The BBC reports that a police chief in al-Baghdadi, Iraq reports that IS torched 45 people there.

Jihadist militants from Islamic State (IS) have burned to death 45 people in the western Iraqi town of al-Baghdadi, the local police chief says.

Exactly who these people were and why they were killed is not clear, but Col Qasim al-Obeidi said he believed some were members of the security forces.

IS fighters captured much of the town, near Ain al-Asad air base, last week.

Col Obeidi said a compound that houses the families of security personnel and local officials was now under attack.

Shiraz Maher explains why IS does things like torching people to death.

Content warning.

Even by the barbaric standards of Islamic State, the murder of the captured Jordanian pilot is particularly gruesome. The 26-year-old is paraded around the site of an alleged coalition airstrike, presumably to witness its effects first-hand.

He is then placed in a metal cage and set alight. The scenes are harrowing, the screams of anguish unimaginably horrific.

The slow, soft focus cinematography – coupled with primitive sadism for which IS’s videos have come to be known – is always designed to shock.

It was quite deliberately aimed at capturing the world’s attention.

That of course is evident enough. They make these videos for a reason, and what other reason could there be?

Questions abound over how or why IS could do this. To understand their mindset requires a brief examination of Islamic, or Sharia, law.

IS believes in a principle known as “qisas” which, in its broadest terms, is the law of equal retaliation. Put another way, it is the Islamic equivalent of “lex talionis”, or the doctrine of an eye for an eye.

Within Islamic law qisas typically relates to cases of murder, manslaughter, or acts involving physical mutilation (such as the loss of limbs) and creates a framework for victims (or their families) to seek retributive justice.

In other words, they believe in a principle that dates from a time when very few people had thought carefully about retributive justice, a time when moral thinking had not made much progress. That was then, this is now. This is the thing that makes religion so dangerous – the fact that it puts a veneer of justification on the refusal to allow morality to make progress. It makes it seem respectable to continue to believe in a “principle” that if it were a secular “principle” would be obviously horrific and sadistic. It makes it seem respectable to embrace sadistic retribution as a principle.

All armies want to develop an edge over their adversaries. Typically this involves investment in better hardware to project more power and menace.

IS knows this is not an area where it can compete.

Instead, what it has is asymmetric power – the ability to shock and terrify with videos such as the one released on Tuesday. As always, we are the audience and the aim is clear – to shock and scare us.

As was the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, as was the attack on the blasphemy conference and the synagogue in Copenhagen. It’s all a big ol’ Surrender Dorothy.

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

What it’s like to be a child and a mother.

Many of the babies are born with complications, far from the nearest hospital, and the mortality rate for mother and infant is sky-high.

Nor does the future look rosy. The daughters of these child brides are born into a cycle of systemic abuse, violence and poverty.

“I thought I’d have a better life, but at the end, it didn’t turn out that way,” says Aracely, who was married to a 34-year-old when she was 11. When she was four months’ pregnant, her husband left, declaring the child wasn’t his. Now 15, she is raising her son on her own.

“During the time I was pregnant, he didn’t give me any money,” she says. “He hasn’t even come to see the boy now that he’s a year old.”

Aracely is one of the girls who feature in photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair’s Too Young To Wed project on Guatemala, where it’s legal for a girl to marry as young as 14 — though many are married far younger than that.

The UNFPA says one in nine girls in developing nations will marry before 15, with 50 million likely to marry before their 15th birthday in this decade. They are usually poor, less educated and living in rural areas — and their early marriages make life even worse.

Puberty is a death sentence for many girls, and a stunted life sentence for a whole lot more. It’s tragic.

“Sadly, child marriage directly affects approximately 14 million girls a year, and in the process legitimises human rights violations and the abuse of girls under the guise of culture, honour, tradition, and religion. It is part of a sequence of discrimination that begins at a girl’s birth and continues throughout her entire life.”

This weekend, the group launched a global report on sex discriminatory laws around the world, using the hashtag #unsexylaws.

It shows in shocking clarity that these discriminatory laws are not simply relics of the past. Just last year, Kenya adopted a marriage act that permits polygamy without consent of the first wife, while Iran’s 2013 penal code maintains that a woman’s testimony is worth less than a man’s.

An Indian Act from 2013 states: “Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape”.

