The BBC tells us of another round of denunciations:

Kamel Daoud is the Algerian novelist who came within an ace of winning France’s top book award – the Goncourt – last year for his Camus-inspired The Meursault Investigation.

He is also an independent-minded newspaper journalist, who has won as many enemies as friends over the years for his critical articles about the state of his country.

But Kamel Daoud has now announced to the world that he is giving up his newspaper work, and will focus on fiction.

Why? Because of the frenzied reaction to a piece he wrote in Le Monde concerning New Year’s Eve in Cologne.

Let me guess – he’s accused of “Islamophobia”?

The article in question – entitled “Cologne – City of Illusions” – was a two-pronged attack on the cliches triggered by the mass molestations of women.

On the one hand Daoud deplored the far-right “illusion” which treats all immigrants as potential rapists.

But by far the greater part of his anger was directed at the “naive” political left, who in his view deliberately ignore the cultural gulf separating the Arab-Muslim world from Europe.

Or they don’t ignore it but they pretend it’s just a matter of different as opposed to worse – stoning women, not stoning women, it’s all just part of the great tapestry of Culcha.

What Cologne showed, says Daoud, is how sex is “the greatest misery in the world of Allah”.

“So is the [male] refugee ‘savage’? No. But he is different. And giving him papers and a place in a hostel is not enough. It is not just the physical body that needs asylum. It is also the soul that needs to be persuaded to change.

“This Other (the [male] immigrant) comes from a vast, appalling, painful universe – an Arab-Muslim world full of sexual misery, with its sick relationship towards woman, the human body, desire. Merely taking him in is not a cure.”

I added the [male] because French does that but English doesn’t and it makes a difference.

These were strong words, and the reaction came fast.

In an opinion piece also in Le Monde, a collective of intellectuals and academics delivered an excoriating attack on Daoud, whom they accused of “feeding the Islamophobic fantasies of a growing part of the European population.”

That must have been pleasant for him.

Last year Adam Shatz, a leading liberal journalist and editor, wrote a long and favourable profile of Daoud for the New York Times.

But now – regretfully but firmly – he turned against him.

“It is very hard for me to imagine that you truly believe what you have written. This is not the Kamel Daoud that I know,” Shatz wrote in an open letter.

What worried Shatz – like the intellectuals (though he hated their “Soviet”-style public denunciation) – was the link Daoud drew between the events in Cologne and Islam.

“A few years ago we saw similar events at the Puerto Rico Day parade in New York. There too women were molested. But the molesters were not under the influence of Islam, but of alcohol,” he wrote.

That’s interesting, but so what? Both can be true – and also the influences can be combined. Maybe the Cologne abusers were fueled by alcohol as well as (partly or mostly or wholly) religious misogyny, and maybe the New York abusers were fueled by religious misogyny as well as alcohol. Or maybe the difference was absolute, but that doesn’t tell us much – it certainly doesn’t demonstrate that the Cologne abusers were not influenced by religious misogyny.

Daoud says he has had enough.

In an open letter to Shatz (a friend whose criticisms he respects), he denounces the academics and intellectuals who earlier denounced him.

“They do not live in my flesh or in my land, and I find it illegitimate – not to say scandalous – that certain people accuse me of Islamophobia from the safety and comfort of their western cafes.”

And that is his last word.

It’s like well-meaning lefties in the UK accusing Maryam of “Islamophobia” from the safety and comfort of their local pubs.

Deborah Cameron on the chronic question do women and men write differently, and if so how much more do women suck at writing?

When people ask questions about male-female differences, they’re rarely motivated just by idle curiosity. They may formulate the question as a neutral inquiry into the facts of a given matter (‘how do men and women do X?’), but often the underlying question is more like ‘why do women have a problem doing X?’, or ‘what are women doing wrong when they do X?’

Aka why can’t women do anything correctly, the way men do it?

In one study of the language of blogs, the researchers found what appeared to be differences between male and female bloggers; but on closer inspection they turned out to be more closely related to the distinction between ‘diary’ blogs, containing the author’s personal reflections, and ‘filter’ or content-sharing blogs, where the author comments on the links s/he recommends. This looked like a gender difference because more women in the sample produced diary blogs, and more men produced content-sharing blogs. Of course that in itself is a gender difference; but it’s not a gender difference in writing style, it’s a gendered preference for different kinds of blogs.

