Mohammed was a pedophile...

It is well-reported that Mohammed had sex with his betrothed young wife, Aisha. 
She was only nine years old... He was 52... She had been promised to him when she was seven... In modern laws this would make him a grand pedophile. 
But there are some ambiguity. In order to give him "divine" rights, she was deemed a virgin (aged nine!)... There is of course some resonance with the "virgin" Mary — a woman of note, also showing up in the Quran, as there is a strong relationship between the Quran and the old testament known as the Tanakh to the Jewish people... — Abraham, being the guilty centrepiece of three religions...

I don't mean disrespect, but since the advent of these three Abrahamic religions, women in general have been placed in shackles or have been victims of the scourge, and I don't mean PMS. I mean the tool of flogging. Before the creation of the Quran, most women in Mecca and Medina enjoyed far more freedom — including freedom for pagan women. No burqua and no hijab to be worn... Actually even in the Quran there is no such enforcement, only in subsequent fanatical interpretation.
http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/20041120_en.html

These days there are very few women rabbi, no women priests (priestesses) — except in small breakaway christian groups such as some Anglican dioceses, and certainly no women Iman, though Mohammed's favourite wife, Aisha, has been named as "the mother of the believers"... She was 19 when Mohammed died, as the legend goes, poisoned by a Jewish woman — three years earlier... Go figure.
As a relative rule, religion has been mostly the devil's work of men. I don't believe in the devil thus this is not what I literally mean... I mean that these religions were likely to have evolved from nebulous rituals, loosely devised years before to repel the angst human felt when facing unsettling ignorance as to the purpose of life. The rituals turned this unsettled ignorance into comfortable structured ignorance, so organised societies could progress and relate according to the rules of the evolving ignorant rituals.

In contrast, many Aboriginal groups were matriarchal societies. Women were the rulers... This did not mean that males were view as inferior nor were treated badly... But in a life of hunting and gathering, women had more time to control and devise purpose for the group.
As humans asked questions of their worth on this planet, they invented the answers. Soon many of the rituals were used by men to control the rights of reproduction and women in general. The tenets of dogma are non-negotiable and imbued with the relationship with "god". Of course most religious dogma instil the need to be grateful and humble for the privilege, and demand women's submission to the will of men.
Aisha coped. 
If one reads sexual abuse manuals — especially that on under-aged kids — one would discover that often the victim becomes attached to the perpetrator...  It's perverse and part of the process in which one's identity and purpose is defined thus by the abuse — before one ever had one's own full identity, nor the ability to explore the world and/or experience choice... 
When Mohammed died Aisha was only 19...  She was still one of his major supporters... Mohammed had been a warrior as well as a social reformer... Aisha became a chronicler of his exploit and philosophy. She became a strong advocate for the education of Islamic women especially in areas such as Muslim law and the teachings of Islam. In fact, one can see here, the subtext in the education of submissive womanhood to men, which thus permeated the subsequent religious teachings. This submissiveness does not only appear in Islam but also in Christianity. 
Few religious movements have successfully broken away from this concept of woman being submissive to men. It still is part of the Christian traditional wedding wows, though fewer and fewer people pay attention to it... 

I often refer to the Cathars, roughly from the 9th to the 14th centuries, who created a powerful society where women were equal to men, in social and religious values. These of course were deemed "heretics" by popes. The Cathars, who believed the temporal world had been created by the devil, were wiped out by the end of the 14th century, by the Pope's and the French King's armies. Because then, the Pope had armies to go and kill people — especially those who did not subscribe to Christianity or more specifically the Catholic dogma. The people who did not believe in god in general kept a very very low profile... 
http://www.cathar.info/1209_inquisition.htm

By 1300 according to a "legend", there was a small faux-pas in the catholic kingdom in which a "papesse" became the pope but the legend was soon destroyed by the dark forces of men, though kept alive a bit longer in England by the anti-papists... In fact the papesse "Jeanne" might have been a weak pope himself and was derided as being woman...

It is often reported that women in the Muslim religion love their place of being "followers", and enjoy the rituals and the dress code such as the ijab and the burqua. I know blokes who enjoy being told what to do, as well. It saves time and effort thinking for oneself. Questioning the world for one's own sake is not an option. All the answers are provided and they are neatly comfortable if we live according to the rule of submission, as learned by brainwashing.
But things are never so simple. One could go on about the absence of progress or mind games. Mohammed had 15 wives (consumated marriage with only 11) and 9 concubines, according to some historians... 
Praying five times a day provide a rhythm and reinforcement of beliefs, which are no more than strong cultivated habits, enforced by fear of corporal punishment — removing the desire for exploration and curiosity. Curiosity of course is the essence of being human in an animalistic world. Dolphins are curious. Dogs can be curious. Curiosity outside the narrow framework of religion would have a great chance of destroying faith by acquiring a different knowledge...
In order to protect beliefs from really strong challenges, the religious dogmas have instigated mechanisms of moral and corporal punishment through "blasphemy" and other laws against trespass. Anyone who says anything against the beliefs will be deemed to be blasphemous. Punishment for such act against religious beliefs vary from religion to religion, but all carry a hefty penalty. 
In the not so distant past, the Catholic religion used to torture people until they died or recanted their "blasphemous" views... The inquisition was not a fun circus... These days, this Catholic mechanism, judged barbaric since the age of enlightenment, has been reduce to exorcism and other kind of banishment from the realm of god... though the Catholic church provides an escape clause through contrition and confession, should one sins real bad.
The Muslim religion, by and large, still holds dear to serious corporal punishment which also permeates the political structure. It includes floggings and death, for anyone committing a blasphemous act... For the fanatical religious devotee, the "sacred" books and teachings need to be protected against anything, even if they don't make much sense in a modern world... One could say that the more modern the world, the more arcane and powerfully dished the religious dictums become. Most are designed to stop women from acceding to equality. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy

Death sentence

In Britain's last blasphemy execution, 20-year-old Thomas Aikenhead was executed for the crime in 1697. He was prosecuted for denying the veracity of the Old Testament and the legitimacy of Christ's miracles. In recent years, George Rosie wrote in the newspaper The Scotsman that "The killing of Thomas Aikenhead, like the hounding of Salman Rushdie for the same 'offence,' was a disgrace…a prime example of a God-fixated state killing a man in an attempt to stop the spread of an idea."[21]

Islam

Main article: Islam and blasphemy

The Quran and the hadith do not mention blasphemy.[22] According to Pakistani religious scholar, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, nothing in Islam supports blasphemy law.[23] Rather, Muslim jurists made the offense part of Sharia; the penalties for blasphemy can include fines, imprisonment, flogging, amputation, hanging, or beheading.[24] Muslim clerics may call for the punishment of an alleged blasphemer by issuing a fatwa.[25]

Judaism

In the third book of the Torah, Leviticus 24:16 states that he that blasphemes the name of the LORD "shall surely be put to death". See also List of capital crimes in the Torah. The Seven laws of Noah, which Judaism sees as applicable to all people, prohibit blasphemy.

The United Nations

Main article: Blasphemy and the United Nations

In the early 21st century, blasphemy became an issue for the United Nations. The General Assembly passed several resolutions which called upon the world to take action against the "defamation of religions."[26]

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Nothing is "sacred" in the real world, but what we wish to be held in such a state, even by decree. Blasphemy laws are mostly designed to stop pure analysis and thoughts that would stray away from the dogmas. Blasphemy minimise the science of observing reality and its inevitable penetration into the gobbledegook of the dogmas... Thus the United Nations dictum fails to address the real plight and inferior position of women while protecting religion... The United Nations should actually protect men and women against the laws of blasphemy. The exposure of religious idiosyncracies is part of humanity's progress...
Now, the Anglican church and a few other denominations have accepted women and gays as equal in the servicing of the souls (I do not believe in souls) but there, at least, lies a certain equality of representation of humanity in whatever chosen illusions.  
Religion is only one step ahead of (or behind) sorcery... The power of religion has been used by rulers to cement their position. Kings have done this with the respective Abrahamic religious support, except the Jewry which has been sort of fragmented by their own sin, or let's call it a mishap, with the Benjamin tribe...
The children of Israel went up and wept before the LORD until even, and asked counsel of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother? And the LORD said, Go up against him. The children of Israel came near against the children of Benjamin the second day. Benjamin went forth against them out of Gibeah the second day, and destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand men; all these drew the sword.
... Blah blah blah, etc...
The children of Israel departed there at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from there every man to his inheritance. It was in those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. (Judges 20-21). 
http://www.guidedbiblestudies.com/topics/tribe_of_benjamin.htm

So, many kings have used religion to support their own "divine" importance and this more or less got inflated big with Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire. The gods of the roman people were tired and emotional, the priestesses (the vestal Virgins) were "unreliable" (and hard maintenance) when the Christians were quickly overtaking the populace... Thus, what greater mechanism could be created to stay on top, than to adopt the new religion and mould it to make one's empiredom "ruling rights" fit the picture, no matter how murderous one was... Offer protection against martyrdom and promote "freedom of religion" for this particular brand for some "godly" recognition in return... Fantastic. Soon the leaders of the religious movement became popes and in the pocket of the ruling man. No ruling lady though. No. Never... 
Meanwhile the Arabic nations more or less streamlined their own kingdoms into a unified empire under Mohammed. Mohammed was not a bad bloke, warring bloodily at times, except during time of prayer and contemplation. A hundred and fifty years after Muhammad's death, the Muslims invaded Spain and Europe, to be defeated in France and pushed back south of the Pyrenees. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests

If it had not been for the west's insatiable need for oil, the Muslim religion's influence would have deflated nearly a hundred years ago. Oil created and now maintains the kingdoms in the Arabian peninsula...  Oil is the controller of the region, god is the motivator that gives right of ownership as long as one has weapons. 
It's all about empire building, and the control of population by controlling women...

The Foundation and Rise of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 29 May 1453) refers to the period which started with the weakening of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rûm in the very early 14th century and ended with the Byzantine Empire decline and the Fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453.

The rise of the Ottomans correlates with the decline of the Roman Empire, which generated the shift in power from a singular Christian European society to an Islamic influence. The beginning of this period was characterized by the Byzantine-Ottoman wars which lasted for a century and a half. During this period, the Ottoman Empire gained control of both Anatolia and the Balkans.

Immediately after the establishment of the Anatolian beyliks, some Turkic principalities united with the Ottomans against the Byzantine Empire. The rise period witnessed Sultanate of Rûm's defeat against the Mongols in the 14th century and was followed by the Growth of the Ottoman Empire (29 May 1453 – 11/12 September 1683) — a period referred as Pax Ottomana, the economic and social stability attained in the conquered provinces of the Ottoman Empire, by some historians.

Mongols were highly tolerant of most religions, and typically sponsored several at the same time. At the time of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, virtually every religion had found converts, from Buddhism to Christianity and Manichaeanism to Islam. To avoid strife, Genghis Khan set up an institution that ensured complete religious freedom, though he himself was a shamanist. Under his administration, all religious leaders were exempt from taxation, and from public service.[1] Mongol emperors were known for organizing competitions of religious debates among clerics, and these would draw large audiences.

So the battle-lines between the Muslims and the Christians go back a long way... The list of forgotten fallen soldiers from peasant crusaders to knights in charming armour is long... Kings failed. Ransoms had to be paid. The centre of action was mostly Jerusalem, around which two of the three Abrahamic religions were vultures fighting each other. Women had basically no role in this unholy mess. The ideal was for men to rule over other men — or kill them... The Jews were like wanderers around Europe, having lost most power in the region. Many Jews were in Spain, until the Muslims were kicked out. See, the King of Spain decided to kick the Muslim and the Jews...

 

Medieval Spain had been the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. The Almohads, who had taken control of the Almoravids' Maghribi and Andalusian territories by 1147, far surpassed the Almoravides in fundamentalist outlook, and they treated the dhimmis harshly. Faced with the choice of death, conversion, or emigration, many Jews and Christians left.[32] The Christian kingdoms to the North had also, at times, treated Muslims harshly. The treatment towards Jews at this time in Iberia varied greatly between and within the different Muslim and Christian kingdoms. By the mid-13th century Emirate of Granada was the only independent Muslim realm in Spain, which would last until 1492. Despite the decline in Muslim-controlled kingdoms, it is important to note the lasting effects exerted on the peninsula by Muslims in technology, culture, and society.

In the same month in which their Majesties [Ferdinand and Isabella] issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies." So begins Christopher Columbus's diary. The expulsion that Columbus refers to was so cataclysmic an event that ever since, the date 1492 has been almost as important in Jewish history as in American history. On July 30 of that year, the entire Jewish community, some 200,000 people, were expelled from Spain. 

But god was no woman then and now...

The death of Henry IV in 1474 set off a struggle for power between contenders for the throne of Castile, including Joanna La Beltraneja, supported by Portugal and France, and Queen Isabella I, supported by the Kingdom of Aragon, and by the Castilian nobility. Isabella married King Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469.[37] Following the death of her half-brother, Henry IV, King of Castile in 1474 and the resulting War of the Castilian Succession, Isabella retained the throne, and ruled jointly with her husband, King Ferdinand II pursuant to an agreement signed by Isabella and Ferdinand on January 15, 1474.[38] Under the terms of this agreement, Isabella held more authority over the newly unified Spain than her husband, although their rule was shared.[38]
Women could become powerful, but not be kings........


Now the Wiggles are considering being replaced by some women! "heresy!"......

More to come... This is an abridged version of a chapter for "The Age of deceit"

 

A court in Kuwait has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison for endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Muhammad and the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in messages on Twitter.

Hamad al-Naqi was also found guilty of mocking Islam and provoking sectarian tensions.

Mr Naqi, a Shia Muslim, had said his Twitter account was hacked and that he did not write any of the messages.

Some Sunni activists had demanded that he be sentenced to death for blasphemy.

'Chance to appeal'

An amended law endorsed by the Kuwaiti parliament last month stipulates capital punishment for any Muslim who, through any form of expression, insults God, his prophets, messengers, the Prophet Muhammad's wives or the Koran, unless the defendant publicly repents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18322418

An Indonesian man has been sentenced to two and a half years in jail and fined $10,598 for professing his atheism on the internet, Al Jazeera has reported.

Alexander Aan, a West Sumatran civil servant, was sentenced in court on Thursday with blasphemy and violating internet laws.

Aan was arrested earlier this year for posting "There is no God" on the social networking website Facebook.

Prosecutors in the case had demanded a prison sentence of three and a half years but the court handed down only two and a half. Aan's lawyers said they were considering an appeal.

Al Jazeera spoke about the case to Endy Bayuni, chief editor of the Jakarta Post.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/06/20126146135415374.html

 

When you have a ménage a trois, they must not include a woman and her daughter. “That is wickedness.” Says the Lord. And when a man sells his daughter to another man, he must refund the money if the buyer finds the sex unsatisfactory.

Just two instructions in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures which suggest the God of Israel does not follow “Biblical family values”.

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney urged his followers last week to “commend the Biblical way of life in our churches and to the community.” This was in anticipation of this week’s report on same-sex marriage to the Australian Parliament.

Dr Jensen’s definition of marriage specified “two persons of the opposite sex”. Roman Catholic and Orthodox leaders echoed this call.

The problem these venerable gentlemen have, however, is that their understanding of the “Biblical way of life” is just nowhere found in the Bible.

Abraham is one of the greatest heroes of the Judeo-Christian tradition. When he and wife Sarai found themselves childless, they brought their slave girl Hagar into the bedroom. The resulting son became a great patriarch.
Abraham later took a second wife, Keturah, and had several more kids. He also had children with an uncertain number of mistresses — or concubines.

Jacob’s sex life was more bizarre still. He purchased his first wife Leah from her father — then married her sister Rachel. Rachel’s servant girl Bilhah soon joined them “as a wife” for at least two children. A bit later, Leah’s servant girl Zilpah made it a happy fivesome.

Yes, a bit kinky perhaps. But there is no hint in the texts this was irregular. In fact, the opposite. Great rejoicing at these blessings from God.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/philosophy/human-rights-2/marriage-in-the-judeo-christian-scripture-those-kinky-hebrews/

 

 

Salman Rushdie was the target of a notorious fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic of Iran, 23 years ago. Now, the author of The Satanic Verses is the subject of an Iranian computer game aimed at spreading to the next generation the message about his "sin".

The Stressful Life of Salman Rushdie and Implementation of his Verdict is the title of the game being developed by the Islamic Association of Students, a government-sponsored organisation which announced this week it had completed initial phases of production.

News of the computer game came as Tehran on Tuesday played host to the country's second International Computer Games Expo. "The organisers considered the event as an opportunity to introduce Iranian culture, value and Islamic identity, and also a way to present Iranian products to international computer games designers and producers," the English-language state television channel, Press TV, reported on its website.

