Wow – Ensaf Haidar posted something amazing an hour ago.

Today from Pakistan! ‪#‎FreeRaif‬

Pakistan! That takes guts. That picture makes me tear up.

Beautiful beautiful people.

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

Here’s a bit of weirdness. Tara McKelvey at the BBC reports on something labeled an “extremism summit” at the White House yesterday…without ever explaining what it was actually about. Well it was about “violent extremism”…but what is meant by that? She never says. You can tell what it’s about if you already know some things, but it’s utterly bizarre that the BBC is so exceedingly coy about it. I’m tempted to convene a summit on Extremist Evasiveness.

A summit at the White House to counter violent extremism has been criticised for being poorly organised and hasty. Will it be able to achieve anything, whether substantial or superficial?

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, spoke in halting English at the White House summit on Wednesday – though her message was forthright.

“When we are together, we are most strong,” she told police officers, FBI agents, European mayors and others gathered in a windowless auditorium for a conference on countering violent extremism, a three-day event held this week in Washington.

Oooh, violent extremism, what’s that, a naïve reader might wonder. Well a naïve reader will never find out by reading the article, no matter how closely or repeatedly. It’s just more of the same.

Extremists killed 17 people in attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January.

Ms Hidalgo joined a unity march on the streets of Paris a few days later. She walked with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel – and more than a million others.

There’s the tipoff. Oh that “violent extremism.” But then since it is in fact a particular kind of “violent extremism” with particular hates and particular goals and a particular ideology, what the HELL is the point of concealing all that? What is the point of giving it a generic and fundamentally empty label when an informative one exists? Imagine a White House summit on Nazism convened in 1938 (if only they had…) that was reported as being about “violent extremism” without mentioning Nazism. What would have been the use of that?

Obama wasn’t at the Paris march against “violent extremism” and the administration is worried about the criticisms of his failure to appear.

US officials seemed sensitive about the criticism. On the day of the march, Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about their plans to host a summit.

The forum, according to White House officials, was designed to help “prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalising, recruiting or inspiring individuals”.

Radicalizing into what? Recruiting to what? Inspiring to what? These violent extremists and their supporters don’t just go up to people and urge them to join the movement for “violent extremism” do they? Of course they fucking don’t.

Even those who are passionate about the goals of the summit – combating violent extremism – wonder about the optics – a term the Washington political class use to describe how an event is perceived.

One participant, a former State Department official, says there isn’t enough time to coordinate ministers for public appearances – one of the main goals for this kind of event.

Officials from France, Belgium, the UK, and other countries are attending. Mr Obama is expected to address them at the State Department on Thursday.

Whether hastily pulled together or carefully orchestrated, the summit to counter violent extremism is timely.

Timely! But mysterious. What oh what could all this violent extremism be in aid of? What’s its platform? What does it want? What vision of a better world is its goal? Won’t someone please tell us?

Speaking at the White House summit, a Belgian mayor, Hans Bonte, describes people from his city, Vilvoorde, who have joined extremist groups in Iraq and Syria.

“They are seen in awful video movies,” he says.

He believes dozens more people are now preparing to leave Belgium to join the extremist groups.

“We are facing a global problem,” Mr Bonte says. “But we have to act locally.”

Regardless of the politics – and the optics – of the summit, he and the others are facing the difficult task of trying to stop acts of violence. However flawed, the summit is better than nothing.

But is the reporting?

Not this reporting, that’s for sure. This reporting might as well be nothing. Godalmighty McKelvey even spells it out about the “extremist groups in Iraq and Syria” and the “awful videos” and people leaving Belgium to join “the extremist groups” but still doesn’t say the word. The word is never said throughout the article. Not once.

Islamist. The “violent extremist” groups are Islamist groups. “Violent extremist” is code for Islamist. But why does the BBC think it’s required to talk in code?

This is just plan bad reporting, reporting so bad that it borders on mendacious. The BBC ought to be better than this. It’s one of the chief sources of global news, and millions of people around the globe – most of them Muslims – are terrorized and victimized by Islamist groups. The BBC should be reporting honestly on the subject.

[Note: I’m pretty sure this is a BBC matter, not an individual reporter matter. I don’t think McKelvey decided for herself to report the story this way; I think it’s a house rule.]

