Miscellanea Agnostica

As I’ve mentioned before, it appears Oklahoma has become the new Kansas. Writer Thomas Frank famously posited in 2004 — in his What’s the Matter with Kansas? — that the Religious Right had used his home state as a kind of crucible in which to construct a suitable following for its religiofascist agenda. It certainly appears, over the last couple years (as I’ve touched on a time or two here on this blog), that they’ve drifted one state to the south and are now trying to make Oklahoma into a second crucible. The latest example of this militant religiofascism is something known as the Save Our State amendment. Its goal is to prevent Islamic shari’a law from being followed by Oklahoma courts. ABC News reported on this insanely misguided effort (WebCite cached article):

Oklahoma is poised to become the first state in the nation to ban state judges from relying on Islamic law known as Sharia when deciding cases.

The ban is a cornerstone of a “Save our State” amendment to the Oklahoma constitution that was recently approved by the Legislature.

The amendment — which also would forbid judges from using international laws as a basis for decisions — will now be put before Oklahoma’s voters in November. Approval is expected.

There are two problems with this amendment. The most important is that it’s based on the paranoid delusion that Oklahoma courts may soon follow shari’a law. There is absolutely no evidence that this has yet happened, however, nor is there any evidence it’s on the horizon. The Religious Right is going to war over a mirage.

The second problem is that — where American courts following international-law precedent is concerned — that ship has already sailed. It has been done, and it might be done again; and because the US Supreme Court has done it, that means a state constitutional amendment cannot prevent it.

T. Scott Brown, Atheist Examiner for Oklahoma City, goes over this in more detail (including providing a list of relevant court cases).

I’d like to be clear on the fact that I am opposed to shari’a law being imposed on anyone, Muslims included. It’s a metaphysically-based legal system closely tied to Islamic religious doctrines and practices. As a form of justice, it leaves much to be desired. Metaphysically-based legal codes are nearly as detrimental to humanity as metaphysically-based medicine is. I’ve also blogged on the evils — and the follies — of shari’a law. I’ve also pointed out the foolishness of allowing shari’a law in UK courts. So by pointing out that Oklahoma’s “Save our State amendment” is insane, I am not “defending” shari’a law. What I am saying is that passing a state-constitutional amendment preventing something from happening, which is not currently happening and will never happen, is paranoid-delusional thinking, and that sane, mature adults do not engage in this kind of thing.

The hosts of Religiofascism are on the march, folks! They not only have taken over Kansas, they’ve pretty much got Oklahoma in their corner too.

Hat tip: OKC Atheist Examiner.

Photo credit: dustout.

Tags: christian right, delusion, Islam, islamism, islamists, kansas, law, law system, legal system, oklahoma, oklahoma city, oklahoma city OK, oklahoma state constitution, religiofascism, religiofascist, religiofascists, religious right, save our state, save our state amendment, shari'a, shari'a law, state constitution, t scott brown, what's the matter with kansas

For a few months now, questions have swirled around Ergun Caner, the dean of theology at Liberty University, a college founded by the late Rev Jerry Falwell. He claimed to have originally been a devout Muslim, but converted to evangelical Christianity. For this he became relatively famous in fundamentalist Christian circles, going on the fundie-church lecture circuit around the country, especially after September 11, 2001. The fundies, you see, just love hearing about people who go from being a devout {something-other-than-Christian} to a devout Christian.

In any event, the fundies in charge of Liberty University found they could no longer credibly ignore the controversy; they investigated Caner, and decided he’s out as head of their theology department. The AP via Google News reports on their decision (WebCite cached article):

A Baptist minister who toured the country to talk about his conversion from Islam to Christianity is no longer the dean of Liberty University’s theological seminary following allegations he fabricated or embellished facts about his past, the school said Friday.

The university founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell said that a board of trustees committee concluded Ergun Caner made contradictory statements. Although it didn’t find evidence that he was not a Muslim who converted as a teenager, it did discover problems with dates, names and places he says he lived, a statement said.

