Remember the baby girl in Bangalore whose father punched her because he wanted a boy?

Well, she died.

For nearly a week, the three-month-old fought as hard as she could in hospital, despite a father who established through brute force that she was unwanted. This morning, Baby Afreen died 30 minutes after a cardiac arrest in a government hospital – the third that she visited in the last seven days with her teenaged mother. She was buried later in the day.

Baby Afreen’s father, Umar Farooq, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly assaulting his only child. He has reportedly confessed to the police that he hit his only child because he had wanted a son. Afreen’s mother, Reshma Bano,

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There’s a very good article about Leo Igwe in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian.

The heated face-off between Igwe and Ukpabio’s followers that took place in July 2009 is part of a continuing battle for the country’s soul. In the one camp, there are people like Igwe, a humanist who fights superstition because of the savage effect it has on the country’s children. Ukpabio and a growing horde of pastors just like her, such as David Oyedepo and Celestine Effiong, make up the other group. They are the ever-growing number of evangelists whose fame and fortune comes from irrational beliefs and their livelihood is dependent on the hysterical fear associated with witchcraft that exists in Nigeria’s fundamentalist, Christian south.

…

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Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic Wire gives a lot of background on John Derbyshire’s…erm…views on race.

Derbyshire doesn’t say that black people, especially women, are pathetically stupid people doomed to live on the dole (For a good example of that, check out the 1941 Looney Tunes cartoon Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs.) Instead, he says that the black women who work at the DMV are mean and stupid because they’re genetically destined to be so. From his recent essay:

The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low… There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by

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This too is from last month. You probably already know about it. I saw a headline or two, but didn’t follow it up. Dozens of Iraqi teenagers with emo haircuts were stoned to death.

Pictures below the fold.

Activists told the Lebanon-based al-Akhbar daily that at least 90 Iraqi teenagers with “emo” appearances have been stoned to death by the Moral Police in the country in the past month. The violent crackdown against “emo” Iraqi teenagers came after the Iraqi interior ministry declared them as “devil worshippers.”

“The ‘Emo phenomenon’ or devil worshiping is being probed by the Moral Police who have the approval to eliminate it as soon as possible since it’s detrimentally affecting the society and becoming

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This is from last month, but I missed it. Egypt’s Islamists want to do away with the category “women” and replace it with “families.”

A women’s conference organized by the dominant Islamist bloc in the Egyptian parliament has called for a council for families to replace the existing National Council for Women, a state-owned daily reported on Friday.

The conference, held Thursday on International Women’s Day, also condemned the 1978 U.N. convention against gender discrimination saying it was “incompatible with the values of Islamic sharia” law, the Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

Great. Faaaaantastic. One, forget all about women, there are no women, there are only families. Two, forget all about equal rights for women, equal rights for women are incompatible with … Read the rest

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And another thing:

Sign the petition if you haven’t already.… Read the rest

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Andrew Copson was on BBC News to say what he thought about the cardinal’s yips about religious freedome and Wearing the Cross. He said it very nicely, but the cardinal won’t like it any better for that.

Andrew’s bit starts at 2:14.

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

H/t Author.… Read the rest

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The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on misogyny websites and blogs. It lists twelve of them, including In Mala Fide and the subreddit Men’s Rights.

In Mala Fide This blog, whose name translates from the Latin as “In Bad Faith,” describes itself in its mission statement as “[a]n online magazine dedicated to publishing heretical and unpopular ideas. Ideas that polite society considers ‘racist,’ ‘misogynistic,’ ‘homophobic,’ ‘bigoted’ or other slurs used to shut down critical thinking and maintain the web of delusions that keep our world broken and dying.” The unifying idea is this: “Feminism is a hate movement designed to disenfranchise and dehumanize men.” The site carries ads for such offerings as the HardKnight “male enhancement system,” PolishLasses (“Over

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A horror story from India.

The girl’s screams were brittle and desperate. Neighbors in the suburban housing complex looked up and saw a child crying for help from an upstairs balcony. She was 13 and worked as a maid for a couple who had gone on vacation to Thailand. They had left her locked inside their apartment.