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

Originally a comment by thephilosophicalprimate on The demarcation problem.

I think the difference between “waspish” criticism and just being “mean shits” is easier to articulate than you suggest, Ophelia. What you’re talking about is rooted in this commonly recognized tension: Thoughtful people believe and say, for good reasons, that hostility and contempt aimed at PEOPLE is bad. However, some IDEAS are clearly deserving of hostility and contempt, and nothing but. The difficulty arises because it’s difficult, perhaps even impossible, to keep the hostility and contempt for the bad ideas entirely separate from the people, because it’s the people who embrace the contemptible ideas.

But which comes first, and why, does matter. Criticizing people for having bad ideas is perfectly reasonable and respects their fundamental humanity; in effect, such criticism asks others to be better people by chiding them for ideas which are bad but *which they can change*. Recognizing someone’s humanity means, ultimately, recognizing their autonomy and consequently their responsibility: You have this belief, advocate this position, and take these actions — and I argue that they are horrible beliefs and positions and actions, and that such beliefs and behaviors make you a bad person. My criticism respects your humanity by holding you accountable for your choices, and is consistent with encouraging you to make better choices and thereby become a better person.

Criticizing people for who they are — attacking their character and identity rather than their beliefs and actions, especially when the attack is on a part of their identity that is not chosen or subject to change (gender identity, able-bodiedness, race, etc.) — does not show the same respect for humanity. Generally speaking, such criticism places ideas in a secondary role: Instead of saying that you are bad because and only to the extent that you have bad ideas and engage in bad behavior, such criticism declares that only a person who is fundamentally bad would embrace such a bad idea or behave in such a way. Such criticism bears no element of encouraging or recognizing the possibility of change in it, and shows no respect for the humanity of the one criticized.

Thus, what separates a sharp and witty critic like Jon Stewart from some asshole who thinks he’s witty but is actually just a mean shit — Rush Limbaugh is a paradigm case — is the recognition of a fellow human’s humanity even when one thinks that fellow human is being a complete shit and has horrible beliefs that motivate horrible behavior. For example, Stewart will criticize Faux News broadcasters by eviscerating their bad ideas and actions — their hypocrisy, self-contradiction, blatant denial of reality, systematic deceit of the public, lack of journalistic integrity, and so on. But his criticism consistently puts the priority on the ideas: you are bad people because you have and promote bad ideas, and by implication you would be better people if you had and promoted better ideas. For the perfect counter example, Rush Limbaugh’s criticism of Sandra Fluke for testifying about the mandate for insurance to fund birth control under the Affordable Care Act was to label her a slut and generally belittle her with every misogynist insult he could spit into his microphone: He offered no real criticism of the ideas Fluke advocated, and he dismissed the idea of birth control subsidies as so obviously wrong-headed that they are something only a bad person would ever argue for in the first place — a filthy slut like Fluke.

Now, those are extreme opposite ends of a spectrum for illustrative purposes, but I think the underlying distinction is basically right: We can and should criticize people for bad ideas and bad behavior, and that can and should be uncompromising and even cutting when necessary, but such criticism is ultimately respectful of the humanity of others because it implies that they can become better people through embracing better ideas and behaviors. But attacking people for their identity rather than their ideas — especially for elements of their identity that they cannot change or choose — or suggesting in any way that their ideas spring from or should be judged according to their identity rather than the other way around, is fundamentally dehumanizing because it denies the very possibility of choice and improvement.

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

The New York Times has a feature by Stephanie Sinclair on child marriage in Guatemala.

In Guatemala, the legal age of marriage is 14 with parental consent, but in Petén, in the northern part of the country, the law seems to be more of a suggestion. Underage brides are everywhere. They parade endlessly through Petén’s hospital in San Benito, seeking medical care. Most have traveled from the villages along the mud-soaked roads that flow out in all directions.

…the physically immature and psychologically unready young mothers were prone to complications during childbirth, which often took place at home. For girls in Petén villages, the journey to competent care could take hours and the consequences dire. According to the International Health Alliance, Petén has the highest rate of maternal mortality in Guatemala at 172 deaths for every 100,000 births. The infant mortality is also high at 40 deaths for every 1,000 births.

There are photos, and a short film. It’s sad, depressing, hopeless. Therefore you should look at the pictures, and read the article, and watch the film.