There’s more, lots more. There’s Equality Now’s 2014 report, Protecting the Girl Child.

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

My friend Sadaf Ali has a post about the fact that far too many activist atheists talk over ex-Muslims and liberal Muslims instead of listening to them and/or helping them get a turn at the mic.

I was recently quote in Allie Conti’s article for VICE on this issue:

But Sadaf Ali, a Muslim turned atheist activist, says that many New Atheists are just grown-up version of the bullies who called her a “terrorist” as a kid.

“I’ve had to debate people often who make gross generalizations of Muslims and Muslim cultures,” she told me. “People hide their bigotry behind their promotion of atheism, and I think it’s disturbing.” She has a pretty easy solution to changing the movement’s alleged-racism rap: Giving people besides Dawkins and Harris a prominent platform.

That would help. It would help with a lot of things.

It’s a familiar problem with how the media operate, which is that once X gets called as an expert then X becomes that expert you always call when you want an expert. It’s a stupid & lazy shortcut which seems to be damn near impossible to overcome.

How could a major newspaper or tv news station possibly illustrate a piece on anything atheism-related without including a photo of Dawkins??! The world would tilt off its axis and plunge directly into Venus if they did that. There is only Dawkins, and maybe farther down the page one other atheist, so naturally that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for including ex-Muslims or women or unwhite people or anyone else who’s not Dawkins. It’s very sad and all but their hands are tied.

…bear in mind that I speak from experience and interactions that I’ve accumulated over several years as an activist. If you are unfamiliar with my work and who I am, I started a grassroots initiative that built the foundations for the community building organization known as Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA). I am EMNA’s co-founder and former Director of Community Development. I have been privy to the environments and attitudes in which ex-Muslim activists are exposed to and have to work with when it comes to the secular movement. There has been a consistent erasure of ex-Muslims and vocal secular Muslims this past decade.  .

Many of the other ex-Muslims I have worked with and contact on a regular basis have shared this sentiment with me. For starters, Kiran Opal, another co-founder of EXMNA, has written about something she coinedkuffarsplaining. It is the attitudes she captures in “A How-To Guide For Talking About Islam” that make it difficult for (ex-)Muslims to discuss Muslim issues. The first 7 deal specifically with the cultural relativist attitudes that many people hold that promote the erasure of ex-Muslims.

Number 8 on the guide is a special note for atheists:

1. *Special Note: If you’re an ‘atheist’, instead of giving a platform to theEx-Muslim atheists that are risking their lives now to ‘come out’ and be visible… instead of tagging your Ex-Muslim atheist colleagues and acquaintances in conversations with other Western atheists… instead of promoting Ex-Muslim atheist voices… just do all the talking for them yourself.
   a. Talk about how well you understand Islam, being Muslim, and everything else about the issue so much better than the other white Westerners you’re talking to.
   b. Don’t be our ally, be our mouthpiece. We love it when you do that.

Please make note that the quoted text was written sarcastically!

She tells us something I don’t think I knew, and it makes me want to heave.

Would you like another example? In October of 2014, there was a two-day International Conference on the Religious-Right, Secularism and Civil Rights with Maryam Namazie. Here is a photo gallery of the conference. Here is what Kiran wrote for Atheist Alliance:

“Among the Secular Conference’s speakers, organizers, volunteers & delegates, two thirds were women and 75% were people of colour. This diversity served to shatter the notion — often propagated by antisecularists and far-right fundamentalists — that secularism belongs exclusively to “white men”. Manyspeakers directly challenged the patronizing idea that women, people of colour, ethnic and sexual minorities, and citizens of non-Western countries cannot comprehend, handle, or fight for secularism, freedom of conscience, and universal human rights.”

The Guardian covered the two-day conference by using a picture of Richard Dawkins and as Kiran put it: “All the people of colour and women were erased or downplayed and instead Dawkins’ picture was posted when he was not a speaker or organizer of the event.”

Dawkins has actually done a lot to help ex-Muslims get a platform. The Guardian’s coverage isn’t his fault, it’s the Guardian’s. An damn but that’s a glaring example of the problem.

