Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1864

Pakistani Bollywood Star Veena Malik Gets 26 Years in Jail For the “Terrorism” of Blasphemy

Under the flag of fighting terrorism, virtually every outrage against people’s liberties is allowed as long as you work for the government. Nothing new, but this is surely a new low:

Veena Malik has expressed her anger and disbelief after she was handed a 26-year jail term by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court for ‘malicious acts’ of blasphemy.

Her crime? Appearing in a pretend wedding scene, staged on a daytime show broadcast by Geo TV and based on the marriage of the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter.

The program sparked a wave of controversy in the Islamic country when it aired in May, despite the fact similar scenes had been aired in the past to little or no such public outrage.

Malik’s husband, Asad Bashir Khan, and Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, the chief executive of the biggest media group in the Asian country, were further sentenced to 26 years behind bars for the apparent religious offense. The host of the show, Shaista Wahidi, was also punished.

Malik is both angry and optimistic.

“26 years! Come on. 26 years is a lifetime… But I have faith in higher courts in Pakistan,” Malik said… “When the final verdict comes, it will do justice to me. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Let’s hope that she’s right, and that the same will be true for another Pakistani blasphemy convict. Asia Bibi, whom we wrote about here, filed her final appeal with Pakistan’s Supreme Court earlier this week. She will be executed if the justices don’t act. Bibi has been on death row since 2010 for supposedly insulting Islam during a bizarre local dispute over drinking water.

(Image via Wikipedia)

Alabama City to Hold Parade With “Keep Christ in Christmas” Theme

The city of Piedmont, Alabama has a Christmas parade on December 4, which is not really a big deal… but their theme could use a bit of work:

The annual City of Piedmont Christmas parade will be at 6 p.m. Dec. 4. The lineup will start at the old National Guard Armory at 4 p.m. The theme for this year is “Let’s Keep Christ in Christmas,” reflecting our strong belief in prayers.

The hell…? That’s unequivocally a city-sponsored promotion of Christianity. This week, the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote a letter to city officials warning them of the constitutional problems:

The theme “alienates non-Christians and others in Piedmont who do not in fact have a ‘strong belief in prayers’ by turning them into political outsiders in their own community,” wrote Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel.

“The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the government from endorsing, advancing or promoting religion. A government celebration of Christmas is only permissible because courts have ruled certain aspects of the holiday, such as Christmas trees, to be secular symbols. The sentiment of ‘Keeping Christ in Christmas’ does not qualify” as a secular celebration, Seidel explained.

This is the same city, by the way, in which the school district said prayers over the loudspeakers at football games until FFRF stepped in.

No word yet on whether the city will change its theme by next week.

(Image via elina / Shutterstock.com)

Keith Lowell Jensen Releases Atheist Christmas Stand-Up Special

My friend Keith Lowell Jensen just released his latest comedy album, Atheist Christmas (which you can also watch on Amazon instant video if you’d like):

Jensen covers a wide range of material from having a daughter who has decided she is a tiger, sexual morality at church camp, depression, and how to deal hilariously with a telemarketer. Jensen returns to the holiday theme several times, often in surprising ways, which includes a touching story of agreeing to perform stand up comedy at the ‘fun’eral of his friend, a professional Santa, and closes out comparing his niece’s same sex wedding to Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

If you like stand-up, Jensen has done a great job throughout his career of putting an atheist spin on all sorts of topics. Christmas, then, is one of the holy grails. The clips I’ve heard so far have been great — I can’t wait to hear the whole album.

Florida Police Department Sued After Holding Christian Prayer Vigil to Fight Crime

A couple of months ago, Chief Greg Graham of the Ocala Police Department in Florida posted an unusual letter to the department’s Facebook page. Co-signed by community development director for the Ocala/Marion County Family YMCA Narvella Haynes, the letter called for public prayer to help stop crime:

We are facing a crisis in the City of Ocala and Marion County that requires fervent prayer and your presence to show unity and help in this senseless crime spree that is affecting our communities.

…

I am urging you all to please support a very important “Community Prayer Vigil” that will be held this coming Wednesday, September 24, 2014 at 6:30 pm to be held at our Downtown Square located in the heart of the City.

It seemed almost self-defeating for a Chief of Police to say, “The best solution we have to stop crime is prayer!”

For some reason, he didn’t suggest just waving a white flag.

