Identity politics and 2020

April 21, 2019 • 10:45 am

I am not a political expert, and somehow I just can’t get deeply involved in a race for President when the election won’t take place for a year and a half.  But I do know three things:

1.) We have to get a Democrat into the White House, and that means defeating Trump. Unless he’s impeached, that is, and then we have to replace Pence.

2.) I am not excited about any of the Democratic candidates so far. Perhaps I’m just old and tired, but nobody has yet risen from the pack who excites me as much as, say, Obama did.

3.) I’ll be voting Democratic, as usual. Republicans by and large are an odious bunch with repugnant policies, and Trump doesn’t deserve to be dogcatcher, much less President. If we can get a Democratic President, House, and maybe even the Senate, then maybe we can get things done.

I’ve also been worried about whether identity politics, which is a large aspect of the schism between mainstream and progressive Democrats, could hurt the Democrats in 2020. By this I don’t just mean the squabblings and missteps of the so-called “progressives”, many of whom I find self-centered and wedded more to getting attention than getting stuff done, but also the constant emphasis on getting an affirmative-action President who is not an old white male. Such a “minority President” could, many say, turn off middle America and turn them toward Trump.

All things equal, I would prefer a woman President, as it’s time to break the lock on the nation’s highest office, but selecting a President solely or largely on the grounds that they have two X chromosomes may be a losing strategy. I don’t think it helped Hillary Clinton for her supporters to bruit about the notion that “it’s her turn”, and it surely didn’t help her to demonize Republicans as a “basket of deplorables.”

And so the dilemma raised in today’s New York Times piece (click on screenshot): should we even consider sex or ethnicity when deciding which Democrat to support, or do we simply go for the candidate who is a.) most likely to defeat Trump and b.) has the best policies?  Ideally, we’d find a candidate who appeals to all Democrats, and there’s no reason why a non-white-male President couldn’t have the best platform as well. It would be a shame, for instance, if the Democrats would lose just because their candidate was a woman, but I can’t see myself saying, “We can’t support candidate X because she’s a woman and she can’t win.” On the other hand, I can’t see myself saying “We can’t support candidate Y (a white male) because he doesn’t represent the face of America, and Old White Men are passé.”

As I said, I’m not excited about any Democrat right now, but it’s early days.

In general, the article is pretty even-handed in describing and quoting people who favor best policies versus those who demand a minority/woman candidate regardless of their electability:

Interviews with several dozen Democratic voters around the country show how the party, which enjoyed victories in 2018 that were powered by female and nonwhite candidates, is now grappling with two complicated questions about race, gender and politics in the Trump era.

Is a white man the best face for an increasingly diverse Democratic Party in 2020? And what’s the bigger gamble: to nominate a white man and risk disappointing some of the party’s base, or nominate a minority candidate or a woman who might struggle to carry predominantly white swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that both Barack Obama and President Trump won?

But the Times does seem to tip its hand in one place:

White men have largely ruled both the Democratic and Republican parties throughout American history, even as they have declined to roughly 30 percent of the population, and many voters still have preconceptions of presidents as white and male. Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders are starting off with other advantages as well: They are the best-known candidates at this stage, both with experience running for president, and they are well positioned to have the money and resources to compete through the 2020 primaries.

But as older white men, they are out of step with ascendant forces in the party today.

Women, minorities and young people are fueling much of its energy, and they are well represented by multiple well-qualified, politically savvy female and nonwhite Democrats who are running. Ms. Harris in particular has had a strong start in fund-raising, and only Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders consistently outpace her in polls.

I’m not sure if Biden and Sanders are markedly inferior to younger or female candidates, and being “out of step with ascendant forces in the party today”—if that means aligning with all the views of people like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—might not be a bad thing.  After all, the “ascendant forces” are not in the majority, though some of their views, like taking climate change seriously, is something that needs to be part of a Democratic push.

One thing that Grania pointed out to me is that if one looks at the readers’ comments on this article, you can see, as she said, that “the responses by Democratic voters show that they are fed up to the back teeth with identity politics.” Here are a few of the top “Times Pick” comments, which seem to have risen to the top because they get more recommendations from other readers. I’m going to give the top ten comments in descending order without selecting any. Only comments #2 and #10 are dissents:

So there you have it. I request that you address these questions below:

a. Are identity politics among Democrats going to hurt us in 2020?

and

b. Who (if any) among the declared Democratic candidates excites you?

