Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1906

Pakistani Critics Notwithstanding, Malala Yousafzai Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

The then-15-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting education for women has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala Yousafzai, now 17, survived the attack and subsequently moved to Birmingham, England, where she has continued to be an outspoken proponent of peace and human rights.

Given her emphasis on the importance of education, I like this sentence from the New York Times story:

Ms. Yousafzai was at school … when the prize was announced and was taken out of her chemistry class to be informed of the award.

No previous Nobel Prize Winner was ever in high school at the time he or she received the award; Malala is the youngest recipient in Nobel history.

She shares this year’s honor — and the $1.1 million prize money – with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian activist who fights child exploitation and modern slavery. Although the two are from countries that have long been at each other’s throats, with the Hindu/Muslim conflict playing the central role, the Nobel Prize Committee lauded them for what easily unites the duo:

… “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

The reaction in Malala’s former home country was mixed. There’s this:

[N]ews of the Nobel Prize on Friday inspired jubilation and well-wishers in the Swat Valley, who spilled onto the streets and distributed sweets in a traditional celebration. “We have no words to express our feelings,” said Ahmad Shah, a family friend, speaking by phone from Mingora, the main town in the region. “Her efforts have been recognized by the world with this great prize. This is a victory for the people of Swat and of Pakistan.”…

For months after the attack on Ms. Yousafzai, some residents criticized the schoolgirl, fearing publicity around her case would invite further Taliban attacks. But now, Mr. Shah said he told Mr. Yousafzai [Malala's father] by phone, “even those who were opposing Malala are happy.”

And this:

Some residents, however, clung to the conspiracy theories that have dogged Ms. Yousafzai’s reputation in Pakistan. “Her shooting was a ready-made drama that was created by foreign powers,” said Ghulam Farooq, the editor of a small local newspaper.

The young laureate herself was unfazed, stating at a press conference today that

“I’m proud that I’m the first Pakistani and the first young woman, or the first young person, who is getting this award.”

Well deserved, I’d say.

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P.S.: This 11-minute Times documentary, The Making of Malala, is fascinating, and a little depressing at the same time. Though the girl was just 12 years old at the time, you see Malala’s father pushing her — too hard? — to become a politician, the way that other ambitious parents might try to push their kids to become tennis stars or beauty-pageant winners (a point also made by Adam B. Ellick, the maker of the film). Moreover, there’s Ellick’s assessment that

Even if the Taliban vanished tomorrow, most girls still wouldn’t be in school. Only 9 countries in the world spend less money on education than Pakistan.

Here’s hoping that Malala, and others, can change that.

Rise of Radical Islam Means Catholic Church Can Grab Market Share, Anglican Bishop Suggests

You gotta love the opening line of this article from Catholic Say:

The former Church of England’s bishop of Rochester has spoken of the overriding importance of the Catholic Church’s global voice for the future of Christianity in a world threatened by Islamic militancy and secularism.

He’s right to casually mention those two threats in the same breath, all equivalent-like. Surely you’ve heard of the insurgent atheist movements all over the world whose members have been beheading people of faith, detonating bombs in trains and subway cars, and flying passenger jets into cathedrals.

Bishop Nazir-Ali [above] said the Catholic Church potentially had “a great future and a huge opportunity” in the emerging world order and that it now had allies in upholding orthodoxy, even in unexpected quarters.

And by allies, of course the Bishop doesn’t mean atheists and agnostics, many of whom have been among the most fearless and vociferous in criticizing radical Islam. Instead, he’s referring to — and perhaps making a sales pitch to – Protestant evangelicals and other non-Catholic lovers of Christ.

He said that, with the growth of Islamic militancy and the persecution of Christians worldwide, many people were now looking to Rome as the voice that could stem the tide. He said these people included many Evangelicals whom he knew who never, in the past, would have thought about Rome. “So the Catholic Church has both a great opportunity and also a great responsibility.”

Without jest or reservation, I do agree with him on this point:

On the topic of the rise in Islamic militancy, he said that two things, in particular, had to be denied: one was the idea that extremism was explained solely by economic and social factors (this he said, overlooked the nature of the militants’ agenda) and the second was the claim, expressed by some Church leaders, that “a truly Islamic state would not persecute Christians.” Bishop Nazir-Ali said he could see no empirical evidence to support this view, which romanticized Islamic militancy.

Still, perhaps it’s just a bit callous to speak of the ascent of murderous religious thugs as an “opportunity” to recruit future Catholics.

