The BBC reports a horrible case of child abuse ending with a seven-year-old boy beaten to death with a piece of wood.

His mother, Sara Ege, 33, denies beating Yaseen Ali Ege to death at their home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, in July 2010 and setting fire to his body…The jury was shown a piece of wood which the prosecution claims was used by Mrs Ege to hit her son “like a dog”.

Mrs Ege covered her ears as jurors heard the 999 call she made saying that there was a fire in the home and that her son was still upstairs…It was first thought that the boy had died in the fire and that his death was a tragic accident, the jury heard.

But a post mortem examination revealed he had died several hours before the blaze, of multiple injuries caused by being hit by a blunt instrument.

Sare Ege admitted she been hitting Yassen with a stick, in her own words, “like a dog,” for three months before the fire, the court heard…Mrs Ege admitted pouring lighter fuel over her son’s body, the jury was told, saying “I know he was gone but I was just trying to protect myself”.

Oh, well then.

How horrendous. Three months of being beaten with a stick…and in the end being killed that way. By his own mother.

But the BBC report never says why. Did he disobey? Wet the bed? Talk back?

To find out why, you have to read the Telegraph.

In a video recording of her interview with police, Mrs Ege told them: “I was trying to teach him the Koran.

“I was getting more and more frustrated. If he didn’t read it properly I would be very angry — I would hit him.

“We had a high target. I wanted him to learn 35 pages in three months.

“I promised him a new bike if he could do it. But Yaseen wasn’t very good — after a year of practice he had only learnt a chapter.”

The court heard Mrs Ege, 32, a university graduate, and her husband, Yousuf, had enrolled Yaseen in advanced classes at their local mosque.

They wanted him to become a hafiz — an Islamic term for someone who memorises the Koran.

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

Yesterday I took a look at the Scientology building on Fountain Avenue, which is very near the hotel I stayed in on Vermont. Holy shit that place is creepy.

Think the name is big enough?

The building is a former hospital, and it’s massive. The paint job makes it very conspicuous – it’s like a blue Oz.

There are security guards and guardish-looking people with belts festooned with surveillancey equipment all over the place. The street that runs along the east side of the fortress building is named L Ron Hubbard Way. It’s a public street but I felt very…not on public property while I was walking north on it.

It looks like fascism; it looks more like fascism than fascism did. It’s like fascism cartoonishly exaggerated and made visual.

Creepy. creepy. creepy.

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

Amy talked to Michael De Dora about what he does as CFI’s Director of Public Policy and UN rep. It’s good that she did that, because what he does is important, and he does it. (No need for self-mockery about 1st world probs here.)

Many people in the secular community seem unaware of the extremely important work that Michael De Dora and CFI are doing. They are literally on the front lines battling to protect women’s reproductive rights. They are working to ensure the separation of church and state here at home. They tirelessly rage against the oppressors of the world so that all people may eventually have freedom of religion, non religion and freedom of expression. They fight to keep religion out of the classroom and they fight to keep government funding from being funneled from public schools into religious schools. Care about freedom of speech? Then you should care about CFI’s newly launched Campaign for Free Expression.

Huh? What’s that got to do with skepticism?! 

Hey, you know what? Skepticism isn’t all CFI does. How about that.

You probably knew that. I think some people don’t know that though. I mentioned the question I got after my talk, asking why I drag feminism into skepticism, when I hadn’t been talking about skepticism at all. Skepticism is one thing but it’s not the only thing, and CFI isn’t CSI.

Amy’s on it.

What?

Not enough?

Too much social justice and not enough traditional skepticism for ya?

Well, guess what?

They even educate local government on the dangers of alternative medicine and fight to stop tax funding and insurance coverage of risky or unfounded treatments. Oh, and yeah, climate science is on their list too.

See? It’s not the only thing, but it is one thing. Deep breaths, people.

Michael’s on it, CFI is on it, they’re all on it. It’s what they do.

Could you please explain the mission of CFI’s Office of Public Policy and your active role in that policy?

The broad mission of CFI’s Office of Public Policy is to push governing bodies to enact public policies based on secular values, humanist ethical principles, and, where possible, scientific evidence. Essentially, we combine the secular and humanist worldviews, and the scientific worldview, and apply the combined perspective to policy debates. I think that this multi-faceted approach results in some very compelling arguments.

Got that? It’s a multi-faceted approach. Secular values are part of it. Secular values are what my talk was about. I’m allowed to do that.

Free expression is one of those secular values.* CFI’s OPP works to support it.

