PuffHo tries to whitewash Islam again (yawn)

October 7, 2016 • 11:00 am

PuffHo is on a crusade to stamp out “Islamophobia,” by which it apparently means not just bigotry against Muslims themselves, which is reprehensible, but criticism of the religion. To the latter end, it repeatedly asserts that Islam is not a divisive, xenophobic, or particularly hateful faith—and it’s not, so long as you’re a Muslim of the right sect. But if you’re a Sunni, the Shias should watch out, along with nonbelievers, ex-Muslims, gays, Christians, and women (the list is long).

So here’s the latest piece of HuffPo garbage (click on the screenshot to go to the article):

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Here’s an example of “anti-Muslim garbage.” And indeed, it’s meant to incite fear, but it’s not garbage; in fact, the call for killing of apostates and unbelievers appears repeatedly throughout the Qur’an.
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They do show another, and far more invidious, “meme” suggesting that we nuke Muslims, and that is Islamophobia. But the author, Christopher Mathias, adds these claims about Islam. I’ll leave it to readers to discuss them, as I’m off to Fallingwater.

The Quran? On the whole, it’s a book that promotes faith and peace. Scary quotes you see attributed to the Quran are often fake or taken out of context.

Sharia? It’s not a strict set of laws as much as a set of guidelines for how Muslims can live their lives. (And no, lawmakers aren’t trying to implement Sharia in the U.S.)

Jihad? It doesn’t always mean violence. It’s an Arabic word that means “exerted effort” or “struggle.” It can be a Muslim’s jihad to exercise more, or to go on more dates.

Hijab? It’s a traditional way Muslim women choose to express their faith. (Hijabs aren’t mentioned in the Quran.) Are some Muslim women limited by their faith? Some are, yes. Yet there have been far more female heads of state in Muslim countries than in the U.S.

Buddhist malfeasance: 3 years of hard labor in Myanmar for man who pulled the plug on speaker emitting loud Buddhist chants

October 7, 2016 • 8:30 am

Buddhism is always the religion held up as an exception to the bellicosity and oppressive nature of religion in general, and while that may be true, Buddhism by no means has a spotless history. In Myanmar (formerly Burma), for example, Buddhists have engaged in wholesale killing and displacement of the Muslim Rohingya. Such persecution also happens in Sri Lanka, and I’ve sometimes reported arrests for hurting Buddhist sentiments, as in the case of three people jailed for wearing an ad for a disco depicting Buddha wearing headphones.

Buddhists, then, occasionally play the “offense card,” and it’s pretty dire when they do. The latest incident, reported in yesterday’s New York Times, involves Klaas Haijtema, a 30-year-old Dutch tourist who, while visiting Myanmar, was staying at a Mandalay hostel near a Buddhist center. On the night of September 23, the center began broadcasting Buddhist chants over a loudspeaker, disturbing Haijtema’s sleep.

After asking the Buddhists to lower the volume (they probably didn’t understand him), he then pulled the plug on the amplifier. BIG mistake. He was arrested and sentenced to—get this—three years at hard labor for “causing a disturbance to an assembly engaged in religious worship.”

 As the NYT reports:

Mr. Haijtema wept after the prison sentence was announced. He was also fined the equivalent of $80 for violating the terms of his entry visa, which require visitors to obey Myanmar’s laws and customs. Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country, and Mandalay is a relatively conservative city.

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Haijtema in custody. Photo: Agence France-Presse, Getty Images

There are reports, however, that the Buddhist center was itself violating the law by broadcasting over a loudspeaker without a permit. Perhaps Haijtema won’t have to break rocks for three years after all.

h/t: Florian

The cephalopod-faced display of Costa’s Hummingbird

October 7, 2016 • 7:30 am

Reader Michael sent a short (2-minute) video clip showing a male Costa’s hummingbird (Calypte costae) courting a female; it’s from a PBS show called “Super Hummingbirds” that will be shown on October 12th. Don’t miss it. 

