Raquel Evita Saraswati posted a couple of photos from the Oslo demonstration of solidarity.
Butterflies and Wheels
Gnu atheism, women's rights, internationalism, universalism, and gossip
The Guardian reports on the peace vigil in Oslo today.
Norwegian Muslims organised a peace vigil in Oslo on Saturday in a show of solidarity with Jews a week after fatal shootings in Denmark targeted a synagogue and free-speech seminar.
As the mainly elderly Jewish congregation filed out of the synagogue after Shabbat prayers, a group of young Muslims, many of them teenage girls wearing headscarves, formed a symbolic ring outside the building to applause from a crowd of more than 1,000 people.
Hurriyet reports on a protest in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in which men wore skirts to protest violence against women.
“I would walk around in Taksim wearing a skirt, if you can do that…”
For many Turkish men, this is a common phrase they use when they want to assert a claim or make a bet. It has turned into reality when a group of men went to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square wearing skirts, keeping their word they have been pledging for the past few days on social media.
On Feb. 17, Erkan Doğan had donned a skirt in Istanbul’s Asian side neighborhood of Kadıköy to demonstrate in memory of slain 20-year-old student Özgecan Aslan. [Read more…]
As Harald said – not everything is shitty in Europe now. Reuters reports:
More than 1000 Muslims formed a human shield around Oslo’s synagogue on Saturday, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark last weekend.
Chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” Norway’s Muslims formed what they called a ring of peace a week after Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a Danish-born son of Palestinian immigrants, killed two people at a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen last weekend. [Read more…]
A friend comments –
Oklahoma is not widely seen as one of the most salubrious of the united states in terms of its climate or geography or political culture or friendliness to the arts or promotion of science. It’s seen more as the state that combines the worst aspects of Texas and Arkansas, along with its fame as the spot Andrew Jackson chose as the destination for all the Native Americans he kicked out of fertile farmland in the southern states.
So I guess they decided to put a big ribbon on all that, by voting to ban advanced history classes in Oklahoma public high schools.
Unaware that their state has become a satire on the folly of man, an Oklahoma legislative committee overwhelmingly voted to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History classes because these classes “only teach what is bad about America” and fail to teach “American exceptionalism.”
Brendan O’Neill explains about identity politics at the Spectator. In other news, birds fly north for the summer and water is wet.
His occasion for the surprise-free explanation is the Twitter-mobbing of Peter Tatchell and Mary Beard for signing an open letter about free speech and no-platforming.
How do we explain this tirade of abuse against someone I would describe as the grandfather of gay rights if I
wasn’t[weren’t] worried that the use of such a gender-specific title might earn me a tsunami of online abuse? Why are people so incredibly thin-skinned? I think it’s down to the politics of identity. I think the more we’ve made the personal political, the more we define our social and political outlook with reference to what’s in our underpants or what colour our skin is, the more we experience every criticism of our beliefs as an attack on our very personhood, our souls, our right to exist. The problem here is the terrifying wrapping together of the biological and the political, the packaging up of the accident of your gender or race or sexuality with your political persona, to the extent that debate itself comes to be seen as a form of hatred, a ‘phobia’.
Fascinating, and yet – I can’t help noticing he’s not subject to any of the particular forms of hatred he is so magisterially looking down on. [Read more…]
Another horrendous piece of news – from Tom Porter at the International Business Times (which so far seems to be the only English news outlet reporting it) –
So that’s appalling.
Isis supporters have called for lone wolf terrorists to target Franco Moroccan cartoonist Zineb el-Rhazoui, who survived the attacks on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last month.
Thousands of supporters of the jihadist group have tweeted under the hashtag translated as #MustKillZinebElRhazouiInRetaliationForTheProphet, reports Vocativ, posting her personal details, pictures of her husband and sister, and a map showing places she had visited taken from her Facebook account, as well as pictures of Isis beheadings.
Money has also been offered in reward for information on her or her husband’s homes or places of work, reports Alyaoum24.com.
What can we do. Murderers can defeat us, because they’re happy to murder.
See update at the end.
Chris Stedman wrote a public Facebook post a couple of days ago about a little misunderstanding between him and the people at The National, an English-language newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates. They invited him to write an opinion piece.
I decided to use this opportunity to look at what I think are the most constructive aspects of a UAE-sponsored UN resolution that calls for interfaith dialogue, free expression, and the open debate of ideas.
I would still rather see more secular dialogue (which of course religious people can perfectly well engage in) than interfaith dialogue (which excludes non-religious people). But if the UAE is a fan of free expression and the open debate of ideas that has to be a good thing. Maybe they can exert some pressure on their neighbors to let Raif Badawi and Waleed Abu al-Khair out of prison.
Oh wait. [Read more…]