(Image via Wikipedia)

Battle to Take Down Ten Commandments Monument in Fargo (ND) May Be Over After Appeals Court Rejection

Back in August, I posted about a Ten Commandments monument in the city of Fargo, North Dakota.

(Image via Secular News Daily)

It was donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1958 and was the only religious monument of its kind on city property. Long story short, it remained there even after two separate legal challenges.

The most recent one involved the Red River Freethinkers offering to pay for their own secular monument to be erected nearby the Ten Commandments one. But rather than allow that to happen, the city council voted on a new policy stating that no one else could put up a monument on the property. If that sounds illegal, that’s because it totally is. In August, however, an Appeals Court ruled 2-1 in favor of the city.

The freethinkers group said they would ask the full appeals court to rehear their case if they could raise enough money. (Meanwhile, city officials had spent more than $120,000 of taxpayer money on legal fees between these two lawsuits.)

Turns out they got the money they needed to request an en banc review… but unfortunately, this week, the full Appeals Court denied the request to rehear the case. That leaves the U.S. Supreme Court as the final option for the atheists.

Freethinkers President Charles Sawicki said he believes it is unlikely his group will appeal to the Supreme Court because the process is expensive, and the group has already hit the maximum amount it is willing to spend.

The group has not yet met to discuss the matter. If a donor comes forward willing to pay legal fees, a Supreme Court appeal is more likely, Sawicki said.

Keep in mind that the Supreme Court is unlikely to hear the case even if the money is raised… so it looks like the battle is over.

All this, because city officials want to promote Christianity above everything else. I don’t see how this monument is anything but government endorsement of religion. Only in the U.S. are Commandments saying not to take the Lord’s name in vain and to keep the Sabbath day holy considered secular. There’s just no reason the monument belongs on city property instead of a church.

(Thanks to Chengis for the link. Large portions of this article were published earlier)

Saudi Soccer Fans Are Angry Because a Woman — a Woman! — Was Spotted In a Foreign Stadium

Last week, a Saudi Arabian soccer team lost to rivals from the United Arab Emirates in the Asian Champions League semi-finals.

TV footage of the match, now on YouTube, shows something horrific. Here it is:

The BBC explains:

Following [a] tackle, the camera picks out an angry fan of the Saudi team – a woman fully covered in a black abaya and niqab. In Saudi Arabia itself, women are banned from attending football matches, but since the game was taking place in the UAE, this spectator – together with several other women cheering for [the] Saudi [players] … – were able to join their fellow male supporters in the stadium.

Over 900 people have commented on the clip, most of them angry men, critical of the unidentified woman for being in a stadium filled with thousands of men. “Women aren’t interested in football, so why go to a stadium to watch a live match?” wrote one. “Does this woman not have a man? Her place is in the house,” said another. Many who oppose women being allowed into stadia say it encourages immoral and sinful behavior.

Luckily, Saudi bureaucrats are reportedly fighting for the right of women to be spectators at sporting events… cleverly employing segregation and gender apartheid.

Local newspaper reports in Saudi Arabia suggest the government is considering building separate sections in stadia for female spectators.

Long live progress!

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P.S.  Free bonus video, courtesy of a Saudi cleric who lays out some of a woman’s most sacred obligations.

Atheist Who Convinced PA School Board to Stop Reciting the Lord’s Prayer in 2012 Returns to Apologize

Two years ago, Ernest Perce V (below, the Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists at the time) and Carl Silverman (of the PA Nonbelievers) tried to convince the Greencastle-Antrim School District board members to drop the Lord’s Prayer, a 50-year-old tradition.

And it worked! The board members realized they weren’t going to win this battle, so they stopped fighting it.

Last week, when the school board held its regular meeting, Ernest Perce was there once again… but for a very different and surprising reason.

He came to apologize:

Wearing a white clergy collar against a black shirt, he said he was now a traveling preacher.

“Every day I kick myself at what I did,” Perce told the board members and public in attendance. “Forgive me.”

… the hell?

The man who once made actually-Islamophobic comments online, and who threatened to publicly desecrate the Koran if Pennsylvania state officials didn’t drop their “Year of Religious Diversity” Resolution, and who dressed up like Zombie Muhammad during a Halloween parade was now a Christian?

What changed his mind?

He was an atheist for six years, and then a prophecy turned his life around. That was Revelation 2:9. In the Revised Standard Version the text reads, “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich) and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.”

Umm… okay. I mean, that did nothing for me, but I guess those words are magical. Who knew.

(I should say that his apology doesn’t negate the fact that he was right two years ago — the Christian prayers still have no place at a school board meeting.)

