A letter to Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, from Radha Bhatt, Marieme Helie Lucas, Nahla Mahmoud, Chris Moos, Maryam Namazie, Pragna Patel, Abhishek Phadnis, and Fatou Sow. They write to draw her attention to the increasing incidence of gender segregation on public university campuses in the United Kingdom, and to seek her intervention in the matter.

Gender segregation reinforces negative views about women, undermines their right to participate in public life on equal terms with men and disproportionately impedes women from ethnic and religious minorities, whose rights to education and gender equality are already imperilled.

Speaking of that…it’s very damn unfortunate that the only women from Muslim backgrounds the BBC saw fit to invite to participate in that Big Questions on gender segregation were there to defend it. There were plenty of people there to oppose it, good, but they were all men. It’s right that Chris and Abhishek were there because they’ve been way out front on this, but it’s a great pity that Maryam or Pragna or Nahla or Radha couldn’t have been there too, to disrupt that very strong visual in which the two shrouded women were right smack in the middle. [Read more…]

A young guy from Afghanistan has been granted asylum on the grounds of his non-belief in “God” (or, specifically in his case, in “Allah”), This is believed to be a first.

The Afghan was brought up as a Muslim and fled the conflict in his native country. He arrived in the UK in 2007, aged 16. He was initially given temporary leave to remain until 2013 but during his time in England gradually turned to atheism.

Enough said. He can’t go back to Afghanistan in that condition, now can he. [Read more…]

Ten minutes in. The woman in the niqab is Sahar al-Faifi, a community organizer and geneticist (the caption says). She says the big question assumes there is a conflict between religious rights and human rights and there is no such conflict. Same-sex marriage is totally impermissible in Islam, she says; that is agreed upon.

But it doesn’t mean for me to actually project my belief into my action allowing myself to discriminate against them. So that’s, that’s – you know, the human rights and the religious rights are in align. There is no conflict between the two.

See what she did there? She completely contradicted herself. She said there is no conflict, and then she promptly described a conflict. Same-sex marriage is right out in Islam, but she doesn’t get to act on that. Why not? Because acting on it would violate human rights! [Read more…]

Never never be born a girl in Afghanistan. Never.

A girl who says she is nine years old was captured at a checkpoint in Afghanistan wearing a suicide vest. The BBC reports her story as she told it.

It was late evening, the mullah was calling for prayers and my brother took me outside and told me to put on this vest. He showed me how to operate it, and I said: “I can’t – what if it doesn’t work?” And he said: ‘It will, don’t worry.’

I was scared and he took the vest back from me and he hit me hard, and I felt scared. Then [he gave me back the vest and] left me near the checkpoint where he said I had to operate it. [Read more…]

From last week, the BBC reports another political murder in northwest Pakistan.

On a hot and humid night in late August, a small group quietly scales the wall of a mud-brick house in a village near Pakistan’s north-western town of Akora Khatak.

In the dim, starlit courtyard, they make out the figures of a man and a woman lying in two separate charpoy cots, sleeping. About 15 minutes later, they walk out through the main door, leaving the couple in pools of blood.

So we know roughly what’s coming. The two were of the “wrong” family or ethnic group or caste for each other; or the woman had been ordered to marry someone else; or the woman’s younger brother had been accused of something or other. [Read more…]

And in Mauritania – another journalist, another criticism of Mo, another “apostasy” claim, another potential death sentence. “Mo is the best thing ever and if you deny it we’ll kill you!” Well that sure convinces me.

A young journalist in Mauritania faces a possible death sentence after being convicted of apostasy for an article criticising the prophet Mohammed, AFP reported Monday (January 6th).

Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed was arrested January 2nd in Nouadhibou and “was convicted of lack of respect for the prophet”, a judicial source told AFP. [Read more…]

Via Yemisi – Gay Cameroonian, Roger Jean-Claude Mbédé, imprisoned for sending love text message to same-sex person, dies.

That’s appalling.

He was sent to prison in March 2011 for sending a text message declaring his love for another adult human.  The message was a simple “I’m very much in love with you”. How does such a message constitute harm? Why should this lead to imprisonment? [Read more…]

Here are Chris and Abhishek on the BBC show The Big Questions. The question, you will remember, was “Should human rights always outweigh religious rights?”

There’s also Tina Beattie, and a guy called Davis Mac-Iyalla saying yes they should, and (I skipped ahead) hot disagreement about (male) circumcision.

I skipped all the way ahead to get to the Chris and Abhishek part at about 50 minutes. They unzipped their jackets as requested to reveal the (shock-horror) Jesus and Mo T shirts.

Do they have the right to wear such T shirts? No, the woman in a hijab sitting (reluctantly) next to them says. No, another woman in a hijab in the back row says. “When you’re threatening our religion,” she explains twice. Of course, the T shirts don’t threaten her/their religion.

Ah the tragedy of manhood today, having to live in a “feminized” atmosphere in which being a bully isn’t unreservedly admired by 100% of everyone. Britt Hume of Fox “News” is sad and upset about the tragedy. He blames women.

During a panel discussion on the Fox News show Media Buzz, host Howard Kurtz asked if [Governor Chris] Christie’s “bully image” was hurting him after his administration was accused for closing part of the busiest bridge in the world to hurt his political opponents.

“I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and are kind of old-fashioned tough guys run some risks,” Hume opined.

Oh I know. It’s so sad. All Governor Christie did was create a colossal traffic jam for his own purely selfish reasons. In normal times, before all this feminization nonsense, who would have objected to that? No one! [Read more…]

Dave Ricks posted the link to Emily Lakdawalla’s post on why rocks are evenly spaced on Mars so I read it so now I have to share it More.

On Mars there are rocks everywhere. The difference is that Mars’ landscape is shaped in large part by impact processes. Far-away impacts can toss rocks for miles, and they fall where they land. So it’s not particularly surprising that you see rocks everywhere, even in flat places on Mars. What is a bit surprising is their even spacing. Here’s an example of a rock-strewn landscape selected more or less at random from the early part of Spirit’s mission, when it was dashing across the flat plains to the east of its landing site toward the Columbia Hills. [Read more…]