Islamic Human Rights

Is there a more self-contradictory phrase? Let’s take a look at some of the egregious violations of humans rights that have been executed under this draconian, pre-Enlightenment philosophy.

1. Honor killings – you’d have to have your head stuck in the sand to have not seen a story about
   some Islamic father/brother/<insert male noun here> that has brutally murdered some oppressed woman in the name of Allah.
2. How about women’s rights in general?
3. Threats of prison and torture for an elderly British teacher that named a teddy bear after a student whose name happened to be Mohammed. I’m not making this up.
4. Let’s not forget beheadings.
5. Or the worst terror attack on U.S. soil ever, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths.

There’s more out there, but it’s tough to look at all those links without feeling a little nauseous, so I’ll spare you. Islam recently came to the UN Human Rights council with a request for help: they didn’t want Islam to be criticized during debate. Self-serving, eh? I guess starvation, poverty, and disease are nothing compared to the easily fractured ego of Allah!

You may be surprised to hear that Islam is continuing it’s selfish and infantile crusade for their version of human rights by proposing the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Pitched (in my head, it’s by that merchant at the beginning of Disney’s Aladdin), as an addendum to the laudable Universal Declaration of Human Rights, accepted by the UN General Assembly in 1948.

Austin Dacey and Colin Koprosky have a breakdown of the Islamic Declaration that shines a light on it’s manipulative, deceitful, and anti-human-rights nature. I’ll give an example from the Dacey and Koprosky
article that describes the use of false Arabic-to-English translation to hide the references to sharia law and binds non-Muslims to it:

English: Every person has the right to express his thoughts and beliefs so long as he remains within the limits prescribed by the Law. No one, however, is entitled to disseminate falsehood or to circulate reports that may outrage public decency, or to indulge in slander, innuendo, or to cast defamatory aspersions on other persons.

Arabic: Everyone may think, believe and express his ideas and beliefs without interference or opposition from anyone as long as he obeys the limits [hudud] set by the shari’ah. It is not permitted to spread falsehood [al-batil] or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination [al-fahisha] or forsaking the Islamic community [takhdhil li’l-umma].

The English version reads as an innocuous restatement of well-established norms, embracing rights to speech and generally accepted limits involving slander and libel. In its original Arabic, however, this article demonstrates a clear religious test for speech: one may not express oneself where limits are set by Islamic law, and one must not “encourage abomination” or “forsake” the Islamic community. (Emphasis mine)

Considering the monstrous violation of human rights mentioned above, why does Islam even have the ear of the Human Rights Council? Did they really think that they could slide through legislation that makes all UN members susceptible to victimization under sharia law? We’ve all heard that Muslims want sharia for them selves in countries that they have emigrated to, but this is the first time I’ve seen them try this kind of deceit to trick us all into following their thuggish code.

The Human Rights Council should laugh this drivel off the floor, and the UN should take the first step in telling Islam that they have to evolve their society into one that follows current human rights laws before they get to try to enact any.

(h/t to Pharyngula for the link and providing me with some morning rage)

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Join the Atheist Blogroll

I have been added to Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll. The link has been added to the right. There’s some great blogs listed there so visit it often, try something new, and add them to your feedreaders! While you’re at it, add me as well!

Finally, a payoff

I joined a ultra right-wing Christian news service. Have I gone mad? Possibly, but not for the reasons that you think. I joined OneNewsNow to keep tabs on these nuts as an afterthought while I was using their automatic email service, intended to send Christian hatemail to Hallmark for showing love to the GLBT community, to send Hallmark a thumbs-up for starting to carry gay marriage/civil union cards.

Since then, my mailbox has been assailed with all manner of trivial garbage, but today, this headline cought my eye:

Biden ‘honored’ to speak at pro-homosexual gala

From this article are two hilarious quotes, and one not-quite-infuriating one. Let’s do funny first, shall we? Peter LaBarbera, founder of Republicans for Family Values (probably not Larry Craig or Ted Haggard fans) has this to say:

“I think the Democratic Party has sold its soul to the radical homosexual lobby,”

Radical? Why am I picturing a bunch of gay Ninja Turtles eating pizza and making closed-door deals with the Democrats? Now we know why Donatello wore purple!

Another idiot… no, wait, LaBarbera again says the Democrats:

“are now fully in bed with the homosexual activist lobby.”

So, now the gay Ninja Turtle lobbyists are having (assumingly) premarital or extramarital relations with the Democrats! Tortopedobestiolobbying is the new fad. Sounds like it would be a kinky, repressed Republican thing!

If you read the article, you may have by now divined which quote is angering, if not entirely infuriating.

The pro-family activist points out that Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) is the most pro-abortion and pro-homosexual candidate ever to receive a major party’s presidential nomination.