Caner will remain on the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary faculty, but won’t be dean when his term expires on June 30.

During the course of the controversy, when bloggers had just started discussing the conflicting and/or incorrect claims he’d made, Caner went around the Internet asking for information about him, or material by him, to be deleted. Unfortunately, covering one’s tracks on the Internet doesn’t work too well.

Note that — in spite of Caner’s documented lying and dissembling, LU still couldn’t summon the courage to fire Caner completely or concede he’d never been a Muslim; they said, in a statement (courtesy of WSET-13, Lynchburg VA; locally cached version):

However, the committee found no evidence to suggest that Dr. Caner was not a Muslim who converted to Christianity as a teenager, but, instead, found discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence. … Dr. Caner will remain on the faculty of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary as a professor.

That’s the way it is with fundamentalist Christians … they may have their disagreements, and they may even have to admit wrongdoing on the part of one of their own, but — no matter what any of them might do — ultimately, they all stick together nonetheless.

This sorry episode makes Ergun Caner another member of my “lying liars for Jesus” club, and the directors of Liberty University gain honorary membership in it, for essentially being apologists for a lying liar for Jesus. Way to go guys!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: christian, Christianity, christians, convert, converts, ergun caner, Islam, liar for jesus, liars for jesus, liberty university, liberty university theological seminary, lu, lu theological seminary, lying, lying liars for jesus, lynchburg VA, muslim, muslims, preacher

During the last 9 years, folks have proposed building lots of things at or near the site of the World Trade Center, felled during the September 11, 2001 attacks. Few, if any, of them have ever been built … for reasons that are puzzling to just about everyone on the planet. Among the proposals, however, is construction of a mosque. That sparked a bit of outrage during a Community Board 1 meeting in New York City, as reported by the New York Post (WebCite cached article):

Angry relatives of 9/11 victims last night clashed with supporters of a planned mosque near Ground Zero at a raucous community-board hearing in Manhattan.

After four hours of public debate, members of Community Board 1 finally voted 29-1 in support of the project. Nine members abstained, arguing that they wanted to table the issue and vote at a later date.

All the raging and fuming, however, was in vain, because this board cannot really stop the project even if it wished to:

The board has no official say over whether the estimated $100 million mosque and community center gets built.

I suppose the sanctimonious anger is understandable, however, ultimately it should play no role in the matter. You see, all over the world, there are religious buildings constructed at places where those religions committed atrocities; for instance, there are Christian churches in and near Jerusalem, the site of a massacre perpetrated by (Christian) Crusaders in 1099, and at Verden an der Aller, the site of a massacre of pagan Saxons by Charlemagne’s forces in 782. By this same reasoning, neither of these places … or good many others … should ever have any Christian churches, either! I wonder if these same folks would go along with that … ?

Photo credit: Luke Robinson.

Update 8/15/2010:

For the longest time I’ve had this nagging feeling there’s a great, pithy literary parallel to the situation of the so-called “mosque” (well, no, it’s not really a mosque) at (well, not really “at,” it’s a few blocks away from) the former WTC site. I just hadn’t been able to think of it.

Until tonight. It finally hit me. Not all of you will know this reference, but I’m pretty sure some of you will.

That recent literary parallel is: The monastery at Mar Terrin.

For those not familiar with this, it’s from a 5-book fantasy series called The Belgariad by the late David Eddings. In it, there had been — millennia prior to the events in the book — a race known as the Marags who lived in their own country called Maragor. They were invaded and slaughtered by a neighboring race, the Tolnedrans. Maragor was left a ruined land where no one lived (not voluntarily, anyway), haunted by the ghosts of its former inhabitants. In one of Maragor’s ruined border cities, Mar Terrin, a few Tolnedran monks settled, praying and chanting, in an effort to ease the suffering of the dead Marag souls still lurking in Maragor. In the books, the monks of Mar Terrin — who aren’t very numerous, since the vast majority of Tolnedrans prefer not even to think about how they destroyed all the Marags — are called “the conscience of Tolnedra.”