I guess we should all just reflect on how an atheist leader managed to (re-)discover his faith and how we may have pushed him away…

He also became convinced, after reading a book by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that Jesus was not a Jew, the Jewish holocaust never occurred, and 9/11 was caused by “the false state of Israel.” He now leads Jesus Was Not a Jew Ministries, with 40 followers. He and his wife intend to pull their boys, Praise, 12, and Apple, 5, out of public school, to be homeschooled while traveling with them on the preaching circuit.

So he became a Christian, Holocaust denier, and 9/11 conspiracy theorist all around the same time. He also became a guy who posts things like this on Facebook.

You know what, Christians?

You can keep him.

Good riddance.

(Thanks to Brian for the link)

Alabama Pastor Confesses to Having Sex With Female Church Members … and Knowingly Exposing Them to AIDS

It’s not unusual for a sermon to draw boredom and stifled yawns. But pastor Juan Demetrius McFarland of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama found a very special way to make congregants hang on his every word these past few Sundays.

Last month, he began admitting, right from the pulpit, that he’d done some bad things. And bit by bit, over several weeks, it all came out: how he’d been using drugs, and how he’d “mishandled” church money.

But those revelations were nothing compared to this bombshell confession: McFarland not only said that he’d been having sex with women in his flock — in the church building, no less — but also that he’d wittingly exposed his sexual partners to the HIV virus.

For the last six years, he said, he’d known that he has full-blown AIDS.

Church deacon Nathan Williams Jr. told Channel 12, the local NBC TV news affiliate:

“He concealed from the church that he had knowingly engaged in adultery in the church building with female members of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church while knowingly having AIDS.”

Five days ago, the church decided to oust McFarland.

You’d think that prosecutors are by now throwing the book at him, intent on trying him for (let’s say) reckless endangerment or attempted manslaughter. But to avoid further scandal, and to safeguard the identity of of the pastor’s victims, the church and its members may not press charges.

Also, Channel 12 learned that McFarland holds a leadership position with the Alabama Middle District Baptist Association, a group that has 34 member churches all over the state. It seems he’s still got his job there.

Calls to association leaders indicate that at this time there are no discussions to remove McFarland from his position.

It’s a timely story in a way. Just two days ago, I wrote about ueber-Christian investment scammer Ephren Taylor, and about the victims who didn’t come forward because they thought it would reflect badly on their congregation if the truth was publicized. That same evening, I happened to drive past a church close to where I live, and I was struck by the message on its sign. So I took a picture:

Love is… deafness when scandal flows.

Well, there’s your problem.

Atheist Family in Louisiana Receives Threatening Messages from “Godly” People

My friend and ex-pastor Jerry DeWitt runs a monthly secular gathering in Lake Charles, Louisiana called Community Mission Chapel. It’s one of the more successful “atheist churches,” drawing in a sizable number of atheists who appreciate the camaraderie.

This week, however, the following notes were placed in the mailbox of one of the families that attends the gatherings:

We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. You’re little group of devil worshippers isn’t welcome here. Let the love and message of the Lord filter through you and may you escape from the eternal damnation that you have condemned you and you’re innocent children to. Repent you’re Satanistic ways or you will find that the Lord works in VERY mysterious ways. You are against God and are not welcome in this area and we WILL spread his message to the hearts and minds of your innocent children. To deny His word to your children is abuse, and if you do not learn to love Him and His word then we will have no choice but to take action to protect your children from your devil-enabling ways. Do not even try to report this to the police — we are every where and His work will be done in His name thru us, the true beleivers.

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You could not keep away from it, could you? You and your group are infecting this area and driving THE ONE TRUE GOD out. We have warned you before. We are warning you again. We will stop you any way we have too. He has misterious ways. Keep you’re family close.

Scary shit…

Jon Jeffels, whose family received the anonymous notes, is handling this as well as he possible can. He reported the messages to the police and moved the other members of his family to an undisclosed location for the time being. Jeffels also wants to reiterate that this appears to be the work of one or two people, certainly not representative of the religious population at large.

He posted an open letter on Facebook last night and it’s a clear reflection of the kind of guy he is. I would highlight certain parts, but the whole thing is worth reading:

An open letter.

To whoever is leaving us these hateful notes in our mailbox, I implore you to contact me directly and allow us to have a reasoned discussion over what has happened up to this point. If the group that I am part of is offending you and your beliefs, then let’s talk about why that is, and how we can move beyond it.

Despite the obvious threats that you have made against me and my family, I have done nothing but encourage people to try to co-exist with the local communities. It hasn’t been easy because my family is my world and they have been threatened, but I also understand that your beliefs are your world to you and you feel that those are just as threatened by us in some way.

