The IHEU on the brutal murder of Washiqur Rahman in Dhaka a few hours ago.

Washiqur Rahman’s Facebook banner declares “#IamAvijit”, after the leading secular and humanist blogger, Avijit Roy, who was murdered a month ago in Bangladesh.

This morning Washiqur Rahman himself was killedin similar circumstances: a machete attack by assailants on the streets of Dhaka. The brutal attack took place close to Rahman’s home. Police have reportedly taken two men into custody who were detained at the scene.

Bob Churchill, Director of Communications at the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) comments: “We are deeply saddened that yet another rationalist voice has been so brutally silenced in this vile backlash against atheist bloggers. Our thoughts are with Washiqur’s family and we stand in solidarity with the many individual thinkers and writers from Bangladesh who exercise their right to discuss religion — Islam in particular — frankly and critically. This is a human right, freedom of expression, and it should be respected and protected in Bangladesh, as it should be respected and protected everywhere.”

Asif Mohiuddin, who was also the victim of a machete attack in 2013, but survived and now lives abroad, described Washiqur on his Facebook page as a “humanist” and a true wit. He told the IHEU: “He was a good friend. We spent hours over tea discussing blogs a few years ago. He had a great sense of humor, his satires were amazing. I named him the George Carlin of Bangladesh! Personally he was very polite, a nice human being. He wanted with all his heart, a true secular country, where everyone can practice their freedom.”

They go on to give extracts from Washiqur’s writing. Read them.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The BBC reports on the brutal murder of Washiqur Rahman.

Two students at an Islamic seminary have reportedly been arrested.

Last month, Avijit Roy, a US-based writer who had criticised religious intolerance, was killed in a machete attack while he was visiting Dhaka.

His death sparked fresh concerns for freedom of speech in Bangladesh, where several secular-minded writers have been targeted by militants.

Bangladesh is a death-trap for writers who promote religious tolerance and freethinking.

Mr Rahman was killed on a busy street in Dhaka. Two of the suspected attackers, armed with meat cleavers, were caught near the scene.

The suspects told police they had targeted Mr Rahman because of his anti-Islamic writing, a police official told the Associated Press news agency.

Rejecting Islam is forbidden in Bangladesh. The penalty for disobedience is brutal murder.

Mr Rahman blogged under a pen-name, Kucchit Hasher Channa, or Ugly Duckling. According to the Dhaka Tribune newspaper, he had criticised irrational religious beliefs.

Imran Sarker, the head of a network of activists and bloggers in Bangladesh, told AFP news agency that Mr Rahman was “a progressive free thinker”.

Asif Mohiuddin, a Bangladeshi blogger who survived an attack in 2013, said he had often talked to Mr Rahman about “criticising fundamentalist groups”.

“I liked him for his satire, his sense of humour. He was a wonderful blogger and I’m very… upset right now,” he said.

Life is a horror movie.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Taslima tweeted this photo.

Madrasa students Zikrulla & Arif killed Washikur Babu today. Killers said it’s their duty as muslims to kill freethinkers.

She also shared photos of Washikur Rahman’s hacked corpse. She wants everyone to know what that murderous violence looks like, so that we can imagine what it feels like.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Oh god no not again – another atheist blogger hacked to death by men with machetes in Dhaka.

Washikur Rahman, an atheist blogger, was hacked to death on a busy street in the centre of Dhaka on Monday morning, a police official said.

“Police on duty near the spot caught two attackers red-handed with three machetes as they were fleeing the scene after the incident,” police official Humayan Kabir told Reuters.

A fellow writer said Rahman wrote against religious fundamentalism on Facebook and across other social media sites using a pen name, although this could not be confirmed by police. The alias used by Rahman is said to be “Babu” (ugly duckling).

“He is a friend of mine and a fellow warrior. He was an atheist and a believer in humanism,” fellow blogger Asif Mohiuddin, who survived a brutal attack by Islamists in January 2013, told AFP via Facebook from Berlin.

swear words

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

This is horrifying. Nushin Arbabzadah says religious violence has become normalized in Afghanistan.

The brutal lynching of Farkhunda, has revealed a number of significant issues regarding the state of Islam in Afghanistan.

The most crucial is that a fanatic strand of Islamic has become normalized, and accepted by a mainstream audience. The imam who incited the violence, the mob who lynched Farkhunda, the bystanders who filmed it — they were not the disenfranchised. They were ordinary Afghans, members of the middle class, including shop keepers. The initial public reaction was approval, expressed by public figures representing the spheres of culture and education.

