This fascinating Dutch article (to which I do not have a link, unfortunately) was translated by a facebook friend Leon Korteweg:
My translation (aided by Google Translate) of an article that appeared in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. Reading and translating this article made me somewhat emotional: I’m delighted by the rise of atheism exactly where it is most needed, which gives me hope, but I’m also saddened by how many victims it takes to make that change happen.
Apologies as I have been away for a break on the nearby Isle of Wight with my family. I’m back,…
Bangladesh is not the place to be for freethought. What is to be done against this vicious brand of anti-intellectualism and attack to freedom of thought?
From The Guardian:
I was trying to work out what is going on in Syria, and what the implications of rebel victory were, as well as who, exactly, the rebels were in light of media bias.
I came across this article from an interesting source called EA WorldView (based in the University of Birmingham, UK).
The Friendly Atheist has an excellent short piece which utterly destroys liberal and moderate Muslims in their case for Islam being a religion of peace. It is not that, as I have shown here, and due mainly to this. The problem stems from the core text, the Qu’ran. And you can’t really be a Muslim and drop the Qu’ran – they are inseparable.
Attackers in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka have hacked to death a US-Bangladeshi blogger whose writings on religion angered Islamist hardliners.
Avijit Roy, an atheist who advocated secularism, was attacked as he walked back from a book fair with his wife, who was also hurt in the attack.
This awesome video comes from a couple of years ago in Melbourne. Genius:
Saudi Arabia has introduced a series of new laws which define atheists as terrorists, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.
In a string of royal decrees and an overarching new piece of legislation to deal with terrorism generally, the Saudi King Abdullah has clamped down on all forms of political dissent and protests that could “harm public order”.
I am engaged in many conversations and debates across multiple platforms on the internet. At the moment, and in general recently, I have been wrapped up in many debates with my fellow liberals. The subject has been Islam and as to whether it is in some culpable proportion responsible for the violent extremism which is taking place across the globe. From the Middle East and ISIS (incorporating a number of different countries) to France and the Charlie Hedbo events; from Nigeria and Boko Haram to Kenya and Somalia with al Shabaab, things are not looking good.
This is well worth a watch with some great panellists on both sides of the debate line. I will be…
This is a really interesting BBC article looking at violent extremism and its sudden apparent arrival on the scene: Boko…
With another massacre, this time in Parisian France, and the issues with religious extremism, this is as pertinent as ever.…
I have reported a few of these recently. One might think I am picking on Islam. But there is no other worldview or religion which is inspiring such mass killings. From 8 people being shot in the head in Kenya for not being able to recite the Qu’ran, to ISIS going nuts in the Middle East. I know a lot f liberal apologist (and as I say, I am generally as liberal as they come) point to other causal factors and try to blame the West and geo-political scenarios. But this is simply death for infidels in parts of Africa over which the West has little power, or at least not in the way that would inspire this kind of activit
Oh dear. Kenya again feeling the brunt of Islamist extremism:
Gunmen from the Somali militant group al-Shabab say they have attacked a bus in northern Kenya, killing 28 people.
The bus was travelling to the capital, Nairobi, when it was stopped in Mandera county, not far from the Somali border.
Gunmen separated out non-Muslims by asking passengers to read from the Koran, officials and witnesses said. Those who failed were then shot in the head.
This awesome news comes from CNN:
(CNN) — It’s a revolutionary decree. In the midst of the fight against Islamist rebels seeking to turn the clock back to the 7th century, a Kurdish region in Syria has just approved a new law ordering equality for women. Take that, ISIS!
The National Secular Society has released this fascinating piece which is relevant and in line with my last substantial post on Islam.
Moderate believers argue that Isis has misinterpreted the Koran. But no one can determine who is right or wrong, argues Matthew Syed.
Who are the real Muslims? Who are the bona fide, authentic, true-to-the-core followers of the Islamic faith? Now, that might seem like an easy question. Surely, the people who are Muslims are those who say, when asked: “I am a Muslim.”
Before I get stuck in, I want to emphasise how I am a liberal commentator and am happy to be shown where I am wrong; I do not want to level accusations at Islam which are wrong and which have developed out of a biased media caricature of what Islam is. It is easy to fire from the emotional hip and to rely on emotional social identity theory of ‘us and them’ such that I present an attack on Islam which is either straw man or unwarranted.
Moreover, there is an issue here with the while notion of causality, something which I have looked at in the post “Have I ever killed someone?” I will not so much deal with that in huge depth here as I want to look at the two ideas in unison in the next post on this matter.
I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this, but it seems pretty cool. I found it on a comment on a Yahoo News Article:
For general interest I copied down the oath given to a new group of fighters with the PKK. The Kurdish YPG fighting in Kobane are a different organization and their oath may be different, but it is actually many of the same people.
H/T Leon Korteweg: Two days ago, Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry, known for his criticism of religion, posted this at the…
I have articulated this many, many times, but never yet as a full blog post, so here goes. What is it that differentiates the two major world religions, and how does this translate across to the behaviour of their adherents?
This is a pretty vital question for understanding the state of affairs with world religions and worldviews, especially in present day context…