It’s not good news.

A UN humanitarian official has warned against the risk of genocide in Central African Republic, where an ethnic conflict has caused over 1,000 deaths and left thousands uprooted.

“It has all the elements that we have seen elsewhere, in places like Rwanda and Bosnia. The elements are there, the seeds are there, for a genocide. There’s no question about that,” John Ging, director of operations for the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told a news conference in Geneva.

Ging described the situation in CAR as a “mega-crisis” where humanitarian needs are urged for thousands of displaced people.

The two groups that hate each other are Muslims and Christians.

Whatever. Serbs and Bosnians; Hutus and Tutsis; Hindus and Muslims; Thises and Thatses.

Don’t.

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

From September 2008, a New York Times editorial on libel tourism and Khalid bin Mahfouz’s lawsuit against Rachel Ehrenfeld.

When Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” she assumed she would be protected by the First Amendment. She was, in the United States. But a wealthy Saudi businessman she accused in the book of being a funder of terrorism, Khalid bin Mahfouz, sued in Britain, where the libel laws are heavily weighted against journalists, and won a sizable amount of money.

The lawsuit is a case of what legal experts are calling “libel tourism.” Ms. Ehrenfeld is an American, and “Funding Evil” was never published in Britain. But at least 23 copies of the book were sold online, opening the door for the lawsuit. When Ms. Ehrenfeld decided not to defend the suit in Britain, Mr. bin Mahfouz won a default judgment and is now free to sue to collect in the United States.

And guess what that does. It makes other writers very cautious.

Most writers, particularly those who concern themselves with arcane subjects like terrorism financing, are not wealthy. The prospect of a deep-pocketed plaintiff coming after them in court can be frightening. Even if the lawsuit fails, the cost and effort involved in defending against it can be considerable.

The result is what lawyers call a “chilling effect” — authors and publishers may avoid taking on some subjects, or challenging powerful interests. That has already been happening in Britain. Craig Unger’s “House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties” was a best seller in the United States. But its British publisher canceled plans to publish the book, reportedly out of fear of being sued. (A smaller publisher later released it.)

Ms. Ehrenfeld says that even in the United States, writers and publishers have been backing away from books about terrorism financing — particularly about the Saudi connection — out of fear of being sued. It is hard to know if other books are not being written out of fear of lawsuits — that is the essence of the chilling effect.

Interesting, isn’t it, given that Saudi Arabia already gets Special Treatment because of that sticky black liquid they have so much of and because of their putative help in the world’s quarrel with jihadists. Combine that with fear of lawsuits and you get an untouchable theocracy that is hellish for women and foreign workers.

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

Because it came up, I thought I might as well take a look back at those grotesque libel cases from the recent past.

One is the suit against Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2006), by J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins. Collins wrote it up at History News Network.

On April 3, 2007 Kevin Taylor, Intellectual Property Manager for the Cambridge University Press (CUP), contacted Millard Burr and myself that the solicitors for Shaykh Khalid bin Mahfouz, Kendall Freeman, had informed CUP of eleven “allegations of defamation” in our book Alms for Jihad: Charities and Terrorism in the Islamic World and requested a response. 

They sent a response, seventeen pages worth, but CUP considered it not good enough and caved completely.

On May 9, 2007 CUP agreed to virtually all of the Shaykh’s demands to stop sale of the book, destroy all “existing copies,” prepare a letter of apology, and make a “payment to charity” for damages and contribute to legal costs. After further negotiations the press also agreed, on June 20, 2007, to request 280 libraries around the world to withdraw the book or insert an erratum slip. During these three months of negotiations Millard and I had naively assumed that, as authors, we were automatically a party to any settlement but were now informed we “are out of jurisdiction” so that CUP had to ask “whether or not they [the authors] wish to join in any settlement with your client [Mahfouz].” On 30 July 2007 Mr. Justice Eady in the London High Court accepted the abject surrender of CUP which promptly pulped 2,340 existing copies of Alms for Jihad, sent letters to the relevant libraries to do the same or insert an errata sheet, issued a public apology, and paid costs and damages.

And according to Collins they did that not because the case had merit but because it would be too difficult and expensive to fight it in the English courts.