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

She knows what’s best for the health of her family, and it’s magical thinking. Reductress:

I’m a mom, a wife, a doula, an urban chicken farmer, a life coach, an extended breast-feeder, a weaver, a kombucha brewer, a yogini, and a Therapeutic Healing Touch practitioner. But most importantly, I’m a mom. And as a mom, I know what’s best for the health of my family: magical thinking.

I have a question. What are her shoes made of? I feel that this is decisive.

She’s not stupid. She’s had tertiary education. She understand how science works.

Science is great. It’s done a lot of good for the world, to be sure. It’s just not right for me or my family.

We have opted for a more controversial but totally natural method called “Please No Bad.”

I like it. I think I’ll adopt it.

She understand how vaccines work, too.

I understand that vaccines bolster vulnerable immune systems by stimulating your body’s natural defenses against disease without actually giving you the disease. I understand that vaccines are safe and effective, and that herd immunity is the best way we have to ensure that young or immunocompromised children don’t get sick and die from terrible infectious diseases that, until relatively recently, were commonplace. I get it. And if you want to live and die by the wholly effective, risk-free, and affordable breakthroughs that Western medicine has produced, that’s fine. That’s your right.

But don’t expect me to come along on that joyride of lies.

What’s her plan? Toxins. It’s all about toxins.

I believe that toxins are in everything, and even though I can’t exactly articulate what these toxins are or where they come from or where they live in my body or what they’re doing that’s apparently threatening my life, I know they’re there. And as a mother, you can be damned sure I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that these imaginary toxins don’t get into the pure white light embodiment of the physical plane occupied by my nine beautiful children. My husband and I practiced magical thinking as a form of birth control, and we have had sex way more than nine times. How’s that for proof?

Read on.

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

I don’t see the logic.

Raw Story shares a plan to fix the rape problem by MRA Roosh Vörek.

Anything to do with not raping, you ask brightly? No, not at all; don’t be silly.

Here’s the thing. He saw women get drunk and then have sex with someone, and then when sober, go all angsty and get the guy thrown in jail or out of school. It’s that easy; who knew? But he says he saw it, so it must be true.

“By attempting to teach men not to rape, what we have actually done is teach women not to care about being raped, not to protect themselves from easily preventable acts, and not to take responsibility for their actions.”

“I thought about this problem and am sure I have the solution: make rape legal if done on private property,” he continued. “I propose that we make the violent taking of a woman not punishable by law when done off public grounds.”

Vörek predicted that after rape was legalized, a woman would learn to “protect her body in the same manner that she protects her purse and smartphone.”

That’s the logic I don’t get. So if murder were legalized, would we all learn to protect our bodies the way we protect our phones, so that murder stopped? Except wait, phones still get stolen, and so do purses. Also stealing them hasn’t been legalized, yet they still get stolen. Why would legalizing rape cause it to stop happening?

Especially since it’s already mostly legalized in practice, given the tiny percentage of rapes that ever get successfully prosecuted. So, no, I can’t begin to see how that could possibly work.

“Such a change will provide a mature jolt to American women who have been babied for too long, who are protected and coddled as if they have no agency or intellect of their own,” he asserted. “Let’s make rape legal. Less women will be raped because they won’t voluntarily drug themselves with booze and follow a strange man into a bedroom, and less men will be unfairly jailed for what was anything but a maniacal alley rape.”

Also? When are we going to see babies on the menu at five star restaurants? When will we finally realize it’s time to start setting fire to people when the local polo club wins a game?

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

Indignation continues about some atheists wondering about possible connections between the more combative style of atheism and the reason[s] Craig Hicks lost his temper. (I don’t know he lost his temper, but I’m assuming he did since he turned himself in to the police so quickly. That seems incompatible with murdering in cold blood, because why would you do that? If he’d done it in cold blood, planning it in advance, he would have known the next step was turning himself in – so he would have cold-bloodedly decided not to do it at all. Turning himself in implies regret, in other words, which implies bad impulse control, i.e. loss of temper.)

I sort of get the indignation, because atheists are a demonized group anyway (as are Muslims, oh the ironies), and because the mainstream media are all too ready to bash us without our help.