 

h/t: Grania

Easter Special: Nicholas Kristof interviews a Christian who doesn’t accept the tenets of Christianity

April 21, 2019 • 9:15 am

For a long time, New York Times op-ed writer Nicholas Kristof has been interviewing religious people, struggling to somehow buttress his Christianity.  He’s written a number of columns in which he asks religionists and church leaders if he, Kristof, is really a Christian (see here, here, and here), for, like any sensible person, he has doubts about the miracles that underlie Christianity, and about concepts like the efficacy of prayer, heaven, and hell. He wants to be a Christian but is having problems. I think he’d be better off as a secular humanist (he holds a number of appealing liberal views), and that would also save us from the spate of tedious columns about religion flowing from his pen.

And indeed, the people Kristof interviews, like former President Jimmy Carter, usually disavow any literal belief in the foundational tenets of Christianity, like the Resurrection, but still consider themselves as Christians because somehow the whole fictional story resonates with them. But doesn’t there has to be some acceptance of Christian truths to call yourself a Christian rather than, say, a Muslim or Hindu? In this week’s column, Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, somehow manages to find her Christianity between the Scylla of the Resurrection and the Charybdis of the virgin birth, both of which she rejects.

Here’s what Jones doesn’t accept: the resurrection, the virgin birth, the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient god, heaven, hell (which has a “symbolic reality”, whatever that is). Here’s what she does accept: the crucifixion and the power of faith to tell her that there is a god and that that god is “vulnerable” (whatever that means).

Jones appears to reject things like the Resurrection because there’s no evidence for it, or it doesn’t make sense, but yet accepts other tenets of Christianity because her “faith” tells her what’s true. In the end, she calls for a reformation of Christianity—i.e., the religious underpinnings of Christianity—to effect social justice. (You can read the article to see that bit.)

Here’s where she accept the crucifixion (for which there’s no extra-Biblical evidence) but rejects the resurrection.

KRISTOF Happy Easter, Reverend Jones! To start, do you think of Easter as a literal flesh-and-blood resurrection? I have problems with that.

JONES When you look in the Gospels, the stories are all over the place. There’s no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves. But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed.

For me it’s impossible to tell the story of Easter without also telling the story of the cross. The crucifixion is a first-century lynching. It couldn’t be more pertinent to our world today.

What is it, Dr. Jones? Did the crucifixion really occur, but not the resurrection? If so, how do you know? And if you claim to know that the crucifixion took place, and the person nailed up was anything more than a non-divine apocalyptic Jewish preacher, are you kidding yourself, too? What, truly, was the nature of Jesus? And what is Easter about Is it all just a story? If so, why do you follow that story and run a big Christian seminary?

Sometimes I think that this mushy, cherry-picking theology is worse than Biblical literalism, because it’s infuriating the way that people like Jones twist and turn their words to buttress truth claims that don’t seem to be true. For example:

KRISTOF But without a physical resurrection, isn’t there a risk that we are left with just the crucifixion?

JONES Crucifixion is not something that God is orchestrating from upstairs. The pervasive idea of an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts. For me, the cross is an enactment of our human hatred. But what happens on Easter is the triumph of love in the midst of suffering. Isn’t that reason for hope?

Yes, that story is nuts, and I wonder if Jones tells her faculty and her flock (she’s a minister, too) that this foundational story of Christianity is “nuts” as well.  But then if somebody just got nailed up and was not resurrected, what is the vaunted “triumph of love”? The execution of a preacher isn’t a triumph of love, but hate. And if that’s the case, then what does she mean by saying “what happens on Easter”? Does she mean the celebration of a Resurrection that didn’t happen?

And since Jones doesn’t believe in the afterlife, what “hope” is she looking for? The improvement of humanity? If that’s the case, then secular humanism, particularly as discussed in Steve Pinker’s latest two books, gives us even more reason for hope: the historical progress of humanity that has depended not on religious superstition, but on humanism, science, and secular morality, traits that seem to be spreading.

Here’s where Jones avers that she knows the nature of God, though she doesn’t tell us how she knows, nor how she knows that there even is a God:

KRISTOF: You alluded to child abuse. So how do we reconcile an omnipotent, omniscient God with evil and suffering?