I wonder if women tend to absorb a veiled message from the culture around them that the only thing women really know much about is their own individual selves. If so, that’s tragic. I get a lot of shit from the many tweeters and bloggers who hate me for doing a mostly content-sharing blog, but I think that’s an asinine complaint. I’m interested in a lot of things that aren’t Me, and I share them on my blog – why is that a bad thing? It’s too much interest in the Self that I think is a bad thing.

There used to be a site where you could paste in some text and it would tell you whether a woman or a man wrote it. Most people used it to test their own writing.

Obviously they already knew if they were male or female, so presumably what they were trying to find out was whether their writing was gender-typical. And when the Genie told them it wasn’t (which happened frequently: while I was monitoring it its success rate never got above 68%), their reactions were instructive. Almost no one concluded that there was something wrong with the program, or with the basic idea of gendered writing styles. More commonly they fell to pondering why they, as individuals, did not match the profile for a ‘normal’ male or female writer.

Women who’d been misidentified as men often put this down to being ex-tomboys or geeks who had no truck with ‘girly’ things: none of them seemed offended by being told they wrote like men, and sometimes they appeared to be flattered. Men who were miscategorized as women, by contrast, more often expressed bafflement, annoyance or discomfort. They also got teased by other people in the comments: had they been writing poetry again? Were they secretly gay?

Yep. Being perceived as male or male-like, good; being perceived as the other thing, bad.

These contrasting responses underline the point that gender isn’t just a difference, it’s a hierarchy. As Caroline Criado-Perez notes in her book Do It Like A Woman, to do something ‘like a woman’ usually means to do it badly, or less well than a man would do it. It’s your basic deficit model, in which men set the standard of excellence and whatever women do is somehow deficient, weak and inferior.

Women’s writing, on the face of things, is not an obvious candidate for this treatment. If we consider writing as a basic skill, it’s one on which girls outperform boys from an early age, and if we consider it as an art, it’s one that women have excelled in for centuries. And yet the idea has persisted that men do it better. Only yesterday, I heard a male writer on the radio explaining why he preferred to read other male writers: one of the reasons he gave was that men’s writing gets to the point (while women’s by implication beats endlessly about the bush). Had he ever, I wondered, opened Finnegan’s Wake, or any of the novels of Henry James?

Seriously. Jane Austen? Emily Bronte? Straight to the point, with not a word wasted. Thackeray? Dickens? Not so much.

Abrupt ending.

The Mirror reports:

A Labour MP stunned MPs today by listing the 120 women who have been killed by men in the last year to mark International Women’s Day.

Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips made the moving speech at the beginning of a three hour debate honouring the day, prompting a rare round of applause from the House of Commons benches.

…

 

I want to thank Karen Ingala Smith and the Counting Dead Women project. She doesn’t allow these women to be forgotten. She shouts their names so we can do better.

I want to note that as I read each and every woman’s story, the variety of women struck me.

These are not all poor women. These were women of every age. They were teachers, dinner ladies, doctors, dancers and daughters.

Their perpetrators were not feckless drunks, they were respected fathers, city bankers and eminent lawyers.

Violence against women has no one face. We must do better. These women are gone.

Here in this place, we must not let them die in vain. We owe that much to them. We owe them much more than what they got.

Have a safe International Women’s Day.

Jill Rafferty-Weinisch at Celebrations Beyond Belief explains what the big deal is about Lands End’s repudiation of its own celebration of Gloria Steinem.

But this is just a clothing retailer right? Isn’t it unfair to place the mantle of social justice on a catalog company that sells cute cardigans and water shoes? Here’s my view.

Women and girls are routinely socialized that their rights are acceptable – as long as they do not offend or make anyone else uncomfortable. Our existence is regularly constrained by the possibility we might make someone feel bad, or horny, or angry, or threatened. It has broad and sweeping ramifications in terms of violence against women, educational attainment, workplace equity, the provision of medical care, basic bodily autonomy… virtually every part of our lives.