Three years ago, the student association and Iran's national foundation of computer games asked students across the country to submit scripts for the game and the top three were handed over to video developers. But development of the game was delayed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/26/salman-rushdie-fatwa-iranian-video-game

 

See image and article at top...

 

In photographs, Erika Leonard (EL James) appears dependable and blameless, like a deputy head of a girls' school who quite likes M&S floral dresses. Looks lie. With Fifty Shades of Grey, this erstwhile TV executive has cannily exploited "post-feminist" confusion and sexual restiveness in a period of plenty. I bought the book to see what made it so irresistible to so many.

The narrative is so corny you couldn't caricature it, and the S&M bits are grubby and foul. In sum, an Eng Lit student in Seattle, a virgin (yes, really) meets a heart-stoppingly handsome millionaire, swoons, and allows herself to be taken into his "red room of pain" to be punished and enslaved – for, I assume, being a woman. I was not titillated. I didn't long to be bound and gagged and thrashed for "love". I washed my hands with anti-bacterial soap, but couldn't cleanse my mind of rising rage and desolation.

James has sheathed hard porn in a soft summer wrap, sold fantasies of sexual subjugation to vacuous yummie mummies and middle-class female singletons who are clueless about its implications. Living comfortable lives, they must pursue vicarious excitement by reading about pain, and playing at it in their bedrooms. Sales of bondage equipment have shot up since the book came out.

OK, I hear all you fans of the book yelling at me. I have no business prying into people's motivations and chastising them for the sexual games they choose to play. Yes, agreed. But the phenomenal spread of this bonk-buster takes it out of that intimate space and should make us think about the social and political landscape, the victories and failures of feminism, and the dissonance between female equality achieved and equality willingly surrendered by females.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-do-women-really-want-to-be-so-submissive-7902818.html

 

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven, informally known as The Assumption, according to the Christian beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and parts of Anglicanism, was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches as dogma that the Virgin Mary "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory."[1] This doctrine was dogmatically and infallibly defined by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus.[2] While Catholic dogma leaves open the question of Mary's death before rising to Heaven, the Eastern Orthodox tradition of the Dormition of the Theotokosteaches that Mary died and then rose to Heaven. In the churches which observe it, the Assumption is a major feast day, commonly celebrated on August 15. In many Catholic countries, the feast is also marked as a Holy Day of Obligation.

In his August 15, 2004, homily given at Lourdes, Pope John Paul II quoted John 14:3 as one of the scriptural bases for understanding the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. In this verse, Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and will receive you to myself; that where I am, you may be there also." According to Catholic theology, Mary is the pledge of the fulfillment of Christ's promise.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assumption_of_Mary

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Meanwhile in Tunisia...:

 

TUNIS: Thousands of Tunisians have demonstrated in the capital for women's rights in the biggest show of force by the opposition since April as the Islamist-led government faces growing dissent.
Two demonstrations on Monday, one authorised and the other not, were held to support the withdrawal of a planned article in the constitution backed by the Islamists that refers to ''complementarity'' and not equality of the sexes.

Thousands assembled opposite the parliament building in Tunis after the breaking of the Ramadan fast, while several hundred defied a ban to gather on the main city centre, Habib Bourguiba Avenue. Another demonstration was attended by about 1000 people in Sfax, 260 kilometres south of the capital.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/women-challenge-islamists-over-equality-20120814-246sy.html#ixzz23YrNI6fH
------------------------
Meanwhile at barbaric bible headquarters, from Exekiel 23... :

42 And a voice of a multitude being at ease was with her: and with the men of the common sort were brought drunkards from the wilderness, and they put bracelets upon the hands of them twain, and beautiful crowns upon their heads.

 43 Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries, Now will they now commit whoredoms with her, and she with them?

 44 Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto an harlot: so went they in unto Oholah and unto Oholibah, the lewd women.

 45  And righteous men, they shall judge them with the judgement of adulteresses, and with the judgement of women that shed blood; because they are adulteresses, and blood is in their hands.

 46 For thus saith the Lord God; I will bring up an assembly against them, and will give them to be tossed to and fro and spoiled.

 47 And the assembly shall stone them with stones, and despatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire.

 48 Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught not to do after your lewdness.

 49 And they shall recompense your lewdness upon you, and ye shall bear the sins of your idols  and ye shall know that I am the Lord God.

 

========================

Thank the good lord I am an atheist... Please note that this is ONE Ezekiel version amongst many "traductions".... Of course this porkied item has not stopped "lewdness" nor "idols"...

See also the road to Damascus bizo...

 

A Christian girl with Down's Syndrome has been arrested on blasphemy charges in Pakistan, accused of burning pages inscribed with verses from the Koran, police and activists said on Sunday.
Police arrested Rimsha, who is recognised by a single name, on Thursday after she was reported holding in public burnt pages which had Islamic text and Koranic verses on them, a police official said.
A conviction for blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan.
The official said that the girl, who he described as being in her teens, was taken to a police station in the capital Islamabad, where she has been detained since.

Angry Muslim protesters held rallies demanding she be punished, said the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.
"We had to register the case fairly quickly to prevent any unpleasant situation," he added, referring to the demonstrations.
Rimsha was produced before a court on Friday and remanded in custody for 14 days, another police official said. She is expected to go before the court again by end of this month.
The girl's plight is likely to reignite debate about growing religious intolerance in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where strict anti-blasphemy laws make defaming Islam or the Prophet Mohammed, or desecrating the Koran, a capital offence.

Human rights activists say the law is often used to settle petty disputes, but in the face of huge public support for the legislation, the government says it has no plans to change it.
The girl's alleged behaviour sparked Muslim anger in Mehrabad, an area of the capital where she lives with her parents and where up to 800 Christians reside. Christians there were forced to leave amid mounting fury.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/downs-syndrome-pakistani-girl-accused-of-blasphemy-20120820-24h15.html#ixzz242NKXhUE

 

Anger from Germany's faithful after Kassell museum uses 'blasphemous' cartoon in poster

LAST UPDATED AT 12:17 ON Thu 23 Aug 2012

A GERMAN cartoonist has offended adherents of a major religion with a controversial drawing – but this time the religion is Christianity, not Islam, and the cartoon makes fun of Jesus, not Mohammed.

Der Spiegel reports that the cartoon is being used to advertise an exhibition at Caricatura, a cartoon museum in the central German city Kassell. Blown up to an enormous scale, it hangs in a window looking onto the street.

The cartoon, by Mario Lars, who is not well-known outside Germany, shows Christ on the cross looking unhappy while a speech bubble coming from the heavens above him observes: "Hey… You… I fucked your mother!"

The media spotlight is currently turned on the city as it hosts Documenta, a five-yearly art exhibition, and some of the city's religious leaders have taken the chance to criticise the cartoon which they say is blasphemous.

 

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/48630/christ-cross-cartoon-provokes-christian-outrage#ixzz24PfckeZ1

 

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I wonder sometimes... Why some cartoonists get all the glory and better controversies than we do here?... But there a chance that nobody knows we exist... For example the image at top is far more "blasphemous" than even "Piss Christ" by that famous (unknown apart from this blasphemous artwork) American artist and photographer Andres Serrano...

 

Unless they think Gus Leonisky knows too much about their little racket in religious porkies...

 

Harry Potter banned by Christian school
Medowie Christian School has defended a decision to ban witches and warlocks from its annual book week parade and the Harry Potter series from the school library.The school was one of many in the Hunter Valley that marked Book Week this week by asking children to dress up as their favourite book character for a parade.

"Frankly, we do not want any of our younger students or their siblings feeling frightened, intimidated or uncomfortable during any school activities. "

Principal Samantha Van de Mortel asked parents not to send children to school on Wednesday as witches and warlocks because it was inconsistent with school values.
She said it was a standing policy because the school felt it was not in line with its Christian ethos.

"We just don't believe that's something we want to promote. We promote a Christian focus," Ms Van de Mortel said.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/harry-potter-banned-by-christian-school-20120824-24q7i.html#ixzz24QCGXG3h

 

 

FEMALE leaders have a priceless, long-term positive impact on improving gender equality, with Australia experiencing ''a very special situation'', says the executive director of United Nations Women, Michelle Bachelet.
Ms Bachelet visited Canberra yesterday to ''commend and thank'' the government's leadership and commitment to improving the lives of women throughout the world.
Ms Bachelet, whose family were political exiles in Australia in 1975, told the Herald: ''Seeing women in powerful positions, it opens the sky for young girls who thought they could never become a powerful person in the future.
''This country is living a very special situation. You have the first Prime Minister that is a woman, but also you have the Governor-General, the Attorney-General, you have a lot of important authorities that are women.

''I'm so convinced this will be a major step for what happens to girls and how they see their future in a different way to the way it was two decades ago.''
On a day when the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, took a stand against ''a very sexist smear campaign'', Ms Bachelet, Chile's first female prime minister, was reluctant to comment on domestic politics.
But she did say the attacks were probably fuelled because Australia was dealing with something ''new'' and there was still a lot of male-dominated culture about how to assess leaders.
She lamented the fact that only 31 countries, including Australia, had reached a goal of having 33 per cent female political representation. Rwanda, which has a quota system, has the highest percentage with 56 per cent.
Quotas can work, she said, but were best used as a temporary transitional tool to educate about the benefits of equality.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/un-figure-praises-australia-for-leading-way-in-empowering-women-20120823-24p3x.html#ixzz24QGMmXCB
See blasphemous image and accurate article at top...

 

Five days later, a Slavic supremacist organization called Holy Rus’ announced its intention to patrol the streets of Moscow in search of “blasphemers” and “those who insult the Orthodox faith,” again appearing to claim legitimacy by quoting from Judge Syrova’s verdict. The group’s leader, Ivan Otrakovsky, claimed that 2,000 people per day were volunteering to join the vigilante force, and within hours of this announcement, an influential Orthodox cleric, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, gave the plan his blessing. “In Orthodox tradition, this kind of defense has always been the duty of the Orthodox people. Orthodox believers are called upon to carry this responsibility,” Chaplin told the state news agency Itar-Tass. He added, “But, of course, all within the framework of the law.”

The members of Holy Rus’, and the vigilantes of the cafeteria incident, had all been among the clusters of people gathered near the courthouse to condemn Pussy Riot. Although they were always outnumbered by the band’s supporters, they had a way of attracting the most attention. It was hard to ignore the wild-eyed priests waving icons over their heads, the skinheads with picket signs and the doomsayers proclaiming Pussy Riot to be the work of Satan or the U.S. State Department, terms they seemed to use interchangeably. On the day of the verdict, a group of uniformed Cossacks showed up and tried to start a bonfire in the street so that the young defendants could be burned. For the reporters in the street, loony quotes were easy to find among Pussy Riot’s enemies; reasoned discussion was harder to come by.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/08/23/pussy-riot-trial-unleashes-putins-secret-weapon-the-orthodox-faithful/#ixzz24QoVGy6s

A court has unanimously dismissed an appeal by comedian Mick Molloy and the Ten Network in a defamation case.

A Full Court has upheld a ruling Molloy defamed former Federal Labor candidate Nicole Cornes.

Molloy and Ten last year were ordered to pay Mrs Cornes $85,000 in damages, plus interest and costs, for defaming her on the television program Before the Game in 2008.

Mrs Cornes said she was ridiculed by the on-air comments and Ten argued Molloy made his remarks in jest.

Outside court, Mrs Cornes said she was happy with the appeal decision.

"It's a win for all women because it sends a strong message that you can't go around making sexist and defamatory comments on national television and hide behind those comments as a joke," she said.

Mrs Cornes said she was pleased she stuck to her morals and fought the case, despite it taking on her family.

"I've always been determined to take it all the way through, but you do question if it's worth it but it is worth it," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-24/molloy-loses-appeal-over-cornes-defamation/4221106

BRIDES will be promising to submit to their husbands under a new marriage vow the Anglican diocese of Sydney is expected to approve at its synod in October.
It requires the minister to ask of the bride: ''Will you honour and submit to him, as the church submits to Christ?'' and for her to pledge ''to love and submit'' to her husband.
The service is already being used in some Sydney parishes, under a diocese that opposes the full ordination of women and supports an exclusively male leadership doctrine.
The vows were written by the diocese's liturgical panel, which has the imprimatur of the Archbishop, Peter Jensen. The panel chairman, the Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, said ''submit'' was a deeply biblical word.

''The Bible never said women must obey their husbands but Paul and Peter did say submit, which I think is a much more responsive, nuanced word.''
The bishop said no one would be forced to use the new version, and an alternative would remain available to couples who did not want the woman to obey (which has been optional since 1928) or submit.

Kevin Giles, a New Testament scholar in Melbourne, said the subordination of women was exclusively related to ''the fall'' in the Bible and in 2012 made for bad theology.
''Jesus not once mentions the subordination of woman and says much in contradiction to this. Paul's comments over the subordination of women fit into the patriarchal culture of the day and are not the biblical ideal. The truth is that happy marriages today are fully equal, and unhappy marriages are ones where one or the other party is controlling.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/to-love-and-to-submit-a-marriage-made-in-2012-20120824-24ru7.html#ixzz24V4USn4o

See blasphemous image at top and read articles below it...

...a church in Mumbai announces that a crucifix had started to drip water from Jesus feet, and called it a miracle.

Sanal was sceptical, to say the least. He set out to investigate, and it didn’t take him long to discover that the liquid was coming from a nearby washroom drainage pipe, via a wonderful scientific effect called the capillary action.

 

 

The trouble really started when Sanal accused the church of ‘Miracle Mongering’ — using what they knew to be bogus miracles to drum up support and donations. Senior church officials immediately demanded that Sanal be charged with blasphemy, which is actually still a crime in India (as well as some other enlightened countries around the world).

The official charge proposed is hurting the ‘Religious Sentiments’ of the Catholic Church, and police officials in Mumbai have expressed strong interest in ‘talking to’ Sanal — if they can find him (read into that what you will).

Sensibly, Sanal has taken this opportunity to do some travelling. He recently spent some time in Poland, where he took part in a public debate about freedom of expression. Wikipedia suggests that he might be in Finland, which means that he’s probably anywhere but Finland.

If you happen to see Sanal on the street, shake his hand.  And don’t tell the Catholics.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/international/where-in-the-world-is-sanal-edamaruku/

It would be nice to think that rational moral argument is the engine of moral progress. But that's not how cultural change works, writes Kwame Anthony Appiah.

Honour has a lot to answer for. Consider the thousand or so women in Pakistan who are murdered each year by relatives in the name of family honour. These murders are not endorsed by the state of Pakistan. They are illegal. Nor do they have the sanction of Islam. Any number of Islamic scholars, mullahs and ayatollahs have declared honour killings to be contrary to their religion.

Alas, it is not uncommon for honour to trump even the combined might of morality, law and religion. Many abhorrent customs, from slavery to suttee, have drawn strength from the sentiment. Yet, for those who aim to bring such customs to an end, honour is not just a problem - it also may provide a solution.

Among moral philosophers, the idea of honour - of earning the respect of people whose judgment you care about - is not riding high these days. It has an uncomfortable connection to old hierarchical codes at odds with our democratic values. Its appeal seems primal, pre-rational. Wouldn't it be nice to think that rational moral argument, not this antiquated legacy of our carnage-ridden past, could be the engine of moral progress?

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4220884.html

 

Fifteen men and two women have been found beheaded in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Officials said the victims were killed by Taliban insurgents as punishment for attending a mixed-sex party with music and dancing.

The bodies were found in a house near the Musa Qala district, 46 miles north of the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, on Monday, said the district governor Nimatullah, who goes by only one name.

"The victims threw a late-night dance and music party when the Taliban attacked," on Sunday night, Nimatullah told Reuters.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

Men and women do not usually mingle in Afghanistan unless they are related, and parties involving both genders are rare and highly secretive affairs.

For the Taliban, flirting, open displays of affection and the mixing of men and women are vehemently condemned.

In June, Taliban gunmen stormed a luxury hotel near Kabul demanding to know where the "prostitutes and pimps" were, according to witnesses. Twenty people were killed.

The Taliban said it launched that attack on Qarga Lake because the hotel was used for "wild parties".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/27/taliban-behead-17-afghan-partygoers

 

 

Chishti has been outspoken about his dislike of the hundreds of Christian families who live in the area, even appearing on a popular national television show to complain that the noise made by Christian worshippers had disturbed Muslim residents.

He also welcomed the departure of most of the Christians from the area following the furore surrounding the arrest of Rimsha last month. With passions running high in the community – hundreds of people demonstrated outside her house, reportedly demanding the right to burn the young girl to death – most Christians fled the area.

"We are not upset the Christians have left and we will be pleased if they don't come back," Chishti told the Guardian on 18 August.

