Kiran Opal is calling on all closeted Ex-Muslims who are forced to fast during Ramadan to send her their stories.

Are you someone who’s been fasting, pretending to fast, or forced to lie about fasting to your Muslim family and friends? Are you under pressure to stay hungry and thirsty for several hours in the hottest part of the year? Are you someone who doesn’t believe in Islam anymore, but has to remain ‘in the closet’ about it?

If so, I want to hear from you.

I am working on an idea for a blog article to be posted soon for Ramadan on ExMuslimBlogs.com.

Similar to the International Women’s Day post from a few months ago, this one requires participation from as many Exmuslims as possible. I’ve compiled a few questions down below, and if you are a closeted Exmuslim, I’d love to hear your responses to them.

I’d like to hear a lot about this too, especially the thirst part. The prohibition on drinking – not “drinking” meaning consuming alcohol, but just plain drinking, as in, water – makes me really angry. It’s very unhealthy, and in hot climates and/or for extended periods it’s plain dangerous.

So spread the word, and if you’re a closeted Ex-Muslim and you want to do this, send something to Kiran by July 16. Detalls in her post.

Meet Meggan Somerville, who actually works for Hobby Lobby.

Customers were coming in after the ruling and high-fiving her, and she was forcing a smile while not letting on that she wasn’t all that pleased.

Sommerville has worked there for 16 years. She loves her job and the store, which she said pays a good wage and carries supplies that she’s used for many of her own crafting projects.

Still, the congratulations from customers were hard to swallow. “I’d smile and nod and say, ‘Yes, it’s a victory for the company,’ and then I’d push my real feelings down and not think about it anymore.” [Read more…]

More “Not us, not us! We get special rules because we’re special! We get to exclude people because god!” bullshit.

PQ Monthly reports that George Fox University has successfully obtained a religious exemption from the Department of Education (DOE) to deny a transgender student named Jayce a place in the campus’ single-sex residence halls. When Jayce first filed his complaint in April, the university said that it had offered him a single apartment as an accommodation, but that it stood by its refusal to allow him to live with other men on religious grounds.

What religious grounds? What religious grounds are there? [Read more…]

 A Québec judge orders a Catholic religious order to pay compensation to victims of sexual abuse.

A Quebec court has ordered a religious group to compensate victims of sexual abuse involving several of the organization’s priests — a total payout that could eventually reach millions of dollars.

The Quebec Superior Court ruled Thursday that the Redemptorist Order will have to pay at least $75,000 in damages to each victim who attended the Saint-Alphonse Seminary between 1960 and 1987.

[Read more…]

At the Washington Post:

[warning: an ad autoplays with audio]

Though foot-binding was officially banned in 1912, it continued, and women who endured the painful tradition are still alive today. Photographer Jo Farrell has photographed and interviewed some of the last living Chinese women who suffered foot-binding.

There are photos of women, their shoes, a tray of dumpings – interspersed with close-ups of the underside of their feet, showing just what the binding does.

Amnesty has a new report on atrocities in the Central African Republic.

The report, Central African Republic: Time for Accountability, documents crimes under international law perpetrated across the CAR in 2013 and 2014, and calls for the investigation, prosecution and punishment of the perpetrators. It names members and allies of the anti-balaka and Séléka armed groups suspected of involvement in serious human rights abuses, outlining their roles and establishing their possible criminal responsibilities.

“If the Central African Republic is to recover from the killing spree that has taken place since December 2013, it is imperative that those who masterminded, committed or participated in war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious human rights abuses are brought to account,” said Christian Mukosa, Amnesty International’s Central African Republic researcher.

[Read more…]

Josh Spokesgay and I share an attachment to the subjunctive. This attachment is, I believe, more than merely aesthetic. There are reasons to use it, and to prefer that its use be available.

See what I did there?

It’s true that the basic meaning is usually clear enough even without it, but it’s also true that a nuance is lost.

The indicative is for talking about things as they are. The subjunctive is for talking about things that are not, but that might have been, or that we wish had been, or were.

This neatly clarifies for me why I’m so attached to the mood. There are so many things I wish were not as they are, but otherwise.

Wraps, for instance. I wish wraps didn’t have a whole superfluous layer of clothy damp tortilla between me and the filling; I wish wraps had one layer of wrap instead of two or three.

But wraps are only the beginning.

One of those dopy Facebook memes, but this one touched off a heated discussion on my wall after I posted it late yesterday.

My commentary introducing the meme was

Wtf is this stupid shit?

Oooooooh yeah women are so weird and creepy and mysterious. What the hell do they want, anyway?

The guy pretending to read it looks like Penn Jillette. Nice touch.

Hiba Krisht, aka Marwa Berro of Between a Veil and a Dark Place and The Ex-hijabi photo fashion journal* made a very interesting point in an online discussion which I’m not going to link to because it’s an essay that she should publish, but she gave me permission to quote from it. (Anything in brackets is my connecting material.)

She was addressing what one might call the Dear Muslima fallacy:

[being] able to see or willing to condemn oppressive Islamic practices only insofar as they are blatant, obvious, and monstrous, insofar as they make the news with the enormity of their crime, and the scope of his condemnation does not transcend the scope of the actions. To him it’s not about the pervasive, the poison of a culture steeped in casual misogyny and homophobia. It’s not about the every-day tensions and struggles and silencing and denigration within Muslim lives. [Read more…]

A Republican candidate for state representative in Oklahoma is a piquant combination of libertarian and biblical fan of stoning people to death.

The GOP candidate responded to a post on Pope Francis saying “who am I to judge?” on homosexuality by posting numerous Old Testament quotations prescribing capital punishment for LGBT people.

Another commenter asked, “So just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?” [Read more…]