This is a must-watch and, a Michael noted, the real fun begins 40 seconds in:

“Spring is the time to nest for the Costa’s hummingbirds, before the desert gets too hot. Both males and females are looking for a partner, but it’s up to him to impress her. Though his back shimmers with green, it’s not until we get her point of view that we see his true splendor. He flexes the iridescent feathers of his mantle until they become a glowing mask of violet”

I have to say that hummingbirds have lovely sexual displays, but this one, in which the male turns his face into a shiny purple octopus, takes the cake!

You can read more about the show, and watch another video, here.

Friday: Hili dialogue

October 7, 2016 • 6:30 am

It’s Friday, October 7, 2016, and I’m in Pittsburgh, soon to head out to Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of home architecture: Fallingwater. The Freedom From Religion Foundation has offered that as an excursion, and as speaker I get to go! (The last time I spoke at the FFRF, it was in Hartford and we got to tour Mark Twain’s house.) I believe some of us are meeting at the hotel bar today at 4 p.m.

It’s National Frappe Day, and for non-Americans a “frappe” is a milkshake (milk, ice cream, and syrup), but it’s only called that in New England. In other places it can be an iced coffee drink, sometimes with ice cream, like my grandmother used to make.

On this day in history, Uppsala University was inaugurated in Sweden in 1477; can you name a famous early biologist who taught there? On October 7, 1868, Cornell University also began operations, and as a purely secular school. The GDR (East Germany) was formed on this day in 1949, and one year later Mother Teresa’s order of nuns began in India.

Notables born on this day include Joe Hill (1879), Heinrich Himmler (1900), Desmond Tutu (1931), Harry Kroto (1939), Oliver North (1943), Yo-Yo Ma (1955), and Tim Minchin (1975). Those who died on this day include Edgar Allen Poe (1849), Christy Mathewson (1925), and Irving Penn (2009). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili decides to imitate Jesus, except that the staff is providing the loaves and fishes:

THE SERMON ON THE LAP
Hili: We came and you petted us, and now it’s time to feed us.
A: I’m afraid I do not have a choice.
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In Polish:
KAZANIE NA KOLANACH
Hili: Przyszliśmy i pogłaskałeś nas, a teraz pora nas nakarmić.
Ja: Obawiam się, że nie mam innego wyboru.

Lagniappe: a cat attack a plush tiger. Look at that wicked right paw!

giphy

An ITV movie on apostate Muslims

October 6, 2016 • 2:20 pm

I’ve arrived in Pittsburgh for the FFRF convention and, unlike Chicago, it’s sunny and warm.

Reader Dom sent me this link along with a note that “it’s a ‘must watch’ for UK viewers.” Sadly, it won’t be viewable from outside Old Blighty. Mark your calendar for October 13 and lay in a few bottles of Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout or Taddy Porter, and maybe a few packets of Philomena’s Favorite: Monster Munch, pickled onion flavor.

The link and the description:

Islam’s Non Believers investigates what life is like for those who choose to no longer call themselves Muslim. 

Acclaimed Norwegian director Deeyah Khan was born in Norway in 1977, and has Punjabi and Pashtun descent. Her debut film Banaz: A Love Story from 2012 started a successful career as a film producer. For her debut, Khan won a Peabody Award and an Emmy for best international documentary film. In 2015 the multi-talent from Oslo made the documentary Jihad: A Story of the Others’,which has also received several awards from around the world.

On 13 October, Khan’s latest documentary will have its world premiere on ITV at 10.40pm. The film, titled Islam’s Non Believers, seeks to investigate the lives of ex-Muslims who face extreme discrimination, ostracism, psychological abuse and violence as a result of leaving Islam.

“I remember saying to my mum, ‘I don’t think I believe in God any more,’ And her saying, ‘You can’t tell anybody else because they’ll kill you, we are obliged to kill ex-Muslims,’ and that it would put me at extreme risk if anybody else was to find out, so that conversation ended there.” – Sadia, a former Muslim 

Here, courtesy of Malgorzata, is a TEDx talk by the director, Deeyah Khan, about the difficulties Muslim children face when encountering European culture. They’re pulled in two directions at once, and her talk is very moving.