But, at the same time, I have learned way more thoroughly than I ever wanted to, over the past 3.5 years, that movement atheism has lots of room for mean shits, and mean shits flourish there. And then, I like to write waspishly myself, and if you put a heavy hand on my shoulder and demanded that I explain to you where the boundary is between “waspish” and “mean shits” I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Or, I don’t know, I guess I would, but it would take a lot of hemming and hawing and we’d both be bored to death before I succeeded in really explaining.

Maybe the real point is that this isn’t an atheist problem but a mean shit problem – much like the proudly racist “football fans” on the Paris metro, perhaps – and that atheism gives mean shits an exciting new base from which to share their mean shit skills.

The mean shittery is prior, and the atheism is a medium for expressing it, perhaps.

I don’t have a conclusion. It’s not as if I want waspishness to cease; I absolutely don’t. But…there’s Jon Stewart and Kate Smurthwaite and the like on the one hand, and there’s everyone else on the other. There’s talent, and there’s the absence of talent. People who are waspish or mean shits without talent…well they’re just mean shits, aren’t they.

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

How appropriate, how timely, how right in every way – Jesus and Mo the Book is now available in Danish.

Jesus and og Mo

Jesus og Mo på dansk

De bedste striber udkommer på dansk fredag den 20. februar.

Overskuddet går til at støtte kampen for ytringsfrihed.

Hver uge i 10 år har den anonyme tegner bag ”Jesus and Mo” lagt en ny stribe ud på sin hjemmeside, og i den tid er tegneserien blevet kult i brede kredse i Storbritannien. Nu kommer de bedste på dansk.

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

Good god. Chelsea fans (fans of the football club of that name) are caught on video on the Paris Métro pushing a black man off the train and chanting “we are racist and that’s the way we like it.”

The jaw drops. The eyes bug out. What are they thinking? What is wrong with them? What is it about being a Chelsea fan that requires or enables this? Football is hardly a lily-white sport, happily, so…what??

Police are looking at the video in hopes of identifying the perps.

The footage was obtained by the Guardian, which reported that the incident had happened at Richelieu-Drouot station in the centre of the French capital on Tuesday evening.

British expatriate Paul Nolan, who filmed the incident on his phone, told the BBC it had been an “ugly scene” and “very aggressive”.

In a statement, Chelsea condemned the behaviour as “abhorrent” and said the fans’ actions had “no place in football or society”.

…

English football’s governing body, the Football Association, said it “fully supports Chelsea’s position in seeking to ban any of the club’s season-ticket holders or members who face criminal action in relation to these abhorrent scenes”.

Sepp Blatter, president of world football’s governing body Fifa, tweetedthat there was “no place for racism in football”.

Lord Ouseley, chairman of Kick It Out, which campaigns against racism in football, said the fact the incident involved an assault on the man was “even more shocking”.

The Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) said the overwhelming majority of Chelsea fans would be “disgusted” by the incident.

Perhaps it’s just the aggression of football fandom, channeled into an irrelevant form of aggression outside the stadium.

Paul Canoville – the first black footballer to play for Chelsea – told the BBC he was saddened by what had happened.

“For me as a black player, and other black players, it would hurt, most definitely.

“It is haunting. It wasn’t nice seeing it, hearing it, at all,” he said.

Frank Sinclair, a black footballer who played for Chelsea more than 150 times, said the men in the video had nothing to do with his former club.

“They tend to move from club to club, they drift and they look at an opportunity where they might have got tickets on the black market, decided to go to this game to cause problems,” he said.

“Certainly, they’re not represented by Chelsea Football Club.”

Ah – if that’s right it’s the aggression that comes first, and the match is just a place to put it to work. Like real-life trolls.

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

Here’s a piece of good news for a change – Malawi has said no to child marriage.

Malawi has passed a law banning child marriage, raising the minimum age to 18 in a country where half of girls end up as child brides.

Women rights campaigners hailed the move as “a great day for Malawian girls” and said the law would help boost development in one of the world’s poorest countries.

But they warned Malawi would not end child marriage without concerted efforts to tackle poverty and end harmful traditional practices like early sexual initiations.

The law is an important part though.

Malawi has one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage. Half of girls wed before their 18th birthday and nearly one in eight is married by 15.

Early marriage not only deprives girls of education and opportunities, but also increases the risk of death or serious childbirth injuries if they have babies before their bodies are ready. Child brides are also at greater risk of domestic and sexual violence.