Because where would we all be if women just weren’t socialized to be compliant any more? What would we do without the adult babygirls simpering and pouting and looking up at us through their adorable eyelashes? What would be do without the constant, automatic efforts to seduce, flirt, manage, wheedle, evade, conceal, and otherwise manipulate? Where would we all be if women just stopped giving any fucks about how acceptable they are?

The current outrage isn’t about a single retailer, or even an individual iconic public figure. In apologizing for having promoted women’s equality alongside chinos and swimsuits, Lands End sent a clear message that women hear repeatedly:

Your rights are not important enough to discuss publicly because the people who feel they aren’t important matter more than you. Those who promote them will be dismissed. Those who bring them up will be castigated. And your protests over that dismissal will be met with weak apologies rather than any meaningful action.

It’s not a new refrain; we can all hum the tune, and it certainly doesn’t go with “Spring’s Must-Have Sundresses for Women and Girls.”

Because women just aren’t in the group “People Who Matter.” That group is reserved for men.

Grim news from Manchester:

Anti-terror police have been called in to investigate the death of Rochdale imam Jalal Uddin.

The investigation into Mr Uddin’s death has been escalated after the discovery of material linked to the Islamic State terror group during a series of raids last week.

Mr Uddin had made efforts to turn youngsters away from radical Islam.

The 64-year-old was attacked as he walked through a children’s park last month.

He was taken to hospital but died later.

Trying to turn people away from Islamism is not popular with Islamists.

Detectives investigating the death raided three properties last week, and so far three people have been arrested.

But the discovery of material connected to the so-called Islamic State terror group prompted Greater Manchester Police to call in counter terrorism experts, who are now leading the enquiry.

Detectives are now examining the material, which includes digital media thought to have been found on computers or smart phones.

…

Mohammed Hussain Syeedy, 21, of Ramsay Street, Rochdale, has been charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

Grim.

RH Reality Check on Facebook:

Martha Plimpton, dressed in Shout Your Abortion style

Photo by Amy Sedaris

Pelting rain all morning – then clearing this afternoon – so Cooper and I went here:

It was good.

I’m wondering how much the potential for doing something useful in a movement for political change relies on a rejection of fantasy.

By fantasy I don’t mean an optimistic vision for the future, I don’t mean ideas about how things should be, I mean actual pretending that X is so when it’s not.

My hunch is that the answer is: a lot.

Many MRAs and other anti-feminists claim that feminism is largely based on fantasy, but that relies on the belief that women really are stupider and less competent than men, and that’s something of a fantasy itself.

Feminism isn’t the belief that women are magical god-like beings. It’s the belief that women are people coupled with the belief that people should have equal rights. It doesn’t require any fantasizing at all, and it doesn’t rely on ordering people to accept fantasies as describing reality. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to other movements for equal rights. The whole point of universal rights is to detach them from value judgments in order to make them apply across the board, no matter what.

I think a politics based on fantasy has some problems.

In hilarity news, Milo Yiannopoulos – who is a tweeter, not a journalist – crashed the White House press briefing on Friday to tell Obama that Twitter took his blue tick away.

Yiannopolous began by quoting Reddit founderAaron Schwartz, who argued that the importance of free speech also extended to social media sites, and brought up Obama’s previous statements denouncing university safe spacesand the coddling of college students.

“It’s becoming very clear that Twitter and Facebook in particular are censoring and punishing conservative and libertarian points of view…” he argued. “Is there anything the president can do to encourage Silicon Valley to remind them of the critical importance of open free speech in our society?”

Can Obama please please do something to make Twitter more welcoming to misogynist bullies?

“You obviously can’t enforce the First Amendment on private corporations,” Yiannopolous allowed. “But there seems to be a very clear trend. My verification check was taken away for making fun of the wrong group of people. Conservative commentators and journalists are being punished, being suspended, having their tweets deleted by Twitter. Facebook is removing criticism of immigration in Europe.”

“Are there any mechanisms the government can use to remind these companies that they have this responsibility, or do we just have to trust the market will punish them if they don’t?” he asked.

His verification check was taken away! That’s literally the worst thing that has happened to free speech since ever. How can the world have an intelligent conversation about whether or not women are stupid sluts if Milo Yiannopolous doesn’t have his blue tick?

So guess what François Hollande did on Friday – gave the god damn Legion of Honor to Saudi Arabia. To Saudi Arabia.