There are many ex-Muslim and progressive/liberal/secular Muslim voices out there, many of whom are doing fantastic work and outreach within their communities. I no longer buy the excuse that both ex-Muslims and others in the movement have given me – that there aren’t enough of us.  I just don’t buy it anymore because I know firsthand how organizations handle diversity and issues of representation. I know how people get picked for these conferences and conventions to speak and to be on panels. I know how this all works now.

Also? The claim that there aren’t enough is just ludicrous. There are many! Very very many!

Instead of telling me I’m brave, perhaps people should be telling me and other ex-Muslims the truth: we’re patient.

SECULARISTS, ATHEISTS, HUMANISTS, ALL SELF-PROCLAIMED ALLIES: PLEASE TAKE AN HONEST LOOK AT WHO IT IS THAT YOU SUPPORT, THE VOICES YOU SEEK, THE VOICES YOU SUPPORT, AND WHO YOU DO AND DO NOT IGNORE. UNDERSTAND YOUR BIASES AND CONSIDER IF YOUR ACTIONS ARE DRAWING AWAY FROM THE DIALOGUE OF THOSE WHO ARE EFFECTED BY IT MOST.

Let’s do this thing.

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

There was a rally for free speech in Copenhagen tonight.

Via Twitter –

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

Via Grammarly –

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

Tom Gjelten at NPR did a typically NPR passive-aggressive story on “extreme” atheists and Craig Hicks and yadda yadda. I’ve been doing the same sort of thing ever since last Wednesday, but…I think without the passive-aggressive aspects. That’s been my intention at least. I’m up front about it – Craig Hicks freaks me out because we had friends in common, because his Facebook wall looks exactly like the walls of countless other bro atheists, because I don’t know but I fear his anti-theism – which I share – may have had something to do with the three murders he apparently confessed to. I don’t like the idea, and that’s exactly why I’ve been poking at it so hard.

But Gjelten…well let’s see.

Outrage over the murder of three young Muslim Americans in North Carolina last week has gone international. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation said Saturday that the killings reflected “Islamophobia” and “bear the symptoms of a hate crime,” but local authorities say they don’t yet know what motivated the murders.

Stop right there. Why on earth would a reputable journalist go to the OIC for a comment? It’s a terrible organization. It’s the outfit behind the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which allows no human rights that are not “compatible with Sharia” – which means many of the most basic rights are nullified, though the declaration doesn’t spell that out.

So that’s one bad move.

The man held responsible for the killings is an avowed atheist. Whether that’s relevant in this case is not clear, but some experts see a new extremism developing among some atheists.

See? Pure passive-aggression. It’s not clear, BUT, some experts see blah blah, so let’s just leave that lying there like a turd so that we can make atheists sound bad while pretending not to. How handy to be able to say some experts see whatever you want to claim.

Religion scholar Reza Aslan says ordinary atheists just don’t believe in God. Hicks, Aslan says, was an anti-theist.

“An anti-theist is a relatively new identity, and it’s more than just sort of a refusal to believe in gods or spirituality; it’s a sometimes virulent opposition to the very concept of belief,” Aslan says.

Reza Aslan isn’t a religion scholar tout court, he’s an apologist for Islam.

The anti-theists have their own heroes; people like the outspoken writer Richard Dawkins, who appears often on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher condemning religion generally and Islam in particular.

“I mean these people have a holy book that tells them to kill infidels,” Dawkins once said on the show.

Yes, and? That’s true. It’s also true of the bible, certainly, but then Dawkins doesn’t say otherwise. It’s so passive aggressive to quote a true statement as if it were some terrible outrage, without actually saying it is, much less saying why it is.

Reza Aslan says the anti-theists are few in number. But just as mainstream Muslims must confront the extremists in their communities, Aslan says, it’s time for mainstream atheists to do the same.

False equivalence. Very false equivalence. One Craig Hicks, even if his atheism did contribute to his murder of the students in Chapel Hill, is not anywhere near the equivalent of Boko Haram and IS and the Taliban and al Qaeda and the government of Saudi Arabia. The idea is laughable.

So, yeah, that adds up to a lot of passive-aggression in one short piece.

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

Some people in Izmir protested the growing influence of Islam in schools in Turkey on Friday. They were dispersed by water cannons.

Education is the latest flashpoint between the administration of President Tayyip Erdogan, and secularist Turks who accuse him of overseeing creeping ‘Islamization’ in the NATO member state.