Millard Burr and I had adamantly refused to be a party to the humiliating capitulation by CUP and were not about to renounce what we had written. Alms for Jihad had been meticulously researched, our interpretations judicious, our conclusions made in good faith on the available evidence. It is a very detailed analysis of the global reach of Islamic, mostly Saudi, charities to support the spread of fundamental Islam and the Islamist state by any means necessary. When writing Alms for Jihad we identified specific persons, methods, money, how it was laundered, and for what purpose substantiated by over 1,000 references. I had previously warned the editor at CUP, Marigold Acland, that some of this material could prove contentious, and in March 2005 legal advisers for CUP spent a month vetting the book before going into production and finally its publication in March 2006. We were careful when writing Alms for Jihad not to state explicitly that Shaykh Mahfouz was funding terrorism but the overwhelming real and circumstantial evidence presented implicitly could lead the reader to no other conclusion.

So that’s that bit of history, only seven years ago.

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

Ashley Miller is getting legal threats, from someone who says “From this point forward our attorney will be the only contact” and then promptly sends another email. The threats look very empty, but to be polite I will be careful not to cast aspersions on the enterprise in question. I won’t make any effort not to laugh, though.

The enterprise in question is called Cinematic Appraisals. I’d never heard of it before and now I have, so I hope they’re thanking Ashley for the free advertising.

Cinematic Appraisals has Science. It has a page about the Science, complete with a photo of Science In Action.

Cinematic Appraisals’ patent-pending Mind Science Method is based on neuroscientific research conducted over the last 40 years. The Mind Science Method measures neurobiological triggers and reactions, assigning a proven value for each level.

It’s long been known that moviegoers psychologically fall into a state of “suspended disbelief” when watching stories play out on film, which is just the beginning of what goes on in the psyche and the body during film watching. Viewers’ physiological responses also fluctuate depending upon their level of involvement with the story and action. While watching something highly stimulating, the human body releases a host of limbic chemical responses. The dose of chemicals released is proportionate to the level of emotional stimuli, creating lasting emotions.

In other words, when the protagonist runs, the connected viewer’s heart rate will increase. When the protagonist holds his breath, so does the connected viewer. This state has been compared to the state of partial hypnosis—a state normally only achieved when dreaming.

The Mind Science Method gauges this degree of connection with the material using our unique patented neurobiological algorithms. This allows the producer to tell when the screenplay produces this hypnotic-like state—and when it does not. This allows a producer to reverse-engineer the screenplay to create one audiences will love, before going through the expense of production.

They should branch out and do that with everything – poetry, novels, paintings, sculpture, ballet, hockey – everything.

More free advertising.

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

Originally a comment by mudpuddles on You can’t say that?

There have been a number of cases here in Ireland where politicians and other high-profile people (high-profile here, not necessarily anywhere else) have successfully sued individual broadcasters and / or their programmes or hosting company (which has in the past included RTE) over allegedly libelous or defamatory statements or programme content. A number of those cases have been valid, but some have been nothing short of bullying tactics aimed at silencing dissent or criticism. Most have succeeded. In one famous case from 4 or 5 years ago, the then-Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) threatened legal action after an art gallery hung two paintings depicting a caricature of him in a state of undress (in kind of a “the emperor has no clothes” concept). The art was removed. What’s worse, he also threatened legal action against RTE which included a piece about the art in its news programmes. Bizarrely, RTE issued an on-air apology to him on the news the following day.

As a result, there is an utterly ridiculous terror of libel, and way over the top efforts by RTE and other media (notably Today FM and the RTE radio outlets) to backpeddle and apologise profusely whenever any guest or interviewee says anything which might, at even the wildest stretch of the imagination, be considered to leave an opening for a lawsuit. It matters not whether any statement is backed up by rock solid evidence (such as is the case with the writings of John Waters, a disgusting bigot, and with the public statements and actions of the Iona Institute).

So RTE censoring a recorded interview, which has already gone out live, is not a shock. Its just indicative of the broader problem of cowardice and complacency within the media here, and a symptom of the cosy relationship that journalists and media organisations like to foster with the powers that be.

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

I saw someone on Twitter complaining about feminists complaining about Peta and its use of the female body yet again so I decided to be one of those feminists complaining about Peta and its use of the female body yet again. So I looked it up: what is it this time?

This time it’s women wearing bikinis made of lettuce (actually made of cloth but with lettuce or cabbage stuck onto the cloth). It’s women wearing lettuce bikinis in Minneapolis during the polar vortex.