Woman sues her Mormon parents to get medical care

October 6, 2016 • 12:00 pm

One of the most horrible and damaging aspects of religion is the tendency of some faiths to refuse medical care to children, relying instead on prayer and “faith healing.” The most famous such faith is Christian Science, but many sects do the same thing. As I recall (and I’m in the airport without my figures), something like 42 states confer civil or criminal immunity on parents who injure or kill their children by withholding medical care on religious grounds. If you withhold medical care on other grounds, of course, you’re liable to prosecution. Such is the unwarranted and harmful privilege of religion in America.

I wasn’t aware that Mormons were guilty of these crimes, but as The Guardian reported (and this is several months old), Mariah Walton, a young woman in Idaho, was permanently disabled because her fundamentalist Mormon parents refused to give her surgery for a hole in her heart when she was born, and so she’s left permanently disabled with pulmonary hypertension. This is what she looks like now:

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Photograph: Jason Wilson for The Guardian

Mariah, sadly. lived in Idaho, where parents are immune from prosecution for this kind of neglect. (The last chapter of Faith Versus Fact discusses the execrable religious-exemption laws.)

Mariah, along with others injured in this way, are campaigning for an end to Idaho’s exemption laws. Amazingly, some state legislators (Republicans, of course), oppose the laws’ repeal because parents should have the right to treat their kids with faith-based medicine: it’s “freedom of religion.”

There should be no freedom of religion that allows parents to hurt their children in the name of their god. It’s bad enough that they indoctrinate their kids (which really should be illegal, too), but it’s out of bounds to withhold scientific medicine in the name of a fairy tale.

It appears that the bill to deep-six the exemption laws is still under consideration, so that children are still being injured (the Followers of Christ are notorious for this). There’s a Change.org petition to the Idaho governor to remove religious exemptions from prosecution, but, sadly, it has only 1,207 signers. It’s time to eliminate all religious exemptions for medical treatment: not just for deformities and diseases, but for vaccinations, too: 47 states allow religious exemptions for the requirement for school children to get vaccinated.

UC Berkeley cancels free online courses because they weren’t accessible to the deaf

October 6, 2016 • 10:30 am

This is a crummy situation and I don’t know what to do about it. But what’s clear is that everyone in this situation is a loser.

What happened is that the University of California at Berkeley provided free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to students, a real bonus to those who lacked either funds or mobility to attend the school. The problem was that, as the Department of Justice determined after a complaint, most of these courses had no captions or sign language for deaf people. This is from the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center:

The Department [of Justice] reviewed MOOCs through the UC BerkeleyX platform and determined that some videos were not captioned, documents were not formatted for those who use screen readers, and assorted other issues.  Upon a sampling of the YouTube platforms, the Department found a number of barriers to access, including for example automatically generated captions that were inaccurate and incomplete, did not provide non-visual description of the content, or were not contrasted properly for those with visual impairments.  Finally, the Department reviewed a sampling of Berkeley’s iTunes U platform and found that none of the videos reviewed were closed captioned, and none provided an alternative format to the visual information contained into the videos.

The Department concluded that Berkeley has violated accessibility requirements.  Specifically, the Department found that Berkeley “is in violation of title II because significant portions of its online content are not provided in an accessible manner when necessary to ensure effective communication with individuals with hearing, vision or manual disabilities.   In addition, Berkeley’s administrative methods have not ensured that individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity to use Berkeley’s online content.”  Along with its findings, the Department presented a list of six remedial measures that Berkeley must take to ensure accessibility in the future.

You can see the DOJ’s letter here. In response, it appears that the courses will be taken down until (and if) UC Berkeley finds ways to satisfy the requirements.

This is what one calls a “Pyrrhic victory”, for nobody wins. Deaf people don’t get access to the courses (unless Berkeley finds the resources to fix them, and remember that they were free), and neither does anybody else. It’s entirely possible that these courses, and others like them, will simply vanish. Is that good?

The one good aspect of this, I think, is that it calls attention to the needs of those who are hearing-impaired (we haven’t even considered the blind), so that those who have the resources should make their courses accessible to all.

But if that can’t be done for lack of resources, what is the solution? I don’t know, but taking all the courses offline for the interim seems a lousy solution