I don’t know why he didn’t ask the community to report suspicious activity, or call on politicians to enforce tougher gun control laws, or ask for more government funding for the police department, or (on a broader/long-term scale) look for ways to get people out of poverty so some of them don’t feel the need to resort to crime.

The fact is prayer isn’t going to fix anything. If it did, crime would’ve stopped everywhere a long time ago.

There’s nothing wrong with having people come together as one to show that they won’t stand for what’s being done in their community — we’ve been seeing that in Ferguson, too — but that’s not what the letter said. Hell, promoting prayer (and does anyone doubt it’s a Christian prayer?) likely divided the community much more than it brought it together.

The American Humanist Association’s David Niose wrote a letter to the Chief shortly afterwards, calling on him to remove the letter from their page and asking for reassurance that the police department (as a government entity) would not be participating in the event.

For a police department to say that a spree of violence “requires fervent prayer” is an endorsement of religion that violates the First Amendment, as is your statement: “I am urging you all to please support the very important Community Prayer Vigil.” There are many ways the police can support a community that is experiencing a crime spree, but such religious proselytizing is not an acceptable means. A government call to “show unity” through prayer is in fact inherently divisive, as is evidenced by the numerous complaints posted beneath your letter on Facebook. Religious leaders and private citizens may organize such events, but please keep the apparatus of government out of it.

Nothing ever came of that. The original post is still up on the police department’s Facebook page and they took part in the prayer vigil. They didn’t just quietly attend, either. They participated.

It didn’t stop there. A resident complained about the problem to Ocala’s Mayor Kent Guinn, only to have him respond with this:

There is nothing in the constitution to prohibit us from having this vigil. Not only are we not canceling it we are trying to promote it and have as many people as possible to join us. We open every council meeting with a prayer. And we end the prayer in Jesus name we pray. our city seal says “God be with us” and we pray that he is and us with him.

Yesterday, the AHA’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center filed a lawsuit against the department claiming this is a constitutional violation:

The lawsuit challenges the city and the police department’s practice of promoting Christianity at a community prayer vigil, held on September 24 and attended by representatives from the Ocala Police Department, who wore their official badges. Some of these police department representatives preached Christianity in a revivalist, evangelical style that encouraged a call-and-response from the audience. Speakers from the police department also prayed, sang religious songs and delivered Christian sermons. The event came after objections from individuals in the community, who learned about the prayer vigil when the police department created a public Facebook post containing a letter encouraging members of the community to support the prayer vigil. The letter was written on official department letterhead and signed by the police chief and a representative of Ocala’s New Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

“Using the machinery of the state to advance a religious agenda is an abuse of police power and a clear violation of the Establishment Clause,” said Monica Miller, an attorney with the Appignani Humanist Legal Center.

“Police departments should protect the public, not promote religion or proselytize Christianity,” said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association. “Seeing uniformed officers engaging in religious activity pressures other community members into participating in those same exercises and portrays those who fail to do so as outsiders and second-class citizens.”

The AHA is asking for a declaration that the department’s actions violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and an injunction so that they don’t do it again in the future.

I don’t see how the police department can possibly say they weren’t promoting Christianity when the evidence is crystal clear. More importantly, they were wasting time that might have been spent actually fighting crime.

(Large portions of this article were published earlier)

A Christian’s Letter to the Editor Discusses the Problem with Women in Elected Office

Willard C. Holt Sr. is very unhappy with the direction his county is going in, and he wrote a letter to the editor earlier this month which was published in The Newport Plain Talk. (Because writing a letter to a newspaper is how we solve all our problems these days.)

The only reason I mention it here is to point out that this guy is real. He exists and he holds these views.

He’s very upset, for example, that stores are allowed to sell alcohol:

We have liquor stores in our town. We have a distillery that glorifies a man that was convicted of manufacturing illegal whiskey for sale. We now have a winery that produces another alcoholic beverage for sale, to draw our young people into the sin of drinking.

We now have Food City trying to seek to sell wine in a place where Christian people go to buy their food.

All these issues are wrong and should never be allowed. Our CLB members and City aldermen who voted for these measures, ignoring the people’s will for the sake of a tax dollar, will stand before God and give an account for every bottle of liquor, wine and every can of beer sold to a person who goes and gets stoned out of their mind, then drives and kills someone, or for every wife or child that has to withstand the abuses of an alcoholic husband, or for every little child that is deprived of its daily needs, because the paycheck was spent for alcohol. Likewise the people who stand to profit from the sale of any of these alcoholic products, including our county, will not be held guiltless.

