Libby Anne has another great post on the way the more anti-feminist of the atheist guys use Islamist misogyny and abuse of women as a pretext for belittling women’s issues closer to home.
She starts with something Sam Harris said on that much-discussed Bill Maher program. [Read more…]
Another human rights defender charged with a “crime.”
Within two weeks of releasing leading human rights defender Maryam Al Khawaja from jail the Bahrain authorities detained another. On September 30 Nabeel Rajab was taken into custody for allegedly insulting the Bahrain regime on twitter. [Read more…]
John Sargeant at Homo economicus blogs about Maryam’s Secular Conference 2014 which took place in London this past weekend.
Imagine a conference where over two thirds of the speakers are women. From across the world. Artists, professors, authors, journalists, human rights activists. One who feared having children because of the threat to their lives. [Read more…]
Salman Rushdie gave a PEN/Pinter Prize Lecture the other day and used the occasion to talk about “jihadi-cool,” the Telegraph reported.
The so-called “jihadi-cool” image romanticises Isil, using rap videos and social networking to recruit followers – posing with AK-47s and bragging about their “five star jihad” in videos showing fighters lounging around in luxury villas as they urged the destruction of the West. [Read more…]
More on the realities of the Magdalene laundries at TheJournal.ie.
ALTHOUGH PREVIOUS REPORTS and testimonies reveal that labour in the Magdalene Laundries was forced and wholly unpaid, conditions harsh and the incarcerated women completely deprived of their liberty, suffering both physical and emotional abuse, survivors are still searching for an apology and redress. [Read more…]
One story of one woman who was sent to a Magdalene Laundry at age 16 and never got out, but died there after 35 years of slavery.
Samantha Long’s mother Margaret Bullen was placed in Gloucester Street (now Sean McDermott Street) Laundry c.1967 and died 35 years later, never having been released into society and her own home. Margaret died of an illness known as Goodpasture Syndrome, a disease of the kidneys and liver – one of the causes is exposure to industrial-strength chemicals such as those used in the Laundries.
The alleged sexual assaults in the Sayreville case are worse than I’d imagined.
Graphic details of what allegedly happened inside the locker room at the school were also revealed in a report Wednesday on NJ.com.
The report stated that “a freshman football player would be pinned to the locker-room floor, his arms and feet held down by multiple upperclassmen. Then, the victim would be lifted to his feet while a finger was forced into his rectum. Sometimes, the same finger was then shoved into the freshman player’s mouth.”
What is wrong with people.
Six of them were arrested on Friday evening and a seventh was being sought.
Tehmina Kazi talks about secularism and Islam, and how the former is good for the latter. She argues that secularism actually adds to the Islamic discourse, because there’s a long tradition of critical thought in Islam.
It makes sense you know. If all religions and none are treated equally, then people are more likely to feel safe discussing and exploring.
A Fox News station in Arkansas asks a question on its Facebook page. It asks: Is this method of restraining juveniles torture?
The Yell County Juvenile Detention Center uses this restraint mechanism called the “wrap system”. Some juvenile detainees call it “torture”. Now, the Arkansas Department of Human Services has sent a cease and desist letter to Yell County officials asking them to stop using the device. What do you think about the wrap system?
It supplies a photo of the “restraint mechanism”: [Read more…]
Fathima Imra Nazeer makes the point that I keep making: holy books say what they say, and there’s no magic that renders what they say universally harmless.
Well-meaning Muslims claim that these Islamists have simply ‘misinterpreted’ the Quran. But have they? [Read more…]