This is an example of a militant Muslim

Mumtaz Qadri assassinated Pakistani provincial governor Salman Taseer because of Taseer's assault on Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws. By Qadri's twisted logic, Taseer's support for free speech and the rule of law meant he had to die.

And the response from the religious parties in Pakistan?

Qadri appeared in court, unrepentant, where waiting lawyers threw handfuls of rose petals over him and others in the crowd slapped his back and kissed his cheek as he was led in and out amid heavy security.

The internet had already been hosting fan pages for Qadri, with one Facebook page attracting over 2,000 followers before being taken down, while there were small demonstrations in favour of the killer in north-west Pakistan.

That's a militant Muslim, someone prepared to kill because someone might say something they don't like.

I hope that people now think twice about using the term "militant atheist" pejoratively for thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens etc.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

What the hell is wrong with some people?

PRESS RELEASE
October, 31 2008

Somalia: Girl stoned was a child of 13

Contrary to earlier news reports, the girl stoned to death in Somalia this week was 13, not 23, Amnesty International can reveal.

Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was killed on Monday, 27 October, by a group of 50 men who stoned her to death in a stadium in the southern port of Kismayu, in front of around 1,000 spectators.

She was accused of adultery in breach of Islamic law but, her father and other sources told Amnesty International that she had in fact been raped by three men, and had attempted to report this rape to the al-Shabab militia who control Kismayo, and it was this act that resulted in her being accused of adultery and detained. None of men she accused of rape were arrested.

This was the prologue to an article by Nicholas Kristof in the New Yoork Times about a female doctor running a hospital, school, and literacy and health classes for women. In Somalia. Not the easiest task, as you might imagine.

So Dr. Hawa had her hands full already — and then in May a hard-line militia, Hizb al-Islam, or Party of Islam, decided that a woman shouldn’t run anything substantial. The militia ordered her to hand over operations, and she refused — and pointedly added: “I may be a woman, but I’m a doctor. What have you done for society?” The Party of Islam then attacked with 750 soldiers and seized the hospital. The world’s Somalis reacted with outrage, and the militia backed down and ordered Dr. Hawa to run the hospital, but under its direction.

Dr Hawa stood her ground where most would undoubtably cave in, and eventually received an apology, and her hospital back, although I gather it's not fully up and running yet, from the article.

I must disagree with Kristof on one point, though.

What a woman! And what a Muslim! It’s because of people like her that sweeping denunciations of Islam, or the “Muslim hearings” planned in Congress, rile me — and seem profoundly misguided.

To my mind, it's in spite of, not because of, Islam that Dr Hawa's efforts have succeeded and been appreciated. There's nothing in the articles that I've read to suggest that she is religious at all - she's a divorced mother of two, which would already indicate that she's not concerned with religious views on marriage. And the comparisons with Mother Teresa don't help.

Kristof does the redoubtable Dr Hawa a disservice by lumping her together with her attackers, and the murderers of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow.

Subtle differences

My last post was about the Sun's anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric, in which the paper printed statements like the following:

What changed? Well, like wannabe martyr Roshonara Choudhry, Shamsudeen was brainwashed by the perverted rantings of fascist madmen like Anwar al-Akwali.

Ooh, perverted rantings! Fascist madmen! Inflammatory, no? How terrible.

On the other hand, a few days ago I posted:

She's now been jailed for life. Because she watched the videos of homicidal maniacs like Anwar al-Awlaki and Sheikh Abdullah Azzam

Homicidal maniacs! Indeed.

The overlap between my position and the Sun's troubled me a little. I've always, always considered the Sun to be the polar opposite of all my politics, all my ideals. Are we really that different?

One difference is... I'm not a huge tabloid newspaper, run by a global billionaire for his own business and ideological ends.

So there's a difference, right there.

The main difference, I realised, is that the Sun is criticising Islam from a distinctly pro-Christian perspective. Search the Sun's site for "Islam", and the top 5 headlines are:

1. From Spider-Man to a web fanatic
2. Silence Them (a leader demanding that al-Awlaki be kept quiet)
3. Enemies of Britain
4. Fanatics protest at MP stab trial
5. Gunmen take Brit hostage

The headlines never tell the whole story of course, but the implication is clear. There's another story on the site about a Catholic school being taken over by a mosque in Manchester. Regardless of how the population may have changed to make this appropriate, it's presented as more evidence of "them" taking over "us".

Search for "Christianity", though, and you get this:

1. Killer in dog collar (about a pastor who became Christian after being convicted of murder)
2. Christmas is back on
3. PM praises Pope's "moving" visit
4. Papal power (another leader on how Christian festivals should remain at the heart of society)
5. Pope: Don't let the PC Brigade wreck Christmas

Now we're getting down to it. You can criticise Islam from a Christian perspective, you can criticise Islam from an atheist perspective, but it's not the same thing. Ultimately, by attacking Islam but saying nothing about the evils of Roman Catholicism, it's a hollow critique.

