In re-reading Maryam’s talk and the comments on it I saw a link to a post by someone who attended the NSS Conference.
Nick was good, he says.
Nick was a fantastically eloquent and inspiring speaker – talking about self-censorship and imploring us to always be free to criticise “divinely inspired bigotry and facism”. His passion for free speech and how we should never be deterred from our right to it even in the face of threats of violence was fabulous, and evocative of Hitch in his refusal to back down to fascist terror threats in his robust rebuttals to religious lunatics. There is no greater compliment I can grant him than that.
But then there was Maryam…
Maryam’s talk was the highlight for me, Io, Narwahl and Chris as she delivered a devastating, passionate and ferocious salvo against islamo-fascism and the horrors of sharia law. I can’t do justice to how amazing she was, her presentation was a tour-de-force, and it was truly compelling and educational. I urge you all to read the talk in full right here. Go do it. Now. And only come back here when you are done.
You know, it was exactly the same at QED. She brought the fuckin house down. Everybody said she was the highlight.
He quoted a bit of what she said about sharia in Britain.
Shocking isn’t it? Maryam also urged everyone to stand up to this and to denounce anyone that would dare to call you a racist for questioning and criticizing islamists and sharia law.
I’m doing my level best.
There was an amusing bit about Dawkins’s talk.
Suffice to say it was about 40 minutes of trolling Christianity and it’s most peculiar sub-division, Mormonism. His presentation was typically sharp and witty, with his laying in to Mitt Romney a particular highlight.
Ah, I’d noticed he’d been tweeting about Mormonism and Romney a lot. Homework!
So anyway. Secularism, people. It’s not racism. Really, it’s not.
Iran gave me my beautiful internet handle and Maryam Namazie as well. I love that place!
‘Muslims after all are not a homogeneous community as Islamists portray…’ (from Maryam’s talk, as quoted in your previous post). But it is not of course only Islamists who portray Muslims in this way. I wish that people like Sam Harris (who I don’t admire very much), Jerry Coyne (who I much admire when he’s discussing biology or theology)and Eric Macdonald (who I admire very much when he’s not talking about Muslims) would have a rather greater generosity of spirit so that those Muslims who oppose the Islamists and violent demonstrations in response to the provocations of Christian bigots might be recognised and encouraged. It was not an Islamist who wrote that when something like that ridiculous film-trailer comes along, all however many billion Muslims there are in the world react as one monstrous bloc. They don’t.
It’s lovely ‘n all, but my exposure to field guides immediately make me wonder if there’s also a ‘Lesser American Satan’.
(/… also whether there’s a Field Guide to Nationally-Aligned Jinn.)
Actually, I think the idea is supposed to be that America is the ‘Great Satan’, while the UK is the ‘Little Satan’ (or ‘Lesser Satan’; I’m not sure. Personally I’d prefer ‘microsatan’).
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