Most recently our focus has been on protecting and defending the rights to freedom of religion, belief, and expression. Historically, these rights have been fragile, and they have come under widespread attack the last couple months – especially after the release of the Internet video Innocence of Muslims, which caused protests in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

One of our main focuses on this issue has been to shed light on the growing number of cases of people being punished simply for practicing a different, or no religion, or speaking their mind. Perhaps the most prominent case, at least for the secular community, is that of Alexander Aan, the Indonesian fellow who is in jail for posting on Facebook that he is an atheist.

In order bring attention to Aan and others like his, we just launched the Campaign for Free Expression, which seeks to rally broad support for the right to freedom of speech.

In concert with that, we have been working at the United Nations to fight attempts by the leaders of several countries to implement resolutions and agreements that would in effect restrict freedom of expression. And we have been working with the State Department to put diplomatic pressure on countries that do not respect freedom of expression. The idea is that the more social support you build for a position, the more feasible political action becomes.

How do they decide what issues to take on?

We decide which issues are important largely based on our mission. We will jump on an issue if it threatens the separation between church and state, is unethical from a secular humanist perspective, or is either unaligned or even opposed to current science.

Sounds sensible to me.

*No, that doesn’t mean people should call women they dislike fucking cunts, or non-white people they dislike fucking niggers, or Jews they dislike fucking kikes, or gay women they dislike fucking dykes, or gay men they dislike fucking faggots. It means doing so should not be a crime, or punished by the state.**

**Unless it adds up to harassment or incitement. Yes it makes a difference. A playful slap is one thing, a beating is another.

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

It’s not just the Taliban that destroys schools, Mohammed Hanif points out.

Last week, a girls’ high school was set ablaze in Pakistan’s second largest city, Lahore. And no, the Taliban were not the culprits. A mob, enraged after allegations of blasphemy against a teacher, carried out the attack. Instead of taking action against them, the police arrested the school’s 77-year-old owner.

The accused teacher, who allegedly committed blasphemy by photocopying the wrong page of a book for homework, is in hiding.

We make fun of ourselves by saying “first world problem” – sometimes when we’re misdirecting our attention or worry, sometimes when we’re addressing an admittedly smaller-than-genocide item. What can ironists in Pakistan say about items like torching a school because a teacher photocopied the wrong page of a book for homework? What can ironists in a country with way too many uneducated religious fanatics say about religious fanatics torching a school for ludicrous religious fanatic reasons that in fact don’t even apply because the alleged “blasphemy” was just a matter of copying the wrong page by accident? “Third world problem” doesn’t quite seem ironic, somehow.

What is conveniently ignored in the debate over Malala is the fact that every 10th child in the world who doesn’t go to school is Pakistani. The Taliban are not the only ones keeping kids out of school. Some fairly secularly minded people think of Pakistan’s children as someone else’s children – not deserving the education that their money buys for their own kids. As such, Pakistan is a booming marketplace for private education. Ask anyone on the street, and they’ll tell you it’s the biggest business in Pakistan.

Hanif doesn’t mention madrassas. There are a lot of them in Pakistan, partly because public education is so neglected. They don’t teach anything - they just train children in rote recitation of the Koran in Arabic. Most of them are very conservative.

Listen to the Taliban, not to their cuddly intellectual friends, and you begin to get a clearer picture. Their apologists in political parties may try to prove that girls’ education is an invention of the  infidels, but the Taliban seem to know what they are talking about. An educated female population is more threatening to them than armies equipped with all-seeing drones. Every girl who crams for a high-school exam, every woman who runs a hospital, and every semi-educated mother who makes sure her daughter gets a better education than she herself received, is a mortal threat to the Taliban’s declared ambition that every little girl who talks about school gets it in the head.

By abdicating its responsibility to educate our children, to protect those who manage to go to school and those who teach them, Pakistan is making it that much easier for the Taliban’s mission to succeed.

A third world problem. Irony is nowhere in sight.

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

There was one guy who kind of ambushed me after the talk yesterday – by which I mean he came up to me afterward all friendly-like and had his picture taken with me, when actually he’s one of the “faction” there (and it apparently is quite organized) that hates me and all other…you know, Those Women and their Mangina Allies.

He probably got the picture for photoshopping purposes.

I took a quick look at his Facebook page just now (having been enlightened as to who he is and what he was up to) and saw a TAM 2012 album with this in it-

Uhhhh. Thanks a lot, Harriet Hall. I’m glad you think it’s so funny.

The reference is to vaccinations. My bad.

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

You’re longing to hear all about My Trip To LA, right? No? Well you’re going to.