In any case, the Sun's viewpoint is only informed by religion to the point that it's part of the dominant culture of this country, therefore it chimes with the inherent fears and prejudices of the population, therefore it's going to sell newspapers. There's an argument to be made about whether xenophobia is actually as widespread as some parts of the media would have you believe, or whether the media is what propels that anti-foreigner sentiment in the first place, but that's for another day.

So that's good, I don't have as much in common with Rupert Murdoch's bile-filled mouthpiece as I first thought. That much bile in my mouth would leave a nasty taste, anyway.

How to legally demonise immigration

The Sun, for those outside the UK who may not realise, is the most widely-read tabloid newspaper in the UK. Its politics are decidedly right of centre, as you might guess from the fact that it's owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Today it's reported on Phil Woolas, a Labour MP who's had his election victory in May overturned.

A COURT has ordered a re-run of a general election campaign after ruling that Labour's Phil Woolas stirred up racial tensions in a desperate bid to retain his constituency seat.

The specially convened court said Mr Woolas had knowingly made false statements about a Lib Dem rival in the Oldham East and Saddleworth elections.As a result the outspoken MP's election victory has been declared void. The former immigration chief's campaign team was said to have set out to "make white folk angry" by suggesting he was the victim of a Muslim campaign to kick him out.

It just won't do stirring up racial tensions by publishing inflammatory material about religious extremists.

Unless, of course, you're a national newspaper.

HE was a friendly, fun-loving London lad who worked at Boots and loved footie.
Now Mohammed Shamsudeen is an extremist zombie called Abu Saalihah, screeching hatred for Britain in support of a similarly deranged woman who tried to murder a democratically-elected MP.
What changed? Well, like wannabe martyr Roshonara Choudhry, Shamsudeen was brainwashed by the perverted rantings of fascist madmen like Anwar al-Akwali.

No brief for Muslim extremists here of course. But the Sun's agenda goes way beyond attacking the extremes, and goes for the jugular by demonising anyone who wants to move to Britain.

One in four new babies in Britain now has a mum who was born in a foreign country.

The ONS said "international migration" means there are now 200,000 more women in the key childbearing ages of 15 to 44-years-old than in 2001.

Immigrant women also have higher birth rates than Brits.

The usual language - "huge influx", "population is rocketing", "startling". I'm just surprised they didn't say "swamped".

The BBC reports that

Mr Woolas was accused of stirring up racial tensions in his campaign leaflets by suggesting Mr Watkins had pandered to Muslim militants, and had refused to condemn death threats Mr Woolas said he had received from such groups.

Mr Woolas ran a "risky" campaign, the court was told, designed to "galvanise the white Sun vote" because he feared he faced defeat on polling day.

The Sun omits this quote, oddly enough.

Things have moved on from the "Arab pigs" days, but the Sun's viciously right-wing propaganda is still there.

Roshanara Choudry - a life ruined by religion

Roshonara Choudry was studying to be a teacher. She was the top student in her university class. In a few years' time, who knows what she might have achieved? Maybe teaching in a primary school, educating young people, giving hope to others. Maybe carrying out her own research. The world would have been at her feet.

The achievements that she could have accomplished, the lives she could have changed, the benefits she could have brought to herself and society... all whisked away in the moment when she stabbed her local MP, Stephen Timms.

She's now been jailed for life. Because she watched the videos of homicidal maniacs like Anwar al-Awlaki and Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, from whom she gained the insight that

when a Muslim land is attacked it becomes obligatory on every man, woman and child and even slave to go out and fight and defend the land and the Muslims and if they can't handle like the forces they are facing, then it becomes obligatory on the people who live in ... closest to that country and if those people refuse to fulfil their duty then it, then it becomes to the next closest people and the next closest until it goes all the way round the whole world and it's obligatory on everyone to defend that land.

And so she went out, bought some knives from a hardware shop, and stabbed a man.

If you ever needed proof that religion is a cause of harm, well, here it is. It's just destroyed the life of a young woman who had every reason to live, not to mention the lives of her family, not to mention the man she stabbed and his family.

And where's Anwar al-Awlaki? As well as apparently hiding out in Yemen, he's still on the internet in the form of his videos, inciting others to murder in the name of his barbaric ideology, like

Paul “Bilal” Rockwood and his wife Nadia in Alaska, and on the other side of the world in Singapore, Muhammad Fadil Abdul Hamid.

I can't help but feel sad that Roshanara Choudry is now going to spend the rest of her life in prison, in 21st-century Britain, all because of a few hate-filled words in a book written in the desert over 1,000 years ago.