After a firefighter rescued her, the girl described a life akin to slavery, child welfare officials said. Her uncle had sold her to a job placement agency, which sold her to the couple, both doctors. The girl was paid nothing. She said the couple barely fed her and beat her if her work did not meet expectations. She said they used closed-circuit

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Taslima is wasting no time. “What should women do?” she asks. “They should take off their burqas and burn them.”

That’s telling them!

So is her opening observation.

My mother used to wear a burqa with a net over her face. It reminded me of the meat safes in my grandmother’s house. Meat safe’s net was made of metal, my mother’s net was made of linen. But the objective was the same: keeping the meat safe.

Thwack.… Read the rest

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Interesting post of PZ’s on being “good without god” and whether that’s a goal or slogan worth having.

The implication of “good” is thorough conformity. Has challenging an authority figure ever fit the definition of being good? When abolitionists broke the law by smuggling slaves into Canada, when suffragettes picketed to demand the vote,  when Stonewall erupted and Martin Luther King marched, when students protested the war in Viet Nam, were they being “good” in the general public’s understanding of the term? I don’t think so. They were being very, very naughty. Which was good. See what I mean? It’s an empty word that offers nothing but vague reassurances.

Yes I guess so. I admit I have been thinking all … Read the rest

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Update: Maryam reports that it’s not reliable.

there have been some reports that 23 year old Hamza Kashgariwho faces execution in Saudi Arabia for his Tweets about Mohammad is now out of danger and is to be released imminently or that he is only being held ‘for his own safety’. But these reports are not true.

I just got two messages from a family member and a friend. One message said:

That’s not true, nothing has been confirmed so far, everything still foggy and in a gray area. We hear from him from one time to time informing us that he’s ok and that’s it.

So everything below is wrong or at least unconfirmed.

Via the Free Hamza … Read the rest

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Mark Driscoll, of Seattle’s Mars Hill church fame, has an Easter post on the Washington Post’s “On Faith” blog. (Are we faithy enough yet?)

It’s beautiful.

…for most people in our culture, Easter is more synonymous with fluffy bunnies, brightly painted eggs, kids hopped up on chocolate and a great meal with family and friends.

And while many Christians happily and freely celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter today, they don’t know exactly how to approach the whole Easter Bunny thing. So, I thought I’d take a moment to share how we do at the Driscoll house.

Just like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny is a hallmark of American culture. So, unless you live in a commune, you can’t

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Catholic clerics and superclerics don’t seem to know when they have it good, do they. They seem to think Christianity is “marginalized” when something under 100% of the population dances to their tune.

Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic Church cleric has called for Christians to wear a cross every day.

In his Easter Sunday sermon, Cardinal Keith O’Brien will tell worshippers to “wear proudly a symbol of the cross of Christ” each day of their lives.

The leader of the Church in Scotland, he will voice concern at the growing “marginalisation” of religion.

What marginalization? What growing marginalization?

Look at all the ink he gets. Look at all the ink he gets in this very story in which he bleats … Read the rest

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Justin Griffith has a very important post on why it matters (a lot) that atheists in the military should come out of the closet. (Yes, Brendan O’Neill, the closet.)

This is why:

Here is the debate-ending argument against NO-REL-PREF:

For all of those who still don’t see why this is a big deal:

• Silence reinforces the culture of shame and fear.
• We are banned from meeting on posts.
• We are forced to take spiritual fitness tests (and mandatory remedial training).
• Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent on converting you and your families to Christianity.
• Many chaplain-endorsing agencies have an official proselytizing policy: “We reserve the right to evangelize the un-churched.”

This list is not even close

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The Vatican at its loveliest – shutting up a priest because he has reasonable, valuable criticisms of the Vatican itself.

Fascists.

Father Tony Flannery, a Catholic priest who has been outspoken in his criticism of the abuse crisis in Ireland, has found himself under investigation by the Vatican for his liberal views.

Founder of the Association of Irish Priests, Father Flannery told TheJournal.ie that the Vatican has contacted him to inform  him of the investigation.

The effect of the investigation was immediate. This week The Irish Catholic newspaper reports that Father Flannery had to cease writing his monthly column in the Redemptorist Reality magazine in response to news of the investigation.

It’s helpful of them, in a way, to be … Read the rest

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