So there you go: I’m complaining about it.

If you type “peta women lettuce” into Google images you get an astonishing quantity of images.

If you type “peta women” into Google images you also get an astonishing quantity of images.

Women as things to be deployed for advertising purposes. Yeah. It wasn’t cute when Madison Avenue did it and it’s not cute now. It’s not made cute by “irony” or “transgression” or hipster misogyny or any of the rest of the bullshit.

Yet again.

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

Now that’s a really horrifying use of “homeopathy” – that haha medical “treatment” that takes care to wash away every trace of the active ingredient.

It’s insulting on top of recklessly endangering, charging $15.99 for a tiny amount of water. But the reckless endangerment is the horrifying part. Asthma can kill! How can a “spray” with no active ingredient offer any kind of relief, temporary or otherwise, for asthma symptoms? It’s not going to shrink the swollen inflamed airways, so what relief can it offer?

It’s criminal.

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

The BBC reports that 27 Nobel laureates have written an open letter to Putin about his disgusting law against “homosexual propaganda.”

Leading figures including novelist JM Coetzee signed the letter, devised by Sir Ian and chemist Sir Harry Kroto and given to The Independent.

I heard this story on the World Service last night, including Harry Kroto reading from the letter. That was exciting, because I’ve shared a dinner table with Harry Kroto. He was at CFI’s Moving Secularism Forward conference in Orlando two years ago – and gave a very exciting and thrilling talk.

Sir Harry Kroto said he had “enjoyed the tremendous friendship of Russian scientists” during numerous visits, but had seriously considered cancelling his next trip, an invitation which he had accepted before the issue arose.

“I have decided to go and, while in Russia, make my grave concerns clear at appropriate moments by pointing out that I shall not consider any further invitations unless this law is repealed or moves to repeal it are taken and in addition a serious effort is made by the Russian Government to ensure the safety of the Russian LGBT community,” said Sir Harry.

He’s a great guy, and a firebrand.

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

There was a conversation on RTE the other day, a conversation which touched on homophobia; the video of the conversation was taken down from YouTube and then restored with parts removed.

RTE has removed content from the RTE Player featuring Rory O’Neill’s interview on The Saturday Night Show.

In an interview following a performance by O’Neill’s alter ego Panti, host Brendan O’Connor spoke to the performer about homophobia in Ireland. O’Neill spoke about how he believed Ireland had a bad rep but as a small country could change much faster.

Nothing too horrifying there. He goes on to say that everybody knows gay people, which makes it hard to “be mean” about the subject.

Because Ireland is such small communities grouped together, everybody knows their local gay!

Maybe twenty years ago it was ok to be really mean about him, but nowadays it’s just not ok to be really mean about it.

The only place that you see it’s ok to be really horrible and mean about gays is on the internet in the comments and people who make a living writing opinion pieces for newspapers.”

Rory O’Neill

When O’Connor asked who the writers were that O’Neill was talking about he named Breda O’Brien and John Waters, as well as the Iona Institute.

And the interview was later taken down.

TheJournal.ie reports:

RTÉ confirmed its actions in a statement to TheJournal.ie:

        Last weekend’s The Saturday Night Show was removed from the Player due to potential legal issues and for reasons of sensitivity following the death of Tom O’Gorman as would be standard practice in such situations.

The programme has since been returned to the online player but O’Neill’s interview has been cut short.

What potential legal issues?

Can anybody seriously think that anything he said was libelous? If so, things are more different on that side of the Atlantic than I had realized.

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

Gnu Atheism on the pope:

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

Another one. From the New York Times:

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Tuesday that the state’s constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage violated the federal Constitution, the latest in a string of legal victories for gay rights and one that occurred in the heart of the Bible Belt.

The state’s ban on marriage by gay and lesbian couples is “an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit,” wrote Judge Terence C. Kern of United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, in Tulsa, deciding a case that had languished for nine years. The amendment, he said, is based on “moral disapproval” and does not advance the state’s asserted interests in promoting heterosexual marriage or the welfare of children.

The judge stayed his ruling in anticipation that the state will appeal, but it’s a start.

…with his decision against the state’s own ban on such marriages, “Judge Kern has come to the conclusion that so many have before him — that the fundamental equality of lesbian and gay couples is guaranteed by the United States Constitution,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, in a statement issued late Tuesday.