They included a female deputy culture minister, who said, in reference to the murder, that nothing can stand in the way of the pure faith of the people. Rahel Musavi, a presenter on Tamadon TV, provided another public message of support saying, “She deserved to burn in the fire of the people’s anger.” And then there was the sermon of the imam, Ayaz Niazi, whose message can be summed up as follows: The people who killed Farkhunda were correct and the police have no right to arrest them. If they do, the people have the right to stage an uprising.

 

That kind of thing makes me absolutely despair of human beings. Educated people think deference to religion matters more than not setting a woman on fire.

A key characteristic of this version of Islam is that is encourages lawlessness. Niazi told the mosque audience, that their religious sensitivity is the supreme source of legitimacy, overriding the legitimacy of the state and law enforcement. But to what extent? According to the sermon, it would seem that the believer is entitled to kill first and ask questions later. Even if it turns out that the believer was wrong, the supremacy of his religious emotions are such that police has no right to arrest him. In other words, religious sentiment, not religion, is the supreme force and the prime source of legitimacy in Afghanistan. This was what Niazi was endorsing.

And she adds that he’s considered a moderate Muslim.

Many Afghans continue to believe that the supreme law is their own religious emotions. This belief is not natural, it’s carefully cultivated and sustained through collective effort. Some comply out of fear, others out of populist motivation, others because they are ignorant. Afghan activists are some of the few who have opposed the message. In return, they have received threats. The nature of these threats is summed up by the following statement that a TV personality working for a religious channel said that Farkhunda’s burning will be a lesson to the other whores.

Yes, it’s definitely a lesson to us whores.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Mandy Brown comments on the ruling in Ellen Pao’s suit against Kleiner Perkins.

The law has been constructed in such a way that only extremely blatant discrimination counts. More subtle sexism (and racism) can hide behind all kinds of gender- or race-neutral justifications which can never be wholly dismissed. So Pao wasn’t passed up because she was a woman, but because she wasn’t likeable. She wasn’t fired because of her lawsuit, but because she didn’t have what it takes. She was both too pushy and not pushy enough. She wasn’t a “thought leader.”

The message here is you can discriminate all you want so long as you aren’t completely stupid about it.

“Thought leader”? That made me jump. I didn’t know it was a catchphrase; I thought it was something special that Edwina Rogers dreamed up for the Global not-Global Secular Thingummy. Thought leader. Lead me to your thought thinkings. Lead me into the sunny uplands of skilled thoughting. But not about gender bias or stereotype threat or double binds or always having to be better and still not getting the promotion – none of that kind of thoughting. Only the approved kind – lead me to that.

The Times quotes Peter Fenton, an investor at Benchmark, in response to the ruling: “I really worry more that there will be a chilling effect on the risk-taking appetite toward getting diversity into venture. Kleiner took the risk and look what happened.” Ho boy. Let’s unpack that. Kleiner did not “take a risk” in hiring a woman; Kleiner hired a demonstrably competent and talented woman who even by their own testimony seems to have been pretty damn good at her job. The notion that every woman you may hire has some measurable risk associated with her—as if we’re all ticking discrimination lawsuit timebombs—is itself discrimination. The “risk,” if there even is any, isn’t located in the women a firm may or may not hire, but in the structure of their own organization.

Oh come now. Be fair. Hiring a woman is pretty much like hiring a hungry bear. Women aren’t normal. They aren’t like everyone else. You don’t know where you are with them. They’re always flipping out, or spilling milk on the floor, or being way uglier than you wanted them to be. They’re nothing but risk. With men you know where you are.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Remember Amal Farah on The Big Questions?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOYR1_1Zzw

The Daily Mirror talks to her.

The police came to her door and told her her mother was a jihadist.

In the seven years since the two last saw each other, her mother had become a pivotal member of Al Shabab, the Somali jihadists ­behind the Westgate mall ­massacre in Nairobi.

Known as Mama Shabab, she ­allegedly ran a safe house for suicide bombers and Western fighters recruited into the militant Islamic organisation.

The police officers told Amal, 34, to Google her mother’s name if she wanted to know why she was in trouble.

So later on she did.

“There were all these ­pictures of people injured by ­suicide bombs.

“As I read about what she’d done I felt so alone. I couldn’t just turn to my colleagues and say, ‘Guess what? My mum’s a wanted terrorist .’

“I couldn’t believe my own ­mother was involved. I cried non-stop for days after that.”