Tahir Naveed Chaudhry from the All Pakistan Minority Committee said Rimsha's lawyers had always maintained the evidence was planted. "And now it is proved that the whole story was only designed to dislocate the Christian people," he said.

"[Chishti] must be prosecuted under the blasphemy law as it will set a precedent against anyone else who tries to misuse that law."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/02/pakistan-mullah-blasphemy-girl-framed

 

 

The arrest of an anti-corruption cartoonist in India on charges of sedition has sparked off criticism.

Aseem Trivedi was held in the city of Mumbai over the weekend for his cartoons allegedly mocking the Indian constitution.

Mr Trivedi was also charged with insulting the national flag and remanded in police custody till Sunday.

The cartoonist has been participating in the anti-corruption movement led by campaigner Anna Hazare.

India's media and prominent citizens have condemned Mr Trivedi's arrest, calling it a "wrongful act".

"From the information I have gathered, the cartoonist did nothing illegal, and in fact, arresting him was an illegal act," Chairman of Press Council of India Markandey Katju told The Hindu newspaper.

"A wrongful arrest is a serious crime under the Indian Penal Code, and it is those who arrested him who should be arrested."

Mr Katju, a former Supreme Court judge, asked how drawing a cartoon could be considered a crime and said politicians should learn to accept criticism.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-19540565

NO such problem here... In my dreams I  believe cartoonists are more cunning than a box full of political tacks... So politicians won't go near such controversy... Meanwhile in the same India:

http://www.beingcynical.com/2012/06/letter-of-presidential-aspirant.html

 

 

 

The movie, Innocence of Muslims, was directed and produced by Sam Bacile, a 52-year-old real-estate developer from southern California who says Islam is a hateful religion.
‘‘Islam is a cancer,’’ Bacile told the newspaper.
The protests came on the eleventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, when US cities were targeted by hijacked planes.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/islam-is-a-cancer-american-killed-in-libya-as-mob-attack-us-consulate-over-movie-20120912-25rim.html#ixzz26E6i3wLM

 

Islam is no more a cancer than christianity... Both are silly beliefs that have no place in a "modern" world... Religions are idiotic and hypocritical... 

See image at top and stories below it...

 

UPDATE: No one can find anything about "Sam Bacile".... But :

 

The film at the centre of the protests in Libya and Egypt is called Innocence of Muslims and was apparently shot in the US.

The full version is said to run for two hours, but so far all most people have seen is a collection of extracts found on Facebook and Youtube - with one trailer running to 14 minutes.

That inevitably makes the storyline hard to follow. Early scenes are set in the modern world and appear to show Egyptian Coptic Christians suffering at the hands of militant Islamists.

The latter, highly amateurish part of the film is set in the past and appears to depict the Prophet Muhammad, played by a young American actor, as a philandering, womanising caricature.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19572912

--------------------------------

Now read the historical record in regard to Muhammad and as I wrote at the top:

 

 

Mohammed was a pedophile...

It is well-reported that Mohammed had sex with his betrothed young wife, Aisha. 
She was only nine years old... He was 52... She had been promised to him when she was seven... In modern laws this would make him a grand pedophile. 
But there are some ambiguity. In order to give him "divine" rights, she was deemed a virgin (aged nine!)... There is of course some resonance with the "virgin" Mary — a woman of note, also showing up in the Quran, as there is a strong relationship between the Quran and the old testament known as the Tanakh to the Jewish people... — Abraham, being the guilty centrepiece of three religions...

...

Mohammed had 15 wives (consumated marriage with only 11) and 9 concubines, according to some historians... 

Mind you the Jews did not fare too well either. in those days (and now?) .. They were always fighting something, escaping from somewhere and being punished by god every second day...

 

So another internet clever-clogs sets the Middle East on fire: Prophet cartoons, then Koranic book-burning, now a video of robed ‘terrorists’ and a fake desert. The Western-Christian version of al-Qaida then goes into hiding (an essential requisite for publicity) while the innocent are asphyxiated, beheaded and otherwise done to death - outrageous Muslim revenge thus ‘proving’ the racist claims of the trash-peddlers that Islam is a violent religion. 

The provocateurs, of course, know that politics and religion don’t mix in the Middle East. They are the same. Christopher Stevens, his diplomat colleagues in Benghazi, priests in Turkey and Africa, UN personnel in Afghanistan; they have all paid the price for those ‘Christian priests’, ‘cartoonists’, ‘film-makers’ and ‘authors’ – the inverted commas are necessary to mark a thin line between illusionists and the real thing – who knowingly choose to provoke 1.6 billion Muslims.

When a Danish cartoon in a hitherto unknown newspaper drew a picture of the Prophet Mohamed with a bomb in his turban, the Danish embassy in Beirut went up in flames. When a Texas pastor decided to ‘sentence the Koran to death’, the knives came out in Afghanistan – we are leaving aside the little matter of the ‘accidental’ burning of Koranic pages by US personnel in Bagram. And now a deliberately abusive film provokes the murder of one of the State Department’s fairest diplomats.

In many ways, it’s familiar territory. In fifteenth century Spain, Christian cartoonists drew illustrations of the Prophet committing unspeakable acts. And – just so we don’t think we have clean claws today – when a Paris cinema showed a film in which Christ made love to a woman, the picture-house was burned-down, one cinema-goer was killed, and the killer turned out to be a Christian.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-provocateurs-know-politics-and-religion-dont-mix-8131297.html

 

There are moderate religious people... But even these people — when their religion is "mistreated" or driven through mud, even questioned by atheists or other religious adherents — can become irate. But it's not just a "provocation" that can make religious people become aggressive... I dig in the history books and see popes with armies going to the crusades, and muslims invading Europe, and catholics and protestants fighting it out.... The whole underlying purpose of most religions — especially the three Abrahamic religions — is to have power. Power of men over women. Power to control the agenda of the "people". Power to send you to death if you say something against the "belief"... Religions are perverse tools of oppression — especially since they promise "freedom" while the cage of dogma is like a prison that stop people to see the real world. 

Some religions have toned down their belligerence, or use hypocritical discreet excuses to go to war... Some simply massage the brains of a few (a lot of) nutters (yes we have nutters in our societies) to go and do bad (deemed to be good by the religious nuttery) deeds against humanity... The preachers, the priests, the imans, the rabbis are often in unison talking about peace but often their means to achieve this is to go to war...

 

Anger over religious insults alone doesn't explain the violence in the Arab world, writes Ruby Hamad. The film at the centre of the protests was a hateful attempt to enrage people racked by war.

It is a cliché to say that freedom of speech comes with responsibility. But that does not make it any less apt when it comes to the anti-Islam video, The Innocence of Muslims, linked to the wave of violent protests currently sweeping the Arab world.

The storming of the US embassy in Libya, which killed the US ambassador as well as three other officials, was an organised military-style attack that used the protests as a diversion. The US is currently investigating claims the attack was planned to coincide with the anniversary of September 11.

These protests follow a number of similar incidents in the past few years. In February of this year, thousands of Afghans took to the streets following the burning of the Koran by military personnel at the Bagram Air Base. Thirty people died, six of them US soldiers.

This followed protests in April 2011, also in Afghanistan, after American Christian pastor Terry Jones staged a mock trial of the Koran and, finding it guilty, set it alight. Enraged protesters responded by storming the UN compound, killing seven.

There is no doubt that many Muslims take any insult, whether perceived or real, to their religion personally. Incidents such as these fuel the perception that Islam is an inherently violent religion, intent on ending free speech across the globe.

Look closer. There are over 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, yet when Jones set fire to that Koran in Florida, the incident barely raised an eyebrow except in Afghanistan, a country crippled by decades of war, poverty, illiteracy and an American military presence then in its 11th year.

Protesters took to the streets at the urging of their mullahs who warned of "violence and protests not only in Afghanistan but in the entire world". The protests in the rest of the world never materialised.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4261316.html?WT.svl=theDrum

 

Angry scenes have erupted in central Sydney as hundreds of Muslims protest against a controversial film about the Prophet Mohammed.

Violent demonstrations have killed at least six people in the Middle East, while protestors have also marched through London.

The wave of protests spread to Sydney's CBD this afternoon, beginning outside the United States Consulate and spreading through the city's streets to Hyde Park.

The ABC understands the protest was sparked by a mass text message saying: "We must defend the honour of our prophet, we must act now."

The group is made up of Muslim men, women and children of all ages.

One protester was carrying a placard that read "behead those who insult the Prophet".

The group, which included children, shouted "down, down USA", while another protester yelled: "Our dead are in paradise. Your dead are in hell."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-15/anti-us-protests-hit-sydney/4263372?WT.svl=news0

Meanwhile Google could become a censor:

 

Google’s restricting of anti-Muslim video shows role of Web firms as free-speech arbitersBy Craig Timberg, Saturday, September 15, 11:13 AM

Google lists eight reasons on its “YouTube Community Guidelines” page for why it might take down a video. Inciting riots is not among them. But after the White House warned Tuesday that a crude anti-Muslim movie trailer had sparked lethal violence in the Middle East, Google acted.

Days later, controversy over the 14-minute clip from “The Innocence of Muslims” was still roiling the Islamic world, with access blocked in Egypt, Libya, India, Indonesia and Afghanistan — keeping it from easy viewing in countries where more than a quarter of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live.

Legal experts and civil libertarians, meanwhile, said the controversy highlighted how Internet companies, most based in the United States, have become global arbiters of free speech, weighing complex issues that traditionally are the province of courts, judges, and occasionally, international treaty.

“Notice that Google has more power over this than either the Egyptian or the U.S. government,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor. “Most free speech today has nothing to do with governments and everything to do with companies.”

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/googles-restricting-of-anti-muslim-video-shows-role-of-web-firms-as-free-speech-arbiters/2012/09/14/ec0f8ce0-fe9b-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_print.html

----------------------------

 

Meanwhile, there are quite a few YouTube videos where to see the exerpts (the longest one is 15 minutes)... it's not as funny as "the Life Of Brian"and definitely badly made — with deliberately obvious dubbing in parts — I would say as an "artistic" artifice... The whole thing does not deserve such hooplah as Muslims (men, women and children) threatening to "behead people" for this, in this country.... Ease up.... This "anger" shows a strong dangerous tendency for extremism in religionism, in this country... 

Learn to live with criticism, mate... If you must, protect you values with kindness, not violence.

-------------------------

Meanwhile:

"The import of weapons has to finally stop," Benedict, 85, told journalists on the plane. "Without the import of arms the war cannot continue. Instead of importing weapons, which is a grave sin, we have to import ideas of peace and creativity."

The Arab Spring uprisings against authoritarian leaders were "a positive thing. There is a desire for more democracy, more freedoms, more cooperation and renewal," he said.

But he added that it had to include tolerance for other religions. Asked about Christian fears about rising aggression from Islamist radicals, Benedict said: "Fundamentalism is always a falsification of religion."

All main faith groups in Lebanon, which was gripped by civil war along sectarian lines from 1975 to 1990, have welcomed his visit.

Among banners greeting Benedict on the road from the airport were several from the Shia group Hezbollah.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/201291514812182367.html

Why is the Arab world so easily offended?

By Fouad Ajami, Published: September 15

 Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.

Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in search of greater opportunities in the Western world, modernity — with its sometimes distasteful but ultimately benign criticism of Islam — has sparked fatal protests. To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.

There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.

In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored — poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.

If Islam’s rise was spectacular, its fall was swift and unsparing. This is the world that the great historian Bernard Lewis explored in his 2002 book “What Went Wrong?” The blessing of God, seen at work in the ascent of the Muslims, now appeared to desert them. The ruling caliphate, with its base in Baghdad, was torn asunder by a Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Soldiers of fortune from the Turkic Steppes sacked cities and left a legacy of military seizures of power that is still the bane of the Arabs. Little remained of their philosophy and literature, and after the Ottoman Turks overran Arab countries to their south in the 16th century, the Arabs seemed to exit history; they were now subjects of others.

The coming of the West to their world brought superior military, administrative and intellectual achievement into their midst — and the outsiders were unsparing in their judgments. They belittled the military prowess of the Arabs, and they were scandalized by the traditional treatment of women and the separation of the sexes that crippled Arab society.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-arab-world-why-a-movie-trailer-can-lead-to-violencewhy-cant-the-arab-world-accept-offenses-without-violence/2012/09/14/d2b65d2e-fdc8-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_print.html

 

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione says he was outraged to see children holding signs that called for the beheading of anti-Islamists at a Sydney protest.
Mr Scipione said it was the actions of "extremist offenders" who turned a peaceful protest violent on Saturday, leaving six police and 17 others injured.
"It was an outrage," he told reporters in Sydney today.

"To see a young child with a placard thrust in his hand calling for the beheading of a person is simply something I cannot comprehend.
"It's just not what we teach our children."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/children-with-beheading-signs-an-outrage-says-scipione-20120916-2602v.html#ixzz26bzVk9HK
See image at top and articles below it...

 

 

This morning Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr urged Australians not to blame all Muslims for the behaviour of what he said was a "telephone box minority".

"It was an unacceptable demonstration, first in terms of the violence that was used - and I accept the views of the police completely that it was generated by some of the protesters - and secondly the sentiments being expressed," he told News Breakfast.

"Those sentiments are repugnant to Australians, and repugnant to Australians particularly of Islamic background.

"This telephone box minority, this hundred-strong demonstration, had nothing to do with the Islamic community I know and I admire, and I appeal to Australians not to judge Australian Muslims by what they saw in those pictures, and those images, repugnant as they were."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-17/police-warn-of-more-arrests-after-sydney-protests/4264512?WT.svl=news0

 

Religious fanaticism push people to do stupid things...

It's a simple process of defending a belief which has nothing to do with history nor reality and is not the true record of whatever happened... The bible is full of controversies, idiosyncracies and hypocrisy... Yet people peel all these layers in order to extract what they want to believe which in our present time does not make sense or is contrary to proper analysis of what we can see.

Sugularly, this would could lead one person to a confroting "spiritual" situation  or becoming angry while defending one's false version of understanding in order to avoid facing a new reality. Should this person accept that his/her beliefs have been wrong, after years on indoctrination to the contrary, this can leads to an awakening, but more often than not to a collapse of the spirit followed by deep depression... Reality can be a downer... 

The movie "innocence of muslims" is not a reality either... And devoted muslims would know that. It's a stupid little sad cynical bad satire (not "repugnant" in the least) that is as idiotic as religion itself. The Copts, the Catholics, the Muslims, the Jews have to cope with living with each others, without using corporal punishment for religious trespass from others. Religion and violence make bad bedfellows ... The involvement of religion in politics is crazy, as politics is a social weapon.... 

I am afraid the telephone box sitting on top of the iceberg... which is a Bickford rope away from becoming a powder keg...

--------------------------

 

 

'He told me he produced a movie last year and wanted to screen it on September 11 to reveal what was behind the terrorists' actions that day,'' Girgis said. The journalist said he watched the movie and found it insulting. He didn't want to write about it. But Mr Sadek called back and urged him to, telling him he could not deny the movie existed.

Two days later, on September 6, Girgis published a three-paragraph article, calling the movie ''shocking'' and warning it could fuel sectarian tensions between Egyptian Christians and Muslims.Girgis concluded the video ''is just a passing crisis that doesn't affect the bond between Muslims and Copts''.
Five days later, thousands of Egyptians stormed the US embassy in Cairo and burned the American flag while as many as 125 armed men overwhelmed the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the ambassador and three other diplomats.
Three days after that, protests in 23 countries included the ransacking of the German embassy in Sudan and the burning of the American school in Tunisia.
Saturday seemed calm across the region, but the US State Department fears the violence has not ended.
An Islamic web forum picked up Girgis's story the day after it was published.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-tiny-piece-of-newsprint-that-started-a-global-inferno-20120916-260ex.html#ixzz26fmDsZwj
Time to remove religions from politics. Time to remove violence from religion — and I mean from all religions, including the Christian religions in which our expunged interpretations of that ghasly book has lead us to do bad things using a crooked moral compass and an arsenal designed to destroy the planet...

 

 

 

IN THE LAST WEEK, three people have died, hundreds have rioted in the Sydney CBD and millions of dollars of property damage has been done around the world — all because of a movie.

Not even a movie, in fact. Just a trailer, for a movie that may or may not exist. The movie in question is called Innocence of Muslims.

The director of the film (rumoured to be a former pornographer, like all the great directors) is said to be influenced by a radical Coptic Christian preacher. Actors involved claim that they thought they were working on a historical epic (a little hard to believe considering the production values) and then were shocked to find that their lines had been overdubbed with anti-Islamic propaganda.

