Chop Chop Square

Avicenna has a brilliant post about Saudi Arabia’s way with executions and foreign domestic workers.

Be warned – it’s ferocious stuff. The place where it all happens has several names.

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest travel destinations on the planet. It is every Muslim’s duty to go on pilgrimage to Mecca and why not see the sites while you are there?

And one of the sites is the beautiful Qasr al-Masmak, which is an old medieval fort which is next to the Grand Mosque. But when you go visit there is something else to see. [Read more…]

Justice

In Pakistan – a guy gets ten years in prison and a large fine for misquoting a Hadith.

After a trial spread over 14 months and conducted in an uneasy environment, Additional District and Sessions Judge Raja Pervez Akhtar jailed a blasphemy accused for 10 years and imposed a fine of Rs200,000 on Tuesday evening.

…

Convict Ghulam Ali Asghar, a resident of Chinji village in Talagang tehsil, was booked on Nov 17, 2011, on a charge of blaspheming the Holy Prophet (PBUH) by misquoting a Hadith in Punjabi language. [Read more…]

Adam’s petition

Adam Lee has a petition to the Leaders of Atheist, Skeptical and Secular Groups: Support Feminism and Diversity in the Secular Community. Please, if you agree with it, take a minute to sign it and share it.

We, the undersigned, are atheists, skeptics and nonbelievers who value free speech and rational thought and who seek to build a strong, thriving movement that can advocate effectively for these values. We’ve chosen to put our names to this petition because we want to respond to a video created by a blogger calling himself Thunderfoot. In this video, Thunderfoot attacks named individuals who’ve been active in promoting diversity and fighting sexism and harassment in our movement. He describes these people as “whiners” and “ultra-PC professional victims” who are “dripp[ing] poison” into the secular community, and urges conference organizers to shun and ignore them. [Read more…]

Respected ladies are never raped

Avicenna reports on the progress of the case against the guys who raped and murdered Jyoti Singh.

Manohar Lal Sharma has been named as the Defence Lawyer for the Delhi Rape/Murder case which he is planning to plead “not guilty” to. And boy is he a real piece of work. Remember how Anil from AVfM said “women have it better than men”? I probably have to apologise to him (And to Astrokid), because Sharma has it figured out.

Well Manohar Lal Sharma is all about women. In his infinite knowledge about the female body has analysed the case meticulously and found that in his experience there are no rapes of “respected ladies”. [Read more…]

Putting in the input

Where’ve I been? Writing my column for the Freethinker, which was due…today, which by rights I generally take to mean the end of the previous day since it’s 8 hours later over there, but this time I didn’t manage it.

It poured with rain here last night and then it stopped, so now it’s all clear and whitecappy and gorgeous.

Ron Lindsay requests input for the annual meeting of heads of secular organizations.

I’d like your input on these two questions: 1. What specific steps do you think
secular groups should take to increase diversity within our movement, in
particular with respect to the participation of minority groups? 2. As you are
aware, there are some stark differences of opinion within the movement about the
appropriate understanding of feminism and how feminism (however defined) should
influence the practices and mission of secular organizations. How do you think
these differences can best be narrowed or resolved?

Personally, I don’t think they can be, but others are more optimistic. Chime in if you feel like it.

 

Why blame atheists?

Chris Stedman spoke out against marginalizing atheists before the Sinema post, too. He did it for Melissa Harris-Perry’s page at MSNBC a little over a week ago, asking why blame atheists for the Newtown shootings.

The interfaith memorial service in Newtown featured expressions from multiple faiths, including remarks from President Obama that reflected only a theistic perspective.

A non-religious perspective was absent, and this, I think, is a problem. Especially since, in the human search to place blame for this tragedy, nontheists like me have become a target.

A number of influential political and religious public figures have used this heartbreaking massacre as an opportunity to blame or marginalize nonreligious people, and to decry religious pluralism and the separation of church and state.

He gives several examples and then says what’s wrong with them. He does it well, too.

Saudi justice

Saudi Arabia beheaded a Sri Lankan domestic servant today. She was convicted of murdering her employer’s baby.

Rizana Nafeek smothered the infant to death after an argument with the child’s mother, her employer, said the ministry in a statement carried by SPA.

She was beheaded in the Dawadmi province near Riyadh.

Nafeek who was only 17 when the incident occurred in 2005, had always maintained that the baby had choked to death when drinking from a bottle.

Allah is great, merciful.

Stedman to Sinema

Credit where it’s due: way to go Chris Stedman. He has a post at CNN’s religion blog – CNN! lots of eyeballs! – saying Kyrsten Sinema shouldn’t treat the word “atheist” as a contaminant.

Seriously, way to go!

Preamble: Synema’s a None, and some have called her a nonbeliever or atheist. But…

Sinema doesn’t actually appear to be a nonbeliever. In response to news stories identifying her as an atheist, her campaign released this statement shortly after her victory: “(Rep. Sinema) believes the terms non-theist, atheist or non-believer are not befitting of her life’s work or personal character.”

As a nontheist, atheist and nonbeliever (take your pick), I find this statement deeply problematic. [Read more…]

Rather, people care about their groups

Another interesting item from The Righteous Mind. People don’t vote on self-interest all that much – that is, “self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences.” [p 85]

Rather, people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political. [p 86]

Or all those in sequence, which confuses things; or all those in sequence plus others plus all those not so much in sequence as in competition all the time, waxing and waning depending on which is most salient at any particular moment. That’s my gloss, not his, but I think it has to be right, since we’re all part of all the groups he named plus a bunch of others, and they’re not all equally salient at every moment.

But anyway, the basic idea is useful and suggestive. A lot of us have experienced our atheism becoming less salient while our our membership in the gender group “women” has become more so, lately. We’ve experienced this so strongly that many of us express considerable hostility to the atheist “movement” as such.

Why is this? I don’t even need to explain it, do I. It’s because big chunks of the atheist movement have taken to using a fairly large number of women as verbal punching bags, using gender-specific words and sexual disgust as boxing gloves. That makes our gender group a lot more salient while it makes our atheism group seem hostile.

I wonder how that’s going to work out over the long haul. I don’t know, and I wonder.

We the peeps

The Washington Post tells us there are some eccentric petitions on the White House’s petition site. That’s not really very surprising.

There’s a petition to designate the Catholic church a hate group. Yes well that’s not going to happen, but the idea itself isn’t crazy. The Catholic church does foster certain kinds of hatred. It’s silly to deny that.

The “We the People” petition was filed on Christmas Day and was prompted by Pope Benedict XVI’s Dec. 21 year-end address to Vatican administrators in which he denounced gay marriage as a threat to Western civilization.

The petition blasts Benedict for “hateful language and discriminatory remarks” and for implying “that gay families are sub-human.”

Well? Is that inaccurate?

Atheists and secularists could file a similar petition. What about Protestants? Muslims? Jains? Would that fly, or has the pope’s interfaith work immunized him?

I don’t know. I merely watch from the sidelines.