Because no one knows how to drink responsibly.

If you down even a sip of alcohol, it automatically means you’re going to get high, start driving, beat your spouse, and ruin your kids’ lives. In that order, I presume.

That’s not the only problem though. It turns out some local stores sell magazines with scantily-clad models on the covers:

We have sensational magazines at checkout lanes in our stores. We have magazine sections in the same stores that promote lewdness. We have a newspaper that thinks it’s all right to fill the paper with half-dressed women and girls. I know we have freedom of the press but what happened to common decency? Where are the mothers and fathers that allow their precious children to be used in this manner to sell newspapers. Where are the silent preachers and Christians that allow these things? I have not heard one word from any of our many religious leaders in our county opposing these practices. You know why? They want to be politically correct; they do not want to ruffle feathers. They might lose members or their collections might go down. Preachers, preach against sin and back with your life. Christians, live in such a way that God will be pleased with you.

He doesn’t give any examples, but there’s a difference between a sultry pose on the cover of Cosmo and the Kim Kardashian cover that broke the Internet. You get the feeling, though, that this guy would find offense with the cover of the Economist.

But then we get to the biggest problem of them all:

We have another problem in our county. We have women in places of authority over men; this is totally against God’s word. A woman has the highest calling on earth, that of being a mother and a homemaker.

We now have a woman mayor, women [County Legislative Body] members and women running for aldermen. God will not honor these women nor will he bless our county nor the men who allowed this to take place.

Any woman who claims to be a Christian and holds one of these offices will answer to God for her disobedience of God’s word.

Any man that claims to be a Christian, serving under a woman’s authority, is going against God’s word in doing so. In my opinion if they call themselves a Christian they should resign their office and honor God.

You know, even most conservative Christians will say there’s no problem with women holding elected office (i.e. Sarah Palin). If they believe men are superior to women, they make clear those gender roles are to be followed only in the home, not the workplace.

But if Holt can take the Bible out of context to justify his sexism and other awful views, then I think it’s only fair to take a portion of his letter out of context to amuse myself:

In closing, I would like to say that I love Cocke

I had no idea.

(Thanks to Frank for the link)

Former Yeshiva Student Highlights Educational Deficits of Many Hasidic Schools

A piece in the New York Times examines the work of Yeshiva graduate Naftuli Moster, in highlighting the educational shortcomings of many Hasidic schools in New York and pushing for enforcement of existing law regarding the curriculum requirements of non-profit schools.

Some New York City Jewish schools offer a full range of educational topics, secular as well as religious, but many of these schools keep non-religious studies to a bare minimum, particularly for boys (who are often pushed toward eventual Talmud study after graduation). Sometimes secular studies comprise less than two hours in a school-day:

Nearly one-third of all students in [New York City] Jewish schools are “English language learners,” according to the city’s Department of Education. Yiddish is the Hasidic community’s first language, and both parents and educators report that many boys’ schools do not teach the A B C’s until children are 7 or 8 years old. Boys in elementary and middle school study religious subjects from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. followed by approximately 90 minutes of English and math. At 13, when boys formally enter yeshiva, most stop receiving any English instruction.

It’s further worth noting that

… Hasidic schools receive millions of dollars in government funds and are required by state law to teach a curriculum that is “equivalent” to what public schools offer.

Moster notes that “in his school… English, math and science were considered ‘profane’” topics of study; this aversion to secular education comes at a steep cost for the Hasidic community, which struggles with some of the highest levels of poverty among Jewish communities. Moster, despite having gone on to pursue a secular higher education, can point to a number of ways in which his religious education impacted his personal learning — he recalls, for instance, being unaware of what an essay was, entering a class ignorant of the definition of “molecule,” etc. To this day, he says, he is still sometimes “stumped by a certain word or concept that is familiar to the average student.”

Moster has been working to ensure that his community’s religious schools adhere to the statewide educational standards in place and “teach a curriculum that is ‘substantially equivalent to that provided in the public schools.’” To this end he founded YAFFED — Young Advocates for Fair Education — in 2011 and has since attempted to pressure local officials to observe and enforce the standards. So far, despite a number of meetings and communications, he has met with little success. From superintendents who were unaware of the regulations, to officials who believed the problem was someone else’s, no one seems willing or able to oversee the needed changes:

The state department would not discuss Mr. Moster’s letter to the Board of Regents with The New York Times or speak about the equivalency mandate except to say that enforcement was the city’s responsibility. For its part, the city said the state was responsible.