This doesn’t explain what the guy playing the Prophet, who knocks a woman to the ground with his holy stick, thought he was doing, but it’s obvious this low budget hate film was released for one reason — to stir up anger. From any perspective, this has been a success.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/international/movies-theyre-not-real-people/

 

New rules banning female university students from studying 77 subjects in Iran have come into effect as the nation's academic year kicked off on Saturday.

No official reason has been given for the restrictions to courses at more than 30 universities.

Banned courses include nuclear physics, computer science and English literature.

The US-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the restrictions extended a creeping "Islamicisation" of Iran's universities that have been imposed under president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A much smaller number of courses were also barred to men in some campuses, including studies in history, linguistics, literature, sociology and philosophy.

"As university students across Iran prepare to start the new academic year, they face serious setbacks, and women students in particular will no longer be able to pursue the education and careers of their choice," said Liesl Gerntholtz, the women's rights director at Human Rights Watch.

Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi says it is part of a policy to weaken women's role in Iranian society.

"The Iranian government is using various, different initiatives to restrict women's access to education and to return them to the home to weaken the feminist movement in the country," she sad.

Currently, around 60 per cent of students are female and 40 per cent are male.

But the dean of Iran's Petroleum University of Technology, Gholamreza Rashed, was quoted by the IRAN newspaper last week as blaming market forces - implying job prospects were shrinking because of Western sanctions.

He said his school was no longer accepting female students due to "the hardship of the work situation, and because the oil industry does not need female students right now."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-22/iranian-women-banned-from-77-university-courses/4275764

 

This is a crime against humanity.

 

The forgotten girls: By 2020, there will be 50m child brides under the age of 15

 

This week's international 'Day of the Girl' offers governments, the UN, and charities an opportunity to address a shocking - and growing - trend

 

Sarah Morrison

Sunday, 7 October 2012

When 12-year-old Nargis was woken up, one morning in Bangladesh, by two women she did not know, she was confused. She did not understand when they told her she would be marrying their brother in just a few weeks, or that she would be leaving her parents' home. When she became a mother two years later, losing her son after only 16 days, the pangs of fear were familiar. Now, with a frail child to bring up, she is much more resolute: "I don't think girls should marry before they're 18 years old."

Today, days before the first internationally recognised Day of the Girl, experts warn that child marriage is, without exception, the biggest challenge to girls' development. The number of girls married before the age of 15 is expected to double over the next decade, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has warned. By 2020, there will be around 50 million wives under the age of 15. This will pass 100 million by 2030, if current trends continue.

Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the UNFPA, said the "shocking" projections were being released to call the world's attention to the scale of the problem. "We are dealing with the largest generation of young people the world has ever known," he told The Independent on Sunday. "This is the marrying off of children who don't even understand what it is to be married or to be an adult. Girls are being robbed of their childhood. They have babies before they are ready, and we see intergenerational poverty. We need to stop this vicious cycle."

Across the developing world around one third of girls get married before 18, according to Unicef. Around 10 per cent, like Nargis, will not have even have turned 15. Marie Staunton, chief executive of the children's charity Plan UK, called child brides the "most forgotten of all the invisible girls". Married children are generally isolated, she warned, at greater risk of violence, abuse and exploitation, and more likely to drop out of education.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-forgotten-girls-by-2020-there-will-be-50m-child-brides-under-the-age-of-15-8200788.html#

 

Please read article at top...

The murder comes against a backdrop of a world outcry over the shooting by Taliban Islamists of a 14-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, who had become a voice against the suppression of women's rights.
While Yousafzai's case has made world headlines, people using social media in Afghanistan have made the point that oppression and violence against women are commonplace in Afghanistan.
Abdul Qader Rahimi, the regional director of the government-backed human rights commission in western Afghanistan, said violence against women had dramatically increased in the region recently.
"There is no doubt violence against women has increased. So far this year we have registered 100 cases of violence against women in the western region," he said, adding that many cases go unreported.
"But at least in Gul's case, we are glad the murderer has been arrested and brought to justice," he said.
Last year, in a case that made international headlines, police rescued a teenage girl, Sahar Gul, who was beaten and locked up in a toilet for five months after she defied her in-laws who tried to force her into prostitution.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/woman-beheaded-for-refusing-to-be-a-prostitute-20121018-27s9c.html#ixzz29bMQlW4r

see toon and story at top...

Pakistani activists say they have lost hope in the government to reform the Islamic country's controversial laws in the wake of an attack on a girls' school over alleged blasphemy.

A mob of more than 200 people set fire to a girls' school in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday on accusations that one of the teachers of the school distributed "blasphemous" material to her sixth grade students.

Pakistani police are trying to trace the teacher of the Farooqi High School who has apparently gone into hiding.

Police officer Azam Manhais told the media that the 76-year-old Asim Farooqi, owner of the school, had been arrested on blasphemy charges.

http://www.dw.de/no-end-in-sight-to-pakistans-blasphemy-laws/a-16351894

 

Campaigners say Dalits often suffer violent assault and that Dalit
 women are the most vulnerable. They claim the situation is
 particularly bad in rural Haryana, relatively prosperous and located
 close to the national capital, but where strict patriarchal and 
conservative attitudes often clash with demands for change.

The state
 has the country’s worst gender ratio, with just 830 girls for 1,000
 boys because of the illegal but widespread use of pre-natal sex
 selection and female foeticide.


The attitudes were revealed, say campaigners, by the response of many of those from
 Haryana to the rape of the young woman from Dabra and other similar
 cases, highlighted by the subsequent media attention.

One local leader, Jitender Chhatar,  a member of a so-called khap
 panchyatt, or unelected village council claimed: “Consumption of fast
 food contributes to such incidents. Chowmein leads to hormonal 
imbalance, evoking an urge to indulge in such acts.  You also know the
 impact of chowmein, which is a spicy food, on our body.”


Meanwhile, the state’s former chief minister, Om Prakash Chautala, of
 the  Indian National Lok Dal, an ally of the main national
 opposition, told local media he supported another 
recommendation from a khap panchyatt which claimed lowering the 
marriage age to 15 would also reduce the number of rapes. “In the past, 
especially in Mughal era, people used to marry their daughters early
 to save them from such atrocities. Currently a situation of similar
 kind is arising in Haryana,” he said...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/outcry-after-rape-of-indian-girl-aged-16-triggers-calls-for-reduction-in-age-of-consent-8281120.html

See image and story at top...

A teenage Pakistani girl allegedly murdered by her parents for looking at a boy begged for her life before they doused her with acid. Her mother said it was the girl's “destiny” to die in such a fashion.

In the latest twist to a saga that has created outrage across South Asia, where acid attacks are common, the parents of the 15-year-old girl gave an interview in which they justified their actions. They said their elder daughter had previously brought "dishonour" to their family and that they would not tolerate it again.

The couple were arrested last week in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in a remote village in the Kotli district. Muhammad Zafar and his wife, Zaheen, were detained after allegedly confessing to officers that they had poured acid on their daughter, Anusha. Though she suffered up to 60 per cent burns on her body, the couple did not take her to hospital until the following day. She died of her injuries.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/parents-who-killed-daughter-with-acid-say-it-was-her-destiny-8282835.html

 

 

For all its freedoms, Australia is still pervaded by violence against women, writes Andrea Durbach. We all have a role to play in ending this.

In answering the question posed by the title of her book Are Women Human?, American feminist scholar and lawyer Catharine Mackinnon says 'no'.

She writes:

If women were regarded as human, would they be sold into sexual slavery worldwide; veiled, silenced, and imprisoned in homes; bred, and worked as menials for little or no pay; stoned for sex outside marriage or burned within it; mutilated genitally, impoverished economically, and mired in illiteracy?

The case studies detailed in Jacqui True's book The Political Economy Of Violence Against Women, and those portrayed in the documentary film Half the Sky which premiered this week, speak of lives in places far away where the pain and trauma of the violence is experienced by women who are among the most 'displaced, disinherited and impoverished' in the world.

One in three Australian women over the age of 15 has experienced and will report physical or sexual violence at some time in their lives. Although the political, economic and cultural lives of women in Australia are, in the main, immeasurably different from those of women who live through war and political and cultural subjugation, when I accompanied the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Ms Rashida Manjoo, on a study tour across Australia earlier this year, the testimony we heard was despairingly and disturbingly similar in one key respect.

The cry from Australian women writ large across the world - be it from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, migrant and refugee women, women with disabilities, students and workers, mothers and daughters, or from the men who work to address and prevent the violence - was that the systematic degradation of women, the denial of their humanity, was consistently met with weak resignation at best - and passive condonation, at worst.

Passive condonation comes in many forms.

When women do not speak out about the violence they endure for fear of bringing shame upon their men and their communities, the violence is condoned;

When students who are victims of abuse and assault are told by their peers that it is not cool to complain and that the perpetrator is a 'jerk', not a criminal, then the violence is condoned;

When police are reticent to enter the private sphere to halt domestic violence or when doctors treat the symptoms of violence and circumvent the cause, the violence is condoned;

When women with disabilities or women of colour are told that they don't feel the pain or the hurt 'in the same way', the violence is condoned;

When senior government bureaucrats presented with overwhelming evidence undermine the gravity and prevalence of violence, preferring to call it 'wrong' rather than to name it as a serious violation of human rights, then the violence is condoned;

When women workers - critically dependent on an income to remove themselves from violent relationships - are demoted or dismissed by employers who fail to acknowledge and accommodate the impact of domestic violence on work performance, the violence is condoned;

And when the Australian Government - acutely aware that over 800,000 women workers are victims of some form of violence - fails to provide those women with legal protection against discrimination in the workplace lest employers baulk at 'more regulation', then the violence is condoned.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4401082.html?WT.svl=theDrum

 

 

As noted on this site, especially in this line of articles, most of the discrimination of women comes from religious traditions... The latest being the anglican church rejection of women bishops and the permanent dislike of women equality in the catholic church. In the Muslim world, women are brainwashed early in life to be submissive to the point their life would crumble should they try to understand the world away from the strict religious dogma. This may suit an unadventurous mind, but for my understanding of humankind, the human being is curious and should be curious beyond what we are limited to accept. Religions are designed to limit understanding and exploration. See story and picture at top... 

As well, women are not just the victim of men, but of other women as well... especially those trained to make traditions apply. These traditions involve genital mutilations and other forms of imprisonment such as the burqa and forced marriages from a young age...

I know some asylum seekers (Muslim men mostly) who have made their religious duty to force all women — yes I mean all women — in this country submit to sharia law...  They are very patient but they are actively working on it...

On the other side of the coin, you have persons like Janet Albrechtsen who ridicule feminism as much as they can — not understanding that most women are not in the same privilege position of comfort and power than they themselves are... Many women start eight squares behind the rest in education, in opportunity and in the development of skills, not only in pay packet docking...

Should Janet Albrechtsen and her cronies start to understand their own privilege and the processes that made them acquire this (rich family, luck, help from other women, sleeping with the enemy for favours), rather than poopoo the efforts of feminists — those who really try now and tried hard in the past such as those who brought in family planning and protection of women against violent men — this would go a long way to help for a more equitable world... But often, apart from men who are ignorant and just bullies, some women will victimise other women for the sole purpose to protect their position of relative power...

Meanwhile I know many women who are in powerful working position but still are very aware of their responsibilities in this regard... they are able to regard men and women equally — while still adopting positive feminism attitude to help other women who have been victimised develop better skills...

Despite his claim to the contrary, Tony Abbott has not understood a thing about this problem and he, himself, can even be led to believe crap as told to him by women... That he was rattled (according to some journos) by Julia Gillard misogynist tirade against him shows that a) he has not understood the changing modern male/female dynamics and b) he is afraid of female in power. Thus most of the females in his entourage will "act" as subservients or advisors though they could be "controlling" him... and thus have more power than he has, though he has the "last" say... But I could be wrong here...

see picture at top...

 

When patriarchal cultures and traditions become categories to defend, rather than 'women', feminist commitment appears on rather shaky grounds, plagued by its own contradictions. The gang rape of an Indian woman two weeks ago is a case in point, writes Swati Parashar.

The brutal sexual assault of a 23-year-old physiotherapist in one of the posh areas of Delhi has left many of us traumatised and speechless.

Social media is rife with comments and updates. For a change, even some Indian men have come forward to reflect on their upbringing and the roots of patriarchy while media has been relentlessly pursuing this case, reporting all the protests and anger in Delhi and the latest developments.

From my Australian home, I have seen ABC and SBS cover this horrific news and yet have noted with disappointment, the silence of my Western feminist* colleagues and friends on this issue.

I have not seen any international petitions condemning this act of brutality and the Indian government's failure to protect its women citizens. I have not seen debates in the social or mainstream media in which Western feminists have said much at all.

Those who are quick to condemn governments which kill women and children in drone attacks in Afghanistan or Pakistan, or who are quick to point out that Western policies have endangered lives of civilians in many parts of the world, find no words to speak out against the violence women in the Global South face repeatedly and everyday.

Violence against women that is routinely normalised in certain cultures, in certain societies, in certain countries, and violence that cannot be traced to Western militarism or Western foreign policy does not find easy critics. That would not be politically correct nor would it reflect commitment to anti-racism, perhaps.

Not long ago Adele Wilde-Blavatsky wrote an article on why she abhors the burqa and thinks it is oppressive towards women in general. The article irked many Western feminists and Muslim-feminists alike. An intense personal attack followed on social media and on The Feminist Wire website where the article was published,. The attacks accused the author of simplifying the issue, of being a white middle-class racist who could not look beyond her own privilege. How dare she have an opinion on an issue that she did not understand in her Islamophobic and racist mind?

Following the backlash, Wilde-Blavatsky's article was withdrawn and a signature campaign was launched by Western feminists (mostly US-based academics) to discredit her argument and point out its flaws.

Instead of engaging the author in a respectful manner, feminists chose to censor what they perceived as an inappropriate attack on the Muslim community.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4444810.html?WT.svl=theDrum

 

See image and read story at top...

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indian-rape-victim-has-brain-damage-lung-infection-doctors-struggle-to-save-her-life/2012/12/28/cf4ad07c-50b4-11e2-835b-02f92c0daa43_print.html

 

India boasts some powerful female politicians but women in the world's largest democracy are often subjected to taunts, insults and sexist remarks both on the streets and by powerful male politicians.

A wave of protests aimed at ending crimes against women have swept the country in the past fortnight, but demonstrations have not stopped some of India’s male politicians from continuing to make tasteless remarks.

Abhijit Mukherjee, the president’s son and a Member of the Indian Parliament, dismissed the current anti-rape protesters in the capital Delhi calling them "dented and painted women" who frequented discos, implying that the protests smacked of tokenism.

On Christmas day, a senior West Bengal state Communist leader, Anisur Rahman, shocked many with his indecent comments against the state's Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/12/20121228124356833971.html

 

 

The brave and courageous Delhi gang rape victim breathed her last on December 30, 2012. This article is a tribute to her and other victims of violence against women.

Violence against women is as old as patriarchy. But it has intensified and become more pervasive in the recent past. It has taken on more brutal forms, like the death of the Delhi gang rape victim and the suicide of the 17-year-old rape victim in Chandigarh.

Rape cases and cases of violence against women have increased over the years. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported 10,068 rape cases in 1990 which increased to 16,496 in 2000. With 24,206 cases in 2011, rape cases jumped to incredible increase of 873 percent from 1971 when NCRB started to record cases of rape. And New Delhi has emerged as the rape capital of India, accounting for 25 percent cases.

The movement to stop this violence must be sustained till justice is done for every one of our daughters and sisters who has been violated.

And while we intensify our struggle for justice for women, we need to also ask why rape cases have increased 240 percent since 1990s when the new economic policies were introduced. We need to examine the roots of the growing violence against women.

Could there be a connection between the growth of violent, undemocratically imposed, unjust and unfair economic policies and the growth of crimes against women?

I believe there is.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/20131192034265193.html

 

 

Meanwhile In India...

Lawyers at an Indian court hearing the case of a fatal gang-rape say they will refuse to defend the men accused of taking part in the brutal attack.

The 23-year-old victim died in hospital at the weekend after 13-day struggle to survive injuries so grievous that part of her intestines had to be removed.

The medical student was allegedly raped and assaulted with an iron rod before being thrown from a speeding bus, along with her male companion.

Six men arrested over the attack have been charged with murder.

Hearings are expected to begin on Thursday at the Saket district court in south New Delhi, where police will formally present a 1,000-page charge sheet against the men.

"We have decided that no lawyer will stand up to defend the rape accused as it would be immoral to defend the case," said Sanjay Kumar, a lawyer and a member of the Saket District Bar Council.