Riot police were out in force on Izmir’s streets, with water cannon being used to disperse banner-waving demonstrators who had gathered in the center of the city, according to pictures from Dogan news agency. At least one person was seen being led away by plain clothes security officers.

Parts of some regular schools have been requisitioned to create more places for students in “Imam Hatip” religious schools championed by Erdogan, where girls and boys are taught separately. Almost 1 million students are enrolled in those schools, up from 65,000 when AKP came to power in 2002.

Sort of a Turkish Tony Blair then.

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

I wrote this month’s column for the Freethinker yesterday. It’s a rather heated rejection of the “we must be responsible if we want to live in harmony with horrible ideas” approach. I don’t want to live in harmony with horrible ideas; I want to reject them, and explain my reasons for rejecting them.

It’s not always immediately clear which ideas are horrible. Sometimes it takes extended discussion and illustration and listing of examples to make the horribleness of a particular idea clear. That’s one major reason free speech is important, and why it often trumps other goods.

But some ideas we already know are horrible. We don’t need to keep reopening the question every hour, because we already know and because the ideas are so horrible that they do damage and harm. It can be worthwhile to discuss such ideas in classrooms or seminars, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be discussed in every newspaper and chat show. Should we be sitting down for a serious conversation with Boko Haram in order to come to an understanding? No. Boko Haram has murdered some 30 thousand Nigerians. There’s nothing to discuss. Its members may be rehabilitatable, but its ideas are the ideas of murderers.

But you won’t find Boko Haram in a Copenhagen coffee shop or a Paris newspaper office. It’s not Boko Haram that keeps getting threatened and killed for trying to have a conversation.

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

Brilliant cartoon by Kevin Moore at The Nib – Parking Space Atheists.

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

More on Turkey’s Family and Social Policy Minister Ayşenur İslam via an article in Today’s Zaman last November.

An activist who was kicked out of the Women and Justice Summit organized by the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM) on Monday has said Erdoğan committed an unconstitutional act by saying men and women are not equal.

On the first day of the conference activist Fikriye Yılmaz was silenced and forcibly removed from the room by security at the request of Family and Social Policy Minister Ayşenur İslam after Yılmaz attempted to ask a question during a speech by the minister.

Yılmaz, a member of the We Will Stop the Murders of Women Platform, spoke with Today’s Zaman about her experience and the message she was trying to get across to the minister and to the public. Yılmaz said that last week when İslam was asked by a reporter how many women had been killed in Turkey, İslam responded that she did not know and referred the reporter to the minister of justice.

“It is very clear that they cannot even tolerate our questions. It is impossible for her to be ignorant of the number of women who have been killed. They do not want to know because they are aware that women are being killed because they are not enforcing the laws [that protect women]. They do not answer our questions because they do not want to admit this to the public,” Yılmaz said.

Why don’t they want to? Is it just because they’re lazy or too busy or out of funds? Or is it because they’re ideologically committed, as Islamists, to treating women as inferior and subordinate in every way, as Erdogan’s remarks suggest?

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also spoke at the conference and made controversial statements that have gained the attention of the international media. At the conference, which was organized to support female empowerment, the president said: “You cannot bring women and men into an equal position; this is against nature. You cannot subject a pregnant woman to the same working conditions as a man.”

The president continued: “You cannot make a mother who has to breastfeed her child equal to a man. … Our religion [Islam] has defined a position for women [in society]: motherhood. Some people can understand this, while others can’t. You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.”

Liar. Of course we “accept the concept of motherhood.” What we don’t accept is the claim that it defines us, the way Erdogan does there – “Our religion has defined a position for women: motherhood.” We don’t accept that it’s all we can do, and we don’t accept that we all have to do it.

The president’s comments contradict commonly accepted definitions of feminism, which generally characterize it as advocating social, political, legal and economic rights for women equal to those of men.

Yılmaz also commented on the president’s comments, saying: “He has no right to say this because he, as the president, has to act in accordance with the Constitution, and the Constitution states that men and women are equal. As long as he is the president, he cannot speak like this. It is a criminal offense. He has overstepped his boundaries.”

I wish the US Constitution stated that. But it doesn’t.