LaBarbera again… sigh. I have never heard of anyone who is pro-abortion. Pro-choice? Yes. Pro-abortion? No. I have had two children and no one, when I told them the news said, “Hey, congrats! Have you considered an abortion? They’re neat!”

There’s a world of difference between pro-choice and pro-abortion. In one, you value the life of a thinking, feeling woman over the life of a bundle of cells, in the other you walk around with a glitter-decorated coat hanger, just in case. This is an example of one of the things I hate most in politics, which is spin in order to demonize your opponent. You see it every time someone talks of kool-aid, rethuglicans, wingnuts, moonbats, or any of that shit. It’s a way to avoid debate by denigrating who would be your opponent. Don’t have a good argument? Compare your opponent to Hitler and you don’t need one!

But, I digress. I hope to see more stupidity from this mailing list in the future. I somehow doubt I’ll be disappointed.

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Millionaire flees haunted mansion

Anwar Rashid and family fled Clifton Hall, their home for 8 months, and handed it back to the bank because of ghosts. The young family experienced such horrors as tapping, voices, red stains, and ghosts actually taking the forms of their children.

Now, I know what you’re going to say, the taps are the house settling, the voices were people talking or a radio or TV, the red stains were cranberry juice, and the specters taking the form of their children were actually their kids.

However, I was able to find actual video recorded in their mansion of a ghost actually attacking Mr. Rashid. Video is after the break.

Student forced to pray for Jesus’ forgiveness

From Blabbermouth via richarddawkins.net:

Former ROB ZOMBIE guitarist and current SCUM OF THE EARTH frontman Riggs‘ 13-year-old son was reportedly reprimanded by his eighth-grade art teacher for wearing an inappropriate t-shirt in the classroom. The art teacher allegedly insulted the student in front of his peers, dragged him out of class into the hallway and forced him to pray on his knees for forgiveness from Jesus Christ. Later that day, the principal had commented that “we will have to have a board meeting about the situation.”

There’s more to the story from the links above, but this quote captures the gist fairly well. The shirt that the teen wore was a concert tee from his father’s band that showed a monster crucified. I can see how this may offend certain people, however the appropriate response is not to trample all over a kids Constitutional right of freedom of speech then force him to supplicate himself to a man that’s been dead for thousands of years.

We’re supposed to have a separation of church and state in this country. It was one of the founding doctrines of our government. Yet it is still so easy for one person to say “To hell with that, I’m going to use my authority to force my religion on this child”. This teacher has abused her authority in a particularly egregious manner by insulting a child in front of his peers, then stealing his rights to free speech and free religion, if only for a moment.

Let’s imagine this kid’s humiliation of being ripped out of the classroom, then taken into the hall, forced to get on his knees in front of the teacher, then forced to ask the forgiveness of a fiction. A teacher has abused her position as a state employee to further her own religious agenda. She should be relieved of her job. This is child abuse, plain and simple, and it should disgust anyone who reads it, especially Christians!

However, I foresee that there will be no Christian outcry. I see in my mind the nods of approval from any Christian who hears about this, reveling in this teacher’s righteousness, wishing it had been them to teach this child his place. To them, freedom of religion is no more than a tool to legislate their religion, and dominate the will of any who differ in their beliefs.

If this can happen with out wall of separation in place, what will this country be like if these religious nutjobs finally succeed in wearing that wall down to nothing?

Let’s all talk about Bill Maher

Bill Maher is opening a new mockumentary called “Religulous” due out in October of this year. I have a problem with this movie because Maher and his Borat croney have resorted to the same tactics of the Expelled retards in making his “shocking” flick: lies and manipulation.

See, Bill never allowed interview condidate to know that he was the one interviewing them. He even used a different name for the film to coax interviewees into  false sense of security. However, Maher is a champion of rationality, right?

As it turns out, not so much. Turns out that Rational Bill is against vaccines. He doesn’t belive that the polio vaccine was the cause of the dramatic drop in polio cases. And this is the rational man that is going to lead the way against religious irrationality? Not fucking likely!

When you are a rational person, when you are able to look at the evidence and make a decision, you have to use that rationality in every aspect of life. You can’t rail against the ridiculousness of the Easter Bunny and believe in Santa Claus. You can’t believe in gnomes, but not elves. When you promote rationality in one aspect of life, you are held to a higher standard in all others.

Thanks for your attempt at poking the religious right, Mr. Maher, but no thanks.