Mr Kumar said the 2,500 advocates registered at the court had decided to "stay away" to ensure "speedy justice", meaning the government would have to appoint lawyers for the defendants

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-02/indian-lawyers-refuse-to-defend-gang-rape-accused/4450666

 

 

On Christmas Eve 2012, attacks on two Nigerian churches resulted in the deaths of at least 12 people. Brutal as the attacks may have been, they were not necessarily surprising as attacks by militant Islamist groups against Christians in Nigeria have become all too common. The Christmas attack is one of many since 2010. More than 30 people died in 2011 on Christmas Day in a wave of attacks in the region, blamed on the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. Indeed, al-Qaeda affiliated militant Islamist groups such as Boko Haram have become more active not only in Nigeria but in other African countries as well. Some of the other main groups include Ansar Dine in Mali and al-Shabab in Somalia. 

As of January 2012, Boko Haram had killed close to 1,000 people. One year on and many attacks later, the death toll is well over 1,000. Although it has targeted a wide range of people, Boko Haram is especially known for attacking Christians during religious gatherings. This is in part due to the fact that many international news agencies tend to give more coverage to Boko Haram when it targets Christians as opposed to other groups. Ansar Dine has taken over large areas of Mali, most notably Timbuktu, and imposed sharia law. Al-Shabab has caused devastation in Somalia and has been responsible for attacks in Kenya and Uganda.

Varied as these groups and their individual causes may be, they have some things in common. They all demonstrate a lack of respect for human life. They all claim to be working for Allah, yet they so easily destroy the lives of people who, from their perspectives, are creations of Allah. They respect only the lives of those who follow Islam in the way they deem correct. So if you do not hold the same religious beliefs as they do or are not 'Muslim enough', your life means nothing. They will target you. The more people who are injured or killed, the better it is for Islamists. This instils fear in people and puts immense pressure on governments and any other group they believe are in the way of them achieving their goals. 

Islamist groups such as Boko Haram would argue that their mission is a moral one. But there is no morality in their mission or their methods. No amount of destruction and devastation is too great. Many people have lost their lives or someone close to them, livelihoods have been lost, freedom of choice and freedom of expression are not permitted, historically and culturally significant sites like those in Timbuktu have been destroyed, and the economies of targeted areas have been negatively affected. But this is all perfectly acceptable as it only helps in achieving their goals.

The actions of Islamist groups in Africa and other parts of the world are undoubtedly wrong, but so too is the perception that their actions are un-Islamic. Words such as ‘extremist’, ‘Islamic terrorist’ and ‘Islamist’ are commonly used to distinguish groups such as Ansar Dine from mainstream Muslims. This implies that these groups are not following Islam but have, in a sense, created their own religion – a corruption of Islam or a version that is much too harsh. 

The distinction is useful, but in many instances it is those who are deemed as ‘extremists’ that follow the tenets of Islam more closely that mainstream Muslims. After the Islamic group MUJAO put restrictions on music in Gao, one reporter in an arts publication describes the actions taken by militiamen to enforce the restriction in the “most literal and brutal Sharia jurisdiction in the world today”. But the problem here is not just MUJAO, or Ansar Dine or Boko Haram. The problem here is Islam itself. MUJAO and similar groups must be condemned for the way they impose and enforce literal interpretations of Sharia law. But the key word here is ‘literal’. The bigger issue is that militant groups’ actions are mandated by Islamic texts. Like so many, the author condemns the people who belong to the religion and follow it strictly, but he does not condemn the religion that mandates their actions. Perhaps it is the desire to come across as politically correct and the fear of being labeled Islamophobic that leads people to condemn Islamist groups but stop short of condemning Islam.

The word Islam means ‘submission’ and a Muslim is someone who has submitted fully to God. In that sense, the so-called moderate Muslims do not fully demonstrate what it really is to be a Muslim as they are not fully submitting themselves to God. It is the extremist groups that follow traditional Islam. Moderates follow a 'diluted' form of Islam. The conditions in areas where Sharia is imposed are often brutal and inhumane; freedom of expression is no longer allowed and life is particularly difficult for women. This is not because of doctrines invented by al Qaeda or their affiliates in Africa. This is the result of following Islamic doctrine literally.

Still, over a billion people cling to Islam and the number of adherents is growing. Whether it be amputation of hands as punishment for theft, forced conversions to Islam, the murder of those who refuse to convert, or making women second-class citizens – Islamist groups can justify these actions using Islamic texts. 

In 2012, Islamist groups in Africa continued to gain ground, becoming a more prominent force while affected governments struggled to deal with them. Older groups such as al-Shabab, Boko Haram and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continued their reign of terror while new groups such as Ansar Dine and Supporters of Islam in the Land of Sudan emerged in 2012. If in 2013 governments fail to address Islamist groups in Africa as they did in 2012, the groups will only become stronger and cause more devastation. Some of these groups may come together in order to achieve their similar goals. Greater efforts are needed to combat Islamism in Africa and it is important to acknowledge that Islam, Africa's second largest religion, mandates the destructive actions of Islamists.  

http://atheistalliance.org/news-a-articles/archive/600-the-onward-march-of-islamism-in-africa

 

The islamofascists are taking over where colonialism left off...

 

An Egyptian court has blocked online video service YouTube for a month for insulting the Muslim Prophet Mohammad.

The country's administrative court ordered the ministries of communication and investment to block access to the Google-owned website inside Egypt because it had carried the film Innocence of Muslims.

Human rights activists say the decision is an attack on freedom of expression and they expect a challenge in courts.

The Innocence of Muslims, a low-budget internet film, depicts the Prophet as a fool and a sexual deviant.

The film sparked protests around the world last year, including a violent demonstration in Sydney which saw six protesters arrested.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-10/egypt-court-suspends-youtube-over-anti-islam-film/4510376

JERUSALEM: Ten women, including two US rabbis, were detained by the Israeli police on Monday for praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem wearing prayer shawls traditionally used by men, in the latest escalation of a conflict over one of Judaism's holiest sites.

Those detained were part of the group Women of the Wall, which has gathered each month for the past 24 years to protest against the ultra-Orthodox insistence that only men may pray at the wall wearing traditional garb, a rule that has been backed by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A spokesman for the Israeli police, Micky Rosenfeld, said the women were not charged with criminal offences but were barred from returning to the wall for 15 days. He said the women were detained ''as a result of them wearing the garments that they're not allowed to wear specifically at that site''. He noted that despite the court ruling, ''they decided to go down to that specific area''.

Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency - a quasi-governmental body that handles immigration and works with the diaspora - said he had spoken to police before the prayer session on Monday and asked them to make accommodations for the women, including having female police officers present to handle any arrests.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/women-detained-after-defying-prayer-ban-20130212-2eb1h.html#ixzz2Kid4IURW

and god said : "......."

Religions and religiously-inspired laws discriminate against women. Secular activism can help to empower women. And, whether you are a woman or a man, you can help to shape the future of secular activism and women’s rights around the world by coming to Dublin this June.

Following our successful sell-out World Atheist Convention in the same venue in June 2011, you can register now for Atheist Ireland’s international Conference on Empowering Women Through Secularism, in the O’Callaghan Alexander Hotel in Dublin, Ireland, on the weekend of 29-30 June 2013.

You will hear and meet and socialise with inspiring speakers and panelists and conference participants from around the world. You will help to shape strategies for positive change, and vote on an international Declaration on Empowering Women Through Secularism.

We will discuss how religion and religiously-influenced laws discriminate against women in areas from healthcare, sexuality and reproductive rights to education, careers and social policy, as well as how to combat violence against women and the history and future of women in atheist and secular activism.

If you register now, you can attend all sessions of this important Conference at an early discount price of just €100. There will be optional extra charges for meals and entertainment, and we will recommend hotels and other accommodation that you can book.

To reserve your place today, or for further information, please email

[email protected]

 

http://www.atheist.ie/empowering-women-through-secularism-conference-dublin-ireland/

 

Soap operas in the Arab world often address issues of class, with stories that often include central characters struggling to escape poverty. They not only combine the usual characteristics of American soaps - extravagant plots, love and family drama - but also carry certain cultural values that audiences can relate to. Viewers often identify very closely with the lead soap characters. 

Khadija, a 49-year-old seamstress in Rabat, Morocco, said about her favourite heroine: "She is like me, she suffered and had her heart broken, but she still tried to make life better. Just like me." Soaps also provide an escape from the daily routine and harshness of reality, particularly in conflict-affected countries. In Gaza and Yemen for example, you will find the streets empty as the soap of the moment is airing.

Soap operas can play the same role that myths and fables have throughout history. By introducing a critical social issue into the soap narrative, the soap can go from being simply "entertainment" to being "entertainment-education" - or in short: "edutainment". In fact, around the world edutainment soaps have often helped bring about critical behavioural changes. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322611939675778.html

-------------------------------------

I remember in the 1950s, in the days without television, one of my aunts used to buy Italian soap-opera magazines... I must say I did not "understand" then how someone could buy such "trash"... They had actors in which still black and white photographs, stringed like strips in comic magazines, had the dialogue superimposed above... While reading the mag, my Aunt dreamed of dreams only people who dream of a better life can do... in which love is true, or in which their loved one is still alive. It was a bit like the illustrated Jane Austen books for the uneducated. I guess they were derived from the Charles Dickens instalments...

The characters were always beautiful and they conquered weekly challenges against their relationships that would have made mere mortals buckle at the knees...

Not only in Egypt are such soaps popular but even in Afghanistan, soaps tend to explore the male/female relationships away from the strict sharia structure of arranged marriages and give women more hope and more voice to acquire more freedom — away from poverty of knowledge as well as escape from economic poverty...

But it is a long process in which culture can forbid singing and watching TV for other reason that being preached at.

 

Atheist Alliance International (AAI) urges global governments to petition the government of Bangladesh to immediately release bloggers who have been arrested for allegedly "hurting religious sentiments” and, further, to demand that the state take resolute steps to protect atheists and religious minorities from real and pressing threats of violence.  On 2 April, police arrested Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Mashiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez. The following day, authorities detained blogger Asif Mohiuddin, a writer who was attacked on 13 January by militant Islamists. The attack on Asif was followed a month later by the violent murder of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider.

“That a government will arrest people for exercising free speech and expression when those people are themselves under threat from religiously-inspired criminals is a tremendous injustice and an outrage to humanity,” said AAI President Carlos A. Diaz.  "This is contrary to basic human rights and Bangladesh's own constitution."  The arrests of the bloggers, three of whom were paraded in handcuffs at a press conference on 2 April, came after pressure from Islamists, who have organised a march to the capital on the weekend of 6/7 April to demand the death penalty for atheist bloggers.  “That the government has caved-in to a violent sectarian movement, by arrests and shutting of websites, does not bode well for the country’s future,” Diaz said. “The state should act to ensure a vibrant civil society by protecting free expression, especially the expression of minority viewpoints.”

AAI calls on the international community, concerned individuals and organisations to take a firm stand in supporting freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. Religious tolerance and pluralism are strongest when freedom of expression, including freedom to challenge religious viewpoints, is protected for all peoples.

Please contact the Bangladesh Embassy in your country to express your outrage at this situation and call for the bloggers to be freed and their personal safety protected.  You can contact the Bangladesh embassy in the US here.

About Atheist Alliance International

Atheist Alliance International (AAI) is a global alliance of atheist/freethought groups and individuals, committed to educating its members and the public about atheism, secularism and related issues.

Atheist Alliance International's vision is a secular world where public policy, scientific inquiry and education are not influenced by religious beliefs, but based upon sound reasoning, rationality and evidence.  Atheist Alliance International's mission is to challenge and confront religious faith, to strengthen global atheism by promoting the growth and interaction of atheist/freethought organisations around the world and to undertake international educational and advocacy projects.

http://atheistalliance.org/news-a-articles/archive/633-aai-demands-release-of-bangladesh-bloggersprotection-of-free-expression

Clashes between security forces and demonstrators have raged in the centre of Dhaka, where at least three people have been killed since protests began on Sunday.

More than 10,000 forcers drawn from police, the elite Rapid Action Battlion and paramilitary Border Guard Bangladesh jointly launched a drive late on Sunday to clear demonstrators from a major thoroughfare in Dhaka.

But while the main street was largely cleared, protestors scattered into side streets and continued to battle police, officials said early on Monday.

The security forces fired numerous rubber bullets and teargas when they launched the eviction drive.

The turmoil comes as the government struggles to deal with outrage over the collapse of a factory building north-west of Dhaka, where the death toll has risen to 610 since the late April accident. Rescue workers were still searching through the rubble.

The protesters, who are demanding an anti-blasphemy law with provision for the death penalty, had announced their determination to shut down Bangladesh's main business hub Motijheel until the government accepts their demands.

In the hours after security forces started evicting the activists and supporters of Hefazat-e-Islami, at least 50 people, including policemen were also injured, a police officer who took part in the operation said.

Police also arrested a number of protestors.

Security forces got involved after what began as a scheduled demonstration exceeded its time limit and turned violent. Demonstrators attacked the headquarters of the ruling Awami League party, set fire to more than 100 shops and at least 50 parked cars, and vandalised many other buildings.

Supporters of Hifazat-e-Islam group carried sticks and had blocked major entry points to the city, sealing off the capital.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2013/05/20135510413485449.html

blasphemy is a right to be had...

Freedom for atheists and free thinkers...

 

IMAD IDDINE HABIB used to be a practicing, if not particularly devout, Muslim. Somewhere along the way the nonsense all became too much, and Imad renounced his faith. To celebrate this, and to shed a light of reason in a  country deep in the shadows of fundamentalism, Imad founded a local chapter of the Council of Ex-Muslims.

Now, if Imad lived in a country with proper separation of church and state, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Unfortunately, Imad lives in Morocco, where the state of play is decidedly different.

Morocco is an Islamic nation. The King of Morocco is also the head of the High Council of Ulemas, which is essentially a religious cadre with massive influence over state policy. Recently, the High Council declared a Fatwa against apostates – people who renounce their faith. This placed Imad and his associates in a dangerous position — not only could the authorities lock him up for blasphemy, but he risked getting dragged out of him home and beaten to death by anyone feeling particularly pious that day.

Inevitably, the Moroccan State police went looking for Imad. Fortunately, he had lived in Morocco long enough to know what was coming, and went into hiding.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/international/blasphemy-in-morocco/

God does not exists... and no little green men will come to rescue us from this lonely planet...

 

A ‘celebrity’ Saudi preacher accused of raping, torturing and killing his five-year-old daughter has reportedly been released from custody after agreeing to pay ‘blood money’.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi had been accused of killing his daughter Lama, who suffered multiple injuries including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. Social workers say she had also been repeatedly raped and burnt.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi admitted using a cane and cables to inflict the injuries after doubting his five-year-old daughter’s virginity and taking her to a doctor, according to the campaign group Women to Drive.

Rather than getting the death penalty or receiving a long prison sentence for the crime, Fayhan al-Ghamdi served only a few months in jail before a judge ruled the prosecution could only seek ‘blood money’.

Albawaba News reported the judge as saying: "Blood money and the time the defendant had served in prison since Lama's death suffices as punishment."

Fayhan al-Ghamdi, who regularly appears on television in Saudi Arabia, is said to have agreed to pay £31,000 to Lama’s mother.

The money is considered compensation under Islamic law, although it is only half the amount that would have been paid had Lama been a boy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-preacher-who-raped-and-tortured-his-five-yearold-daughter-to-death-is-released-after-paying-blood-money-8480440.html

 

Islamist rebels fighting the Syrian regime shot dead a 15-year-old child in front of his parents and siblings Sunday after accusing him of blasphemy, a monitoring group said.

"An unidentified Islamist rebel group shot dead a 15-year-old child who worked as a coffee seller in (the northern city of Aleppo), after they accused him of blasphemy," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.

Abdel Rahman said the rebel group likely comprised foreign jihadists. "They spoke classical Arabic, not Syrian dialect," he told Agence France Presse.

"They shot the boy twice -- once in the mouth, another in his neck -- in front of his mother, his father and his siblings," he added.

The Observatory condemned the execution as "criminal and a gift to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"This kind of criminality is exactly what makes people in Syria fear the fall of the regime," Abdel Rahman said.

The Britain-based monitoring group, which relies on a broad network of activists, doctors and lawyers in Syria for its reports, demanded the killers' arrest.

"We are working on identifying their names," said Abdel Rahman.

Large swathes of Aleppo city have since last year fallen into rebel hands.

Activists have frequently lashed out against rebel groups which have taken advantage of the security vacuum in Aleppo to commit rights abuses.

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/86251-syria-islamists-execute-youth-in-front-of-family

SourceAgence France Presse

The relationship between politics and religion is interesting. Russia is an example of a country where attitudes toward religion have gone from one extreme to another. For much of the 20th century the country under Soviet rule actively sought to eliminate religion. Religion was a threat to the power structure of the country at the time. Things changed in the 1990s, and modern Russia now has laws guaranteeing religious freedom. The politics in the country changed and now the church, and in particular the Russian Orthodox Church, enjoys significant influence on Russian politics. 