Rights trump religion. So there.

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

The ever so much more nice guy pope has pitched a big fit about women having the audacity to terminate their pregnancies.

He said it was was “frightful” to think about early pregnancy terminations.

Easy for him, isn’t it. It’s not his life that will be messed up and perhaps irreparably thrown off course by an unwanted pregnancy. He can afford to drool sentimentally over a process inside someone else’s body that he chooses to think of as a “baby” or even a “child.”

“It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day,” he said in part of the speech that addressed the rights of children around the world.

No, it isn’t. It is no more horrific than it is to think that there are “children” who will never see the light of day because their potential parents didn’t fuck at a particular moment. That’s just as true you know. If they fuck a little later and conceive and have the child, why, that child replaces the ones that would have seen the light of day if the parents had fucked at some other time. Omigod the horror!

Dreadful man, horrified by the absence of imagined children and completely unconcerned about the women who have to bear the children.

The BBC’s Alan Johnston in Rome says that there has been concern in some quarters of Roman Catholicism that the pope has not been putting the church’s view on abortion forcefully enough.

Our correspondent says that the Pope’s stance favouring mercy over condemnation has made more conservative Roman Catholics uneasy, but they will welcome his latest remarks.

Because they’re all about punishing and controlling women, and that’s what those shits care about.

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

Yup.

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

An Oklahoma Bill from 2009, HOUSE BILL 1330.

An Act relating to the state capital and Capitol Building; providing for legislative findings; creating the Ten Commandments Monument Display Act; authorizing the placement of a monument displaying and honoring the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol; authorizing the Secretary of State to work with certain persons in designing a monument; providing for the location for the monument; authorizing the Attorney General to defend certain challenges; providing for codification providing for noncodification; and providing an effective date.

Stupid. There shouldn’t be such a monument. It’s a horrible theocratic set of “commandments” and it doesn’t belong anywhere near any government buildings.

The ten. Protestant version.

I. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

II. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

III. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

IV. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy.

V. Honor thy father and thy mother.

VI. Thou shalt not kill.

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

VIII. Thou shalt not steal.

IX.  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

X.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods.

See? The first four are brazenly theocratic. The Oklahoma legislature has no business telling any citizen to do or not do any of those things.

Part of their rationale goes like this:

3. That the Ten Commandments represent a philosophy of Oklahomans and other Americans today, that God has ordained civil government and has delegated limited authority to civil government, that God has limited the authority of civil government, and that God has endowed people with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

That’s not a philosophy, it’s a religion, that is dependent on invocation of an imagined person who does not communicate with us. It has no business being mixed up with government.

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

Originally a comment by Irène Delse on More on the Big Questions.

Let me be the token French citizen and resident, here, and clarify a few misconceptions.

1) There is no general ban on the hidjab in France. There simply is not. Maybe Ms. Sahar al-Faifi was thinking of a recent law (enacted under the former president, right-wing leader N. Sarkozy) against the wearing of full-face veils, like niqab or burqa, in public spaces. (Wether this confusion was an honest mistake or deliberately done in order to generate F.U.D. about “islamophobia”, now, is another question.)

2) This law is a can of worms, that much is true. It was crafted as a way to combat Islamist (mostly Salafist) influence in the Muslim communities, and the government used a few high-profile incidents to justify what they saw as a “necessity” for this law: things like a niqab-clad woman refusing to take off her face veil to testify in court even though she was offered to do so in a side-room with a small number of witnesses. There was also a few jewelry thefts in Paris by men dressed up as female tourists from Saudi Arabia. The niqab served to hide their faces to security cameras in the luxury shops they “visited”! Of course (as could have been predicted by even the thickest of politicos if they had taken the time to think about social and historical circumstances), the law backfired and gave even more publicity to the ultra-conservative Islamists, who now can pose as “victims”. By the way, this law only entails first a cautioning, and then a fine for a repeat offense. But in some instances, it led to confrontation (also predictable) between the woman’s family and/or neighbours and the police, hence more incidents and heightened tensions with a part of the Muslim population. Sigh. There’s many reasons not to be a fan of Sarkozy, and this law is only one of them.