Just in case

you were wondering where I got the name for this webby-loggy:

Comment Rescue: Another reason to not believe in god

I love Greta Christina’s blog. I’ve read her blog for years, but never commented until she wrote her reasons for not believing in god (Part 1, Part 2). I added a reason of my own in the coments for Part 2 which I will also quote here:

Kind of related to #9, but I think it’s solid enough as its own point:

There is no change or improvement of the moral precepts of a specific religion. Religion is supposed to be our guiding light to live a moral and decent life, yet it does not change to incorporate the new moral dilemmas that arise through time? Issues like capital punishment, stem cell research, equal rights regardless of sexual preference: religion looks at centuries-old documents for an interpretation of what have now become moral dilemmas, either as a truly new situation (stem cell research) or usually as an old situation that now merits closer attention (equal civil rights for GLBT).

A particular religion can rarely change their views on these matters, as they fear it will lessen their authority over the moral lives of its followers. However, secular morals, including the morals of religious adherents, do evolve, and when they evolve enough to make waves in a religion, one of two things happen: a small group of followers splinter into their own sect or, such a splinter group is too large, the religion will change. This second is a rarity that I’ve only seen in the Catholic Church, which seems to be fighting tooth-and-nail to keep their faithful.

If a group splinters off, then the same pattern will hold. It’s only when a religion is in danger of complete irrelevance and death that they will change a moral code to keep followers. There is no natural evolution of moral values because there is no questioning of them. Instead of thinking about what is truly right and wrong, they look for and interpret references in old books. If there is not thought on morality and ethics, then there can be no improvement on them, only stagnation and irrelevance. Since morality is a leading excuse to believe in god, I see the apparently inability of his doctrine and followers to improve morally as a prime reason to think it is all a fiction.

There is little in my life that I can’t relate to morality in one way o another. It’s just one of those things that I think about a lot. If the only change in the moral pecepts of a religion comes through force of its followers (i.e. secularly), then I see little use for god or religion at all.

A heartening story

So, after that greeting, you may be primed to hear me go off on some superstitious claptrap or another, yeah? Well, tough. Instead, I have a good story to tell…

About a year back we had a party for my daughter’s fourth birthday. Some folks came early in order to help prepare for the festivities, which happened to be a Halloween-themed party. Now, these friends, two families are religious, one Catholic and one Protestant of some kind, but the adult talk didn’t turn to religion.

So, I go down to the basement to see what the three kids are up to, and they’re talking about angels. This is a subject that I haven’t discussed with the young ones yet, so I was interested to see LilB1’s reaction. The two religious kids were arguing whether god was an angel or not, and LilB1 asked me to settle the argument, “St. Bastard, ” or Daddy. Whatever. “St. Bastard, is god an angel?”

I replied, “Most people don’t believe that, kiddo” and I left it at that. Now, we had discussions earlier about heaven, and I told LilB1 that some folks believed that we go to heaven when we die and some people don’t. I then explained that I did not personally believe that and she would have to think hard about it and eventually decide for herself, but she didn’t have to worry about such things yet. I harbored no real hope that the discussion would take root.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised when, a few weeks after LilB1’s birthday, she came to me and said, “St. Bastard (or Daddy), angels aren’t real, are they?” I asked her what she thought, and she said “They’re not!”

It’s nice to know that I have as yet been successful in raising a thinking child.

A greeting

Hello, my name is St. Bastard and I am an atheist. You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m watching the original Night of the Living Dead as I write this, so I may wander a bit in my writing, such as it is.

I’m not only an atheist. So few of us are. I am, in no particular order, a Secular Humanist, a husband, a father, a nerd, a fan of science, and of course, a Bastard. I have started this blog in order to more freely speak my mind without the constraints of diplomacy that we all indulge in polite company.

So what the hell does that mean? Well, we’ve all been there; an offhand comment by a friend, family member, or acquaintance that they’ll pray for you, thanking god for good fortune, or bowing to their perceived will of their savior. Internally, our eyes roll, but after the thousandth time really you just want to smack the christ out of them.

But, we love our loved ones and don’t want to attack an acquaintance, right? Hyperbolic violence aside, we would at least like to tell them that their prayers are nice, but useless. We’d like to tell them that it’s been proven so, and that their good fortune is just that, and not through the attention of some all-powerful being. We’d also like to add that they’re being a little bit self-involved to think that god wanted them to find a crumpled finn on the side of the road while thousands die of starvation every day.

Allow me to give you an example: I have a relative living in Saudi Arabia on a little walled compound while he does contract work for the military. This relative used to be a hard-core Everquest player and wanted to play World of Warcraft with me while he was overseas. However, the network he uses blocks access to the game and his comment to me was, “Well, I guess god just didn’t want me to play WoW.” This was one of those moments where I wanted to smack a religious person due to their hubris.

But, I didn’t because I love the idiot and also my arm wasn’t long enough. So, this will be my outlet where I can say what I like about superstition, religion, quackery and all that other bullshit without have to edit myself to avoid offending a loved one.

So, there it is. I hope it entertains!

-St. Bastard