An example of this is the Pussy Riot case, as reported by Atheist Alliance International in August 2012. This brought to international attention how powerful the Russian Orthodox Church really is and how strongly dissent is still dealt with in Russia. That case relates to the actions of five women of the Pussy Riot collective, who performed a protest piece in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Three of the women were arrested, charged and convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. As reported by RAPSI News one of the convicted three, Samutsevich, has since had her sentence reduced to probation. 

There was much criticism at the time from the international community regarding the harshness of the sentences handed out to the convicted women. However, the reaction from Russian MPs since then has not favoured the support of free-speech, but rather to seek harsher anti-blasphemy laws. Laws were then proposed setting fines and long jail sentences for those who insult religious feelings. Critics at the time warned that under the proposed laws the teaching of evolution or the Big Bang theory could be considered as insulting to believers and punishable under the proposed laws.

There have since been three readings of the proposed laws, and the state of Duma, part of the Russian Confederation, has passed an anti-blasphemy bill, which introduces fines of up to 500,000 roubles ($15,430) and the possibility of prison sentences of up to three years for “offending the feelings of religious believers.”

http://atheistalliance.org/news-a-articles/archive/664-after-pussy-riot-russia-strengthens-anti-blasphemy-laws

 

Read articles from top down...

To uphold Islamic beliefs, people are limited to what they are exposed to so that they cannot think of anything in contrary with Islam. To reach this goal, censorship is used to prevent people from understanding, acting and even thinking of facts that Islam rejects. There are many different ways of censoring in Islam to keep people in the Muslim scholars’ ideal condition of ignorance. One of the most ridiculous methods that truly bothers me is censorship in books, especially in educational books just like my book.

To improve my English, I have taken a Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) course. Learners of English around the world who are taking the CAE course may not have any idea about books published for the same course in Iran. The versions here are not the original. Actually some changes are made before publishing. However, original ones can be found rarely. One of my classmates owns one.

Comparing the original version with the Islamic one, censorship can be easily seen in different parts of the books. Here are just a couple of examples:

In Unit 2, page 20 of the original, there is a passage that reads: “and the first toy doll in the USA with breasts went into production.” Breasts! Reading such a word is never accepted. In the Islamic version of the book breasts is omitted and replaced with no other word.

In Unit 2, page 23: “Lots of people said they thought the dancing was good.” As dancing is not an appropriate action in Islamic belief, the word performance is used instead.

Also, in one of the listening scripts of the second unit I found another change. In the original it reads: “It’s a secret I would hate my boyfriend to find out.” As being in an unmarried relationship with the opposite gender is not accepted here, I assume the people who were trying to censor this sentence came to conclusion that they had to make the relationship of the speaker legal! So the sentence in the Islamic version has been altered to: “It’s a secret I would hate my fiancé to find out.”

Censorship cannot only be seen in the text – there have been changes to the images and pictures in the books too. As women are obligated to cover their bodies from men according to Islamic rules, highlighting, removing, adding and total editing with the help of some photo editing software has been done to censor all images of females’ bodies. There is a photo on page 96 showing women in a pool wearing swimsuits. The women have converted to Islam and wear shirts if you look at the same photo in the Islamic version of the book. The arms of little girls have even been edited so that they appear as they should in Islam.

Islamic rules censor many different things in order to prevent people from gaining facts and understanding what is actually going on outside the world of this religion. But there are ways – such as communicating with free thinkers and referring to different sources – to avoid being dictated to by orders from gods or prophets of centuries ago.

Thanks to my friend Amir for lending me his ORIGINAL book!

http://atheistalliance.org/news-a-articles/archive/666-censorship

A Kuwaiti court has sentenced a woman to 11 years in jail for posting remarks on Twitter deemed insulting to the emir and calling for the overthrow of the regime, the verdict said.

Huda al-Ajmi, a 37-year-old teacher, on Monday received the longest known sentence for online dissent in the Gulf state.

She was convicted of insulting Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, calling for the overthrow of the regime and misusing her mobile phone, according to a copy of the lower court ruling obtained by the AFP news agency.

Mohammad al-Humaidi, the director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights, confirmed the verdict on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging website.

Ajmi has not yet been taken into custody and can appeal the sentences, Reuters news agency reported.

It is rare for a woman to serve jail time for political crimes in Kuwait, which allows more freedom of speech than some other Gulf states. Previously, Kuwaiti courts had sentenced at least two female activists to lighter jail terms but suspended the implementation.

Ajmi is the latest in a growing list of tweeters and former-opposition parliamentarians to face trial or receive jail terms for allegedly insulting the emir, described as "immune and inviolable" in the constitution.

The political trials have drawn rebuke abroad and anger at home.

In April, a Kuwaiti court gave an opposition politician five years in jail for insulting the emir, but an appeals court overturned the sentence.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/06/201361014168716717.html

 

Meanwhile growing  some hair:

Malik Afridi is a Pakistani businessman who extremists have tried to kill - all because of his eye-catching facial hair.

So why is he prepared to risk everything for his extraordinary moustache?

Charles Haviland reports.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23687651

Teenage girls who fear they are being taken abroad to enter into a forced marriage are using a simple trick to escape: hiding a spoon or any other metal object in their underwear to set off the metal detector at the airport and avoid the flight at the last minute.

A charity has said it knows of many girls who have escaped what they fear awaits them in their family’s old homeland, by using the ruse to be separated from their parents.

The revelation follows a Government warning to teachers, doctors and airport staff to be alert to the problem that school age girls who are seemingly being taken abroad on holiday may actually be on their way to a life of enforced servitude.

Forced marriages are particularly common during the summer holiday break, when there is a minimal chance of a child’s absence being noticed. The Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit received 400 reports in the three months up to the end of August last year, though it is feared that many more cases go unreported. More than a third of those affected are under 16.

Karma Nirvana, a Derby-based charity which runs a helpline for victims of forced marriages, has been encouraging desperate teenagers to try the spoon trick. Its founder, Jasvinder Sanghera, was disowned by her Sikh family at the age of 16 after she refused to marry a man in India. She set up the charity in 1993, when she was 27.

The charity takes about 600 calls a month. “When youngsters ring, if they don’t know exactly when it may happen, or if it’s going to happen, we advise them to put a spoon in their underwear,” charity spokesman, Natasha Rattu, said.

She added: “When they go through security, it will highlight this object in a private area and, if 16 or over, they will be taken to a safe space where they have that one last opportunity to disclose they’re being forced to marry.

“We’ve had people ring and say that it’s helped them and got them out of a dangerous situation. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do with your family around you – but they won’t be aware you have done it. It’s a safe way.”

Almost half of the 1,500 cases a year handled by the Forced Marriage Unit involve Pakistan. Bangladesh counts for 11 per cent, and India eight per cent, the remainder being spread across about 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Somalia, and Turkey. The youngest victim they have come across was aged two, the oldest was 71.

Sameem Ali, a Manchester city councillor, was forced into a marriage in Pakistan when she was 13, and was brought back to the UK months after she became pregnant, aged 14.

She told BBC Breakfast: “I did not know I was going to get forced into a marriage until a week before the marriage actually occurred. I had never seen the guy before. I was in the middle of nowhere and I did not know where I was.”

read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/girls-escape-forced-marriage-by-hiding-spoons-in-their-clothing-to-set-off-metal-detectors-at-the-airport-8764404.html

A plan to make female high school students undergo mandatory virginity tests has been met with outrage from activists, who argue that it discriminates against women and violates their human rights.

Education chief Muhammad Rasyid, of Prabumulih district in south Sumatra put forward the idea, describing it as "an accurate way to protect children from prostitution and free sex". He said he would use the city budget to begin tests early next year if MPs approved the proposal.

"This is for their own good," Rasyid said. "Every woman has the right to virginity … we expect students not to commit negative acts."

The test would require female senior school students aged 16 to 19 to have their hymen examined every year until graduation. Boys, however, would undergo no investigation into whether they had had sex.

The plan has met with some support from local politicians, who said the test would help cut down on "rampant" promiscuity in the district.

"Virginity is sacred, thus it's a disgrace for a [female] student to lose her virginity before getting married," Hasrul Azwar of the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) told the Jakarta Post.

The proposal seems to be in response to increasing cases of premarital sex, local website Kompas reported, including the recent arrest of six senior high school students for alleged prostitution.

It is the third plan of its kind in Muslim-majority Indonesia, where similar drafts were proposed in West Java in 2007, and again in Sumatra in 2010, but dropped after a public outcry.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/21/virginity-tests-female-students-indonesia

Read articles from top...

Katy Perry has been accused by some Muslims of "portraying blasphemy" in the video for her single Dark Horse.

The video features the pop star as an Egyptian queen who transforms suitors into sand by disintegrating them.

Shazad Iqbal, from Bradford, has started an online petition for it to be removed from YouTube after he spotted one of the suitors wearing a pendant with the Arabic word for God on it.

More than 60,000 people have signed the petition, saying the clip is offensive.

Explaining his reasons for starting the petition, Mr Iqbal wrote: "At 01:15 into the video Dark Horse a man is shown being burned, whilst wearing a pendant (also burned) forming the word Allah.

"Blasphemy is clearly conveyed in the video, since Katy Perry (who appears to be representing an opposition of God) engulfs the believer and the word God in flames."

He added: "Using the name of God in an irrelevant and distasteful manner would be considered inappropriate by any religion.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26359917

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I find the concept of blasphemy offensive... It defies the natural order of things with hocus pocus and crude psychological manipulations of outrage. The concept of blasphemy has a ringading of nasty tone rather than acceptance and enlightenment in it. The concept of blasphemy hides dark sins and loopy secrets. It smells of hypocrisy. Read articles from top if you can be bothered...

 

A Christian couple in eastern Pakistan has been sentenced to death for allegedly sending a text message insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

A judge handed the death sentence to Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar in a court in the town of Toba Tek Singh.

The couple, aged in their 40s, live in the town of Gojra, which has a history of violence against Christians.

Both have denied the charges and plan to appeal the sentence, their defence lawyer Nadeem Hassan said.

A prayer leader at a local mosque in Gojra, Maulvi Mohammad Hussain, lodged a complaint against the couple in July last year, over a text message which he said was insulting to the Prophet Mohammed.

Mr Hussain accused the husband of sending the message from his wife's mobile phone.

But their defence lawyer says the text was sent from a phone which the couple lost some time before the incident, meaning they could not have sent it.

The couple suspects rivals of implicating them into the blasphemy case to settle personal scores, Mr Hassan said.

Pakistan has extremely strict laws against defaming Islam, including the death penalty for insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Rights campaigners say the laws are often used to settle personal disputes.

In 2009, a mob attacked a Christian neighbourhood in Gojra, burning 77 houses and killing at least seven people after rumours a Koran had been desecrated.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-06/pakistan-couple-death-sentence-over-alleged-blasphemous-text/5370276

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I find the concept of blasphemy offensive and repulsive... It defies the natural order of things with hocus pocus and crude psychological manipulations of outrage. The concept of blasphemy has a ringading of nasty tone rather than acceptance and enlightenment in it. The concept of blasphemy hides dark sins and loopy secrets. It smells of high hypocrisy. Read articles from top if you can be bothered... The "concept of blasphemy" should be outlawed by the United Nations.

 

Disturbing cases of extreme violence against women from around the world have come to the fore in the past few weeks. Farzana Parveen's murder in Pakistan highlighted the country's dismal record of women killed in so-called honour killings. According to the Pakistani Human Rights Commission, 869 women were murdered in 2013 in what were said to be "honour killings". 

Sensationalist media quickly picked up Parveen's story and blasted the familiar stereotypes and misrepresentations, sidelining a much-needed open discussion on misogyny. 

The so-called honour killings is one manifestation of violent and criminal practices against women that seem to persist in places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and several other Muslim-majority countries. Some are quick to seek the causes of this deplorable act in religion, when in fact Islam stands clearly against it. Therefore, it is important to expose the faulty logic behind such accusations and openly discuss violence against women and honour killings in the context of Islam as well as in the context of perceived social norms of honour. 

Understanding the 'honour code'

It is important first to consider the concept of honour itself. Renowned philosopher Kwame AnthonyAppiah's analysis of honour and his idea of moral revolutions can be particularly useful in this case. His book The Honour Code explores the processes that ended three abominable practices related to honour: duelling in Britain, foot-binding in China and slavery in the British Empire. According to Appiah, what ended these practices "wasn't the moral arguments ..., it was the willingness to live by them." 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/06/how-can-stop-honour-killings-201461819244152343.html

 

An event at the Sydney Opera House examining whether honour killings can be morally justified has been cancelled after public outcry.

Sydney-based Muslim speaker Uthman Badar, from Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, was to give the speech, titled 'Honour Killings Are Morally Justified' at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in August.

However, the event sparked an angry response on social media and talkback radio, and drew strong condemnation from two New South Wales Government ministers.

The state's Minister for Women, Pru Goward, and the Minister for Citizenship and Communities, Victor Dominello, were both fiercely critical.

Last night, festival co-curator Simon Longstaff said the event had been withdrawn due to the level of public anger.

"The justification for removing it was simply the level of public outrage," he said.

"We took the view that it was so strong and overwhelming that the ability of the speaker to even open up the question for some discussion and reflection would be impossible.

"It would be unfair for the speaker to put them in a situation where they wouldn't get a word out without finding all of condemnation."

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-25/dangerous-ideas-festival-cans-honour-killings-speech-badar/5548006

 

There is no honour in "honour killings", just outrageous unlawful sadistic stupidity. Humanity is on its way to complete idiocy with views like those of Uthman Badar. Read all articles from top...

 

Sydney talkback radio host Michael Smith has been told he will no longer be filling in on 2GB after making controversial comments about the Prophet Mohammed.

The former 2UE presenter made the comments on Thursday during his regular guest spot with 2GB host Ben Fordham.

Smith was discussing the recent controversy over a talk the Festival of Dangerous Ideas had booked - and later cancelled - with a Muslim activist, titled Honour Killings Are Morally Justified.

He compared the festival's invitation to Uthman Badar to asking the leader of the Ku Klux Klan to speak.

Smith said the founder of Islam was "a man who promoted the idea that it was OK to marry a six-year-old and consummate the marriage when the little girl was nine."

The broadcaster had been due to fill in for afternoons presenter, Chris Smith, from Monday for three weeks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-29/2gb-dumps-shock-jock-michael-smith-over-mohammed-comments/5557600

When the truth is not palatable anymore...... Read from top...

 

Men can spy on women in the shower, an extremist cleric has argued in Egypt, prompting outrage from other Islamic scholars.

According to Osama al-Qusi, a Salafist or ultraorthodox preacher, peeping toms can watch a woman wash as long as they are interested in marrying her.

"If you were really honest and wanted to marry that woman, and you were able to hide and watch her in secret, and see the things that she wouldn't usually let you see before marrying her, then it is acceptable as long as your intentions are pure," Qusi said in an online video translated by the al-Arabiya news network.

Qusi's words sparked heavy criticism from those who said he was usingreligion to win attention.

Egypt's minister for religious affairs, Mohamed Mokhtar, condemned the cleric "and his ilk", saying: "Where is the glory and masculinity in watching a woman shower? Would you allow this to happen to your daughter?"

Mokhtar stressed that fatwas, or Islamic edicts, should only be issued by qualified clerics, and denounced Qusi's claims as anathema to Islam.

The minister also confirmed plans to launch a grassroots campaign against both atheists and Islamic extremists. 

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/22/egyptian-cleric-men-spy-women-shower

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We all know that atheism is the root of all evil... er... Do we? Atheists don't believe in evil, do they?... God and evil are the invention of religious nuts, are they not?... So many questions, so little time... So much extremism in Muslin and Christian religion... and all carrying guns... 

See also: http://ozziesaffa.blogspot.com/2014/06/i-bet-she-regrets-asking-her-question.html

 

... Britain said on Sunday it was worried about the case and the way Ghavami had been treated.

"We are concerned about reports that Ghoncheh Ghavami has been sentenced to 12 months in prison for 'propaganda against the state'," the foreign office said in a statement.

"We have concerns about the grounds for this prosecution, due process during the trial and Ms Ghavami's treatment whilst in custody."

The "Free Ghoncheh Ghavami" Facebook page, where her friends and family campaigned for her release, features photographs of her set against the slogan: "Jailed for wanting to watch a volleyball match."

An update on the page on Sunday appeared to corroborate the one-year sentence but bemoaned the closed-door legal process that has prevailed in the case.

"This morning Ghoncheh's family and lawyer returned empty handed from branch 26 of revolutionary court," it said.