And they’re less able to protect their children, and to teach them, and generally to be a parent to them.

Child marriage is deeply entrenched in Malawi’s society partly because of a belief that a girl should marry as early as possible to maximize her fertility.

Because that’s all women are: machines for making babies.

Brussels Mughogho, Malawi country director of development charity EveryChild, said poverty pushed some families to marry off young daughters in exchange for a dowry payment or so that they had one less mouth to feed.

Mughogho said it was also vital to work with traditional leaders to end early sexual initiations which fuel child marriage.

In parts of Malawi, when a girl reaches puberty she may receive a night-time visit from an older man – known as “a hyena” – who has sex with girls to prepare them for marriage.

“There are so many driving factors behind child marriage,” Mughogho said. “This is a very important step that we’ve taken, but child marriage will never end with legal instruments alone.”

Good luck, Malawi. You’ve taken a crucial first step; well done.

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

But David Futrelle didn’t mess around with just one stupid meme. David Futrelle got together a whole bunch of stupid memes to admire.

Ian Ironwood, as he calls himself, is the proprietor of the blog The Red Pill Room. He’s also a big fan of retro art.  Alas, he has attempted to combine these two interests, producing a series of baffling “memes” in which he pastes little manosophere lessons on top of artwork borrowed from postwar American magazines and paperbacks.

It’s hard to pick a favorite but I’ll go with this one, partly because it’s so wordy, which is kind of not the point of memes.

By…tinkering with their sodas?

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

Lucky me, I just saw a meme on Facebook, with an approving comment.

How lucky for people who hate feminism that ISIS and Boko Haram exist.

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

Lars Vilks has indeed gone into hiding now, which is tragic. I’m relieved, though, that he says it’s probably temporary.

Lars Vilks, the controversial cartoonist who escaped unhurt from the café hosting the debate, told Channel 4 News he is now in hiding.

“I am at a secret place, totally unknown. I can’t give you countries or one place. I can only just say that I will remain here until we have a more clear picture of how things are looking and hopefully I will go back into a bit more normal routines within a few days or a week or so.”

By the way Channel 4 News? He’s not really “controversial” – not to reasonable people he’s not.

“I have become some sort of symbol because I’m pointed out as a kind of target and that target is then attacked. But there is this kind of symbol that is chosen for this purpose and the idea about freedom of speech or the attack on it.”

Exactly. It’s not that he is himself especially “controversial”; it’s that a small number of people have singled him out for the label and all that goes with it. We can’t let them set the terms of the discussion. They’re the wrong people to do it. They don’t think well, and they don’t have the interests of human beings in mind.

The Swedish artist produced a series of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in 2007, but says he feels no guilt after one man was killed in the attack on Saturday.

“We have a murder who was [in] cold blood sinking another person. And that’s the deed. That is his reason.

“It would be like saying that when he attacked the Jews: if they were not in Copenhagen then we wouldn’t have the problem. It’s a kind of stupid logic.”

It is indeed. He did nothing wrong. Nothing. No, not a little tiny bit wrong; not wrong at all. Jews did nothing wrong by living in Copenhagen and going to a synagogue, and Lars did nothing wrong by drawing cartoons.

I hope he can get back to mostly-normal life very soon.

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

The BBC is still at it. This must be a deliberate policy, not mere laziness or habit.

It’s at it in a story on what the Danish domestic intelligence agency knew about El-Hussein. Prison officials told them he was at risk of being radicalized. I would guess they are told that about a lot of people, and can’t closely monitor all of them.

Danish intelligence chief Jens Madsen acknowledged that El-Hussein had been “on the radar” of his services.

Mr Madsen said investigators were working on the theory that he could have been inspired by the shootings in Paris last month.

Lars Vilks told AFP news agency that police “did not step up security on Saturday. It was the same as we had previously”, confirming that he had since gone into hiding.

The cartoonist stoked controversy in 2007 by drawing pictures of the Prophet Muhammad dressed as a dog and has been under police protection since 2010.

There they are, at it again – firmly blaming Lars Vilks for drawing a cartoon that in just about any other context would be simply a cartoon, like any other. There they are again, dishonestly and damagingly saying that Lars Vilks “stoked controversy” when he simply drew a cartoon.

They really really really need to stop doing that.

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

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.)