illness, then. Since Olivier Cyran is himself a veteran of the shop, though I never had the pleasure of meeting him — since he had the luck, and the balls, according to him, to get out before the infection could spread  through the paper — I’ve decided to address him as tu, since we use tu among colleagues at Charlie.

Olivier, you start from the premise that the Muslims of Azerbaijan, of Bosnia, of Malaysia, Egypt or Burkina Faso, represent a single whole that can be designated as a “race.” Well, it so happens that that’s the one I belong to. The fact that I’m an atheist, and proud of it? It makes no difference, since you don’t ask us what we think; you talk about racism, and therefore race. I won’t keep beating around the bush, since I don’t doubt for a second that, like me, you perfectly understand the distinction between a religion and a race. If you make this lamentable conflation, it’s because you engage in a sociological fallacy whose origins lie in the demography of France: our Muslims are most often those we call “Arabs.” I’m sort of starting to understand why you speak of racism. But let’s try to be precise: we’re not talking about the Arabs of Lebanon, who are rarely encountered in the French projects, nor the persecuted Arab Ahwazi minority of Iran, whom nobody in France talks about, and certainly not the Arabs of Qatar who keep Louis Vuitton in business. No, you’re talking about the “Arabs” of North Africa — and here again, it so happens that that is the “race” from which I spring. Moreover, for your information, those “Arabs” aren’t always Arabs. The best-informed people in France know that they are Berbers, a word of Greek origin, “Bearded,” which refers to us Amazighes, Imazighen — Free Men, as we like to call ourselves. I am thus triply qualified to dispel the obvious confusion you manifest when you identify those you claim to be defending: the Muslim race.

We’re all (or most) sick of hearing “Islam is not a race!” from Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins, but hearing it in that style with that panache from a French citizen of Berber origin who is also a woman and an atheist and an editor at Charlie Hebdo – that’s not so boring.

Among the individuals that you assign to this racial category, there are militant atheists like me, obviously secularist (laïque). There are atheists who have other fish to fry, they are secularists too. There are atheists who love Charlie Hebdo and support it; others less so or not at all. There are agnostics, skeptics, free-thinkers, deists; they are secularists as well. There are believers who are non-practicing but politically Islamist, practicing but secularist, or even those with “no opinion,” whose daily lives do not suffer because of Charlie Hebdo. There are converts to Christianity — and oh, are they secularist, for they’ve endured the terrors of theocracy in their countries of origin. And finally there are the fundamentalists (intégristes), the militant Islamists, the adherents of an identity defined above all by religion, and those are the ones you have chosen to defend. Those are the ones who, given the reality of  French laïcité, have no other choice than to cry racism, a tear in their eye and a hand on their heart, on the pretext that their “religious feelings” have been mocked by a drawing in Charlie. Among them you will find many who stand for laïcité in France but vote Ennahda in Tunisia, who do their shopping at a Parisian halal butcher but would cry scandal if a misfit decided to open a charcuterie in Jeddah. Who are outraged when a day care center fires a veiled employee but say nothing when someone they know forces his daughter to wear the veil. They are a minority. But they are the standard to which you have chosen to align the identity of all of us.

Enough generalities, which I didn’t think a man of the pen needed to be reminded of. If I’ve taken up mine to answer you, it is not solely to defend myself from racism, but above all because in my journalist’s memory I have rarely resented an opinion column as much as I did yours. If you will allow an “Arab” to address her own complaint, let me tell you that your rhetoric and arguments are the most sophisticated variety of racism that exists in France. Rare are those today who would risk shouting from the rooftops,”Ragheads Out!” The extremists who would do so would immediately be jeered by you, by me, and by a majority of the French people. First of all, you quote Bernard Maris, Catherine, Charb, Caroline Fourest. What about me, what about me! You preferred to omit my name, when it was my articles that you pointed to as dangerously “Islamophobic,” thus, according to you, necessarily racist. Frankly, I wondered why , and I see only two options. Either you didn’t want to let Charlie Hebdo‘s detractors (who can only subscribe to your thinking if they never read the paper) know that the author of these racist ravings belongs precisely to the Muslim race. Or you simply didn’t think that, as a person, I was worth naming, since in a fascist rag like Charlie I couldn’t be anything but the house Arab.

Wow. I want to be her new best friend.

That’s only the beginning; read on.

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

The BBC tries to host a discussion of free speech but as always it phrases everything in such a fatuously empty meaningless unhelpful way that the discussion is undercut before it starts. They clearly have a mandated list of the correct words to use, and those words are the most anodyne and obfuscatory they can think of. That’s some unfree speech right there.

Am I free to offend you?

Should I deliberately share images that I know will offend others, as a statement of everyone’s freedom to do so?

What about extremists? Should their speech be banned?

“Offend” in what sense? What are we talking about? What does that even mean? Is it even possible to say anything that can’t “offend” someone somewhere?

What can “images that I know will offend others” mean? Again – it’s not possible to share an image that can’t “offend” anyone anywhere. It’s not possible to “know” what will offend whom in advance. None of this is as simple as that; none of it.

What does “extremists” mean? Extremist about what?

The questions are on their face so general that they mean nothing. If you read them through the lens of Charlie Hebdo or Raif Badawi you can attach a specific meaning to them, but the questions are supposed to be general and generalizable, which they fail at.