I want to understand why you are threatening us like this, and why you didn’t just message me directly in an interactive fashion – that’s perhaps the most frustrating part of all of this. There is no need to terrorize us and make us feel unsafe and unwelcome in our own home, not to mention in our own community. Why do you feel the need to follow that path? Threats won’t make us change our beliefs, nor would we wish to try and change yours, but through reasoned discussion I hope that we stand a chance of understanding one another better and co-existing on common ground that we can discover together.

I don’t want for anyone to get hurt, lose their job, or even worse over all of this if we can work this all out as reasonably and amicably as possible. Let’s set a positive example and use this as an opportunity to bridge a gap in understanding on both sides of this issue. Despite all of the stress, concern, and paranoia that you have generated, I want us to be able to produce something good from it all. We may not be able to agree on a lot of things, but I hope that we can cement home that instigating fear is not the best way forward for anyone and that everyone benefits from reasoned discussion.

Yours in anticipation,

Jon Jeffels.

So brave and so well put.

DeWitt is also reaching out to believers in the area, asking them to do a handful of things:

You may not agree with our lack of belief in the supernatural but I’m hopeful that you do believe in our right to assemble peacefully and to proclaim a message of community, tolerance and love without fear of physical harm.

So I’m asking each of you to take the following four actions:
1. Publicly condemn this kind of behavior.
2. Extend a hand of friendship and encouragement to the Jeffels family.
3. Help us identify the author(s) of these letters so that they can be helped.
4. Share this message with everyone that you know.

For Jeffels’ sake, I hope these are just some idiot teenagers who think this is funny and not actual Christians who believe these messages will change his ways. Either way, it’s reprehensible, and I hope his family remains safe and sound.

I’ll provide updates when I know more.

Help Out a Grad Student Doing Research on Atheists

Here’s the information:

My name is Kenan Sevinc, and I am a PhD candidate from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey, and a Visiting Scholar at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga studying atheism in the USA with Dr. Ralph W. Hood Jr., and my Co-investigator Thomas Coleman.

I am conducting research on understanding “reasons for not believing in a god” for my dissertation. We would like to invite you to participate in our survey on “non-belief in God”, and to share this survey with your friends. The survey is relatively short, and should take between 15-30 minutes to complete. Thank you for considering participating in our study, and if you have any questions please feel free to email me at researchunbelief@gmail.com.

You can take the survey right here.

You Only Wish I Was Going to Hell

Liberal comedian Jimmy Dore has been talking about politics and religion for years now, and his new collection of essays and rants is called Your Country Is Just Not That Into You (Running Press, 2014).

In the excerpt below, Dore talks about the problems with religion, including the concept of Hell:

I find that people who need to be publicly religious are always putting on a show of one form or another, and I am always suspect of them. All the mainstream religious “group thinks,” and that scale scares me. You don’t get to think your own thoughts about things inside religions.

Oh sure, I hear the religious now, “No, no, no, we encourage questions!”

Oh really? You encourage questions? But you only encourage one answer, correct?

What if your answers aren’t the ones the church has to those questions? I mean, you can’t start coming up with your own answers to questions that contradict church doctrine and still stay in the church, can you?

Why do religious people get a pass for being ignorant in ways other people don’t? For instance, if I think that gays are defective, immoral, and will burn in hell, then I’m just a good Christian. Or just a good Muslim, or a good Jew. Why is it that the more religious you are, the more ignorant you are allowed to be in America?

In our society, there is the expectation that we should watch what we say around the overly religious. Some members of my family are waaaaaay too religious — like the “born again” kind of crazy. Last year, I was at a family reunion with my parents and a few of my brothers, sitting around a picnic table having some laughs and talking about the latest, craziest thing Pat Robertson had said when some “born agains” pulled up in their car.

“Hey, watch what you say about religion, here comes Angela and her family, and they are really sensitive about that stuff,” my father immediately warned us.

And we all quickly changed the subject as to not offend this overly religious family member. And it pissed me off, I mean, ’til this day it pisses me off that I let that happen and didn’t say something.

Why? Because I am sick of politely dancing around the people who claim to be saved and know they are going to heaven. If you are so sure and so filled with God’s love, then what in the world could anything I say ever mess you up?

Thinking you are going to heaven, forever, eternity, everlasting life with Jesus, in just a few short years…but you can’t stand being in the presence of a little public secular reasoning? Really? Then I guess you aren’t really all that sure of yourself. Sounds to me like you aren’t standing on too solid of ground if you can be thrown into a tizzy by anyone expressing their own disbelief.