Can you imagine it? I can’t…only the edges of it maybe.

At the age of six she was made to wear the hijab, a headdress.

When she was ten her family fled Somalia after being granted refugee ­status in Canada.

But any hope of a Western ­upbringing was quashed after she was enrolled in a strict Islamic school.

She said: “Suddenly I was wasn’t ­allowed to play with my male cousins. We weren’t allowed to listen to music. Anything that was deemed frivolous, anything that took you away from the ­importance of Allah, was forbidden.”

Everything good in life is forbidden, so that you can pay all your attention to something that isn’t there.

But she got out.

It was only when she began ­studying for a ­degree in molecular ­biology that a new world opened up.

“It was a ­revelation,” she said. “I met ­atheists, Christians, Jews, Hindus – they challenged me about my views, and I about theirs. It was an ­incredible sensation to be able to ­discuss ideas without fear.”

She felt in her heart that to be true to herself she could no longer call ­herself a Muslim.

Recalling the day she broached the subject with her family, Amal said: “My mum’s first words were, ‘You’re going to hell!’ Then my uncle flew over from Saudi Arabia and for three days I was locked in the house and forced to listen to him.”

It didn’t work, so her mother cut all ties, and then moved to Dubai. That’s the last time Amal saw her.

Then she married a Jewish man.

Death threats followed soon after.

She revealed: “It was frightening. I was sent death threats telling me to come back into Islam or else. I became paranoid. Leaving my house and going to work made me scared.”

Since finding out about her mother, Amal has become a member of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, ­speaking against radical Islam, and of One Law For All, a campaign group.

Her life now is one that she never thought she would have as a child.

She says: “All my dreams have come true. I have a wonderful family, an ­incredible husband and I just feel so ­fortunate. Sometimes I pinch myself. It’s the life I never thought I’d have.”

But she misses her sister. She also misses her mother, but doesn’t plan ever to see her again.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Nick Cohen reviews Nigel Farage’s campaign biography and finds yet another “get me I’m an outsider” phony.

Farage is an attack dog who poses as an underdog. He’s the small-minded man who pretends he’s the friend of the little guy. He writes as if he were a dissident in a dictatorship: a lone and persecuted voice, who has suffered for telling truth to power. The results are occasionally hilarious. The BBC and press are always out to get him, even though most of the Conservative press supports Ukip’s policies, and the BBC never has him off air.

They promote him, but they don’t cuddle and squeeze him.

Farage’s vainglorious anecdotes are accompanied by a long, low moan about how he could have made “an enormous amount of money” if he had not chosen to leave the City and enter politics. So relentless is the self-pity, so often does Farage play the victim card, that there are times when this book feels like the Home Counties equivalent of a martyrdom video.

Hasn’t he read the memo? He’s supposed to be thick-skinned and resilient. A thick-skinned resilient outsider underdog.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

What not to say about rape:

A Catholic priest in Melbourne has reportedly been criticised for a speech in which he said Jill Meagher would have been at home instead of out on the night she was raped and killed if she was more “faith filled”.

Meagher was murdered by Adrian Bayley after a night out Melbourne in September 2012. He was sentenced to life in prison.

The priest delivered his homily at an end-of-term service for a Catholic primary school in Melbourne on Friday and radio station 3AW reported he held up a newspaper article with a picture of Bayley on it to make his point. The report says he told a crowd of about 100 that if Meagher had been more “faith filled” she would have been home and “not walking down Sydney Road at 3am”.

That. That’s something not to say about rape. So many reasons – one of them being the casual dismissal of women’s right to walk around in the world, and the implication that there’s something immoral about women doing so, and the implication that if they were more god-obsessed they would stay home, obsessing over god, and that that would be a good thing.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Robert Reich thinks college fraternities should be abolished. I do too.

There are exceptions but for the most part fraternities are elitist, exclusive, and privileged. They have nothing to do with higher education. And they’re periodically mired in scandal involving hazing (such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison frat’s degrading hazing); racism (the video of Sigma Alpha Epsilon members calling for the lynching of African-Americans); sexual assault (the University of Maryland frat brothers’ pro-rape emails, and allegations of drug dealing and sexual assault in a North Carolina State frat); degradation of women (Penn State fraternity’s secret Facebook page for sharing photos of nude passed out women); destructive drunkenness (University of Michigan frat brothers destroying a ski resort in a drunken rage). The list goes on, and this is just in the last few months.