Questions like this have been dominating social media conversation in the days since the satirists of Charlie Hebdo were attacked and killed.

Ok, so that’s the lens. But the language remains unhelpful and misleading.

But it wasn’t long before much of the debate online became angry and polarised, and people began asking searching questions about freedom of expression in their own countries. There’s been a spate of “Je Suis” hashtags for all sorts of other free speech causes around the world, along with accusations of double standards and strong reactions from Muslims about the new edition of Charlie Hebdo.

See that? That last line? That’s a vice of the media in general, not just the BBC – saying “strong reactions from Muslims” like that. It gives the impression that there are no Muslims in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, and that’s wrong, and not just wrong but harmful. Reactionary theocratic Muslims are not the only Muslims there are. There are also progressive, liberal, secular Muslims. Quit writing them out of the story.

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

Last week the Beeb took the temperature after the lashing of Raif.

Two Arabic hashtags that translate to “Raif Badawi’s public lashing” and “ lashing Raif Badawi” trended in Saudi Arabia with more than 250,000 tweets after news of carrying out the first round of lashes on Badawi was announced.

Unsurprisingly, there were some hooray tweets.

“He established a network to spread apostasy and to offend religion and the prophet’s verses and some people cry for him, I say he deserves more than this,” one Saudi twitter user commented.

But there were many who expressed their anger and dismay at the sentence, especially at a time when Saudi Arabia is battling with extreme fundamentalism.

“It’s religious extremism that deserves punishment because it’s what brought us the Islamic State and not liberalism which fights extremism” commented another Saudi on Twitter.

It’s odd to talk about Saudi Arabia “battling with extreme fundamentalism” when it’s so extremely fundamentalist itself. Remember: it refused to sign the UDHR when Egypt and Pakistan did. It has never signed it. It uses its oil money to fund Wahhabi evangelism around the world. It’s not an outpost of liberalism and human rights.

And while #JeSuisCharlie trended worldwide after the Charlie Hebdo attack, some of those who support Badawi started #JeSuisRaif to raise awareness about his case.

Maryam Namazie tweeted “All those tweeting #JeSuisCharlie should also tweet #JeSuisRaif. @raif_badawi sentenced to 10 years prison & 1000 lashes. Saudi Govt STOP”.

It’s always good to see the BBC giving a shout-out to Maryam. They don’t do it often enough. Too much Sacranie, not enough Namazie.

Elham Manea, an associate professor of politics at Zurich University, believes that there could be a possible number of reasons why the punishment was carried out.

“It could be because Saudi Arabia wants to show that it will not submit to international pressure,” said Manea, who has been campaigning for Badawi’s release. “It could also be about an internal struggle and rivalry inside the ruling family.”

“But I’d say the most likely possibility is that the ruling family needs the support of the religious establishment against the tides of Arab Spring and dissident voices inside the kingdom, so this is what they are offering in exchange for their support,” said Manea.

The apartheid regime in South Africa also wanted to show that it will not submit to international pressure for years and years…and then changes came.

Onward.

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

A photographer for AFP, Asif Hasan, has been shot at a protest against Charlie Hebdo in Karachi, Dawn reports.

A protest organised by Islami Jamiat Talaba’s Karachi chapter on Friday turned violent when a clash took place between protesters and police. Security forces resorted to aerial firing, tear gas and water cannons to push back the charged mob.

Three party workers, who were affected by tear gas, have been transferred to the nearest hospital.

Agence France-Presse photographer, Asif Hasan, was shot while covering the rally.

“AFP photographer Asif Hasan suffered wounds resulting from gunshots fired by…protesters, police have not opened fire,” Abdul Khalique Shaikh, a senior police officer in Karachi, told Reuters.

“The bullet struck his lung, and passed through his chest. He is out of immediate danger and he has spoken to his colleagues,” Doctor Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman for Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital where Hassan was taken, told AFP.

Dawn explains about the protest.

Hundreds of people had gathered at Teen Talwar to register their protest over the publication of a blasphemous cartoon disrespecting Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) by French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

It’s not a “blasphemous” cartoon because the cartoonist and the magazine don’t subscribe to the system of taboos and exclusions that label it “blasphemous.” It’s “blasphemous” only to people who do subscribe to that system. And the cartoon didn’t “disrespect” the self-proclaimed “prophet” – it portrayed him as far more of a mensch than his nightmarish defenders. And never mind peace be upon him; how about peace for the rest of us? How about an end to the war on the rest of us that’s being carried on by his worst followers?

Today’s rally was aimed at registering its protest outside the French Consulate building. City police had blocked all the roads leading to the consulate and had stopped protesters from marching towards the consulate. The protesters were seen carrying batons.

The rally comes a day after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif led Parliament in condemning the cartoons.

Oh shut up. Act like adults. Have some self-respect.

Rallies are also being carried out in the capital Islamabad and the eastern city of Lahore against the controversial cartoons.

Religio-political groups of all schools of thought are observing today as a black day against the French magazine. The Tehreek Hurmat-i-Rasool, a conglomerate of 20 plus groups, Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamatud Dawa, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F, Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan, Sunni Tehreek and Sunni Ittehad Council also announced on Thursday launching a countrywide protest movement against the cartoons published by Charlie Hebdo.

Maybe if they unite they can persuade the government to nuke Paris. You know they want to.

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