I had earlier written about Bezwada Wilson , recipient of this year’s Magsaysay award. Another Indian was also a recipient , the popular classical music singer T M Krishna.
The South Indian classical music, also called the Karnatik music, is bound strongly by traditional customs and rules and is dominated by Brahmins. T M Krishna has questioned and broke many of the traditions. He got the award specifically for promoting social and cultural inclusiveness.
From tmkrishna.com
“Hijab is a choice”.
We hear this claim from Muslims whenever freethinkers and feminists question the coercion in Islam with regard to female attire.
Now read this.
Fans of popular Malay actress Uqasha Senrose have turned on her and accused the 23-year-old of “deriding” Islam after she decided to stop wearing a headscarf.
After donning the headscarf over the last three years, her decision to go without one has been met with fierce criticism, mostly from her male followers, who took to her Facebook page and accused her of being “undignified” and a “hypocrite.”
“You’ve lost your dignity as a Muslim, so you will also lose your fans because your fans are looking to go to heaven and not to hell,” fan Ahmad Faisal Ahmad Ziad posted.
“I really pity you. Why is your heart so black. Until you’re willing to play with religion,” another social media user Akil Mustafa Madu said.
A group of teenagers, all 15-16 years old, attacked and killed a stranger of foreign origin just because he came and settled in their town.
40-year-old Polish man has died and his friend is recovering after they were set upon by a mob of up to 20 teenagers.
Police are treating the incident in Harlow, Essex, as a hate crime after the teenagers were spotted shouting abuse at the two men.
They then attacked, leaving both of them unconscious outside TGF Pizza and Mr Luigi’s at 11.35pm on Saturday.
Incredible India is the tag line used so often by many agencies to promote tourist attraction to India. If there was a tourist present in the legislative assembly hall of Haryana state of “secular” India yesterday, she might have felt “incredibly” disgusted.
They would have witnessed a completely naked man, sitting on the dais above the seats of Governor and Chief Minister of the state, and giving a lecture to the people’s representatives. That man’s name was Tarun Sagar, a famous monk of Digambara sect of Jainism, an ancient Indian religion. He said:
The control of dharma (morality) over politics is essential. Dharma is the husband and politics is the wife. It is the duty of every husband to protect his wife and it is the duty of every wife to accept the orders (discipline) of her husband,” “if there is no control of dharma over politics, it will be like an elephant out of control,”
Image Credit – Indian Express
Nobody had any doubt that #burkiniban was a violation of Liberty enshrined in the French Constitution, except for some far right white supremacist groups & a few misguided atheists.
Now the top court in France has suspended it in the grounds of serious breach of fundamental rights.
Credit : Reuters
Good news for activists working for a gender equitable world.
In a landmark judgment, the Bombay High Court on Friday allowed women to enter inside the sanctum of the Haji Ali dargah.
Ever since the photograph of armed French Policemen surrounding and allegedly forcing a woman to take off her Burkini on a beach in Nice went viral, the social media is buzzing with reactions to #burkiniban.
Staunch supporters of the ban were seen underlining the supposed to be strict secular nature of French Republic.
Mayor David Lisnard of Cannes while banning Burkini has explained in the order that “access to beaches and for swimming is banned to anyone who does not have (bathing apparel) which respects good customs and secularism,” which is a founding principle of the French republic.
“Beachwear which ostentatiously displays religious affiliation, when France and places of worship are currently the target of terrorist attacks, is liable to create risks of disrupting public order (crowds, scuffles etc) which it is necessary to prevent,”
But soon the French double standards on secularism was exposed by many by uploading pictures of Christian nuns wearing outfits similar to Burkini enjoying the French beaches.
As long as the Christian nun outfits are not banned, no one can argue rationally that Burkini ban is to respect secularism by preventing display of religious symbols in public sphere.
The former French President Sarkozy strongly supports the ban. He said :
it is time to end the presence of burkinis on French beaches.
Wearing a burkini is a political act, it’s militant, a provocation.
If you agree with Sarkozy, how can you not agree with a Muslim who says drawing Mohammed is a similar provocative militant political act ?
Liberté, égalité, fraternité or Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is the national motto of French Republic.
Article IV of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a fundamental document of French Revolution reads like this:
Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights.
Now see some recent news reports from France.
On Tuesday a 34-year-old mother of two, whose family have been French citizens for at least three generations, told French news agency AFP she had been fined on the beach in Cannes, 18 miles from Nice, for wearing leggings, a top and a headscarf.
The former air-hostess from Toulouse was issued a ticket saying she was not wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”.
“I was sitting on a beach with my family,” she said. “I wasn’t even planning to swim, just to dip my feet.”
This was more shocking.
Armed police have forced a woman on a beach in Nice to remove her burkini as part of a controversial new ban.
The incident occurred on the beach at the city’s Promenade des Anglais, the location of the lorry attack on Bastille Day in which 84 people were killed last month.
Photographs show four police officers armed with handguns, batons and pepper spray standing round the woman who was lying on the beach wearing a blue headscarf and matching top.
After speaking to the woman, she appears to remove the blue long-sleeve top.
She is thought to have been issued with a fine and warned about the new dress code on the beach.
Several women have now been fined in France for wearing the swim wear.
It seems the French authorities believe wearing a burkini traumatise others while banning it do not infringe on the right of Liberty enshrined as the motto of their republic.
I feel any woman, whatever be the religion, born and brought up in South Asia, may feel more comfortable in a burkini than a bikini. Is it not better to allow the person concerned to choose their attire ?
Imposition of dress code by religion has to be defeated. But State doing the same will not help that cause.
France is shamefully violating the very same ideals on which the French nation was established.
France is walking backwards by imposing dress codes.
In a music video produced by the popular Malaysian Rapper Namewee, five non Muslim characters were seen uttering the word Allah (God). Also a scene in a song was supposed to be in front of a mosque. This was enough for him to be nabbed from the airport as he returned to the country from a foreign trip and put in jail.
The musician, whose real name is Wee Meng Chee, 33, was arrested at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday after returning from an overseas trip.
He was brought to Penang late last night and taken to the Penang courthouse this morning. The singer-songwriter is being investigated under Section 295 of the Penal Code for defiling a place of worship with intention to insult the religion. The section carries a jail term of up to two years, or a fine or both, upon conviction. Assistant court registrar Ahmad Tajudin Zaini granted a four-day remand, which ends on August 25. Several religious groups had previously lodged police reports against Wee over his music video, claiming that it insulted Islam.
Namewee – Getty images
I believe that continuing debates and public disagreements are necessary for any movement to grow and flourish. It is very much true about atheist movement too. Otherwise it will become as stagnant as religions.
P Z Myers addressed this issue recently in a post. His writing was in response to this article in Patheos by David Smalley titled “What is killing the atheist movement “.
The gist of David Smalley’s article as far as I could understand is most of the disagreements with in the Atheist community can be solved by talking in private. Going public about the disagreement will harm the fight against religious orthodoxy.