They’re bro-culture systematized and glorified, so naturally they promote brutality and sexism.

Some say “boys will be boys” and if they’re not in a fraternity they’ll do all this somewhere else. Rubbish. A much-cited 2007 study shows fraternity members are 300% more likely to commit rape than non-affiliated students (this was the third study confirming the same data.)

What I’m saying. Boys don’t have to be like that, they’re not inherently like that, but shunt them into an organization built around bro-culture, and you get the expected result.

Some say I’m disregarding freedom of association, and that college students have a right to hang out with whomever they wish. Well, yes, but most fraternities depend on university recognition for direct subsidies such as land or buildings and indirect benefits such as tolerance of underage drinking.

Tssssss. Of course college students have a right to hang out with anyone they want to, but they don’t need designated buildings or screening processes or rituals. Fraternities are way more than a way to hang out with anyone you want to – and also less, since they exclude all but a handful of people.

A pox on them.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Indiana is surprised and, frankly, a little hurt by all the hostility that has greeted its friendly new law inviting everyone to treat selected sets of people like pariahs.

Three days after signing legislation widely criticized as a “license to discriminate” against LGBT people, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence says he didn’t anticipate “the hostility that’s been directed at our state.”

Pence told the Indianapolis Star on Saturday he’s been in discussions with legislative leaders this weekend, and will support legislation to “clarify the intent” of the religious freedom that has created a firestorm of criticism, boycotts and backlash from civic leaders to business leaders, and even the White House.

It’s all a big misunderstanding. Poor Indiana.

The measure, which takes effect in July, prohibits state laws that “substantially burden” a person’s ability to follow his or her religious beliefs. The definition of “person” includes religious institutions, businesses and associations.

Critics say the catalyst for the measure was to allow businesses, such as florists and bakeries, to refuse services to same-sex couples following the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state.

Pence and other supporters of the law contend discrimination claims are overblown and insist it will keep the government from compelling people to provide services they find objectionable on religious grounds.

That’s a completely different thing. You can see that, right? Keeping the government from compelling people to provide services they find objectionable on religious grounds has nothing to do with allowing businesses, such as florists and bakeries, to refuse services to same-sex couples. Nothing at all. It’s just that, if a florist or a baker wants to refuse services to same sex couples on religious grounds, the government can’t force them to. See? Totally different.

I’m so relieved.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Some snaps via Twitter.

And another.

One more.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

In Tunis today, thousands of people marched to the Bardo Museum in protest against terrorism and death and culture-murder, and in favor of freedom and art and museums and human flourishing.

Chanting “Tunisia is free! Terrorism out!” they marched to the Bardo Museum, the scene of an attack in which 21 tourists and a Tunisian died.

French President Francois Hollande and other world leaders attended a ceremony at the museum.

…

Demonstrators waved Tunisian flags and held up slogans of “Not Afraid” and “We Are Bardo” as they marched, surrounded by a heavy security presence.

“We have shown we are a democratic people, Tunisians are moderate, and there is no room for terrorists here,” demonstrator Kamel Saad told Reuters.

It wasn’t all love and roses though. It’s complicated.

Some leftist political groups chose to boycott the rally. They object to the participation of an Islamic party, who they hold accountable for the rise of Islamic extremism in the country.

Well that would trouble me too. An Islamic party is of its nature theocratic, in a way that an Islamic group or a group of Muslims needn’t be.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=01VoMtvIa7Y

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A shining example of how religion can foster a twisted view of morality.

[US Cardinal Raymond Burke] has spoken out again, telling an interviewer that gay couples and divorced and remarried Catholics who are trying to live good and faithful lives are still like “the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”

No, they aren’t. Not at all. You can have reservations about unilateral divorce, especially if it’s done with cruelty or brutality, but it’s still not a close relative of murder.

“If you are living publicly in a state of mortal sin there isn’t any good act that you can perform that justifies that situation: the person remains in grave sin,” Burke said in an interview with LifeSiteNews, a U.S.-based web service focused on battling abortion and promoting other conservative causes.

Nonsense. Burke’s church considers the rape of children not a “mortal” sin. That’s all you need to know about Burke’s church.

“And to give the impression that somehow there’s something good about living in a state of grave sin is simply contrary to what the (Catholic) Church has always and everywhere taught,” said Burke, who spoke to LifeSiteNews in Rome.

Asked if being “kind” and “generous” and “dedicated” is enough, Burke replied: “Of course it’s not. It’s like the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people.”

