He must be “thrown from a high place”

The Telegraph reports that IS have apparently taken literally the injunction to throw the children of Lot (you know what they got up to, nudge) off a high place. There are photos.

Photographs have emerged that appear to show members of the Islamic State group in Iraq throwing a man from a building in punishment for being gay.

The graphic images, seemingly taken in the northern Isil controlled city of Mosul, show a man being pushed to his death before a large crowd that had gathered in the main square below.

One photograph, taken from the top of the building, shows the man from behind, blindfolded and with his hands tied across his back, being pushed to the ledge by his executioner.

In another photo, a jihadist, his face covered with a balaclava, is shown reading out the apparent sentence that was ruled in the extremists’ “Sharia court”.

There’s that stupid word again – “extremists.” They’re not “extremists,” they’re murderers, criminals, fascist murdering theocrats. Calling them “extremists” is euphemistic.

A caption for another photo says the man had been convicted of the practices of the “people of lot”, a euphemism for sodomy.

I suppose they also say “thank you for flying with us” right before they cut off people’s heads.

Guest post: What else have you done?

Originally a public Facebook post by Lama Abu-Odeh on January 13, published here by permission.

Ok let’s do these legally. Supposing you pass a rule in France that says any humorous depiction of prophet Mohamad is banned. Based on the idea that life for French “Muslims” is hard because of French racism and any such depiction of the prophet is in itself racist and will only make the effects of the racism worse. You want to make life easier for them so you ban it. What have you achieved? Let’s think of the winners and losers of such a ban.

One primary winner of course are the religious within the “Muslim” camp who find such depictions offensive. Great victory for them and a great concession from the Secular French. The French lose, they win. The French press will have to be self-conscious about its representation of Muslim religious icon, self-censure or face the consequences.

Ok, now think harder, who else loses? Well, the secularists, skeptics, agnostics, atheists within the Muslim community itself. [Read more…]

The Islamist equivalent of Animal Farm

Imagine my surprise and delight yesterday to turn on Fresh Air (the NPR interview show) and find that the guest was Maajid Nawaz. It’s a terrific interview, in which he covers a lot of ground and says valuable things. That’s one thing about Fresh Air – it gives people a lot of time.

At age 16, Nawaz was transformed from a disaffected British teenager to an Islamist recruiter when he joined the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Nawaz continued his college studies and spent a year abroad in Egypt, where he continued his recruiting. As a result, he was imprisoned for four years, starting in 2002.

It was while in prison, surrounded by several prominent jihadist leaders, that Nawaz realized he wanted to take a different path. He was reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm and came to a new understanding of “what happens when somebody tries to create a utopia.” [Read more…]

The most sophisticated variety of racism that exists in France

Here’s a marvelous, blistering piece by Zineb El-Rhazoui in reply to the December 2013 one by former Charlie Hebdo editor Olivier Cyran saying CH was racist. Seth Ackerman at Jacobin translated it. Zineb el-Rhazoui is religion editor of CH.

She learned from Cyran’s piece that she’s a racist.

Being of French citizenship, I was anxious to identify, before the malady could advance any further, which races were likely to activate my white-woman antibodies.

She flips sarcastically through many possibilities, then zeroes in on the real one.

I didn’t have to make it far into the piece to be reassured that his diagnosis was more precise: my racism, thank God (that idiot), is only aimed at Muslims, and I  contracted this dangerous syndrome from the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo. [Read more…]

What we talk about when we talk about offending

The BBC tries to host a discussion of free speech but as always it phrases everything in such a fatuously empty meaningless unhelpful way that the discussion is undercut before it starts. They clearly have a mandated list of the correct words to use, and those words are the most anodyne and obfuscatory they can think of. That’s some unfree speech right there.

Am I free to offend you?

Should I deliberately share images that I know will offend others, as a statement of everyone’s freedom to do so?

What about extremists? Should their speech be banned?

[Read more…]

How to discourage the dissident voices

Last week the Beeb took the temperature after the lashing of Raif.

Two Arabic hashtags that translate to “Raif Badawi’s public lashing” and “ lashing Raif Badawi” trended in Saudi Arabia with more than 250,000 tweets after news of carrying out the first round of lashes on Badawi was announced.

Unsurprisingly, there were some hooray tweets.

“He established a network to spread apostasy and to offend religion and the prophet’s verses and some people cry for him, I say he deserves more than this,” one Saudi twitter user commented. [Read more…]

A blasphemous cartoon disrespecting Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him)

A photographer for AFP, Asif Hasan, has been shot at a protest against Charlie Hebdo in Karachi, Dawn reports.

A protest organised by Islami Jamiat Talaba’s Karachi chapter on Friday turned violent when a clash took place between protesters and police. Security forces resorted to aerial firing, tear gas and water cannons to push back the charged mob.

Three party workers, who were affected by tear gas, have been transferred to the nearest hospital.

Agence France-Presse photographer, Asif Hasan, was shot while covering the rally. [Read more…]

The Friday flogging is put off

Sigh of relief: Raif’s second flogging has been postponed “for medical reasons.”

Not a sigh of full relief, obviously, but comparative relief.

Better than that, the king has sent his case to the Supreme Court for review.

The BBC reports:

The case of a Saudi blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes has been referred to the Supreme Court by the king’s office, the BBC has learned.

Blogger Raif Badawi’s wife said the referral, made before he was flogged 50 times last Friday, gave him hope that officials would end his punishment.

A second round of lashings was postponed for medical reasons.

You’ve put on your spectacle, KSA. Now let him go to Canada to join his wife and children.

More book-demolition

And speaking of silencing writers – in Lebanon the silencers have silenced some dead ones.

Ancient books in a historic library in the Lebanese city of Tripoli have been torched by Islamist[s], after a pamphlet purportedly insulting religion was found inside one of the books.

Security sources say that up to 78,000 books, many irreplaceable ancient Muslim and Christian texts and manuscripts, are now unsalvageable, according to Agence France Press. [Read more…]