The French government was among the most vocal outside the Middle East in its condemnation of Saudi mass executions earlier this year, calling the kingdom’s killing of 47 people “deeply deplorable”.

Yet almost two months to the day after that statement was issued, President François Hollande awarded his nation’s most prestigious award to the heir to the Saudi throne, Prince Mohammed bin Naif.

Thus letting him know the French government didn’t really mean it about those 47 executions.

They tried to keep it a secret. There was a meeting with Angela Merkel the same day and that got lashings of coverage, but they drew a tactful veil over the high five to the Saudis.

That the Prince even received the award was only confirmed by Mr Hollande’s entourage on Sunday afternoon. Officials sought to play it down, telling Le Monde it was “common protocol” to issue visiting dignitaries with the honour.

But while in France the decoration was done, as media outlets put it, “with discretion”, the government-owned Saudi news agency SPA hailed the honour as recognition for the prince’s “great efforts in the region and world for combating extremism and terrorism”.

Nonsense. They don’t combat extremism, they promote it. They spend their oil money on funding Wahhabi mosques all around the world. They fund Wahhabi madrasas. They sue academics who criticize them. They sentence atheists and liberals to prison and torture. They are all about extremism. They are not nice people and they don’t deserve honors.

In its report from the Crown Prince’s visit, SPA said the two sides “reviewed bilateral relations between the Kingdom and France and ways of enhancing and developing them in all fields, particularly joint cooperation for combating extremism and terrorism”.

“The French President and the Crown Prince also discussed the latest developments in the Middle East and exerted efforts towards them in addition to the two countries stances towards them,” it said.

The visit was a “success”, said Saudi minister of culture and information Adel al-Toraifi, and included discussions of “investment”.

Neither report made mention of the refugee crisis, throughout which Saudi Arabia been accused of failing to take its fair share of asylum seekers. And given the “discretion” surrounding the visit, it is not known whether Mr Hollande felt able to bring up the Saudi human rights record.

Saudi Arabia hasn’t taken any asylum seekers.

Merde, France.

My god people are confused. This particular confusion is from a year ago but the brand of confusion is still everywhere.

Rutgers University assistant professor Brittney Cooper joined HuffPost Live on Monday to discuss the exclusion of prominent black LGBT activists like Pauli Murray, who helped in the the progression of the civil rights movement.

From her campaign to matriculate into the University of North Carolina to her countless articles on race relations, Murray was an influential civil rights activist. Even with her list of accomplishments, Murray, who was of mixed-race heritage, saw her complex gender and sexual identity muted in favor of “respectability politics,” Cooper said.

…

Murray is part of a long history of gender nonconforming activists who struggled with finding an identity outside of the gender binary, Cooper said. Murray preferred androgynous dress, had a short hairstyle and [might] have identified as a transgender male today, but she lacked the language to do so at the time.

Whisky tango foxtrot. A woman with short hair does not find an identity outside the gender binary by identifying as a male! Why do people keep getting that so backward? Gender is the collection of dopy arbitrary rules of the type “gurlz wear dresses and boyz wear jeans.” Ignoring the dopy rules is finding an identity outside the gender binary. Switching to the Other set of rules is not – it’s reinforcing the gender binary.

Also…the way this plays out for far too many people is so profoundly insulting. Jonah Mix said so at the time:

The evidence the article gives for Murray’s supposed transgenderism is little more than her appreciation for pants, short hair, female sex partners, and the name Oliver – which she gave only once, to white male police officers, and there’s no other possible reason why a woman would want five men with unlimited power over her to not realize she’s a woman. So attention, all you women out there: If you have short hair, wear pants, and stand up to authority with bravery and conviction – you know, those three incredibly unladylike behaviors – then you are very likely A SECRET MAN. Because a person of strength, intelligence, and slacks who is also a woman? What a crazy thought!

Let’s do it to all of them! Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Emily Bronte – they were all actually trans men! We know this because they did brilliant work, and that’s more of a guy thing. George Eliot and George Sand just came right out and used male names, so that just goes to show, right?