JONES At the heart of faith is mystery. God is beyond our knowing, not a being or an essence or an object. But I don’t worship an all-powerful, all-controlling omnipotent, omniscient being. That is a fabrication of Roman juridical theory and Greek mythology. That’s not the God of Easter. The God of Easter is vulnerable and is connected to the world in profound ways that don’t involve manipulating the world but constantly inviting us into love, justice, mercy.

If God is beyond our knowing, then how does she know that God is vulnerable and “connected to the world in profound ways that don’t involve manipulating the world but constantly inviting us into love, justice, mercy”? Truly, if God really is beyond our knowing, then how does Jones know there is a God at all?

In this bit below, Jones says that her faith is stronger than truth, because she’d maintain it (and has maintained it) even if its truth claims were found to be false (my emphasis):

KRISTOF Isn’t a Christianity without a physical resurrection less powerful and awesome? When the message is about love, that’s less religion, more philosophy.

JONES For me, the message of Easter is that love is stronger than life or death. That’s a much more awesome claim than that they put Jesus in the tomb and three days later he wasn’t there. For Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith. What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus still in the tomb? Would that then mean that Christianity was a lie? No, faith is stronger than that.

Here is deepity piled upon deepity. What does it mean to say that love is stronger than life or death? I have no idea. Note the last two sentences where Jones tacitly admits that faith is belief that is independent of the evidence. And this prompts my question to Dr. Jones: “What, then, would convince you that Christianity was a lie?”

Truly, this modernist theology sickens me, for while it pretends to rest on empirical evidence, it rests on it only so far, and beyond that things are believed for which there is no evidence—indeed, counterevidence if you accept Victor Stenger’s claim that “absence of evidence is evidence for absence, if there should have been evidence.”

I’m getting ill trying to dissect this piece, so I’ll proffer just one more specimen of Sophisticated Theology®:

KRISTOF What happens when we die?

JONES don’t know! There may be something, there may be nothing. My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife. People who behave well in this life only to achieve an afterlife, that’s a faith driven by a selfish motive: “I’m going to be good so God would reward me with a stick of candy called heaven?” For me, living a life of love is driven by the simple fact that love is true. And I’m absolutely certain that when we die, there is not a group of designated bad people sent to burn in hell. That does not exist. But hell has a symbolic reality: When we reject love, we create hell, and hell is what we see around us in this world today in so many forms.

I’m not sure what she means by saying that “Love is true”, which seems to be another deepity. If love is true because it’s there and powerful, then so is hate. But besides that, note that Dr. Jones is “absolutely certain” that there is not a hell. How does she know? Well, maybe hell is just a “symbolic reality,” but you don’t need the symbol of hell to realize that treating people badly makes for a bad society. To call suffering “hell” in the Christian sense is to play with words and mislead people. In this sense—and in fact in every aspect of the watery Christianity that Jones espouses—her faith is unnecessary. In the end, it’s merely secular humanism tricked out with religious symbols to sell it to the Little People.

Happy Easter!

Serene Jones, professed Christian

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 21, 2019 • 7:30 am

Take a break from looking for colored eggs and look at some wildlife photos. Today’s lovely batch of insects comes from reader Tony Eales in Australia, where Easter is already over.  The photos are from Borneo, and Tony’s notes are indented:

The last of the Borneo shots. One Ephemeropteran i.e. a mayfly, there were thousands every night attracted by the lights of the field centre. And the rest are Lepidopterans.  Here’s the mayfly:

A rather tattered large moth which I think is Amblychia sp. We saw a couple of these moths; this one had landed on the leg of my shorts.

 

Next an impressive Hawk Moth from the family Sphingidae, which I’m pretty sure is Ambulyx pryeri.

Next is a moth that I’ve tentatively IDed as Hypochrosis sp. In the family Geometridae aka Loopers…But I could be way off base.

I’m very sure of the family of this caterpillar which is from the Cup Moth family Limacodidae. They have some of the most spectacular and bizarre larvae in all the insect world.

We also found one of the large beautiful Tropical Swallow-tailed Moths, Lyssa sp. The different species are fairly similar looking but this is probably the common one, Lyssa zampa.

I’m completely stumped with this next moth, I suspect it’s in the family Notodontidae but really that’s a stab in the dark. Large and beautiful cryptic patterning.

And finally the king of Bornean butterflies Raja Brooke’s Birdwing, Trogonoptera brookiana, seen here on the photographer’s face.

Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 21, 2019 • 6:30 am

It’s Sunday, April 21, 2019, and it’s Easter. (It’s also the third day of Passover.) That reminds me of a joke I’ve posted before:

This comes from the site Southern Jewish Humor, which gets the story from Eli N. Evans, who wrote The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South:

Evans said he searched for the best example he could find of Southern Jewish humor.  He told the story of a Jewish storekeeper in a small town who was approached by the Christian elders to show solidarity for their Easter holiday.

Mr. Goldberg was chagrined but when Easter came, after sunrise services on a nearby hilltop, the mayor, all the churchgoers, and the leading families in the city gathered in the town square in front of his store.  The store had a new sign but it was draped with a parachute.

After an introduction from the mayor, at the appointed hour, the owner pulled the rope and there it was revealed in all its wonder for all to see: “Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”

I’ll be here all year, folks!

It’s National Chocolate-Covered Cashews Day (I’d eat them but I’ve never seen them), as well as Grounation Day, a Rastafarian holiday commemorating this (from Wikipedia):

Haile Selassie visited Jamaica on Thursday, April 21, 1966. Some 100,000 Rastafari from all over Jamaica descended on Palisadoes Airport in Kingston, having heard that the man whom they considered to be God was coming to visit them. They waited at the airport playing drums and smoking large quantities of marijuana. Today the Rastafari celebrate that Haile Selassie visited Jamaica on April 21.

Today’s news report: there have been widespread terror attacks in Sri Lanka, with 140 people killed and over 500 injured in at least six bombings. This appears to be an attack on the minority Christian community on their Easter Holiday.  No suspects or organizations have been identified as the perpetrators.

On April 21, 1506, the three-day Lisbon Massacre of Jews, occasioned by their being blamed for drought and plague, finally came to an end. Over 1900 Hebrews were killed.  Exactly three years later, Henry VIII became King of England after his father (Henry VII, of course) died.

On this day in 1934, the famous “Surgeon’s Photograph”, a hoax that was taken to represent a real image of the  Loch Ness Monster, was published in the Daily Mail.  You’ll have seen this:

Wikipedia reveals how this photo was shown to be bogus:

Details of how the photo was taken were published in the 1999 book, Nessie – the Surgeon’s Photograph Exposed, which contains a facsimile of the 1975 Sunday Telegraph article. The creature was reportedly a toy submarine built by Christian Spurling, the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell. Wetherell had been publicly ridiculed by his employer, the Daily Mail, after he found “Nessie footprints” which turned out to be a hoax. To get revenge on the Mail, Wetherell perpetrated his hoax with co-conspirators Spurling (sculpture specialist), Ian Wetherell (his son, who bought the material for the fake), and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent). The toy submarine was bought from F. W. Woolworths, and its head and neck were made from wood putty. After testing it in a local pond the group went to Loch Ness, where Ian Wetherell took the photos near the Altsaigh Tea House. When they heard a water bailiff approaching, Duke Wetherell sank the model with his foot and it is “presumably still somewhere in Loch Ness”. Chambers gave the photographic plates to Wilson, a friend of his who enjoyed “a good practical joke”. Wilson brought the plates to Ogston’s, an Inverness chemist, and gave them to George Morrison for development. He sold the first photo to the Daily Mail, who then announced that the monster had been photographed.

Sorry, Virginia, but there is no Loch Ness monster.

On April 21, 1960, Brasília officially took over from Rio de Janeiro as Brazil’s capital. That was a mistake: nobody wants to live in Brasília.  In 1977, Annie opened on this day on Broadway, and five years after that, Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers became the first pitcher in major league baseball to achieve 300 saves. Rollie went on to get 341 saves in his career, but that’s a pittance compared to the record holder, Mariano Rivers of the Yankees, who finished his career as a closer with 652.

Exactly 30 years ago on this day, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 took place as thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square. The democracy movement continued, and on June 5 the famous photo of “tank man” was taken. The identity and fate of this brave man have never been determined:

 

Finally, it was on April 21, 2014, that the Flint Michigan water crisis began when the city changed its water source from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River, causing 15 deaths and thousands of cases of lead poisoning.

Notables born on this day include Charlotte Brontë (1816), Garrett Hardin and Anthony Quinn (both 1915), Alistair MacLean (1922), Elizabeth II (1926), Elaine May (1932), Iggy Pop (1947), Patti LuPone (1949), and Andie MacDowell (1958).

Those who fell asleep on April 21 include Peter Abelard (1142), Henry VII (1509), Mark Twain (1910), John Maynard Keynes (1946), Gummo Marx (1977), Sandy Denny (1978), Nina Simone (2003), and Prince (2016).