He’s a moral monster, but then that’s how the Catholic church is. There are good people in it, but they’re good in spite of the evil shite the Vatican talks, not because of it.

On the surface, Burke’s comments break little theological ground; the church has always taught that sin is sin, and some sins are especially serious. For example, cohabitation, homosexual relations and adultery (which is how the Catholic Church views the relations of a couple who are divorced and remarried without annulling the first marriage) are viewed as mortal sins, as is murder.

But not the rape of children. Not the rape of children by priests they’ve been told to respect and obey and consider close to god.

Burke, 66, has raised eyebrows, and made headlines, with previous comments. Earlier this year, he argued that the church has become too “feminized” and he blamed the introduction of altar girls more than 20 years ago for the decline in vocations to the church’s all-male priesthood.

The cardinal also blamed gay clergy for the church’s sexual abuse crisis, saying priests “who were feminized and confused about their own sexual identity” were the ones who molested children.

Yeah. It’s always the bitches’ fault.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Silicon Valley pretends to love mavericky types but really it’s numbingly conformist in some very obvious ways…such as in being ridiculously absent-minded about the existence of women.

Ellen Pao sued a venture capital firm for gender discrimination and lost, but the trial spilled a lot of crappy beans.

Not only have weeks of testimony revealed a collection of boorish, unsavory and at times unwittingly misogynist attitudes at one of the tech industry’s most storied financial institutions, the case has also come to stand for something bigger than itself. It has blown open a conversation about the status of women in an industry that, for all its talk of transparency and progress, has always been buttoned up about its shortcomings.

Thanks to Ms. Pao, and notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, the secrets are suddenly out in the open. In tweets, in text messages and at tech gatherings like TED and South by Southwest, the case has been virtually all that anyone could talk about during the last few weeks.

We keep rediscovering sexism as if it were a brand new thing. “Ohhh will you look at that, we don’t treat women as equals. Who knew??”

After the Pao testimony, former employees of Facebook and of Twitter have filed gender-discrimination suits against those companies, which have denied the accusations.

Sexist?? Facebook and Twitter??? Inconceivable!

Anita Hill’s testimony didn’t keep Clarence Thomas off the bench, tragically, but it did put sexual harassment in the public spotlight. (And that rapidly brought it to an end! Oh wait, no it didn’t.)

The Kleiner-Pao trial has prompted a similar discussion because the series of large and small slights that Ms. Pao contends she suffered at the hands of her male colleagues and bosses at Kleiner has resonated with women across the industry, and it has turned a light on problems that many men around here have long kept under wraps.

Listen. Can you hear it? That murmur in the distance? A billion Dear Muslimas stir and yawn and pull their socks on.

“What usually happens when you have something like this happen to you at work is that you negotiate a settlement with a gag order,” said Melinda Byerley, a marketing consultant who has worked in the tech industry for more than a decade. “They pay you to be quiet. This happens all over Silicon Valley — they will write you a severance agreement outlining X number of months’ salary, X number of shares, and along with that is a gag order.”

She added: “This is how women have been doing this for more than a decade. This is tribal knowledge. It’s shared from one woman to the next.” What made Ms. Pao’s story unusual, Ms. Byerley said, was her refusal to take the quiet settlement, despite the risks to her reputation and her career.

Risks? You surely don’t mean anyone would punish her for speaking up.

Documents in the case showed that one Kleiner partner, Chi-Hua Chien, arranged a ski trip for entrepreneurs from which women were excluded. When he was asked if a female entrepreneur from one of the companies Kleiner had invested in could come along, Mr. Chien responded in an email that because the trip involved shared accommodations, women probably wouldn’t feel comfortable.

“Why don’t we punt on her and find 2 guys who are awesome,” he wrote. “We can add 4-8 women next year.” There was no ski trip the next year.

Jam tomorrow. We can add 4-8 women next year.

To several women in the industry, the most salient note in Ms. Pao’s complaint was her claim that there was a narrow band of behavior she was expected to adhere to at Kleiner. She was criticized both for being too timid and for being too aggressive, for speaking up too much and for not speaking up enough.

Is that a narrow band, or is it a zero band? Was there actually a sweet spot between talking too much and not talking enough, or did the one slam right into the other leaving no space in between? Curious minds want to know.

Worse, criticisms of her performance were vague and unspecific. In written evaluations by her peers and executives at Kleiner’s portfolio companies, Ms. Pao was often given high marks, but Kleiner partners testified that her failings were a more subtle failure of “chemistry.”