This endless search backwards through time to find evidence of transgenderism relies on the most viciously conservative ideology possible, in which women displaying any form of intelligence, power, strength, and courage – you know, those personality traits that feminism exists to say are not inherently male – become evidence of manhood. Queers, either intentionally or not, aid the patriarchy by erecting incredibly rigid definitions of womanhood and manhood in a self-serving quest to catch as many people outside the boundaries as possible. It never seems to occur to them that maybe, just maybe, they can only sustain their community by reifying the “gender binary” they claim to hate so much.

It’s incoherent. It babbles about escaping the rigid gender binary in the very act of reinforcing it. It embraces a contradiction as its core ideology.

Is this real advice or is it satire? I don’t know.

In trying to find the source I found advice from the Unitarian Universalist Association, which included this bullet point:

• Use words that encompass all genders rather than only two
  For example, “people of all genders” instead of “women and men”; “children” instead of “boys and girls”; “siblings” or “kindred” instead of “brothers and sisters.”

Hmm.

The things you happen on when stumbling around Twitter. I found an article by someone named Wardah Khalid, which says some strikingly unpleasant things about reformist Muslims and ex-Muslims.

The title, which may not have been her choice, is a bad start:

The Ayaan Hirsi Ali problem: why do anti-Islam Muslims keep getting promoted as “experts”?

That’s a stupid question. You can be opposed to X and be an expert in it. That’s not even unusual. Why shouldn’t people who are critical of Islam get promoted as experts?

And since she raised the question I tried to find out why she gets promoted as an expert, and I couldn’t find much reason. I think it’s probably because she’s a pro-Islam Muslim and that kind of thing is popular, just as reformist Muslims and ex-Muslims are (in different circles).

She starts with an Air Force white paper that she doesn’t like.

The writer is Tawfik Hamid a self-proclaimed “Islamic thinker and reformer, and one time Islamic extremist from Egypt.” He is currently a fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and is the author of a number of books on radical Islam.

And? Is that an illegitimate thing to be? She would reply yes, it is.

But it’s not just this one report or this one author. Hamid is part of a long line of “pseudo-experts” on Islam, and he represents a much larger problem in which fringe Muslim Americans pushing an anti-Islam agenda are promoted as legitimate experts, thus mainstreaming ideas that are both offensive and incorrect.

What is “fringe”? Who defines “agenda”? Who says what is “legitimate”? And as for “offensive” – it’s well known by now that not everything someone calls offensive is necessarily bad or harmful or even illegitimate. Islam is an ideology, one with enormous power over a great many people’s minds, so it has to be open to criticism. Wardah Khalid doesn’t get to make it off limits.

These pseudo-experts typically argue some version of the idea that Islam is inherently violent and oppressive and needs to be reformed or defeated altogether. Their views are treated as legitimate by virtue of their religion; they are Muslim or formerly Muslim themselves, so they must know. This doesn’t just lead groups like the Air Force Research Laboratory to portray junk analysis as correct; it also promotes fringe ideologues as legitimate representatives of Islam and of Muslim Americans, when they are anything but.

But the whole idea of “legitimate representatives of Islam and of Muslim Americans” is an absurdity. Who could possibly represent all Muslim Americans? Obviously critics of an institution or ideology don’t “represent” all fans or adherents, but so what? That’s not what critics do.

It’s a bullying idea she’s working with, this idea that “fringe” means bad and wrong and not legitimate.

Most famous is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch-American author and former Muslim who argues for a complete reformation of Islam, calling it “the new fascism” and “a destructive, nihilistic cult of death.” She demanded a Western-led war on the religion and was cited as a source of inspiration in the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Breivik, the right-wing shooter who killed 77 people and injured 319 in Norway. Hirsi Ali later sympathized with Breivik’s argument that he “had no other choice but to use violence.”

Ah well now we know not to believe a word she says, because that last claim is a much-circulated lie. Hirsi Ali did not sympathize with Breivik’s argument, and that’s a dirty way to fight.

A fellow laureate of the Lantos Prize is Irshad Manji, who argues that the entire religion of Islam requires reform.

Again – and? Why shouldn’t she argue that?

Zuhdi Jasser, the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, was relatively unknown to the Muslim American community until he testified at Rep. Peter King’s extremely controversial homegrown Islamic terrorism hearings in 2011, where he stated that Muslims are “long overdue for an ideological counter-jihad.” He claimed that Muslim American leaders, including imams, are contributing to radicalization by not actively campaigning against political Islam or for the separation of mosque and state.

