Don’t forget, there is no compulsion in religion.

Lawmakers and members of a political party assaulted the exiled feminist author as she presented a translation of one of her novels in Hyderabad…Many Muslims have accused Ms Nasreen of ridiculing Islam…About 100 protesters, including three lawmakers, from the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party burst in, shouting that the author was “anti-Islam”. Ms Nasreen backed into a corner as objects rained down and she was threatened with a chair, witnesses said.

There is no compulsion in religion, but if an author is ‘anti-Islam,’ then men will throw things at her and offer to beat her with a chair, on the grounds that there is no compulsion in religion.

It’s quite understandable, of course, … Read the rest

Never forget, Islam means ‘peace’ – oh and also ‘there is no compulsion in religion.’ Got that?

Ehsan Jami, a local council member for the Dutch Labour Party and a former Muslim, has been afforded extra protection since Monday this week…The local politician, who also heads a committee established to fight for the interests of former Muslims, was the target of a violent, physical attack outside a supermarket near his home in Voorburg last Saturday…Jami was knocked to the ground and kicked by a group of three men: two young Moroccans and one Somali. During the incidents, his attackers called him a ‘filthy homo’ and ‘filthy traitor’. Mr Jami’s advisor, Afshin Ellian, later pointed out that it was not the

Contradict yourself much? Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail –

The big mistake is to see religion and reason as polar opposites. They are not. In fact, reason is intrinsic to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible provides a picture of a rational Creator and an orderly universe – which, accordingly, provided the template for the exercise of reason and the development of science. Dawkins pours particular scorn on the Biblical miracles which don’t correspond to scientific reality. But religious believers have different ways of regarding those events, with many seeing them as either metaphors or as natural occurrences which were invested with a greater significance. The heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief in the concept of truth,