3) As for the hidjab or other religious garments like kippas, Sikh turbans, etc., that don’t hide the face, they are banned here in two very precise circumstances:

a) For students public schools and high-schools, on school ground and during school-organized excursions. The rest of their time, they do as they want.

b) For government workers, during their hours of work, including certain private contractors who provide a public service (like a hospital, nursing home or child-care), if they are subsidised by the national or local government.

But, and this is a very big “but”, these lregulations on religious symbols and garments have been accompanied for more than 20 years now by directives to help schools and other administrators enforce them in a conciliatory way, in order to let believers practice their religious customs (like covering their head) in a way that doesn’t attract disproportionate attention to them. For instance, a hidjab is out, but a bandanna knotted over the hair is fine, and so is any other kind of hat than a kippa. In fact, I have a colleague who is an Orthodox Jew and he’s perfectly OK with wearing a beret at work, and so is the government agency we both work for! (Berets are a commonplace style for men here, and so are bandannas and knitted hats for both sexes.)

What this means in practice is that no, a believer doesn’t have to “choose between [their] career and [their] religious/cultural identity”, as A Hermit fears, but find a style that doesn’t shout out loud “look at the religion first, but the citizen and human being last”. I hope Québec finds a way to build some similar compromise and spare themselves more political strife under the guise of religion.

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

A letter to Farida Shaheed, Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, from Radha Bhatt, Marieme Helie Lucas, Nahla Mahmoud, Chris Moos, Maryam Namazie, Pragna Patel, Abhishek Phadnis, and Fatou Sow. They write to draw her attention to the increasing incidence of gender segregation on public university campuses in the United Kingdom, and to seek her intervention in the matter.

Gender segregation reinforces negative views about women, undermines their right to participate in public life on equal terms with men and disproportionately impedes women from ethnic and religious minorities, whose rights to education and gender equality are already imperilled.

Speaking of that…it’s very damn unfortunate that the only women from Muslim backgrounds the BBC saw fit to invite to participate in that Big Questions on gender segregation were there to defend it. There were plenty of people there to oppose it, good, but they were all men. It’s right that Chris and Abhishek were there because they’ve been way out front on this, but it’s a great pity that Maryam or Pragna or Nahla or Radha couldn’t have been there too, to disrupt that very strong visual in which the two shrouded women were right smack in the middle.

(There was also Tina Beattie, ironically. I say “ironically” because I think she talks awful guff about religion, but she was right on this. She interrupted David Lammy when he was talking about how he respects his constituents, he doesn’t shake hands with women when he goes to a Jewish Orthodox temple. I scowled at that and asked “you respect whom?” so I was glad that Beattie interrupted him to say the same thing and then point out that the reason for not shaking hands is in case the woman is “polluted.” Menstrual blood you know; ew ick filthy women.) (But then, he wasn’t clear about what he meant – whether it was refusal to shake hands with a woman who offered, or not offering to shake hands with a woman after shaking hands with the men. There are degrees of disrespect there.)

The letter, minus the paragraph of background that you already know:

We are compelled to seek your intercession in this matter after Universities UK (UUK), the representative body of British universities, issued, on 22 November 2013, Guidance for universities on ‘External speakers in higher education institutions’. The Guidance featured a hypothetical case study (of a visiting speaker who insisted that the audience be segregated by gender) which concluded that “assuming the side-by-side segregated seating arrangement is adopted, there does not appear to be any discrimination on gender grounds merely by imposing segregated seating”. The case study triggered a protest by students and women’s rights campaigners outside the London offices of UUK on 10 December 2013, and, following sustained criticism, was withdrawn on 13 December, pending further legal advice. (The original guidance is attached: ExternalSpeakersInHigherEducationInstitutions.)

UUK has claimed that the case study was merely ‘hypothetical’. However, besides UCL, there have been several cases of students complaining about gender segregation, for example at Leicester University and Queen Mary University London. A poll by the Times Higher Education revealed that out of 46 universities that responded, 29 do not have prohibitions against gender segregation in place. The Federation of Islamic Students Societies, for example, has issued guidelines on how to run a successful Islamic student society. These prescribe to “maintain segregation between brothers and sisters, keeping interaction between them at a minimum”.

Universities UK claims that it has still not abandoned the case study, which is merely pending “review”. Instead, a number of public statements made by their Chief Executive, Nicola Dandridge, and by the organisation itself, give us reason to fear that the case study may quietly be reintroduced to the report, with purely cosmetic alterations that do not neutralise the danger it poses to gender equality and women’s rights.

