She was loved by everybody in the family

Milton Nkosi reports for the BBC on heartbreak in Nairobi as parents collect the bodies of their children murdered in the Garissa slaughter.

I watched mothers, fathers, other relatives and friends break down in tears at Chiromo mortuary in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, as coffins of their young sons and daughters were handed over.

There could not have been a more poignant moment to witness the deep pain and grief suffered by families of those who perished in the Garissa University College attack last week. [Read more…]

They’re drugging her

English PEN has more on Zainub Dala:

English PEN is gravely alarmed to hear that South African novelist Zainub Priya Dala has been admitted to a mental institution in Durban, South Africa. Dala is also a psychologist and a physiotherapist specialising in autism.

In March, at a literary event at a school, she praised the works of Salman Rushdie. A day later, three men accosted her when she was in her car, placed a knife at her throat and hit her face with a brick. She was addressed as ‘Rushdie’s Bitch.’ She believes that if a minibus taxi had not pulled into the vacant lot that she would have been stabbed. [Read more…]

When she continued to refuse to make a religious vow

Remember the attack on Zainub Dala last month? After she said at a writers’ festival in Durban that one of the many writers she admired was Salman Rushdie? Well now, according to PEN America, she’s been shoved into a mental institution. Bookslive.co.za reports:

Now, according to PEN America, the shocking news has come about that Dala has been put under “extreme pressure” by members of the Muslim community in Durban to “renounce her statement about Rushdie’s work” and “to make a public vow of religious loyalty to Islam”.

When she refused, she was apparently admitted to a mental institution. [Read more…]

Meet the slyme pit

Ashley Miller did a post on some background. She included a photoshop that I hadn’t seen before (although I have seen other versions of the same photo, the one we took in solidarity with atheist bloggers in Bangladesh – such a suitable subject for ridicule and mockery, don’t you think?). I was curious so I did a google image search – and found a whole page of images: three weeks’ worth at the slyme pit, 9/30-10/14 2014. They’re productive.

This is the slyme pit: Michael Nugent’s informants and allies, people Hemant Mehta thinks PZ is too hard on when he “deems” them “trolls.”

There are a lot of photoshops of PZ there, and some of Rebecca and Stephanie, a few of Greg Laden and Melody and maybe others, and there are a lot of me, probably because I’m so grotesquely ugly I make a good target for them.

Meet the slyme pit.

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The talaq

PZ has an amusing post about his latest excommunication from something he wasn’t part of in the first place.

Next time I’m waiting for a bus I think I’ll fantasize about all the groups and organizations I’m not part of that could excommunicate me. The Air Force. Focus on the Family. The League of Left-handed Botanists. God-lovers United for Cheese-flavored Dog Food.

Read PZ’s post for the full entertainment package, but I just want to poke at the excommunication a little myself because it’s so…classic. [Read more…]

But he backtracked after he was elected

Another cartoonist being punished for being a meanie to people in power. (I thought that was what political cartoonists were supposed to do.)

Malaysian cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Alhaque has been charged with nine counts of sedition for criticising the country’s judiciary in a series of tweets.

Alhaque, known for ridiculing the ruling coalition, had criticised the judiciary in a series of posts on Twitter on 10 February, when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was due to start a five-year prison sentence on sodomy charges.

He had tweeted: “The lackeys in black robes are proud of their sentence. The rewards from the political masters must be plenty.” [Read more…]

“I have your nikah in my pocket”

Great god almighty – a new low for George Galloway. You wouldn’t think that possible, would you, but it is. Helen Pidd reports in the Guardian:

George Galloway has admitted ordering an intermediary in Pakistan to dig out the marriage certificate of his Labour rival in order to try to prove she had been 16, not 15, when she claims to have been forced into marriage.

…

Officials from his Respect party dispute that Naz Shah, Labour’s candidate in Bradford West, was forced into marriage, on the grounds that her mother was at the ceremony.

[Read more…]