What we talk about when we talk about offending

The BBC tries to host a discussion of free speech but as always it phrases everything in such a fatuously empty meaningless unhelpful way that the discussion is undercut before it starts. They clearly have a mandated list of the correct words to use, and those words are the most anodyne and obfuscatory they can think of. That’s some unfree speech right there.

Am I free to offend you?

Should I deliberately share images that I know will offend others, as a statement of everyone’s freedom to do so?

What about extremists? Should their speech be banned?

[Read more…]

How to discourage the dissident voices

Last week the Beeb took the temperature after the lashing of Raif.

Two Arabic hashtags that translate to “Raif Badawi’s public lashing” and “ lashing Raif Badawi” trended in Saudi Arabia with more than 250,000 tweets after news of carrying out the first round of lashes on Badawi was announced.

Unsurprisingly, there were some hooray tweets.

“He established a network to spread apostasy and to offend religion and the prophet’s verses and some people cry for him, I say he deserves more than this,” one Saudi twitter user commented. [Read more…]

A blasphemous cartoon disrespecting Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)

A photographer for AFP, Asif Hasan, has been shot at a protest against Charlie Hebdo in Karachi, Dawn reports.

A protest organised by Islami Jamiat Talaba’s Karachi chapter on Friday turned violent when a clash took place between protesters and police. Security forces resorted to aerial firing, tear gas and water cannons to push back the charged mob.

Three party workers, who were affected by tear gas, have been transferred to the nearest hospital.

Agence France-Presse photographer, Asif Hasan, was shot while covering the rally. [Read more…]

The Friday flogging is put off

Sigh of relief: Raif’s second flogging has been postponed “for medical reasons.”

Not a sigh of full relief, obviously, but comparative relief.

Better than that, the king has sent his case to the Supreme Court for review.

The BBC reports:

The case of a Saudi blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes has been referred to the Supreme Court by the king’s office, the BBC has learned.

Blogger Raif Badawi’s wife said the referral, made before he was flogged 50 times last Friday, gave him hope that officials would end his punishment.

A second round of lashings was postponed for medical reasons.

You’ve put on your spectacle, KSA. Now let him go to Canada to join his wife and children.

More book-demolition

And speaking of silencing writers – in Lebanon the silencers have silenced some dead ones.

Ancient books in a historic library in the Lebanese city of Tripoli have been torched by Islamist[s], after a pamphlet purportedly insulting religion was found inside one of the books.

Security sources say that up to 78,000 books, many irreplaceable ancient Muslim and Christian texts and manuscripts, are now unsalvageable, according to Agence France Press. [Read more…]

The silencing of Perumal Murugan

Soutik Biswas at the BBC has more on Perumal Murugan and his silencing by protesters.

Madhorubhagan, first published in 2010, is set a century ago, It’s a gripping fictional account of a poor, childless couple, and how the wife, who wants to conceive, takes part in an ancient Hindu chariot festival where, on one night, consensual sex between any man and woman is allowed. Murugan explores the tyranny of caste and pathologies of a community in tearing the couple apart and destroying their marriage.

Well we can’t have that – no exploring of any tyrannies, or someone will get pissed off. [Read more…]

Guest post: A Departure from the Humanist Society of South Australia

Guest post by Bruce Everett

In November of last year, eight months after resigning from committee, I resigned entirely from the Humanist Society of South Australia (HSSA). Unlike my resignation from committee, my resignation from the organisation was undertaken with nothing in the way of explanation, my intent to leave being stated in only two sentences. Aside from a short status update on Facebook which nobody seemed to notice, up until the topic was raised by one Mark Senior here in the comments at Butterflies and Wheels, I’ve made no public mention of my resignation.

Now, given that Mr Senior has attempted to fill the explanatory vacuum with his own narrative of ridiculous and unverified speculation, I’ve opted to air my grievances with the HSSA in public. Those experiencing discomfort on account of my disclosures can thank Mark for his efforts in making it even remotely worth my time and attention.

***

Surely I’m just leaving the HSSA because Mark is there, and I don’t like Mark, right? This is only partially correct; I don’t like Mark. I won’t deny this. If you want particulars beyond the immediately relevant, you can use Google.

Late last year, here at Butterflies and Wheels, it was claimed by Mark (writing as “Mofa”) that in addition to my seemingly being a “Muslim apologist”, I left the HSSA in a hissy fit because an anti-harassment policy he opposed, which he’d claimed earlier in the year was rigged to target people like him, was not adopted by committee. The problem with this assertion is that it has been my understanding that the policy was passed as a bylaw by committee around March of last year.

Despite such glaring ridiculousness, Mark’s antics are at most tangential to only a handful of my reasons for departing the HSSA. He’s not central to anything I am or have ever been involved in, and at most points in this post, he won’t feature at all. [Read more…]

All about you

Kiran Opal has a brilliant sarcastic post about kuffarsplaining. I know this person she’s talking about. I’ve encountered this person. This person is ridiculous.

Kuffarsplaining:

  • Telling Muslims (or Ex-Muslims) that you, as a Western Non-Muslim know what Islam “really says”.
  • Converting to Islam, then using your white privilege to talk over non-white Muslims, while denouncing non-white Ex-Muslims as being ‘native informants’ and ‘Uncle Toms’.

    • [Read more…]