Here’s Denny singing her most famous song, though the version that became the most popular was probably the gorgeous one recorded by Judy Collins, who will be 80 on May 1 (where did the time go?):

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus and Hili are engaging in intensive bouts of olfaction:

Cyrus: Come on, there are even more interesting smells further on.
Hili: It’s possible, but this one is stimulating my imagination.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Chodź, tam dalej są ciekawsze zapachy.
Hili: Możliwe, ale ten pobudza wyobraźnię.

Reader Bruce, clearly knowing of my love for Marshmallow Peeps, sent me this cartoon by Mark Parisi. You have to know who Woodstock is, of course.

And a cartoon from reader Barry:

A wonderful picture from the All Interesting Things Facebook page:

Two pictures from reader Merilee. The first covers both Passover (which is occurring today) and Easter:

And therapy, of course:

A cryptic green spider:

Tweets from Grania.  These cats are KINGS out dere, fadda!

The conjunction of two funny names (yes, Piggly Wiggly is a chain of grocery stores in the American South that’s still going).

And a jerk cat:

https://twitter.com/AwwwwCats/status/1118557413924327424

This cat has a little samurai suit!!!

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1115689595906215937

Tweets from Matthew. I didn’t know elephants could be jerks:

https://twitter.com/SlenderSherbet/status/1119306658969264129

Dinosaur eggs for Easter:

A dress for the evolutionary entomologist:

I love this video. And note that the closest approach of that star to the event horizon is 20 billion kilometers!

 

Saturday: Duck report

April 20, 2019 • 1:30 pm

It’s chilly but sunny today, and the weather is predicted to be warm for about a week. The good news is that the interloper drakes have largely fled the pond—at least for today. This leaves just Gregory Peck, who has the whole pond to himself.  He’s down there snoozing in the sun right now, but he had a decent meal of duck chow and corn this morning.

Yesterday, however, there were five—count them, five—drakes in the pond, and feeding was out of the question. The interlopers are all about the same size, and look (to me) young. Sometimes I wonder if they might really be part of Honey’s brood from last year, having homed back to Botany Pond. It makes me sad not to feed them, but it wouldn’t do to have five drakes around if Honey returns. (And there’s always the distressing possibility of incest!).

Here are the five from yesterday:

And the very handsome Gregory Peck, still waiting for Honey’s return:

The cowardice of Middlebury College faculty

April 20, 2019 • 12:00 pm

As I reported a few days ago, Middlebury College recently disinvited speaker Ryszard Legutko, a right-wing Polish professor, from speaking to the College. The reason given by the Dean and Provost, in an email to the campus community, was that they could not “ensure the safety of students, faculty, staff and community members.”  That may be true, but it’s their responsibility to make sure that safety is ensured, for if it’s mainly the Left who disrupts speakers, this excuse will guarantee that only Left-wing speech will be heard. It amounts to a tacit kind of censorship—viewpoint restriction.

A reader sent me what is said to be a transcript of a discussion between faculty and a group of students about Legutko’s appearance in a class, which was livestreamed and his only “talk” at Middlebury. I can’t vouch for its authenticity, but it sounds authentic. If it is, it speaks poorly of both the students of Middlebury, who are deeply offended and DEMAND that the college apologize for Legutko’s appearance. And listen how the faculty capitulates to these demands, debasing and abasing themselves and promising to “do better.” If this is real, it sickens me.

Here are you YouTube notes:

A Middlebury College student contacted me with an audio recording of a student/faculty meeting. He was concerned about what took place and wanted help to get it out so I put a video together for him.

Officials at Middlebury College in Vermont have cancelled a planned event featuring a talk by conservative Polish politician and philosopher, Ryszard Legutko.

Legutko is often subject to fierce opposition to his right-wing views. Protests of the Legutko event at Middlebury were planned, before the college cancelled his appearance, citing safety concerns.

An email signed by provost Jeff Cason and deen Bashakhi Taylor was sent out to the campus hours before the appearance by Legutko saying, “In the interest of ensuring the safety of students, faculty, staff and community members, the lecture by Ryszard Legutko scheduled for later today will not take place. The decision was not taken lightly. It was based on an assessment of our ability to respond effectively to potential security and safety risks for both the lecture and the event students had planned in response.”