And? Is that just obviously false?

Asra Nomani, the co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, has called for government intervention in mosques for alleged “gender apartheid” and has denounced the hijab in mainstream media by calling it a “misinterpretation of Quranic verses,” putting her at odds with major Muslim schools of thought, which she rejects. She testified at the fifth King hearing in 2012 on the alleged Muslim denial and deflection of extremism, which she states is directly tied to Islam. Despite her fringe beliefs, she regularly receives mainstream media attention as a purported representative of the Muslim voice.

No she doesn’t. On the contrary, she’s seen as a liberal, reformist voice, which is not representative – and how tragic is that?

All of these so-called Muslim “reformers” are not accepted by most of the Muslim American community, yet media and government present them as authentic and authoritative Muslim voices. So why, with so many other credible, authentic, respected Muslim Americans they could choose to speak on Islam and extremism, do the government and media continue to rely on this small handful of anti-Muslim zealots?

See what she did there? She called them anti-Muslim, when she hasn’t established that. Being critical of Islam is not being anti-Muslim.

The reality is, Wardah Khalid is a religious reactionary, using the vocabulary of liberalism to try to discredit reformers. Someone talking to her on Twitter used the hideous phrase “comprador intellectuals” – which is reminiscent of Murtaza Hussain calling Maajid Nawaz a porch monkey.

The Muslim Reform Movement on Facebook:

Hizbut Tarir Australia has been found guilty of discriminating against women for making them sit at the back of PUBLIC POLITICAL meetings following a suit raised by progressive woman activist, Alison Bevege. Bevege has since been viciously subject to slurs such as “Islamophobe” and “bigot” by Hizbut Tarir members.

She writes on her twitter (@AlisonBevege): “progressive ‪#‎Muslims‬ and non-muslims together win – no forced gender segregation”

Video report

The Sydney Morning Herald:

Controversial Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir has been ordered to stop forcibly segregating men and women at its public events after a NSW tribunal found the practice constituted sexual discrimination.

Former NT News journalist Alison Bevege sued the organisation and five of its members for sexual discrimination after she was forced to sit in a designated women’s and children’s section at a public lecture hosted by the group on October 10, 2014.

Ms Bevege, then a freelance journalist, told the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal she attended the lecture, titled “the politics and plots of the American led intervention in Iraq and Syria”, with the intention of writing an opinion piece and asking questions of the speakers.

Goodness, what a hussy, thinking she gets to ask questions at a public event.

She went with a male friend.

Though the pair separately entered the lecture hall at the KCA Centre in Lakemba, when Ms Bevege attempted to join her friend in the men’s section “to be closer to the action” a female usher insisted she sit with the other women at the back of the room.

She told the tribunal that from the women’s section she struggled to read captions on a digital presentation accompanying the lecture and occasionally had to “crane my head to see.”

She doesn’t need to see. The men need to see, so that they can participate and even ask questions, but the women don’t.

While no representatives from Hizb ut-Tahrir attended the hearing, spokesman Ismail al-Wahwah disputed Ms Bevege’s account in documents supplied to the tribunal, claiming “she made no protestations at the time about such arrangements.”

Mr al-Wahwah said the segregated seating was “not a compulsory imperative” and Ms Bevege would have been allowed to “choose her own seat selection had she requested.”

While the separation of men and women was “a fundamental consideration in Islam” the event’s segregated seating plan was done as a practical measure, he said.

“The presence of women and children, and the noise that necessarily results from a child’s presence, necessitates seating away from the speakers.”

Because obviously the children aren’t going to sit with the men, and the men aren’t going to take care of any part of the childcare duties. Obviously women and children have to be bundled together and ostracized so that the men can get on with the important stuff.

“More importantly, having women and children closest to the fire exits is a safety priority we take very seriously.”

Right. Also women and children might go blind from the bright lights up front, don’t forget that one.

In its decision on Friday, the tribunal held Ms Bevege’s evidence was credible and found she was treated unfavourably on the grounds of her sex in contravention of section 33 of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

It found her experience was “diminished” because “the men’s section did offer better seats than the seats in the women’s section because those seats were closer to the stage, speakers and the screen.”