"It is not clear to her family and lawyer as to what the current legal basis of her detention is. A fair and just legal process according to Iran's legal framework is the basic right of every Iranian citizen. Why are these rights not upheld in Ghoncheh's case?"

Ghavami's arrest came after female fans and women journalists were told they would not be allowed to attend the volleyball match at Azadi stadium in the capital.

National police chief General Esmail Ahmadi Moghaddam said it was "not yet in the public interest" for men and women to attend such events together.

Women are also banned from attending football matches in Iran, with officials saying this is to protect them from lewd behaviour among male fans.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-02/iran-jails-woman-for-watching-volleyball-supporters-say/5861238

All this designed to make males feel important and superior... Read articles from top.

Imagine a nation that treats a huge section of its population as little more than slaves. A nation where many are not allowed access to a full education or a professional career. Picture a place where some citizens can count themselves lucky if they are allowed to show their faces in public, let alone attend a sporting event.

Now imagine this: a football stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this Sunday. A sweltering cauldron of sound. The Western Sydney Wanderers run on to the pitch to play the second leg of the final of the Asian Champions League against Al-Hilal.

Then, at the opening kick-off, the Wanderers all sit down and decline to play until Saudi Arabia agrees to recognise women as equals.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/wheres-the-outrage-over-saudi-treatment-of-women-20141029-11dijm.html#ixzz3I3ecZenZ

Read from top...

Iran says a decision by volleyball's governing body to ban the country from hosting international tournaments as long as women are barred from watching men's games is "unfair".

The international volleyball federation FIVB announced its decision on Sunday, a week after a British-Iranian woman, Ghoncheh Ghavami, was reportedly jailed by a Tehran court for trying to attend a match.

An Iranian judiciary official denied on Monday that Ms Ghavami was sentenced to jail, saying her trial had not yet finished.

Ms Ghavami was detained on June 20 at Azadi ("Freedom" in Farsi) Stadium where Iran's national volleyball team was to play Italy, after female fans and even women journalists were told they would not be allowed to attend, leading to a brief demonstration.

She was released within hours but was rearrested days later at a police station she had visited to reclaim items confiscated from her near the stadium.

The FIVB said it had informed Iran the country would not be able to organise the under-19 world championships in 2015, awarding the tournament instead to Argentina.

The FIVB will "not give Iran the right to host any future FIVB directly controlled events such as World Championships, especially under age, until the ban on women attending volleyball matches is lifted," a spokesman said.

But the president of Iran's volleyball federation said he had yet to receive any official confirmation of the ban.

"We haven't received any letter from the FIVB concerning the change of host nation," Mohammad Reza Davarzani said.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/international-volleyball-federation-bans-iran-from-hosting-games/5881072

From Chris Floyd

Following up from the previous post, we see the woman-bashing beat goes on. A Missouri pol has introduced a bill that would require women to get the written approval of a man in order to obtain an abortion; that is, the signature of the one what knocked her up. Rick Brattin, statesman from Kansas City, says the only exception to his man-mandating abortion restriction is in the case of "legitimate rape."

But as Mother Jones reports, Brattin is quick to assure us that he doesn't mean "legitimate rape" in the same way that his fellow Missouri statesman Todd Akin employed the term, during his disastrous run for the Senate. As you recall, Akin, delving deep into occult science, informed the world that a woman who really didn't want to experience the forcible insertion of hot salami could not get pregnant; ergo, any woman who claimed to have been impregnated by a rapist was, to put it in the most Christian terms possible, a lying slut of a whore who had it coming and wanted it anyway. 

Brattin is much more enlightened. What he means by "legitimate rape" is that a woman reports the assault to the police, and "takes steps to prove it." Whether that means she must prove she was raped or that she must prove she at least tried to prove she was raped remains unclear. But rigor of jurisprudence is rarely a concern of our dedicated embryonists. The main thing is that women must seek the written approval of a man if they want to claim their constitutional right to an abortion. But if the babydaddy -- whoever he may be, as long as no lying slut can "prove" he raped her -- then the fetus-vehicle is out of luck.

Brattin adds another twist. Apparently, any woman who is raped by an abusive partner is also disqualified from the magnanimous "exemption" he provides to women seeking their own bodily freedom. As MJ reports:

When asked if he would support an exception for women whose partners are abusive, Brattin says, "I haven't really thought about that aspect of it." But he adds, "What does that have to do with the child's life? Just because it was an abusive relationship, does that mean the child should die?" Brattin notes that women in these situations can obtain protective custody once the child is born.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2454-update-the-woman-bashing-beat-goes-on.html

 

Captured Yazidi girls in Iraq are killing themselves to escape rape and torture at the hands of Isis militants holding them prisoner.

Hundreds of women and children were captured during the group’s bloody sweep through northern Iraq earlier this year and have since been trafficked as sex slaves , forced into marriage and imprisoned.

Victims who managed to escape told Amnesty International that many Yazidi girls killed themselves after losing hope of being saved.

A 20-year-old survivor, called Luna, said she was held with 20 girls as young as 10 in the Isis-controlled city of Mosul when they were told to dress up.

“One day we were given clothes that looked like dance costumes and were told to bathe and wear those clothes,” she added. “Jilan killed herself in the bathroom. She cut her wrists and hanged herself. She was very beautiful.

“I think she knew that she was going to be taken away by a man and that is why she killed herself.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-in-iraq-yazidi-girls-killing-themselves-to-escape-rape-and-imprisonment-by-militants-9940870.html

 

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As they went on their rampage, the men who killed 12 people in Paris this week yelled that they had “avenged the prophet.” They follow in the path of other terrorists who have bombed newspaper offices, stabbed a filmmaker and killed writers and translators, all to mete out what they believe is the proper Koranic punishment for blasphemy. But in fact, the Koran prescribes no punishment for blasphemy. Like so many of the most fanatical and violent aspects of Islamic terrorism today, the idea that Islam requires that insults against the prophet Muhammad be met with violence is a creation of politicians and clerics to serve a political agenda.

One holy book is deeply concerned with blasphemy: the Bible. In the Old Testament, blasphemy and blasphemers are condemned and prescribed harsh punishment. The best-known passage on this is Leviticus 24:16 : “Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death.”

By contrast, the word blasphemy appears nowhere in the Koran. (Nor, incidentally, does the Koran anywhere forbid creating images of Muhammad, though there are commentaries and traditions — “hadith” — that do, to guard against idol worship.) Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has pointed out that “there are more than 200 verses in the Koran, which reveal that the contemporaries of the prophets repeatedly perpetrated the same act, which is now called ‘blasphemy or abuse of the Prophet’ . . . but nowhere does the Koran prescribe the punishment of lashes, or death, or any other physical punishment.” On several occasions, Muhammad treated people who ridiculed him and his teachings with understanding and kindness. “In Islam,” Khan says, “blasphemy is a subject of intellectual discussion rather than a subject of physical punishment.” 
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-blasphemy-and-the-law-of-fanatics/2015/01/08/b0c14e38-9770-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html

Raif Badawi, the Saudi liberal convicted of publishing a blog, has been told he will again be flogged 50 times on Friday – the second part of his 1,000-lash sentence which also includes a 10-year jail term.

The US, Britain and other western governments had all called for the punishment to be dropped but there has been no sign of any diplomatic action against Riyadh. Amnesty International on Wednesday urged the UK government to challenge Saudi Arabia, which has ignored all protests over the case.

Badawi will be given 50 more lashes outside a mosque in his home city of Jeddah unless a Saudi prison doctor determines he is not yet fit to face the punishment owing to injuries sustained last Friday. If nothing changes, he will be flogged every Friday for the next 19 weeks.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/saudi-blogger-lashes-amnesty-international-raif-badawi

 

When a rapist and killer said the woman brutally attacked on a New Delhi bus was responsible for what had happened to her, it sounded shocking around the world. But not in India.

Here, blaming women for rape is what hundreds of millions of men are taught to believe.

And the code for women in this country is simple: Dress modestly, don't go out at night, don't go to bars and clubs, don't go out alone. If you break the code, you will be blamed for the consequences.

read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-girl-is-more-responsible-for-rape-than-a-boy-the-statement-that-shocked-the-world-except-india-10084409.html

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Ms Wayman said one third of her 100 staff were on maternity leave or covering for someone who was, according to a Mumbrella report.

"We do have a big jar of condoms at work," she told the conference during a debate about recruitment and culture.

"I'm not lying, I'm not exaggerating. I do encourage people regularly to have sex with condoms.

"That is a big area of focus for me, encouraging people to have sex with condoms."

Ms Wayman said she didn't believe women who return from maternity leave should automatically be allowed to work part-time.

"I'd love to, but I'd be lying if I said that was wonderful. It's an idealistic and anti-commercial stance," she said.

"We do try to be flexible. We have all sorts of arrangements at our work place. In some industries it's a very difficult thing."

Ms Wayman said spouses should do more to support working women, stressing there was no such thing as work-life balance.

"We had a breakfast host who had a huge work ethic. She had a baby, then another one. She used to do breakfast, then the house cleaning because her husband wanted to go surfing.

"I offered to go and shove a vacuum cleaner up his arse because that's how supportive I am of our female staff.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/worklife-balance-take-condoms-says-southern-cross-austereo-radio-boss-20150305-13vz9r.html#ixzz3TULXQx3E

 

 

A senior surgeon has been criticised for her "appalling" suggestion that surgical trainees should stay silent if they're sexually assaulted by a colleague because coming forward could ruin their careers.

Dr Gabrielle McMullin, a Sydney vascular surgeon, says sexism is so rife among surgeons in Australia that young woman in the field should probably just accept unwanted sexual advances.

She referred to the case of Caroline, who won a case against a surgeon accused of sexually assaulting her while she was completing surgical training at a Melbourne hospital. But the woman was unable to get work at any public hospital in Australasia after the legal victory, Dr McMullin told ABC radio at a book launch at Parliament House in Sydney on Friday night.

"Her career was ruined by this one guy asking for sex on this night. And, realistically, she would have been much better to have given him a blow job on that night," Dr McMullin said.

"What I tell my trainees is that, if you are approached for sex, probably the safest thing to do in terms of your career is to comply with the request; the worst thing you can possibly do is to complain to the supervising body because then, as in Caroline's position, you can be sure that you will never be appointed to a major public hospital."

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/senior-female-surgeon-urges-trainees-to-stay-silent-on-sex-abuse-in-hospitals-20150307-13xusq.html

 

 

And here I was, thinking that doctors were better than politicians who were smelling the seats of female parliamentarians (and involved in more sexist and sexual acts)... Oh I see, Doctors swear to Hypocritus when they should have sworn to Hippocrates... My mistake... I know that most politicians swear by Hypocritus...

Saudi Arabia has finally responded to the international outcry over the treatment of jailed blogger Raif Badawi, accusing the western media of launching an unjustified attack on its sovereignty under the “pretext of human rights”.

In its first official statement on the case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would not allow outside interference with Saudi Arabia’s judicial system and that pressure from the media and human rights groups would have no impact on his punishment.

Mr Badawi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes – of which so far only 50 have been carried out – for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabia’s clerics. Judges in the country’s criminal court want him to undergo a retrial for apostasy, which carries the death sentence.

“The Kingdom cannot believe and strongly disapproves what has been addressed in some media outlets about the case of Citizen [Badawi] and the judicial sentence he has received,” the statement read.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been one of the first States to promote and support human rights. Though these commitments are more than obvious, some international quarters and some media, regrettably, have emptied human rights of their sublime meanings,” it added.

read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/raif-badawi-saudi-arabia-accuses-western-media-of-attacking-its-sovereignty-10096252.html

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But Waverley mayor Sally Betts, the Consulate-General of Greece, Tsambico K Athanasas, and South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league club chairman Nick Pappas declared their shock at his conviction and vouched for his good character in references prior to sentencing.

The parish priest at the Greek Orthodox Christian Church of St George, Rose Bay, Father Gerasimos Koutsouras, said: "The possibility of imprisonment is completely undeserved for this promising young man."

Ms Goward, who is also Minister for Women, said victims often withdraw charges "and glowing references about their attackers will not help justice to be done".

"This terrible case should serve as a salutary reminder to all of us, but especially those with apparent standing in the community, that they should carefully consider just how willing they are to lend their support to a criminal," Ms Goward said.

"Not only does this diminish their standing, it can shatter the confidence of the victim and often discourages them from seeking justice."

Cr Betts, who is a friend of the Lazarus family, has defended urging the court not to jail the 23-year-old after the decision drew criticism from residents and some of her fellow councillors.

Waverly Labor councillor Ingrid Strewe said about 20 members of the public had contacted her to express disgust, with many demanding Cr Betts resign.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/pru-goward-slams-prominent-supporters-of-convicted-rapist-luke-lazarus-20150402-1mdqtg.html

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I am rarely on the same page as Pru Goward... Her antics usually are full of poor judgements, often based on political lines. But on this one I am with her... Actually, I did not have to be with her, I though that, before Pru made her comments, that the young man who took a woman's virginity without her consent (rape) needed to be fully dealt with the law. A "no-brainer"...

Character references are useful nonetheless but not in such cases when a "young man did a silly thing" with possible dire consequences. In some countries, the female victim would be stone to death, while the "young man" might get twenty lashes.

The providers of character references only diminish their own standing in the community.

Character references can be useful when the cases involve someone wrongly accused or where there is a commercial dispute between parties when the evidences are not clear. 

WE all can make mistakes, but when mistakes have consequences for others, we have to face the judiciary. 

Meanwhile victims deserve the community's support— not the good character referencing of the attackers, by community "leaders".

 

London: The Netherlands has long been celebrated for its liberalism, but an anti-racism activist appears to have run up against the limits of Dutch tolerance after cursing the country's first king in 120 years.

Dutch prosecutors said on Thursday that the activist, Abulkasim al-Jaberi, would go on trial on charges of insulting the king, under a centuries-old law in a case that is connected to broader national issues, including freedom of expression, the sanctity of the monarchy and the culture war over a blackface character, Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, a sidekick of Santa Claus in the Netherlands.

Al-Jaberi, who could face up to five years in prison, was arrested last November, while he was protesting against Black Pete. Black Pete accompanies St Nicholas in a popular parade in November and is often portrayed by children and adults who put on blackface makeup, paint on large red lips and wear frizzy black wigs. Critics say it is a racist relic from colonial times.

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In a tirade that was captured on television, al-Jaberi used a barrage of swear words against King Willem-Alexander, who was inaugurated a little more than two years ago. Al-Jaberi's lawyer, Willem Jebbink, said the tirade was intended to link Black Pete to the Dutch royal family and colonisation.

Supporters of Black Pete, and there are many in the Netherlands, contend that the character is not racist and that use of blackface is intended to represent soot from travelling down a chimney.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/dutch-activist-faces-lesemajeste-trial-for-insulting-king-willemalexander-20150508-ggwum1.html

 

Long live the republic !...

Iceland's parliament has abolished its blasphemy laws, despite opposition from some of the country's churches.

A bill was put forward by the minority Pirate Party, which campaigns for internet and data freedom.

It came after the deadly attack the same month against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

The bill said it was "essential in a free society that the public can express themselves without fear of punishment".

As three members of the Pirate Party stood before parliament on Thursday, each said: "Je Suis Charlie", an expression used globally to express solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo victims.

After the ruling, the party wrote on its blog (in Icelandic): "Iceland's parliament has now established the important message that freedom will not give in to bloody attacks."

The blasphemy law had been in place since 1940, and anyone found guilty could have been sentenced to a fine or three months in prison.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33378778

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO2acNXcSs0

 

Watch for the advert on the front of this ATHEIST video:

 

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Two sisters in India - one aged only 15 years - are to be raped as "punishment" for their brother running away with a married woman from a higher caste in the latest case to shock the country.

Meenakshi Kumari, who is 23, and her younger sister, will then be paraded naked with their faces blackened through the streets, according to a ruling from the all-male village council.

The sisters have petitioned the country's Supreme Court to be protected from the so-called "eye-for-an-eye" ruling from the village council in Uttar Pradesh state, 50 kilometres from the capital Delhi.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/two-indian-sisters-to-be-raped-as-punishment-after-brother-eloped-20150829-gjauvn.html#ixzz3kFZWEa7e
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

Tragic, ugly, sociopathic on a grand scale... Male chauvinistic voyeurism. These males should be hung by their...
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Two Femen protesters were arrested after baring their breasts at a controversial conference near Paris on the role of Muslim women.

According to Inna Shevchenko, a spokeswoman for the feminist protest group, two fundamentalist preachers were discussing the question of "whether wives should be beaten or not" when the activists, aged 25 and 31, ripped off their Arab-style cloaks and jumped on to the stage on Saturday evening.