An open letter circulating on campus had earlier questioned sponsoring “a speaker who blatantly and proudly expounds homophobic, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic discourse.” Bringing such a speaker to campus amounts to “shutting out large swaths of the Middlebury community, all of whom are engaged, critical and rigorous thinkers whose energies would be better spent not combating degrading and dehumanizing rhetoric.”

Many disputed this argument, disavowing some of his stances but saying it was important for the college to have speakers with a wide range of views.

 

Here’s a link to the entire recording of the meeting, though for some reason I haven’t been able to open it.

h/t: cesar

WordPress and the Pakistani government censor my site again, removing a “blasphemous” quote—from the Qur’an!

April 20, 2019 • 10:30 am

This is the third time I’ve gotten an email from WordPress telling me that, at the behest of the censorious and easily offended Pakistani government, they’ve blocked some of the content of my site from that country. The curious thing is that what they blocked—on the grounds of blasphemy—is a quote from the Qur’an! And, as far as I can determine, the quote is pretty accurate.

I’ll put below the email from WordPress, which includes the Pakistani complaint, and I’ve also placed the “blasphemous” item in this post so you can see what caused all the kerfuffle:

From WordPress:

Hello,

A Pakistan authority has demanded that we disable the following content on your WordPress.com site:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/57f662e41a0000de085b7759.png?w=500&h=388

Unfortunately, we must comply to keep WordPress.com accessible for everyone in the region. As a result, we have disabled this content only for Internet visitors originating from Pakistan. They will instead see a message explaining why the content was blocked. [JAC: I’d like to see what message was posted for the Pakistanis]

Visitors from outside of Pakistan are not affected.

You and your readers may be interested in these suggestions for bypassing Internet restrictions.

For your reference, we have included a copy of the complaint. No reply is necessary, but please let us know if you have any questions.

Dear WordPress Team,

I am writing on behalf of Web Analysis Team of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) which has been designated for taking appropriate measures for regulating Internet Content in line with the prevailing laws of Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

In lieu of above it is highlighted that few of the web pages hosted on your platform are extremely Blasphemous and are hurting the sentiments of many Muslims around Pakistan. The same has also been declared blasphemous under Pakistan Penal Code section 295, 295A, 295B, 295C and is in clear violation of Section 37 of Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (PECA) 2016 and Section 19 of Constitution of Pakistan.

Keeping above in view, It is requested to please support in removing following URL’s from your platform at earliest please.

The below mentioned websites can be found on following URL’s:-

[…] 52.

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/57f662e41a0000de085b7759.png?w=500&h=388 […]

You are requested to contribute towards maintaining peace and harmony in the world by discontinuation of hosting of these websites for viewership in Pakistan with immediate effect. We will be happy to entertain any query if deemed necessary and looking forward for your favorable response at your earliest.

Regards
Web Analysis Team
+92 51 9214396

Now I’ve kvetched before about how WordPress acts as the blasphemy police for Pakistan, and I’m sure they do this because they get money from Pakistani clicks. This is contrary to WordPress’s policy on speech, but at least they blocked just the offending item, and only in Pakistan. I suspect I’d better keep my tuchas out of Pakistan since I’ve committed an electronic crime!

In truth, I don’t remember putting that image up. I may have, though it doesn’t seem like something I’d do, and perhaps it was contributed by a reader. At any rate, someone might try to find it and let me know.

Is it blasphemous? Well, let’s look up what the Qur’an says in that verse. You can find various translations of 2:191 here, and I’ll give a few:

Sahih International: And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- îaram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

Pickthall: And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.

Yusuf Ali: And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.

Shakir: And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

Muhammad Sarwar: Slay them wherever you may catch them and expel them from the place from which they expelled you. The sin of disbelief in God is greater than committing murder. Do not fight them in the vicinity of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca unless they start to fight. Then slay them for it is the recompense that the disbelievers deserve.

Mohsin Khan: And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing. And fight not with them at Al-Masjid-al-Haram (the sanctuary at Makkah), unless they (first) fight you there. But if they attack you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.

Arberry: And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the recompense of unbelievers —

So the quote is pretty accurate given that these versions say “Slay them wherever you find them”, and “them” clearly revers to disbelievers or unbelievers. What we have, then, is an Islamic government declaring that the words of the Qur’an are blasphemous!

That’s unbelievable but true. What this means is that the Pakistani authorities want to control what the people see about their own sacred text, because it disrupts “world peace and harmony.” Too bad that it does!