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

Speaking of people being murdered for terrible petty self-regarding narcissistic reasons – in Turkey 20-year-old Ozgecan Aslan was murdered for having the audacity to resist being raped.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVISTS in Turkey took to the streets yesterday in protest at the murder of a young woman after she resisted an alleged attempt to rape her, local media reported.

Hundreds of women gathered in Istanbul’s Taksim square chanting slogans such as “You will never walk alone!”.

The protesters also demanded that family and social policies minister Aysenur Islam, a woman, step down.

See if you can find someone whose name isn’t Submission.

On Friday, police discovered the burned body of 20-year-old Ozgecan Aslan in a riverbed in southern Turkey.

She had been missing since Wednesday when she was reported to have boarded a minibus to go home, the Hurriyet newspaper reported.

Via Facebook

Three suspects including the driver of the minibus were detained and are said to have admitted to having stabbed Aslan.

A motive for the alleged murder was not immediately clear but the private Dogan news agency reported that the driver attempted to rape Aslan after she was left alone in the minibus.

She resisted by spraying pepper gas at the driver who stabbed her to death, according to Dogan.

Because his wanting to rape her and his anger at being pepper sprayed mattered more than her life. His trivial selfish grabby wants, wants that involved the body of a separate person, mattered more to him than her entire life, to say nothing of the happiness of her family and friends.

The crime appears set to become a rallying cause for activists seeking to end violence against women in a country where hundreds of women are killed by their husbands every year.

In November, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stirred controversy when he declared that women were not equal to men.

Which is an ideology that helps to enable attitudes like that of the murderer of Ozgecan Aslan. If women are not equal to men maybe it doesn’t matter so much if men kill the occasional woman in a fit of temper.

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

About the Copenhagen shooter.

Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein has been widely named as the gunman who killed two people and wounded five at a cultural centre and synagogue in the Danish capital.

El-Hussein was not an immigrant. He was of Palestinian descent but his parents settled in Denmark before he was born. Like the gunmen in Paris, he turned against the country of his birth.

…

Classmates who spoke to the Ekstra Bladet newspaper (in Danish) remembered a loner with a hot temper who loved to discuss Islam and the Israel-Palestine conflict. He was not afraid to voice a hatred of Jews, said one.

So he was on the path to becoming a thoroughly terrible person, one with no inhibitions about wholesale hatred of groups of people.

But things took a much more serious turn in November 2013 when El-Hussein stabbed a 19-year-old man on a subway train. He evaded capture but was arrested by chance two months later in connection with a burglary,the Politiken newspaper reported (in Danish).

He escaped an attempted murder charge, convicted instead of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to two years in prison.

It was there, it seems, that El-Hussein lurched towards the radicalised youth that police suspect murdered two people on Saturday.

With “radicalized” in this context meaning someone who hates whole categories of people enough to kill specimens of the categories. That’s a very particular interpretation of the word “radical” – particular and not very accurate. I prefer “fascist” for that quality, myself.

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

In Dhaka today, a publisher’s stall at a book fair was shut down for displaying a biography of Mohammed.

Bangla Academy has shut down the Rodela Prokashani stall on the allegation of publishing and selling a translated book on Prophet Muhammad’s biography, which “hurts religious sentiment of people.”

Dr Jalal Ahmed, member secretary of the Amar Ekushey Book Fair, said: “The stall of Rodela Prokashani was shut down on Monday for publishing and selling a book [translated], Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad, which allegedly hurts people’s religious sentiments.”

“According to article 13.13 of Fair Regulations 2015, none is allowed to sell books at the fair that can hurt religious sentiments. The publication house breached the guidelines of the fair and it was banned accordingly.”

How can a book fair even exist under those rules? You can’t really call it a book fair if it has no books. Or I suppose you can call it that, but it’s damn silly.

The regulation is (if the reporting and translation are accurate) “none is allowed to sell books at the fair that can hurt religious sentiments.” That can hurt religious sentiments. That’s all books. Any book can hurt religious sentiments, especially when religious people have been so zealously coached to have their sentiments hurt on the slightest pretext.

The book, penned by the well-known Iranian writer Ali Dashti, hit the world market in 1985.

In the book, Dashti chooses reason over blind faith. He strongly denied the miracles ascribed to Muhammad by the Islamic tradition and rejected the Muslim view that the Quran is the word of God himself.