I think the talk went pretty well (she said modestly). I had fun doing it, anyway – I talked about some issues that are interesting to me. You guys contributed because of the discussion last week.

It turned out there were some people there who already had an opinion of me, and not a good one. (Perhaps they think I eat cat food.) There was one rather truculent question, but no rotting fruit, or even decanned cat food.

And we went to lunch after, and I talked to amazing Louise, until she had to go play the Auntie Mame part at a family gathering. Alice and Stacy and I went to Wacko, then the Museum of Jurassic Technology, then t0 meet up again with Amy and Johnny at a thrilling restaurant in the Hollywood hills, where they (Amy and Johnny) treated us all to dinner. Fabulous people.

The truculent question was why do I drag feminism into skepticism, when feminism is an ideology while skepticism is about questioning all the things (including, I think we are to infer, gender equality, but not gender inequality). I said basically that I don’t; my talk was about secularism and equality. As far as I know CFI doesn’t focus solely on skepticism. Then I said that on the other hand, I think it would be (or is) stupid for skepticism to drive women away from skepticism by treating them like crap. Apparently that’s a controversial view. Hmreally? Why?

Just now I went out, early while it was still coolish, and went north on Vermont past a bookshop and other nice stuff, then west a bit and back south, past CFI to Barnall Barnsdall Park which is across the street from them (and the Pentecostal church which snuggles up to their east wall). I went up to the top of the hill and was rewarded with a stunning view of the Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign and all the things to the north and west and a good deal to the south until the smog got too thick.

I like LA.

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

In Los Angeles. I took a group shuttle from the airport and it took FOREVER but that was actually good, because I got a tour.

Gonna go have a bite to eat with STACY and ALICE.

Doesn’t suck to be me.

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

I’m at the airport. As usual, I have no earthly reason for saying that, except that I like to.

Larry Williams has to report to the service desk. Larry Williams.

Have a pleasant Saturday.

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

The lady car for ladies, the lady pen for ladies – Ellen DeGeneres has a funny bit on the lady pen.

“And they come in both lady colors: pink and purple.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCyw3prIWhc

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

Something to think about…violence against women in Pakistan: 2,713 cases reported in 2012 so far, not in Pakistan, but just in southern Punjab. And those are only the reported ones. Something tells me that not all women subject to violence in Pakistan are able or willing to report it.

These include cases of aas-aaf custom (10) – in which women accused of ‘bringing shame to the family’ take an oath of innocence on the Holy Quran and then walk on burning coals spread over six metres–, abduction and torture after abduction (577), acid attacks (20), burning by throwing kerosene oil and petrol (17), kaala kaali (25), assault after divorce (45), assault by in-laws (100), ‘honour’ killings (112), murder and assault for contracting a marriage with their free will (114), murder (162), victims of panchayat decisions where women were either sold or killed (37), rape (304), assault by police (20), suicide in reaction to family pressure, rape or other forms of violence (444), torture leading to physical or mental disability (489), wani (37), watta satta (25) and cases of gender discrimination and disinheritance (175).

I hadn’t heard of that aas-aaf custom. That’s nice. Very 16th century Europe, where women accused of being witches might be thrown into a pond. If they drowned they were innocent. Yay.

Sometimes the violence is just grumpy neighbors.

Farkhanda, a second year student and a hafiz-i-Quran, had an argument with three women neighbours when she went to their house to collect her dupatta that had fallen into their house.

They said the women accused her of throwing the dupatta into their house on purpose.

They accused her of entering their house with an intention to steal from there. Some neighbours heard them arguing and intervened, police said.

The matter was resolved and Farkhanda returned home, they said.

However, later that night, police said, three youths, Ibrahim, Iqbal and Bilal, relatives of the women Farkhanda earlier had an argument with, went to her house while her family was away and beat her up. Police said they decapitated her with a butcher’s cleaver…

And then after a pause to catch their breath, they chopped off her arms and legs.

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

I’m still wondering about this question of what is “religious morality”? Most people seem to think it’s just plain morality that’s (partly or wholly) motivated or endorsed or decorated by religion.

I think that’s completely wrong. That’s not because I think nobody is really motivated by religion. It’s because that’s not enough to make morality religious.

I think morality is secular. I haven’t been able to think of any morality that isn’t secular – any moral content that is religious as opposed to secular.

Can you?

Religions have rules, but they’re not particularly moral. Rules about diet or what to wear or taking a day off to honor a god – those aren’t moral.

Morality applies to what people do to each other, and to animals, and perhaps to the planet. None of that has anything to do with a god or with another (different, non-material) world.