We hope you will appreciate that it is difficult enough resisting gender-segregation in public spaces even with equality and human rights legislation demonstrably in our favour, and that a recurrence of this Guidance will irretrievably damage the cause of gender equality and women’s rights in Britain by emboldening the apologists of this practice.

Should you wish to investigate these incidents, we would like to forewarn you of a common misconception that has been encouraged by apologists for this practice, namely that it is “voluntary”. It is not, inasmuch as it is beyond dispute that attendees at these events are expected to sit in specific zones, on pain of eviction. The prefix “voluntary” merely implies that such events will sometimes have three sections – men’s, women’s and mixed. We hope you will agree that this token concession does little to address our principal objection to this practice, which is that it amounts to the appropriation of a public space in the name of religion or culture, in a manner that undermines the dignity of both men and women and creates a hostile, degrading and humiliating environment for women. We also hope you will concur that, for many women, particularly those from ethnic minorities, the ‘choice’ of mixed/segregated seating is often made under considerable duress.

Finally, we would also like to draw your attention to a legal note submitted to UUK by Radha Bhatt, an undergraduate student of the University of Cambridge, which provides a succinct illustration of the manifest illegality of gender segregation under Britain’s Equality Act 2010 and the European Convention on Human Rights, and reminds UUK of its Public Sector Equality Duty towards the imperatives of eliminating discrimination, advancing equality of opportunity and fostering good relations between those who share protected characteristics.

We are concerned that beyond the cases we have brought to your attention, there is a persistent issue of discrimination through gender segregation at public universities in the UK and also elsewhere. Recently, for example, a professor at York University in Canada faced reprimand for upholding gender equality in his classroom. Gender segregation is often done in the name of respecting cultural and religious rights with culture, religion and ethnicity often presented as inextricably intertwined and seen to supersede women’s rights and equality in the hierarchy of rights.

Even though the UK is a signatory to CEDAW and despite the fact that the issue has been brought to the attention of university administrators and policy makers, public institutions in the United Kingdom continue to fail to uphold an environment free of discrimination.

We thank you for your consideration, and look forward to your intercession on this pressing human rights issue.

Yours Sincerely,

Radha Bhatt, undergraduate student of the University of Cambridge
Marieme Helie Lucas, Founder of Secularism is a Women’s Issue
Nahla Mahmoud, Spokesperson of Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
Chris Moos, Secretary of LSE SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson of One Law for All and Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation
Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters
Abhishek Phadnis, President of LSE SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
Fatou Sow, International Director of Women Living Under Muslim Laws

 

 

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

A young guy from Afghanistan has been granted asylum on the grounds of his non-belief in “God” (or, specifically in his case, in “Allah”), This is believed to be a first.

The Afghan was brought up as a Muslim and fled the conflict in his native country. He arrived in the UK in 2007, aged 16. He was initially given temporary leave to remain until 2013 but during his time in England gradually turned to atheism.

Enough said. He can’t go back to Afghanistan in that condition, now can he.

[His lawyers] helped him submit his claim to the Home Office under the UN’s 1951 refugee convention, arguing that if he returned to Afghanistan he would face persecution on the grounds of religion – or in his case, lack of religious belief.

He could, the lawyers argued, face a death sentence under sharia law as an apostate unless he remained discreet about his atheist beliefs. Evidence was also presented showing that because Islam permeates every aspect of daily life and culture in Afghanistan, living discreetly would be virtually impossible.

Like for instance being shouted at by the muezzin five times a day every day. Imagine trying to be “discreetly” atheist with that racket going on.

Claire Splawn, a second-year law student at the University of Kent, prepared the case under the supervision of the clinic’s solicitor, Sheona York. Splawn said: “We argued that an atheist should be entitled to protection from persecution on the grounds of their belief in the same way as a religious person is protected.”

York added: “We are absolutely delighted for our client. We believe that this is the first time that a person has been granted asylum in this country on the basis of their atheism.

“The decision represents an important recognition that a lack of religious belief is in itself a thoughtful and seriously-held philosophical position.”

More thoughtful than religious belief itself is, if you ask me. (I know, I know, believers can be thoughtful. I know. But the belief itself? To the extent that it really is belief, as opposed to a hope or a metaphor or a way of being in communion with other people or tradition, I can’t see it as really thoughtful.)

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