Oh, oh, call on me, I know this one! The subtle failure of chemistry was the emanations of estrogen that wafted around when she was present. Her peers and the executives just didn’t like those emanations. They found them oooooky.

“Many men in the Valley genuinely believe that their company is a meritocracy,” said Karen Catlin, a former software engineer and a former vice president of Adobe Systems. “They think that the gender problem is something that happens somewhere else.”

There’s a name for that. It’s “cognitive dissonance.” They know they’re good guys, and their company is a company of good guys, so the gender problem is something that happens somewhere else, where the guys aren’t so good.

I don’t see that changing any time soon.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And the title goes to

The National Secular Society has awarded the staff ofCharlie Hebdo the annual Secularist of the Year prize, for their courageous response to the terror attack on their Paris office.

Just one week after the attack on 7 January 2015, in which 12 people were killed, the remaining staff ofCharlie Hebdo published an edition of the magazine featuring a depiction of Mohammed and an editorial making a passionate defence of secularism and the right to free expression.

NSS president Terry Sanderson said: “Since the events of 7 January in Paris, Charlie Hebdo has become more than a magazine – it has become an ideal, a symbol of democracy, a rallying cry to those who value freedom and openness in public debate.

“The Charlie Hebdo horror has now joined the endless stream of other outrages committed in the name of Islam. The difference is that it prompted a commitment to free speech and secularism on the part of millions of people.

“Looked at objectively, blasphemy is a ridiculous concept, transparently invented to protect eminently arguable ideas from challenge.

“Ridiculous it may be, but it is also lethal.

“From the forty or so nominations that we received, there was one that could not be ignored, that was the obvious and only possible winner.”

The award was presented at the annual Secularist of the Year event, hosted by the NSS at a lunch event in central London. The lunch was attended by members, supporters and honorary associates of the National Secular Society, including Professors Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling. Also present were a number of progressive Muslim campaigners and representatives of organisations working to combat Islamic extremism.

My friend Tehmina Kazi was there.

Martin Rowson, the Guardian cartoonist, accepted the award on behalf of the staff of Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo said it would donate the £5000 prize money for the award to the fund supporting the families of the murdered cartoonists.

In addition to the main Secularist of the Year award, the NSS also acknowledged a number of others for their work in the past year.

Lord Avebury was recognised with a special award for his invaluable support of the NSS, and for being a tireless advocate for secularism. Lord Avebury recently tabled a Bill to abolish chancel repair liability and has spoken out in Parliament against collective worship in schools and new legislation allowing prayers to be held as part of council meetings.

Maajid Nawaz, who couldn’t attend the event, was recognised for his work at Quilliam, countering Islamic extremism and promoting secularism.

Helen Bailey and Elaine Hession were acknowledged for their efforts in helping the National Secular Society campaign to abolish chancel repair liability.

A number of previous Secularist of the Year winners attended the event, including Peter Tatchell, who was awarded the prize in 2012, and Safak Pavey, the Turkish opposition MP who was named Secularist of the Year in 2014.

Hold your pens up high.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Richard Dawkins tweeted yesterday:

changerofbits ‏@changerofbits 21 hours ago
@RichardDawkins Why are trusting anything to Jonathan Monsarrat at RDF/SPI? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130517/02413623115/bogus-lawsuit-plus-threats-to-those-who-write-about-it-leads-to-epic-response.shtml … Because he’ll sue you if you don’t?

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins
@changerofbits If, by RDF, you mean the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Monsarrat has no connection with it.

At the Richard Dawkins Foundation:

Here’s another one.

And then there’s this public Facebook announcement in 2013:

Call for Volunteers

Johnny Monsarrat is a volunteer traveling with the Richard Dawkins book tour, which is coming to DC on Sep 29 and 30.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation is about to announce some big new projects and to make an impact with the media and decision-makers, we need numbers. Our goal is to add 100,000 signups to our newsletter by November 1. At each event, we need a dozen volunteers to help us work a table in the lobby, speak with people, and pass around clipboards with sign up forms. Free tickets to the event will be provided to volunteers on the evening of the event IF it is not sold out.

Please contact Johnny directly via email if you can help: johnny@secularconnect.org

And there’s Johnny Monsarrat’s own page at the Secular Policy Institute:

Click to enlarge.

So, no connection with the Richard Dawkins Foundation? No connection at all?

Really?

H/t Hj Hornbeck

Updating to add: More – lots more – in a new post by Hj Hornbeck.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)