People try to go the other way around, and say the good is what pleases god and therefore morality is religious, but that falls afoul of the Euthyphro dilemma. What if what pleases god is parents dousing their daughters with acid? Then god would be bad! Therefore god would never do that. Ok but then you’re deciding what god is according to what you think is good, so it’s what you think is good that actually counts. See?

Is there anything we think is good that has nothing to do with the secular – nothing to do with humans and their needs or feelings, nothing to do with animals or the earth? If there is anything like that, maybe it’s religious, but I’ll be damned if I can think of anything.

Can you?

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

Don’t miss Andy Lewis’s long and thorough article What Every Parent Should Know About Steiner-Waldorf Schools.

Just one sample, to whet your appetite -

Far from Steiner’s views being seen as a historical anachronism, the text books are full of unreformed anthroposophical views on the world. The text books I have got hold of teach that the heart is not a pump but is forced to beat by the pulsing blood that is forced around the body by the spirit. We learn that humans are bipedal because it frees the arms to pray. Anatomy is treated as a spiritual subject and not a science. The British Humanist Association notes that the source of the curriculum at Hereford state funded Steiner schools is acknowledged to be based on a book by Martyn Rawson and Tobias Richter which teaches that Darwinism “is rooted in reductionist thinking and Victorian ethics and young people need to emerge from school with a clear sense of its limits”. Homeopathy, a most egregious form of quackery, is  ‘a good example of an effect that cannot be explained by the dominant [atomic] model’.  It is worth noting that Steiner stated that the British Isles floated on the sea held in place by cosmic forces. And he believed in the historical truth of the vanished continent of Atlantis…

That article needs to be published somewhere.

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

And speaking of going places and doing things – Veronica Abbass at Canadian Atheist has a post about what people are looking forward to at Eschaton in Ottawa next month. We’re all looking forward to meeting each other, is what it boils down to.

I hope there’s plenty of cat food.

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

From the Washington state Voters’ pamphlet, the section on Referendum Measure 74, which would allow same-sex couples to marry. From the Argument Against.

God’s creation of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is the foundation of society and has served us well for thousands of years.

Seriously?!

I shouldn’t be surprised. The statements are prepared by the people who prepare them. They can have batshit crazy stuff in them.

But I am suprised, all the same. ”God’s creation of marriage as the union of one man and one woman” doesn’t exist. One man often had lots of women in God’s old-timey world.

My “Promised Land” is a place where people don’t talk stupid shite like that.

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

Belatedly catching up with the Halloween Jesus and Mo.

Is the barmaid praising their sense of humour, or their insight?

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

There’s a new group for liberal Muslims in Canada: Muslims Facing Tomorrow. There was a launch a couple of weeks ago.

I attended the launch of the Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow at the invitation of Raheel Raza, journalist, author, public speaker and activist. She founded MFT to amplify the moderate Muslim voice at a time when it’s in danger of being lost in the clamor of extremist rhetoric.

An energetic advocate of women’s rights and social reform, Raheel wants the group to be unconstrained by religion and open to all who share a vision of tolerance and diversity. She sees it more as a movement than an organization, connecting and motivating people around the globe, holding conferences and workshops to educate and strengthen the progressive Muslim identity. Of particular concern to her is providing direction and support for Muslim youth.

Good good good. Support for the Malalas of the world, and the parents of the Malalas of the world.

As Raheel welcomed the audience and the cameras clicked and flashed, I glanced around the auditorium; half an hour in people continued to arrive. There were no hijabs or “Islamic” beards, no segregated seating. I heard the prophet mentioned without the suffix “Salallahu alayhi wasalam” (Peace be upon Him). I can’t tell you how comfortable that made me; dialogue with some Muslims can feel like a piety competition – the tension is palpable when you don’t couch your words in the correct phrases.

Let’s hope the group thrives.

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

I forgot to say – I’m doing a talk at CFI Los Angeles on Sunday, so if you’re in that area and want to come along, now you know. 11 a.m. 4773 Hollywood Boulevard.

I’m going to talk about Reap Paden.

Kidding! Totally kidding.

I might eat some cat food though, as a kind of party trick.

I’m adding the thing. There’s a thing. A description type thing.

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

Another girls’ school set on fire in Pakistan.

A large number of people, including activists of religious parties, ransacked and set on fire a girls’ school in Lahore and clashed with police following reports that a question paper for a test had contained blasphemous references to the Prophet, police said today.

Reports, please note. Also known as rumors. Reports that something something, so whammo, set fire to a girls’ school.