I wanted to tell my dad, “Hey pop, you know how I’m an atheist? How about if you ask those religious crazies to swallow all their Jesus talk when they are around me, cuz you know how sensitive I am about it.”

See what I mean? Turning the tables, why aren’t knee-jerk reactions to atheists filled with the same kind of reverence for my ideas and the same kind of concern for my easily hurt feelings? Why are atheists not allowed to have sensitive feelings about our beliefs? Why is it that the woman who is super sure that she’s going to heaven and so sure that I’m going to hell gets to scream it at me? Why is it that she gets to play the victim instead of the bully that she is?

I think it’s because those people secretly don’t believe their own bullshit. Anything that undermines the fundamentalist fairly tale they are living in is “offensive and insulting.” Because they secretly doubt it, too, and when you give voice to those doubts, they have to shut that shit up, and quick.

I’ll never forget the time I was on stage in Cleveland, and I was doing my usual jokes about growing up Catholic with 11 siblings:

“I grew up Catholic, but I was never that into it. My parents, on the other hand, were reeeeally Catholic. I mean reeeeally Catholic, like they almost molested somebody… I’m talking hardcore Catholics… I was more of a “buffet Catholic,” I didn’t follow all the dogma, only took what I liked — a little sin forgiveness without judgment, and some unconditional love… but I’ll skip the molestation and subjugation of women parts.”

At that point I heard a noise. It was a woman very loudly putting her coat on. I don’t know how you put a coat on loudly, but believe me, she did it.

As she walked out and I asked “What happened? Was it something I said?” and she responded at the top of her lungs, “YOU’RE GOING TO HELL!” You know, just like Jesus would say.

And it struck me at that moment that she didn’t really think I was going to hell. She was wishing that I were going to hell. In my mind, if she really did think I was going to hell when I died… wouldn’t she be nicer to me now???

Does she always take so much satisfaction in delivering such horrible news to strangers? Does she run up to smokers the same way? Does she get in their face and scream gleefully, “YOURE GONNA GET CANCER!! HA HA!”?

If she really and truly thought I was going to hell and was going to burn in hell for making a couple of jokes about religion, don’t you think her response would be concern?

Her outburst wasn’t concern for my soul or pity for my eternity of burning in a lake of fire. As I learned from Oprah, anger almost always masks another emotion, and that emotion is fear.

She was not angry that what I was saying was wrong and blasphemous; my comedy was agitating that part of her brain that is worried that her whole life might actually be a fraud. Unlike this woman, who has internalized other people’s thoughts and ideas on spirituality and the meaning of life, I was giving myself the permission to not only think contrary thoughts about religion, but I was also giving myself permission to say those things publicly without fear of repercussions.

Those feeling a need to publicly shout down people expressing disbelief in a higher power, or for ridiculing religion, is a manifestation of their own internal doubt about their own beliefs, and they are unable to shout them down inside their own heads, and so do it externally.

So those that do that are really immature, un-evolved, emotional children who are too scared to actually confront their own inner doubts, so they become outer assholes in a very loud, dysfunctional way.

That’s my theory, anyway. And if you don’t like it, then tell me to go to hell. Just don’t do it in the middle of my stand-up show.

Your Country Is Just Not That Into You is now available online and in bookstores.

…

Adapted from Your Country Is Just Not That Into You: How the Media, Wall Street, and Both Political Parties Keep on Screwing You — Even After You’ve Moved On by Jimmy Dore. Available from Running Press, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2014.

Todd Phelps, Mayoral Candidate in Austin, Texas, Supports Teacher-Led Prayers in School

Todd Phelps wants to become the next mayor of Austin, Texas. Austin, if you’re unfamiliar, is known as “an island of blue in a sea of red” — it’s very liberal and thankfully so.

So you have to wonder why Phelps thinks putting prayer back in public schools will lead him to victory.

In an interview with KXAN News, he said (at the 8:22 mark below) that he wants to put “voluntary faculty-led prayer” back in school, adding that he hopes it becomes a model for the nation:

I would like to foster and support voluntary, faculty-led prayer in Austin in the mornings, and I would like it to go nationwide starting here…

He claims that the Supreme Court decision in Greece v. Galloway supports this idea. It doesn’t. When a teacher leads a prayer in the classroom, there’s major coercion going on; students are compelled to join in whether they want to or not. That’s why it’s illegal even if it’s “voluntary.”

It’s also completely unnecessary since private prayers are already legal in public schools everywhere.

To anyone in Austin who plans to vote for this guy, what the hell are you thinking?

(Thanks to Jeff for the link)