There is one particular, pressing problem with Eagleton’s incoherent rant: the problem is that, as in the past, he writes as if the only criticism there is to make of Islam and Islamism is ‘terrorism,’ meaning terrorism in the sense of blowing the legs off small children. That is not the only criticism there is to make of Islam and Islamism. Terrorism-as-bombing is not the only reason there is to be critical of Islam and especially of Islamism. How Eagleton can be unaware of that fact is hard to understand. Does he carefully avoid all news coverage? Does he have a special filter that excludes anything with the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Taliban’ or ‘women’ or ‘girls’ in it? If … Read the rest

The Taliban murdered a couple for alleged putative who cares anyway ‘adultery’ and somebody took pictures.

In footage which is being watched with horror by Pakistanis, the couple try to flee when they realise what is about to happen. But a gunman casually shoots the man and then the woman in the back with a burst of gunfire, leaving them bleeding in the dirt. Moments later, when others in the execution party shout out that they are still alive, he returns to coldly finish them with a few more rounds.

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

It was the kind of barbarity that has become increasingly familiar across Pakistan as the Taliban tide has spread. But this time, with

Typical sinister bullshit from Terry Eagleton.

There is no quarrel about how to treat those whose scorn for liberal values takes the form of blowing the legs off small children. They need to be locked up.

But everyone who doesn’t blow the legs off small children is perfectly all right. In particular those who strip women of all rights and beat them up for breathing incorrectly, we have no quarrel with them.

Writers such as Martin Amis and Hitchens do not just want to lock terrorists away. They also tout a brand of western cultural supremacism. Dawkins strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq, but preaches a self-satisfied, old-fashioned Whiggish rationalism that can be wielded against a benighted Islam. The

An archbishop has been reading The Little Golden Book of DNA, and he has derived much wisdom therefrom.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan yesterday said advocates of gay marriage “are asking for trouble,” arguing that traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people’s moral DNA. “There’s an in-built code of right and wrong that’s embedded in the human DNA…Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life.”

Uh huh. Traditional one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people’s moral DNA – which would explain why there is no such thing as polygamy anywhere on earth: it’s because it just ain’t in our biology, … Read the rest

Jeremy has done a new game for TPM: The Monty Hall Puzzle. He would be grateful if people would give it a test run, and especially grateful if they (you) would tell him if there are any bugs.… Read the rest