Residents of Karim Park near Data Darbar began gathering outside the school yesterday morning following reports that its owner, Asim Farooqi, and teacher Arifa had committed blasphemy.

According to witnesses, the mob surrounded the three school buildings and forced their entry into the complex even after a large police contingent was deployed at the spot.

A sizeable number of activists of the Islami Jamiat Talba and JuD were part of the crowd and they demanded that the police should hand over the blasphemers to them.

The protesters subsequently forced their entry into the buildings after police used teargas in an attempt to disperse them. They let terrified students vacate the buildings and searched for the “blasphemers”.

So that they could beat them to death?

Legislators Mian Marghoob and Khawaja Imran Nazir of the PML-N that rules Punjab and senior police officers reached the spot and requested the protesters to go home so that police could investigate the matter.

“I assure you the government will thoroughly investigate the matter and will not spare those involved in blasphemy,” promised Nazir, who is the political secretary to Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

Later, police claimed they had arrested both Farooqi and Arifa and booked them under the harsh blasphemy law.

A police official said that the private school’s administration had set a question paper for a test a few days ago that allegedly contained “indecent” remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.

I would say something harsh, but Chris Stedman might report me to the Huffington Post.

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

There’s a lot of indignation about Bruce Gorton’s guest post about faitheists. People have been badgering Paul Fidalgo about it on Twitter merely because he linked to it in the Morning Heresy – he linked to it, he didn’t endorse it. James Croft has a long post on it. Vlad Chituc challenged me on it via Twitter, and we ended up having a decent discussion.

The indignation is about the claim that Chris Stedman “holds a degree of the basic unconscious racism that I find common in a lot of these arguments over religion.”

Part of the problem is just that people translated that into “Chris Stedman is a racist.”

Look closely at the two and you’ll see the difference. I pointed that out to Vlad yesterday, and I also pointed out that it’s pretty common to be told that one holds a degree of unconscious racism; he didn’t fully agree but he did at least see my point, which is how we ended up having a decent discussion.

So that’s one thing. It’s just the basic idea that no one is free of unconscious racism and other biases, or at least that it’s not safe to assume that anyone is. The charge can be annoying, certainly, but it’s not the same as just “you are a racist.”

So what about the merits? Bruce went on, first quoting Stedman:

“But how can we discount the role religious beliefs played in motivating the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi?”

Why do I say this is unconsciously racist? Gandhi and MLK Jnr were both fighting against social injustices they personally suffered – and they were fighting shoulder to shoulder with atheists to achieve it.

[snip]

I do not think religion was the motivating factor behind Martin Luther King Jnr, I think not wanting an America where the colour of his skin relegated him to third class status had a lot more to do with it. I do not think religion motivated Mahatma Gandhi, I think desiring an India free from colonial rule had a lot more to do with it.

I think that’s right. I also think it’s possible to find moral support and encouragement and so on from a selective use of religion – obviously King was not “motivated” by the same religion that “motivated” the white supremacists – but that’s not the same as being motivated by religion in general. I think Bruce is right that the real motivations for social justice campaigns like those of Gandhi and King are moral and thus secular. They are not rooted in ideas about obedience to God; they are rooted in ideas about equal treatment among human beings on planet Earth.

I think the idea of unconscious racism has to do with making special rules for other races, and that that’s patronizing and thus racist.

I think I’ve often found that idea somewhat persuasive, but I think I was probably wrong. I think what’s really going on is people trying to correct for their own privilege, and it seems pretty perverse to call that racist. I think the idea is, “it’s easy for me to give up religion, because I’m not shut out of nearly everything else, but it’s not so easy for people who are shut out of nearly everything else. That makes me hesitant about trying to talk them out of religion.”

See what I mean?

I could develop it more, but I’ll let you do the work.

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

A complete and utter horror.

Muzaffarabad: A mother and father in Pakistan-administered Kashmir killed their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid after seeing her talking to a young man, police said on Thursday.

By dousing her with acid. Can there be a worse way to die? Being set on fire, perhaps.

And for talking to a man. Parents. Their child. Acid. Talking to a man.

Local police officer Tahir Ayub told AFP the father, Mohammad Zafar, had had suspicions about his daughter Anvu Sha and became enraged when he saw her with a boy outside their home on Monday.

“Zafar beat her up and then poured acid over her with the help of his wife. She was badly burnt but they did not take her to hospital until the next morning, and she died on Wednesday,” Ayub said.

Doctor Mohammad Jahangir of the state run Kotli hospital confirmed the death, saying the girl was brought to hospital in a “very critical condition” with almost 70 per cent burns.

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