Instead, he favours thorough [analysis?] of all orthodox belief systems and argues that the Quran contains “nothing new in the sense of ideas not already expressed by others.”

Like thousands of other books.

Later, while talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Rodela Prokashani staff said that “Rodela is a progressive, free thought, and creative publication.”

“Rodela invites those writers who basically search for progressive, thoughtful, and research-based knowledge for its readers.”

Islamist political group Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh also protested against the publication and further demanded confiscation and banning of the book in the country.

“This book contains false, fabricated and misleading information about Islam, its prophet Hazrat Muhammad, and the Quran,” they said in a statement made by secretary general Junaid Babunagari of Hefajat-e-Islam Bangladesh.

Well there you go. It’s not really about not hurting religious sentiments, it’s about trying to appease fascist theocracy.

H/t Tasneem Khalil

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

Wow. More dreck from the Guardian. This time it’s not so much the “we must defend free speech but not really” brand of dreck as the making up their own facts brand. Let’s play Spot the Mistakes.

First two sentences of the piece:

The attacks were in different continents and on people of different faiths and of none, but in the North Carolina university town of Chapel Hill and the Danish capital, Copenhagen, it was freedom itself that was the intended target. On Tuesday, three young Muslim students were gunned down in their Chapel Hill flat, apparently by a neighbour, Craig Hicks, who claimed their faith was an affront to his atheistic principles.

Is that a mistake or deliberately deceptive wording? I don’t know. Anyway it makes it look as if Hicks explained his murder of the three student by saying “their faith was an affront to my atheistic principles.” I haven’t seen any reputable news sources that claim he said that, in fact I haven’t seen any that claim to know anything about what he’s said since turning himself in.

The Guardian seems to think it knows more than any journalistic outlets in the US know. It seems to think it knows that Craig Hicks killed his three neighbors because their religion was an affront to his atheistic principles. I don’t think the Guardian knows any such thing.

Then in the last paragraph:

The killing of the three Muslim students by a gunman whose Facebook page contained violent threats against all organised religion, including Islam, was initially described by local police as a dispute over a parking place.

Violent threats against all organised religion? I don’t think so. I looked at his Facebook page too, and it did make me very uneasy, it was full of very typical gnu atheist mockery and similar rhetoric, but violent threats? I don’t think so.

Nice job, Guardian.

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

Islamic State is reported to have killed 21 Egyptian Christians it was holding captive.

A video has emerged purportedly showing the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians who had been kidnapped by Islamic State (IS) in Libya.

The footage shows a group wearing orange overalls, being forced to the ground and then decapitated.

It was posted online by Libyan jihadists who say they are allied with IS.

It’s getting to be like living in an old myth, or in a wilderness full of bears. Or in Europe circa 1942.

The kidnapped Egyptian workers, all Coptic Christians, were seized from the coastal town of Sirte in eastern Libya, now under the control of Islamist groups.

On Friday, IS released pictures of the Egyptians, saying they had been kidnapped to avenge the fate of Muslim women “tortured and murdered by the Coptic church of Egypt”.

Egypt’s government has warned people not to travel to Libya, but many go there looking for work.

It’s not as if Copts are treated all that well in Egypt.

Moving south and east on the continent, we come to Nigeria.

A female suicide bomber has killed at least seven people at a crowded bus station in north-eastern Nigeria.

Police say more than 30 others were wounded in the city of Damaturu, capital of Yobe State.

No group has said it carried out the bombing but the jihadist group Boko Haram has previously launched attacks in the city.

At this rate Boko Haram and Islamic State will soon be able to join forces. Bears. The bears are winning.

Marcos Danladi, police commissioner of Yobe State, said Sunday’s attack took place at the Damaturu Central Motor Park.

According to reports, the female suicide bomber arrived in a vehicle and walked into a crowd outside a grocery store at the end of the terminal where she detonated her explosives.

Atta girl – walk into that crowd before you detonate.

A busy Sunday.

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

The Guardian is prompt with the “but we must guard against the understandable temptation to be provocative in the publication of these cartoons” crap. Defend free speech, it cries. But don’t be provocative about it.

