“What happened to me is the tip of the iceberg.”
Butterflies and Wheels
Gnu atheism, women's rights, internationalism, universalism, and gossip
The New Humanist has a fascinating piece by Paul Sims about Robert Lambert, the retired Special Branch officer who was head of the Muslim Contact Unit.
I’ve had some critical things to say about Lambert and his colleague Jonathan Githens-Mazer in the past – in June 2010 and April 2009. They talked evasive deceptive nonsense about the wonderfulness of Islamism and the badness of “Islamophobia.” They completely ignored the issues of women’s rights and homophobia. The stuff they wrote was extremely misleading – like this, for instance:
While British Islamists are as diverse as British socialists, the interviews do reveal important unifying characteristics, most notably a devotion to social justice and a concern for community needs over individual or corporate ambitions. British Islamists are typified by a sense of moral obligation to confront injustice, and they strive, in their own ways, to try to make the world a better place. These are messages which have more power than ever in modern Britain. [Read more…]
Kyle Sandilands says it’s free speech and also that it’s quite all right and reasonable and why not? He explains carefully.
I’ll attack any journalist that attacks me that I think’s unfair.
Well what he means is, if a journalist says something about his show that he doesn’t like, he will not respond with an explanation of why she is wrong or a criticism of her reasoning, but rather, he will call her a fat slag, a fat bitter thing with a nothing job, and a piece of shit, and then he will tell her to watch her mouth or he’ll hunt her down. In other words he’ll say the most degrading things he can think of and then he’ll threaten her. [Read more…]
The chief rabbi and Charles Taylor got together recently to say stuff about “The Future of Religion in a Secular Age.” Both are big fans of religion, so the stuff they said was in that vein.
For Taylor and Rabbi Sacks, religion should act as a counterpoint and antidote to the rampant solipsism and breakdown of sociality that characterize the secular world. Religion, unlike the market, science, or politics, exists in its own realm beyond materiality and simple solutions, and even beyond the self. According to Taylor, religious practice entails a transcendence of the self that is desperately needed in a culture as self-obsessed as our own. Rabbi Sacks added that on one hand, religion must stand at the vanguard of the “redemption of solitude” and on the other, strive to establish real community beyond the alone-togetherness of this virtual age. [Read more…]
And then there’s Kyle Sandilands. He’s a shock jock in Australia. A journalist called Alison Stephenson wrote an unfavorable review of his shock jock radio show. He replied to her on the air.
Some fat slag on news.com.au has already branded it a disaster. You can tell by reading the article that she just hates us and has always hated us.
What a fat bitter thing you are. You’re deputy editor of an online thing. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. Just so you know, you’re a piece of shit.
This low thing, Alison Stephenson, deputy editor of news.com.au online. Alison, you’re supposed to be impartial, you little troll.
You’re a bullshit artist, girl. You should be fired from your job. Your hair’s very 90s. And your blouse. You haven’t got that much titty to be having that low cut a blouse. Change your image, girl. Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down.
No offers to kick her in the cunt? Huh; I thought that was part of the package deal.
White Ribbon makes pleasanter reading…except that it shouldn’t be necessary.
Oh, Jesus – I can’t keep up with it today! I saw a brief tweet from Mona Eltahawy yesterday saying “arrested and beaten” – it wasn’t even clear if she was the one arrested and beaten. I replied and retweeted but then got distracted…But she was the one arrested and beaten all right: her arm and leg hand are broken. And she was sexually assaulted – “Besides beating me, the dogs of CSF subjected me to the worst sexual assault ever.” Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Mona Mona Mona. God you’re brave.
Via Dan Fincke – Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Republican debate.
Horrible news, via Maryam: the Azerbaijani atheist and critic of Islam Rafiq Tagi has been murdered.
Jahan News has gleefully reported that ‘Azerbaijan’s Salman Rushdie has been murdered’. The Islamic regime of Iran’s mouthpiece says writer Rafiq Tagi was despised by the people of Azerbaijan for his attack on Islam’s prophet Mohammad.
It’s hard to “attack” someone who’s been dead for 14 centuries – but of course they don’t mean “attack,” they mean “failure to grovel to,” and they consider that a good reason to murder him.