The protesters, aged 25 and 31, grabbed microphones and shouted feminist slogans in French and Arabic before being roughly bundled off the stage by about 15 men and handed over to police. Video footage of the incident shows a man apparently kicking one of the women.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/femen-in-topless-protest-of-conservative-islamic-speakers-in-france-20150913-gjlsng.html#ixzz3lghKlMPk
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

Meanwhile the first council of the catholic church discussed the sex of angels... The Femen women are right: we're nuts...

 

Just to set things up for you, Zunera Ishaq is the fundamentalist Muslim woman who, after a two-year legal battle, obtained permission from the Federal Appeal Court to take the citizenship oath while wearing her niqab. 

Ms. Ishaq maintains that her battle to wear the niqab while taking the oath is merely a personal choice. However, according to Ms. Tahir Gora of the Canadian Coalition of Progressive Muslim Organizations, Ms. Ishaq is motivated by political considerations. In fact, Zunera Ishaq works as a volunteer for an organization linked to Jamaat-e-Islami, whose military wing is considered to be a terrorist organization. Up until last October 16th, her Facebook profile mentioned that she is a member of Jamaat-eIslami and a supporter of this Pakistani political party. 

Thus, she became a central figure in the 2015 federal election campaign.


In the wake of this court ruling, the Harper government announced that it would appeal to the Supreme Court. However, the other political parties took advantage of this controversy by alleging that it was only a diversion to distract us from real matters of importance. My response to all these antics is that the niqab issue is indeed one of real importance. Furthermore, it raises the question of the radical segregation between women and men, which is incompatible with fundamental democratic principles. 

It was in this context that a wave of protest arose. Building on this electoral issue, Caroline Leclerc, a communications and marketing coordinator, used her Facebook page to encourage voters to cast their vote while wearing a face-covering. She succeeded in attracting more than 9000 people who indicated their intention of wearing a mask when going to vote. With a certain degree of sarcasm, Ms. Leclerc declared that: 

"It is not those voting with a potato bag or other disguise on their heads who are ridiculous. What is ridiculous is that our laws allow this to occur, and we will denounce that situation." (Les visages couverts se multiplient dans les bureaux de vote (Covered faces become increasing common at voting stations), Radio-Canada, 2015-10-10. 

I endorsed this cause and went to vote wearing a mask, feeling a little ridiculous and uncomfortably hot; I was nevertheless reassured by the fact that several others had done the same. At the polling station, no-one asked me to remove my mask. I was asked for my driver's license (with photo?!?) in order to verify the address inscribed on my voter card. I was not asked many questions, nor was there any attempt to verify that I really was the man shown on the driver's license because no-one saw my face. I asked the people staffing the table if I needed to expose my face, and they replied that that was unnecessary because "we recognize you by your eyes."
Read more: https://atheistalliance.org/regional-reports/north-america/1194-canadian-masquerade-personal-choice-of-the-niqab.html

 

 

The wife of jailed prominent Saudi human rights campaigner Waleed Abu al-Khair has been arrested, activists say.

Samar Badawi was detained for allegedly managing a Twitter account calling for the release of her husband.

Amnesty International called the arrest "the latest example of Saudi Arabia's utter contempt" for human rights.

Abu al-Khair was jailed for 15 years for "undermining the regime" in 2014. He is the founder of the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia group.

Mrs Badawi is also the sister of imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who in 2014 was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam.

Raif Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, also reported the arrest in her tweet: "Urgent: #Samar_Badawi was arrested on the charge of directing @WaleedAbulkhair twitter account."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35298690

 

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Images of women on the cross have long been considered blasphemous by many Christians. But now feminist theologians view them as a commemoration of an oft-ignored history of female martyrdom, writes Rachael Kohn.

To many, the image of a female Christ was nothing less than blasphemy when British sculptor Edwina Sandys wrought Christa in 1975. 

The bronze sculpture—which Sandys, the granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill, recently gifted to St John of the Divine Cathedral in New York—was a reflection of the concerns of a burgeoning feminist movement and the recognition that women had suffered and sacrificed their lives for love.  

The scriptures were written before Christianity [became] patriarchal, acculturated to the wider Roman imperial culture. What you can sometimes see there is a distancing of Mary.
KIM POWER, FEMINIST THEOLOGIAN
read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/women-on-the-cross-mary-magdelene-kim-power/7221030

In reality one can suggest that being a willing martyr is like committing suicide. One does not try to escape the fate nor fight back. Here we have Jesus Christ committing suicide because he knew what was coming about and he did not escape. He took his Nembutal of the time, which was the Roman army. He could have escaped but the system decided later on, in writing the "new" scriptures, that he did not have a choice since "he" was here to redeem the original sin — which to say the least was (and is) a lot of codswallop. He had to die... Hello?.
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Controversy arose after German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and her entourage refused to wear hijab head coverings or the full length abaya garment while visiting Riyadh last week.

Von der Leyen said that she "respect[s] the customs and traditions of the country," but added that, "No woman in my delegation will be required to wear the abaya, as the [right] to choose one’s attire is a right shared by men and women equally," according to Iran Front Page. 

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201612141048524684-german-defense-minister-refuses-hijab/

 

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A Saudi Arabian man has been sentenced to one year in jail and fined $8,000 after calling for his country's government to end its system of male guardianship over women.

A court in the eastern city of Dammam found the man guilty of “inciting to end guardianship of women,” Okaz newspaper reported on Tuesday, according to AFP. He was also fined 30,000 riyals (US$8,000).

The conviction is in response to posters the man put up inside mosques, which called for the government to abolish strict rules giving men wide control over women.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/372010-saudi-women-male-control/

 

Since 2012, when the top article was posted, more than 30,000 people have read this line of comments and more than 300,000 people have seen the top cartoon. Slowly but surely, we are hopefully making an impact to counteract the lunacy of religious beliefs which, despite being enshrined in the United Nations under the "freedom of religion", lead woment into submission and slavery — and lead to other crap such as terrorism.

 

A fictional, blue-skinned animated character in the children's cartoon ‘The Smurfs’ has been censored from film posters in Bnei Brak, an ultra Jewish Orthodox city in Israel because she resembles a woman.TrendsViral

Adventure animation ‘Smurfs: The Lost Village’ is due to hit the cinema screens on April 7, with promotional material already launched in cities around the world.

However, the Belgian comic’s female character Smurfette has been dropped from posters in Bnei Brak, Israel, over fears her gender may offend residents in the city, report Haaretz.

They removed the female from posters in Bnei Brak, Israel to not "harm residents' sensibilities."
Luckily topless guys are family-friendly! pic.twitter.com/XcfE2XxxWU

— Noah Kinsey (@thenoahkinsey) March 28, 2017

The city, located east of Tel Aviv, is noted for being extremely religious and does not allow the depiction of women on advertizing billboards, according to local reports.

Smurfette, who sports long blonde locks, a dress and high heels, was originally the only female character in an almost 100-strong cast of miniature blue forest dwellers. She features alongside male smurfs Hefty, Brainy and Clumsy in most promotional images but not in Bnei Brak.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/viral/382615-smurfs-censor-poster-israel/

 

 

Qasim Rashid is an attorney, author and national spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA.

In the 1979 hit British comedy Monty Python's Life of Brian, an elderly man is charged and convicted for committing blasphemy.

His crime? Uttering the name "Jehovah." He insists he's innocent, but an angry crowd is ready to unleash a barrage of stones on him.

Life, it seems, imitates art. Just last week, Ireland investigated Stephen Fry, an outspoken critic of religion, for allegedly running foul of a 2009 blasphemy law.

In the United States this week, a woman was convicted of laughing at Attorney General Sessions, and faces a year in prison.

Blasphemy laws historically began in Christian Europe as a means of preventing dissent and enforcing the church's authority. They were exported to Muslim majority nations through British imperialism.

Today, almost every Muslim majority nation that has blasphemy laws can trace them back to British statute from centuries prior.

These days, blasphemy cases are becoming increasingly popular as a way of persecuting minorities in nations like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. In Pakistan, notable Ahmadi Muslim Tahir Mehdi was finally released after nearly two years in prison for the alleged blasphemy of claiming he is Muslim. Meanwhile another Ahmadi Muslim, 81-year-old Shukoor Ahmad, serves an eight-year prison term for the same alleged crime of blasphemy.

In Saudi Arabia, Raif Badawi is still in prison for the alleged blasphemy of being an atheist. And this week in Indonesia, courts convicted Jakarta's Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama - known as Ahok - of blasphemy. Ahok, who is a Christian, faces a two-year prison sentence. His crime? He rebuked claims by clerics that the Qur'an mandates Muslims to vote for a Muslim over a non-Muslim.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/05/13/4668670.htm

 

Read from top and see also: 

of apostasy and religious irrelevance...

 

 

Danish legislators have scrapped the country’s more than 150-years-old blasphemy law, which forbids public insults of a religion, such as the burning of holy books. A man who burned the Koran and was the first person to be charged under the law since 1970s has now walked free.

Denmark’s parliament repealed the controversial law on Friday, with the overwhelming majority of legislators voting for decriminalizing insults toward religion.

“Anyone who publicly destroys or desecrates in this country anything related to lawfully existing religious communities’ doctrines or worships is punished with a fine or imprisonment for up to 4 months,” the now-obsolete clause 140 of Danish penal law stated.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/390678-denmarkl-blasphemy-law-repeal/

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'Submit to your husbands': Women told to endure domestic violence in the name of God

Research shows that the men most likely to abuse their wives are evangelical Christians who attend church sporadically. Church leaders in Australia say they abhor abuse of any kind. But advocates say the church is not just failing to sufficiently address domestic violence, it is both enabling and concealing it.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-18/domestic-violence-church-submit-to-husbands/8652028

 

Read from top... in most places when I mention Him (god), I add that "god is a male". God was an invention of men to control women and other men. It's still is a powerful illusion designed to imbue submission, especially that of women. Emperors, kings, and queens are on their thrones because of self-declared "divine" rights. When these sociopaths are not religious, we call them despots, tyrants and dictators... In democracies, many of these guys disguise themselves as politicians. We're screwing ourselves....

Gus is a fierce atheist.

 

 

KABUL, Afghanistan — These are some of the terms Afghan men use to refer to their wives in public instead of their names, the sharing of which they see as a grave dishonor worthy of violence: Mother of Children, My Household, My Weak One or sometimes, in far corners, My Goat or My Chicken.

Women also may be called Milk-sharer or Black-headed. The go-to word for Afghans to call a woman in public, no matter her status, is Aunt.

But a social media campaign to change this custom has been percolating in recent weeks, initiated by young women. The campaign comes with a hashtag in local languages that addresses the core of the issue and translates as #WhereIsMyName.

The activists’ aim is both to challenge women to reclaim their most basic identity, and to break the deep-rooted taboo that prevents men from mentioning their female relatives’ names in public.

“This is just a spark — the posing of a question mostly to the Afghan women about why their identity is denied,” said Bahar Sohaili, one of the supporters of the campaign.

“The reality is that women also remain silent — they don’t protest this,” Ms. Sohaili said, adding that she and other activists were discussing offline steps to bolster the social media discussion.

Like many social media efforts, this one began small, with several posts out of Herat Province in the west. Since then, more activists have tried to turn it into a topic of conversation by challenging celebrities and government officials to share the names of their wives and mothers.

The discussion has now made it to the regular media, with articles in newspapers and conversations on television and radio talk shows.

Members of the Parliament, senior government officials and artists have come forward in support, publicly declaring the identities of the female members of their families.

Farhad Darya, one of Afghanistan’s most renowned singers, put out a heartfelt message about his struggle to make sure he always mentioned his mother and wife by name in concerts and interviews over his decades as a performer.

“On many occasions in front of a crowd that doesn’t have family relations to me, I have noticed how the foreheads of men sour by what they see as my cowardice in mentioning the name of my mother or my wife,” Mr. Darya wrote on Facebook. “They stare at me in such a way as if I am the leader of all of the world’s cowards and I know nothing of ‘Afghan honor and traditions.’”

The campaign also has its detractors. Some on social media have said it is against “Afghan values,” while others have deemed it too small to make a difference.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/world/asia/afghanistan-womens-rights-whereismyname.html

 

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The Eid al-Adha is Islam's holiest festival celebrated annually around the world and is an official holiday in Muslim-majority countries. 

Eid al-Adha in Arabic literally means "festival of the sacrifice", and for Muslims it commemorates the day when prophet Abraham was going to sacrifice his son but was instructed by God to offer an animal instead. 

Eid al-Adha is also the third day of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/saudi-arabia-declares-eid-al-adha-...

 

Anyone who has read the various legends in the "sacred tourist brochures" would know that the same thing happened to Abraham a few millennium before Mohammed made his "sacrifice"... Anyway, a god that call itself god would never ask this kind of "sacrifice" from his devotees, not even as a joke. This would show a totally screwed up and sadistic god.

French prosecutors have dropped rape charges against a 28-year-old man who they say did not use “violence or threats” to force an 11yo girl to have sex with him. The incident has sparked mass outrage with critics saying the issue of consent isn’t debatable at such a young age.

On April 24, 2017, the 11-year-old victim named Sarah from Val-d'Oise, just north of Paris, allegedly agreed to follow a 28-year-old man back to his apartment to engage in what she believed would be “kissing” lessons, according to her mother.

The man named Antoine – now only accused of sexually assaulting a minor under the age of 15 but not rape – allegedly lured the sixth-grade student to his apartment building where the odd couple engaged in three sexual act attempts.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/404833-11yo-girl-rape-french-prosecutors/

Mauritania has moved to strengthen a law criminalising apostasy and blasphemy, after a court in the West African nation ordered the release of a local blogger who faced the death penalty for allegedly criticising the Prophet Muhammad.

An amendment to Article 306 of the country's penal code will now see the death penalty applied to "every Muslim, man or woman, who ridicules or insults Allah", his messenger, his teachings, or any of his prophets, "even if [the accused] repents", according to state news agency AMI.

The change aims to "adapt procedures to new situations that were not previously taken into account" when the law was first passed in 1983, said Justice Minister Brahim Ould Daddah.

Officially an Islamic Republic, Mauritania's legal system is based on a mix of French civil law and Islamic law. Previously, any person found guilty of apostasy under Article 306 faced the death penalty if he or she did not repent.

Someone charged with apostasy who showed remorse could be sentenced to up to two years in prison and a fine.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/mauritania-strengthens-blasphemy-l...

 

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The Turnbull government has appointed an academic who has argued that recognising religious freedom should include acceptance of a limited form of sharia law to the Ruddock review.

On Thursday the government released broad terms of reference for its religious freedom inquiry, headed by former attorney general Philip Ruddock, including the new appointment of University of Queensland constitutional law professor Nicholas Aroney to the five-person panel.

Aroney is an expert on legal pluralism, law and religion who has warned that religious freedom has become a second-class right to anti-discrimination and argued that religious freedom should include a right to practise sharia law within “strictly justifiable limits imposed by the general law”.

In public debate before marriage equality was legalised, Coalition conservatives including the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, and the defence personnel minister, Dan Tehan, warned against amendments with unintended consequences, such as creating religious enclaves shielded by law or opening a back door to sharia.

In a 2012 essay titled The Accommodation of the Sharia within Western Legal Systems Aroney and co-author Rex Ahdar argued that: “From a western point of view, the practice of sharia is in part a religious liberty issue and, to that extent, its conscientious practice ought to be a right enjoyed by all committed Muslims, qualified only by strictly justifiable limitations imposed by the general law.”

 

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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/15/religious-freedom...

 

Time to reject any religious interference in our secular governing cloaks. Sharia is a horrible way to deal with social problems. We have been getting rid of religious hubris for a while, let's not be stupid about it. Read from top. 

 

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he owned a refrigerator...

 

 

Former porn star Mia Khalifa recalled the shocking threats she received after filming a scene where she had sex wearing a hijab.

Khalifa, 25, had only been in the porn industry a few months when a director told her she would be required to wear the traditional headpiece in a scene, she said.

She knew it wouldn’t sit well with the public.

“I said to him, ‘You’re going to get me f–king killed,’” she told BBC Radio’s 5 Live.

When asked why she didn’t say no, Khalifa said: “Being 21, I didn’t know that I could speak up.”

The scene made Khalifa the No. 1-ranked performer on Pornhub, but also drew the attention of ISIS.

Her face was Photoshopped onto another person’s body in a video that showed the mocked-up Khalifa being beheaded.

The footage scared her and confirmed what she feared when her director asked her to do the scene.

“There was also a Google image screenshot of my apartment tweeted at me, that had a death threat go along with it,” she said.

“It was a threat I took very seriously.”

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/04/23/isis-threatened-to-kill-porn-star-mia-khal...

 

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