Great advice, were it not for the fact that that’s exactly what these shooters are saying. Hugh Muir writes:

We are in perilous territory. Slaughter as political protest cannot be defended. Free speech as legal and moral pre-requisites in a free society must be defended. But there are also other obligations to be laid upon those who wish to live in peaceful, reasonably harmonious societies. Even after Paris, even after Denmark, we must guard against the understandable temptation to be provocative in the publication of these cartoons if the sole objective is to establish that we can do so. With rights to free speech come responsibilities.

Why? Why must we? It seems to me the very opposite is true. Publishing them because we can seems to me to be exactly what we should be doing. We should be doing that in solidarity with the people who can’t any more because they’ve been killed, and with the people who still can and do, while under threat – such as Lars Vilks and everyone at Charlie Hebdo and Kurt Westergaard and Author of Jesus and Mo and Tim Minchin and everyone. We should be doing that precisely to establish that we can. That’s a good reason to do it. We need to demonstrate that trying to silence people who make fun of religion fails to silence them because it prompts the rest of us to make fun of religion ALL THE MORE.

That seems to me the moral approach, but there is a practical issue here too. There is no negotiating with men with guns. If progress is to come, it will be via dialogue with the millions of faithful Muslims who would never think to murder but also abhor publication of these cartoons.

It hasn’t been shown that there are such millions. I don’t believe there are such millions. In any case, whether there are or not, people’s unreasonable abhorrences and taboos must not be imposed on all the world. Note I said unreasonable abhorrences and taboos. I don’t think newspapers should fill their pages with photos of shit and vomit and infected wounds and mangled corpses. But if any human institution needs to be wide open to criticism and mockery, it’s religion. Hugh Muir couldn’t be more wrong.

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

Haaretz says Copenhagen police also arrested a suspect last night.

Police said they shot and killed a suspect in the attack, and that another suspected accomplice had been arrested. At the same time, police raided the Copenhagen home of the terrorist and found a gun.

The Danish intelligence agency said investigators have identified the suspect and that he is someone who had been on the agency’s “radar.” He did not reveal his identity.

Danish media reported police also raided an internet café in the Norrebro neighborhood in the capital and arrested two people. It was not reported if the arrests were linked to the shootings.

…

Hours after the attack, Danish police shot and killed a man near Noerrebro train station, close to the sites of the attacks, who had fired at them first. The police said they assumed the man killed was the gunman responsible for both shooting in Copenhagen.

“We assume that it’s the same culprit behind both incidents, and we also assume that the culprit that was shot by the police task force on Norreport station is the person behind both of these assassinations,” Chief police inspector Torben Molgaard Jensen told reporters.

Investigator Joergen Skov said the shooter was confronted by police as he returned to an address that they were keeping under surveillance. Investigators described him as 25 to 30 years old with an athletic build and carrying a black automatic weapon. They released a blurred photograph of the suspect wearing dark clothes and a scarf covering part of his face.

So there is at least one suspected accomplice alive and in custody.

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

As I’m sure you already know, the Copenhagen police tracked the shootings suspect to where he lived, there was gunfire, he was killed. No interviews, again. No doubt that was his intention, again.

The BBC account:

Police say they killed the man in the Norrebro district after he opened fire on them.

…

Police say video surveillance suggested the same man carried out both attacks. They do not believe any other people were involved.

…

Officials said the gunman fled by car. A black Volkswagen Polo was found abandoned a short distance away.

Police said the gunman then called a taxi to take him home.

They used information from the taxi driver to identify the address, near the railway station in Norrebro. They released photos showing the alleged attacker wearing a purple balaclava and thick puffer jacket.

He called a taxi. That’s not the smartest move I can think of.

Hours later, a gunman opened fire outside a synagogue in Krystalgade street, about 5km from the scene of the first attack, killing a Jewish man and wounding two police officers.

The victim was named as Dan Uzan, 37. He had been on security duty while a bat mitzvah ceremony was taking place inside the synagogue.

So he got a taxi home, had some lunch, watched the news to see his own exploits reported, put on a clean shirt, and went back out to shoot some more.

Early on Sunday, police said they had been keeping the Norrebro address under observation, waiting for the occupant to return.

When the man appeared, he saw the officers, pulled out a gun and opened fire, police said. They returned fire and shot him dead.

Martyrdom achieved.

