The IHEU on the brutal murder of Washiqur Rahman in Dhaka a few hours ago.

Washiqur Rahman’s Facebook banner declares “#IamAvijit”, after the leading secular and humanist blogger, Avijit Roy, who was murdered a month ago in Bangladesh.

This morning Washiqur Rahman himself was killedin similar circumstances: a machete attack by assailants on the streets of Dhaka. The brutal attack took place close to Rahman’s home. Police have reportedly taken two men into custody who were detained at the scene.

Bob Churchill, Director of Communications at the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) comments: “We are deeply saddened that yet another rationalist voice has been so brutally silenced in this vile backlash against atheist bloggers. Our thoughts are with

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The BBC reports on the brutal murder of Washiqur Rahman.

Two students at an Islamic seminary have reportedly been arrested.

Last month, Avijit Roy, a US-based writer who had criticised religious intolerance, was killed in a machete attack while he was visiting Dhaka.

His death sparked fresh concerns for freedom of speech in Bangladesh, where several secular-minded writers have been targeted by militants.

Bangladesh is a death-trap for writers who promote religious tolerance and freethinking.

Mr Rahman was killed on a busy street in Dhaka. Two of the suspected attackers, armed with meat cleavers, were caught near the scene.

The suspects told police they had targeted Mr Rahman because of his anti-Islamic writing, a police official told the Associated Press

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Taslima tweeted this photo.

Madrasa students Zikrulla & Arif killed Washikur Babu today. Killers said it’s their duty as muslims to kill freethinkers.

She also shared photos of Washikur Rahman’s hacked corpse. She wants everyone to know what that murderous violence looks like, so that we can imagine what it feels like.… Read the rest

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Oh god no not again – another atheist blogger hacked to death by men with machetes in Dhaka.

Washikur Rahman, an atheist blogger, was hacked to death on a busy street in the centre of Dhaka on Monday morning, a police official said.

“Police on duty near the spot caught two attackers red-handed with three machetes as they were fleeing the scene after the incident,” police official Humayan Kabir told Reuters.

A fellow writer said Rahman wrote against religious fundamentalism on Facebook and across other social media sites using a pen name, although this could not be confirmed by police. The alias used by Rahman is said to be “Babu” (ugly duckling).

“He is a friend of mine

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This is horrifying. Nushin Arbabzadah says religious violence has become normalized in Afghanistan.

The brutal lynching of Farkhunda, has revealed a number of significant issues regarding the state of Islam in Afghanistan.

The most crucial is that a fanatic strand of Islamic has become normalized, and accepted by a mainstream audience. The imam who incited the violence, the mob who lynched Farkhunda, the bystanders who filmed it — they were not the disenfranchised. They were ordinary Afghans, members of the middle class, including shop keepers. The initial public reaction was approval, expressed by public figures representing the spheres of culture and education.

They included a female deputy culture minister, who said, in reference to the murder, that nothing can

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Mandy Brown comments on the ruling in Ellen Pao’s suit against Kleiner Perkins.

The law has been constructed in such a way that only extremely blatant discrimination counts. More subtle sexism (and racism) can hide behind all kinds of gender- or race-neutral justifications which can never be wholly dismissed. So Pao wasn’t passed up because she was a woman, but because she wasn’t likeable. She wasn’t fired because of her lawsuit, but because she didn’t have what it takes. She was both too pushy and not pushy enough. She wasn’t a “thought leader.”

The message here is you can discriminate all you want so long as you aren’t completely stupid about it.

“Thought leader”? That made me jump. I didn’t … Read the rest

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Remember Amal Farah on The Big Questions?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOYR1_1Zzw

The Daily Mirror talks to her.

The police came to her door and told her her mother was a jihadist.

In the seven years since the two last saw each other, her mother had become a pivotal member of Al Shabab, the Somali jihadists ­behind the Westgate mall ­massacre in Nairobi.

Known as Mama Shabab, she ­allegedly ran a safe house for suicide bombers and Western fighters recruited into the militant Islamic organisation.

The police officers told Amal, 34, to Google her mother’s name if she wanted to know why she was in trouble.

So later on she did.

“There were all these ­pictures of people injured by ­suicide bombs.

“As

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Nick Cohen reviews Nigel Farage’s campaign biography and finds yet another “get me I’m an outsider” phony.

Farage is an attack dog who poses as an underdog. He’s the small-minded man who pretends he’s the friend of the little guy. He writes as if he were a dissident in a dictatorship: a lone and persecuted voice, who has suffered for telling truth to power. The results are occasionally hilarious. The BBC and press are always out to get him, even though most of the Conservative press supports Ukip’s policies, and the BBC never has him off air.

They promote him, but they don’t cuddle and squeeze him.

Farage’s vainglorious anecdotes are accompanied by a long, low moan about how he

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… Read the rest

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What not to say about rape:

A Catholic priest in Melbourne has reportedly been criticised for a speech in which he said Jill Meagher would have been at home instead of out on the night she was raped and killed if she was more “faith filled”.