Apparently the fundamental insult isn’t even worth discussing.

I cringe that this is my country. (I’m not very cis-American.) Donald Trump talks about the size of his penis in campaigning for president.

It’s “yuge” — or at least that’s what Donald Trump wants you to believe.

The leading contender in the GOP’s race for president made sure the size of his hands — and his manhood — were front and center during the Fox News debate on Thursday night.

“Nobody has ever hit my hands before. Look at those hands,” Trump said while holding them up, spread-fingered in a bid to address previous suggestions by rival Sen. Marco Rubio. “He referred to my hands — if they’re small, something else must be small.”

He added: “I guarantee you there’s no problem.”

Make it stop.

And then there’s India. Reuters via the Guardian:

India has denied visas for a delegation from the US government agency charged with monitoring international religious freedom.

The delegation from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom had been scheduled to leave for India on Friday for a long-planned visit with the support of the US state department and the US embassy in New Delhi, but India had failed to issue the necessary visas, the commission said.

The Indian embassy in Washington hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Last year, despite a much-heralded fresh start in US-India ties under Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, the United States ran into problems arranging visits by the head of its office to combat human trafficking and its special envoy for gay rights.

Well there’s your problem right there – Modi is a Hindu nationalist, not a secularist or a liberal. He doesn’t believe in religious freedom.

A state department official referred queries on the visa issue to the Indian government, but highlighted remarks by president Barack Obama on a visit to Delhi last year, in which he made a plea for freedom of religion in a country with a history of strife between Hindus and minorities.

In its 2015 report, the bipartisan USCIRF said incidents of religiously motivated and communal violence had reportedly increased for three consecutive years.

It said that despite its status as a pluralistic, secular democracy, India had long struggled to protect minority religious communities or provide justice when crimes occur, creating a climate of impunity.

Because it’s not really a pluralistic, secular democracy in practice.

Non-governmental organisations and religious leaders, including from the Muslim, Christian, and Sikh communities, attributed the initial increase in violence to religiously divisive campaigning in advance of the country’s 2014 general election won by Modi.

The report said that since the election, religious minorities had been subject to derogatory comments by politicians linked to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and numerous violent attacks and forced conversions by Hindu nationalist groups.

In that context, the withheld visas are not a big surprise.

Mehreen Zahra-Malik reports at Reuters:

A powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam on Thursday declared a new law that criminalizes violence against women to be “un-Islamic.”

Thus throwing a massive spanner into the project of liberal secular Muslims who argue that it’s violence against women that’s un-Islamic.

The Women’s Protection Act, passed by Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab last week, gives unprecedented legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. It also calls for the creation of a toll-free abuse reporting hot line and the establishment of women’s shelters.

But since its passage in the Punjab assembly, many conservative clerics and religious leaders have denounced the new law as being in conflict with the Muslim holy book, the Koran, as well as Pakistan’s constitution.

That’s such an astonishingly ugly and indefensible position to take. Those conservative clerics and religious leaders are saying that the Koran is cool with violence against women, or perhaps even that it mandates it. Do they really want to say that?

Why would anyone ever want to worship a god who approves violence against any set of people? Why would anyone ever want to worship a god of hatred and domination?

The 54-year-old council is known for its controversial decisions. In the past it has ruled that DNA cannot be used as primary evidence in rape cases, and it supported a law that requires women alleging rape to get four male witnesses to testify in court before a case is heard.

The council’s decision this January to block a bill to impose harsher penalties for marrying off girls as young as eight or nine has angered human rights activists.

“Controversial” isn’t the right word for those decisions. Immoral, misogynist, sadistic, abusive are better fits.

Fazlur Rehman, the chief of one of Pakistan’s largest religious parties, the Jamiat-i-Ulema Islam, said the law was in conflict with both Islam and the constitution of Pakistan.

“This law makes a man insecure,” he told journalists.

And that’s all wrong, because it’s women who should be insecure, and beaten, raped, married off in childhood, denied education, killed at whim. Men must be secure in their power to inflict all that with impunity.

If the conservative clerics and religious leaders are right that that’s Islam, then Islam is a horror.