Since his efforts so far have failed, Moster is eying a lawsuit to compel officials to enforce educational standards. So far, he has gathered some support from the community.

A handful of modern Orthodox supporters have agreed to cover the legal fees and, with Mr. Moster, are interviewing lawyers. …[A] small number of parents have agreed to take part in a lawsuit if they can remain anonymous. They worry that the yeshivas will expel their children and that the community will ostracize them if their names are revealed.

It remains to be seen whether the lawsuit will proceed, and, if it does, what success it will meet; but Moster hopes his efforts will bring better educational opportunities to the young men of the Hasidic community. “Every Hasidic boy deserves a minimum education,” he notes.

(Image via Shutterstock)

“Don’t Believe in God? You’re Not Alone!” Bus Ad Goes Up in Missoula, Montana

If you’re around Missoula, Montana over the next month, keep a eye out for this ad placed by the Missoula Area Secular Society:

“Our intent with these billboards is to reach out to other non-theists during the holidays to let them know our group is here,” explained MASS president Traci Brown. “The holiday season can often be a lonely time for individuals without a lot of family nearby, as well as for those who do not share similar beliefs to their loved ones and the majority of the nation.

“We’d like to reach out to those people and let them know they are not alone, and we’re here if they’d like to join us.”

To that end, the group is holding a couple of gatherings leading up to Christmas and anyone is welcome to attend.

Hollywood Conservative Pat Dollard: “God Publicly Executed Michael Brown as a Gift To America”

How many friends and Twitter followers will documentary filmmaker and Christian conservative Patrick Dollard lose over this Ferguson tweet?

I think the answer is “Not enough.”

(via Crooks and Liars)

Creationist Mother “Debunks” Evolution Exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum; Here’s How You Should Respond

Earlier this month, self-described “homeschooling, Tea Partying, conservative mother” Megan Fox (not that one) visited Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Then, with her video camera on, she “audited” the “Evolving Planet” exhibit which documents “4 billion years of life on Earth.”

Her 30-minute video hilariously displays her scientific ignorance. The worst part is that she’s so damn confident she’s right. (Did I mention she home-schools her children?)

Here’s just one example of her brilliance. She’s talking about our transition from water to land at the 11:54 mark:

“… It’s not like their fins fell off and then they grew feet! That’s what they want you to believe, that their fins eventually fell off and then they grew some feet and started walking on the land. This is the dumbest theory I’ve ever heard in my whole life. It’s not good. It’s really not good. It’s bad. It’s very bad… Do you know how complex feet are?”

It might be a dumb theory if any credible scientist actually thought that fins just magically fell off of animals one day… but they don’t. Only Megan Fox thinks that. And I suppose Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort do, too.

Every single time she thinks she’s nailed the museum staff, she ends up inadvertently proving how little she knows about evolution and natural selection.

It’s the sort of educational resource that would make Ken Ham proud, partly because she keeps throwing out variations of Were you there? No? Then how do you know?!… which is an argument she’ll never use on the Bible.

On a brighter note, to quote one commenter on Reddit, if you mute the video, you get a free tour of the exhibit!

By the way, Fox has three children. And, in case I didn’t mention it, she home-schools them.

This isn’t a parody. When I saw people talking about this video online, I knew the name rang a bell. Fox has been going after my local library for the past year because they don’t censor their Internet and Fox sees that as sanctioning “taxpayer funded access to child porn.” She’s about as nutty as they get. And it seems like her actions, which have already cost the library more than $125,000, are designed to bring everyone else down to her education level.

If you think this video is ridiculous, you know how you can help? Make a donation to the library. You’d be supporting a wonderful cause — and helping them push back against Fox, who thinks the library is hurting the community by not censoring the Internet.

I know $125,000 is out of the question, but what about 1% of that?

(Thanks to everyone for the link)

Grace for an Atheist Thanksgiving

This is a guest post by Kate Cohen, who blogs at KateCohen.net. She has also written for Slate and the Washington Post.

…

As an atheist, I have always loved Thanksgiving. It’s the perfect holiday: national but not nationalistic, it celebrates consumption but not consumerism (and it seems people want to