Meagher was murdered by Adrian Bayley after a night out Melbourne in September 2012. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The priest delivered his homily at an end-of-term service for a Catholic primary school in Melbourne on Friday and radio station 3AW reported he held up a newspaper article with a picture of Bayley on it to make his point. The report says he told a crowd of about 100 that if

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Robert Reich thinks college fraternities should be abolished. I do too.

There are exceptions but for the most part fraternities are elitist, exclusive, and privileged. They have nothing to do with higher education. And they’re periodically mired in scandal involving hazing (such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison frat’s degrading hazing); racism (the video of Sigma Alpha Epsilon members calling for the lynching of African-Americans); sexual assault (the University of Maryland frat brothers’ pro-rape emails, and allegations of drug dealing and sexual assault in a North Carolina State frat); degradation of women (Penn State fraternity’s secret Facebook page for sharing photos of nude passed out women); destructive drunkenness (University of Michigan frat brothers destroying a ski resort in a drunken

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Indiana is surprised and, frankly, a little hurt by all the hostility that has greeted its friendly new law inviting everyone to treat selected sets of people like pariahs.

Three days after signing legislation widely criticized as a “license to discriminate” against LGBT people, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence says he didn’t anticipate “the hostility that’s been directed at our state.”

Pence told the Indianapolis Star on Saturday he’s been in discussions with legislative leaders this weekend, and will support legislation to “clarify the intent” of the religious freedom that has created a firestorm of criticism, boycotts and backlash from civic leaders to business leaders, and even the White House.

It’s all a big misunderstanding. Poor Indiana.

The measure, which takes

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Some snaps via Twitter.

And another.

One more.

… Read the rest

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In Tunis today, thousands of people marched to the Bardo Museum in protest against terrorism and death and culture-murder, and in favor of freedom and art and museums and human flourishing.

Chanting “Tunisia is free! Terrorism out!” they marched to the Bardo Museum, the scene of an attack in which 21 tourists and a Tunisian died.

French President Francois Hollande and other world leaders attended a ceremony at the museum.

…

Demonstrators waved Tunisian flags and held up slogans of “Not Afraid” and “We Are Bardo” as they marched, surrounded by a heavy security presence.

“We have shown we are a democratic people, Tunisians are moderate, and there is no room for terrorists here,” demonstrator Kamel Saad told Reuters.

It … Read the rest

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A shining example of how religion can foster a twisted view of morality.

[US Cardinal Raymond Burke] has spoken out again, telling an interviewer that gay couples and divorced and remarried Catholics who are trying to live good and faithful lives are still like “the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”

No, they aren’t. Not at all. You can have reservations about unilateral divorce, especially if it’s done with cruelty or brutality, but it’s still not a close relative of murder.

“If you are living publicly in a state of mortal sin there isn’t any good act that you can perform that justifies that situation: the person remains in grave sin,” Burke said in an

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Silicon Valley pretends to love mavericky types but really it’s numbingly conformist in some very obvious ways…such as in being ridiculously absent-minded about the existence of women.

Ellen Pao sued a venture capital firm for gender discrimination and lost, but the trial spilled a lot of crappy beans.

Not only have weeks of testimony revealed a collection of boorish, unsavory and at times unwittingly misogynist attitudes at one of the tech industry’s most storied financial institutions, the case has also come to stand for something bigger than itself. It has blown open a conversation about the status of women in an industry that, for all its talk of transparency and progress, has always been buttoned up about its shortcomings.

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And the title goes to

The National Secular Society has awarded the staff ofCharlie Hebdo the annual Secularist of the Year prize, for their courageous response to the terror attack on their Paris office.

Just one week after the attack on 7 January 2015, in which 12 people were killed, the remaining staff ofCharlie Hebdo published an edition of the magazine featuring a depiction of Mohammed and an editorial making a passionate defence of secularism and the right to free expression.

NSS president Terry Sanderson said: “Since the events of 7 January in Paris, Charlie Hebdo has become more than a magazine – it has become an ideal, a symbol of democracy, a rallying cry to those who

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Richard Dawkins tweeted yesterday:

changerofbits ‏@changerofbits 21 hours ago
@RichardDawkins Why are trusting anything to Jonathan Monsarrat at RDF/SPI? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/02413623115/bogus-lawsuit-plus-threats-to-those-who-write-about-it-leads-to-epic-response.shtml … Because he’ll sue you if you don’t?

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins
@changerofbits If, by RDF, you mean the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Monsarrat has no connection with it.

At the Richard Dawkins Foundation:

Here’s another one.

And then there’s this public Facebook announcement in 2013:

Call for Volunteers

Johnny Monsarrat is a volunteer traveling with the Richard Dawkins book tour, which is coming to DC on Sep 29 and 30.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation is about to announce some big new projects and to make an impact with the media and decision-makers, we need numbers. Our goal

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