Then we get “analysis” from Malcolm Brabant.

It was always a case of not if but when. What’s surprising is that it has taken this long for Denmark to be scarred by a fatal terror attack.

In September it will be 10 years since the Jyllands Posten newspaper inflamed the Muslim world with the publication of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, including one of him with a bomb in his turban.

Well that’s some god damn incompetent inaccurate “analysis” – it doesn’t even get the facts right, let alone the part about accusing Jyllands Posten of “inflaming” and the part about assuming all Muslims were “inflamed” as one. What a load of shit from a respected news source.

It wasn’t JP that “inflamed” a minority of Muslims, it was a group of Danish imams who did that. They did it on purpose with malice aforethought, months after the Motoons were published.

How nice, and how responsible, of the BBC to publish a factually untrue version of what happened, one that simply plays into precisely the misbegotten rage behind this campaign to murder all the cartoonists.

By “nice” I of course mean malevolent, and by “responsible” I mean how grotesquely reckless with the lives of people it should consider colleagues and allies.

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

Update: 

One dead at the synagogue.

A shooting near a synagogue in Copenhagen has left one person dead and two injured, hours after a deadly attack at a cafe in the city.

In the second shooting one person died after being shot in the head, and two police officers were wounded. The attacker is believed to have fled.

More on the shootings at the Copenhagen synagogue, because the BBC has updated its report.

The second shooting took place on Krystalgade street.

“We cannot say anything about the condition of the injured yet,” the Danish police were were quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

“The perpetrator fled on foot,” they added.

…

Police launched a massive manhunt after the first shooting.

They released photographs showing the alleged attacker apparently wearing a purple balaclava and thick puffer jacket.

The three injured were police officers.

For now, police have not linked the two attacks, the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant reports from Copenhagen.

But he says that the Danish capital has been abuzz with sirens and helicopters, amid fears that other attacks could be imminent.

The police have warned residents that it is not safe to be in the city centre.

It’s fucking unreal.

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

Now in case you’re somewhat exhausted by the horrific news of today – I know I am – here’s a little change of pace. A win for the Men’s Rights movement, perhaps, or just an example of domestic harmony restored.

A mum battered and slashed to within an inch of her life by her jealous ex-fiance has been threatened with jail if she refuses to write to him in prison.

Horrified Natalie Allman, 29, has been ordered by a judge to send letters three times a year to brutal Jason Hughes who tortured her for seven hours in front of their twin sons.

Under parental rights laws, Natalie is being forced to send updates on the five-year-olds along with photos.

The boys were just two when they saw their father batter their mum with his weight-lifting dumbbells, slash her throat with an Army knife and try to ­suffocate her with a pillow.

Ok but they’re still his kids, right, so of course the other parent should keep him updated on what they’re doing. The fact that he nearly killed her in front of them is neither here nor there.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and he was kneeling over me, beating me repeatedly in the face.

“At first I thought he was punching me and then I realised he was using his weights.

“He was smashing them into my face over and over. There was blood everywhere but he didn’t stop.

“It was midnight and then the next thing I knew I was coming round and it was 3am. I don’t know whether I fell asleep or was knocked unconscious.”

Probably the latter. I don’t think you’d just fall peacefully asleep if your face were all punched to a pulp.

After that he tied her up and cut her throat.

Hughes refused to call an ambulance, but at 7am Natalie managed to dial 999 herself. When officers arrived, the couple’s two-year-old twins, Ethan and Timmy, were in bed with their mother and covered in her blood.

But that was then. He was sentenced to nine years in prison, and now he wants to be all connected up with his little boys again. So they were covered in her blood, so what!

The negotiated terms stated that she would have to send letters three times a year – at Easter, September and December.

The order requires that the letters include “an update regarding the ­children’s general progress, both at nursery/school and socially, to include details of their health and emotional ­development”.

The letters must also include an “update photograph of each child no smaller than 6 inches by 4 inches”.

Hughes, 42, is also allowed to send birthday cards, Christmas cards and a letter at the start of each school year. Yet most shocking of all is the threat of legal repercussions for Natalie if she fails to complete the gruelling task of writing the letters three times a year.

He could be out of prison in a year. She’s afraid he’ll find her because of the letters.

Reunions are so sweet and touching.

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