Jeremy Clarkson is baaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaack.
Jeremy Clarkson is set to make his first appearance on the BBC since losing his job as co-presenter on Top Gear.
The controversial broadcaster will appear as the guest host of Have I Got News for You on 24 April.
“Jeremy’s contract has not been renewed on Top Gear but he isn’t banned from appearing on the BBC,” a BBC spokesman said.
I too have a very low opinion of Karen Armstrong, Debbie Schlussel, Fred Phelps, Rush Limbaugh, and Ronald Reagan. I’m likely to use harsh adjectives and/or swear words to describe them.
I’m just saying.
Speaking of Asra Nomani – Muhammad Syed of EXMNA shared this post by her on Facebook:
If you are in the Chapel Hill, N.C., area, I would like to invite you to a talk I will give on the campus of Duke University at the Griffith Auditorium, April 7, 2015, at 7 PM.
While Duke won a national championship just now, last week I received less than championship handling of my scheduled talk.
Last Thursday, Duke abruptly cancelled my talk after a stated protest by the Duke Muslim Students Association to my talk, the MSA citing false allegations against me that were first spread two years ago by now Duke professor of Islam, Omid Safi, about my alleged “alliances with the most vicious of Islamophobes.” At the time, I told Religion News Service, where the allegations were first published, and its editor Kevin Eckstrom about the longterm dangers of this smear and personal attack. While RNS deleted the blog, its lack of editorial oversight on its bloggers meant the original attack was published and then reprinted at anonymous sites like LoonWatch.com. [Read more…]
Good to know sexism is dead and we can all move on n shit.
Via Peter Cohen on Twitter –
Me? No. No, you’re not.
Polly Toynbee pointed out last December that everybody’s favorite soap opera Downton Abbey is staggeringly dishonest about the reality of servants’ lives in the early 20th century.
To control history by rewriting the past subtly influences present attitudes too: every dictator knows that. Downton rewrites class division, rendering it anodyne, civilised and quaintly cosy. Those upstairs do nothing unspeakably horrible to their servants, while those downstairs are remarkably content with their lot. The brutality of servants’ lives is bleached out, the brutishness of upper-class attitudes, manners and behaviour to their servants ironed away. There are token glimpses of resentments between the classes, but the main characters are nice, in a nice world. The truth would be impossible without turning the Earl of Grantham and his family, the Crawleys, into villains, with the below-stairs denizens their wretched victims – a very different story, and not one Julian Fellowes would ever write.
And here’s more background from last September, by Qasim Rashid in the Huffington Post.
It is no secret I’ve been critical of Muslim leadership for their deafening apathy and silence over the 125-year worldwide persecution of Ahmadi Muslims. To add insult to injury, every time a new atrocity emerges I’m bombarded with standard anti-Ahmadi talking points in a shameless attempt to justify the violence. Just recently in Gujranwala, Pakistan where four Ahmadi Muslims (including three young children) were murdered when their homes were burned down, insults followed the anemic condemnations. Those who bothered acknowledging the attack refused to recognize Ahmadis as Muslims, thus holding the same view as those who attacked and murdered the young children in the first place.
Well the first step here would be to say it’s not ok to murder people for being or not being any particular religion or non-religion. It’s not ok to persecute people or attack them or murder them. All of that is right out. [Read more…]
In 2010 the BBC offered some background on the Ahmadi movement, aka the Ahmadiyya community.
[I]t is regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical because it does not believe that Mohammed was the final prophet sent to guide mankind, as orthodox Muslims believe is laid out in the Koran.
Well there’s your problem right there: thinking “heretical” is a meaningful and useful word. Let’s face it, nobody knows whether Mohammed was the “final prophet” or not, or whether he was a “prophet” at all, or how they would know he wasn’t one. It’s all just claims all the way down. That, I suppose, why there’s so much venom about the claims. [Read more…]
We have a crappy public sphere in the US, as any fule kno. Public schools, public libraries, public parks, public broadcasting – they all have to struggle and beg to get minimal funding. They’re public, you see, and that’s socialism, and that’s the devil.
Norman Lear in the New York Times points out that PBS is starving its documentary shows in favor of soapy entertainment like Downton Fucking Abbey. [Read more…]
Friendly Hemant says PZ gets Ayaan Hirsi Ali all wrong, because she didn’t say that, she said the opposite.
I’ve seen complaints online about how Hirsi Ali was minimizing problems caused by conservative Christians, as if they weren’t as big a deal as those caused by extremist Muslims. PZ Myers called it “fatwah envy” and said Hirsi Ali was suggesting “we should meekly accept the lesser injustice because of the threat of the greater” and trying to “silence those who strive for respect and dignity in their lives.”
But when I watched her speech (because I actually did that instead of relying on a couple of sound bites and tweets), I didn’t get that impression at all.
Well what impression one got or didn’t get isn’t the issue. The issue is what she actually said. [Read more…]
Kashif Chaudhry is tired of seeing his friends and relatives jailed for being Ahmadis.
Yesterday, a very close family friend – someone I have always considered an uncle – was arrested in Pakistan. His crime: he had printed verses from the Holy Quran in an Urdu publication.
My uncle is an Ahmadi, and under Pakistan’s notorious anti-Ahmadi laws, he committed a ‘crime’ punishable by at least three years imprisonment and a fine. The law states that an Ahmadi who “poses as a Muslim hurts the religious feelings of Muslims”. [Read more…]