The Malay Mail Online went to a talk by Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia. HTM explained about rape.
Women are required to prove rape under Islamic criminal law, Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) said today as the hardline Islamist group claimed that most sexual assault cases involve false accusations.
HTM also told a seminar on hudud that Islam does not accept DNA evidence and that one of the ways of proving rape instead is by obtaining either two male witnesses, or one male and two female witnesses.
Oh isn’t that sweet – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in love. Truly madly deeply.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday said the love and affection for the Saudi leadership and people could not be explained in words.
Pakistan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are tied in unbreakable bonds of religion and brotherhood and both the countries are standing shoulder to shoulder with each other.
Speaking at a function held in honour of Imam-e-Kaaba Shaikh Khalid al Ghamidi at Chief Minister’s House, he remarked that even if the world goes topsy-turvy, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could not be separated from one another.
Amy Schumer’s hit video Last Fuckable Day.
The Guardian on Rushdie on the Soft-headed Six.
[Francine] Prose told the Associated Press that while she was in favour of “freedom of speech without limitations” and “deplored” the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, the award signified “admiration and respect” for its work and “I couldn’t imagine being in the audience when they have a standing ovation for Charlie Hebdo”.
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Andrew Solomon, president of PEN, told the Guardian that aside from brief exchanges with Carey and writer Deborah Eisenberg, no one had indicated they would not attend the gala over the award before the six letters.
Solomon said that PEN distinguished between the right of free speech and much of what Charlie Hebdo actually published. “The award does not agree with the content of what they expressed,” he said, “it expressed admiration for that commitment of free speech.” [Read more…]
A heart-rending item in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, about girls at an Islamic school being banned from running.
Girls at Al-Taqwa College have been banned from running at sporting events because the principal believes it may cause them to lose their virginity, former teachers claim.
The schools regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, is investigating the allegations, which have been referred to the state and federal education ministers.
[Read more…]
What was that about Dawkins’s never having “proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist ‘leader'”?
What about this then – what about Join the Dawkins Circle?
Reason Circle: $1,000 to $2,499 annually (or $85/month)
- Invitation to Dawkins Circle member-only event with RDFRS personalities
- Member-only discount for all purchases in the richarddawkins.net store
Science Circle: $2,500 to $4,999 annually (or $210/month)
All the benefits listed above, plus:
- One ticket to an invitation-only Dawkins Circle event with Richard
Francine Prose expanded on her thoughts in the CBC interview, in a piece for Comment is Free. Her expanded thoughts make my skin crawl.
When I learned that PEN had decided to award the Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo, I was dismayed. I had agreed to serve as a literary table host and I wondered what I would do when the crowd around me rose to its feet to applaud an award being given – in my name – to what I felt was an inappropriate recipient.
She still doesn’t understand what Charlie is. She thinks it’s a right-wing racist rag. [Read more…]
Speaking of thought leaders…I was looking for something and happened on this article by Jerry Coyne in The New Republic last October. It’s a riposte to an article by John Gray, also in TNR, trashing Richard Dawkins. I can easily believe Gray’s is a crap article, because John Gray seems to specialize in crap articles. But I read the first paragraph of Coyne’s article, and found a claim that I think is absurd.
It’s not a good time to be Richard Dawkins, for he alone, like the scapegoat of Leviticus, must bear the brunt of everyone’s hatred of atheism. (Sam Harris sometimes serves as a backup goat.) Even though Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader”—his eminence among nonbelievers is purely a byproduct of his books and talks—he is the poster child for atheism, and everyone who hates atheists, including some other atheists, comes down on him.
The claim I think is absurd is that
Dawkins has never proclaimed himself as any kind of atheist “leader”
Geoff Nunberg told us yesterday on Fresh Air about the fad for the word “disruption,” which I didn’t know was a fad. It reminds me of the fad-word in literary “theory” some years ago, “transgressive.” Same basic idea, innit – we’re new, we’re happenin’, we’re Rebels.
HBO’s Silicon Valley is back, with its pitch-perfect renderings of the culture and language of the tech world — like at the opening of the “Disrupt” startup competition run by the Tech Crunch website at the end of last season. “We’re making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases” — the show’s writers didn’t have to exercise their imagination much to come up with those little arias of geeky self-puffery, or with the name Disrupt, which, as it happens, is what the Tech Crunch conferences are actually called. As is most everything else these days. “Disrupt” and “disruptive” are ubiquitous in the names of conferences, websites, business school degree programs and business book best-sellers.