Building an Islamic cultural center near the site of the World Trade Center would effectively be very similar to that. Make that, it COULD be. I’m not sure what the motives of its builders are; I haven’t heard they wanted to build it as a way of offering some kind of appeasement to those who fell there. But their motives pretty much don’t matter, so long as they go about the process legally.

At any rate, it’s bothered me that, so far, I haven’t been able to think of that. Now I have. Not that it matters much … but there you are.

BTW … if you haven’t read these books, I heartily recommend them. The five books can be purchased grouped into a two-volume set: The Belgariad, Vol. 1 (Books 1-3) and The Belgariad, Vol. 2 (Books 4 & 5). Yeah, I know, this series is stuffed full of all sorts of obvious tropes … but it’s nonetheless a fun read. Call it a “guilty pleasure,” if you must. It was followed by a sequel series of 5, The Malloreon, which is not as good.

Eddings also wrote another, different, series of 3 books called The Elenium, now available in a single-volume set: The Elenium. That trilogy had a sequel trilogy, too, called The Tamuli, but as with The Malloreon, it’s also inferior to its predecessor. And yes, The Elenium is its own massive romp through many tropes, but a lot of readers prefer it even to The Belgariad.

Tags: 9/11, 9/11/2001, community board 1, cordoba center, ground zero, Islam, memorial, mosque, mosques, muslim, muslims, new york city, new york NY, september 11 2001, september 11 2001 attacks, world trade center, worship, wtc

Pakistan’s censorship of the Internet over its potential to convey “sacrilege” has extended to Twitter as well as Blackberry service. The Indian Express reports on this (WebCite cached article):

Pakistanis are hopping mad following the ban on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter and the blocking of Blackberry services in the wake of a controversy over a contest featuring blasphemous caricatures of Prophet Mohammed.

Some Pakistanis apparently aren’t happy about it:

Raza Rumi, the editor of a popular ezine, described the banning of Blackberry services as “absolute madness”. …

“The zealots want us to go back to the stone age. These decisions should be reversed at once. There are other ways of dealing with this issue and not by an absolute ban of connectivity in the 21st century. In any case, it is not easy to ‘ban’ stuff in this day and age.”

That’s true, but the fact is that this will inconvenience a great many Pakistanis, only to satisfy the juvenile lunatic Islamists in that country.

I’m not sure I can really be sympathetic with Rumi and others like him, though. The Pakistani government that he — and the rest of Pakistan — voted into office, is doing precisely what it was voted in to do. Perhaps he — and other Pakistanis — should not have voted those folks in? And maybe they should consider getting rid of those people at the next election?

I’m betting this will not happen, however; Pakistanis will probably continue with an Islamist regime. If that’s the case then even the little sympathy I might have for them, will have vanished entirely.

I hope these zealots keep up their insanely immature campaign of futile censorship, it provides me with a wonderful opportunity to keep posting incendiary images that defy Islam’s proscriptions.

Tags: blackberry, blasphemy, cartoons, censorship, internet, internet censorship, Islam, muhammad, muhammad cartoons, muslim, muslims, pakistan, pakistan censorship, pakistani, pakistanis, raza rumi, sacrilege, twitter

The juvenile, raging hyperreligionists in Pakistan have expanded their Internet censorship. It’s not just Facebook they’re banning, but many other Web sites too. And it’s all due to “sacrilege.” The New York Times reports on this additional expression of Islamist immaturity (WebCite cached article):

Pakistani authorities broadened a ban on social networking sites on Thursday, blocking YouTube and about 450 individual links to Web pages over what it described as “growing sacrilegious content.”

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, or P.T.A., blocked YouTube after a special Internet monitoring cell within the agency determined that “objectionable content” was increasing, according to a spokesman, Khurram Mehran.

Because the government of Pakistan continues to rage and fume about “sacrilege” and continues to assume that everyone on the planet — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — is obliged to obey Islam’s metaphysical proscriptions on depicting Muhammad, the founder of their religion, I’ve added some incendiary cartoons to this post. The power of the Streisand effect is demonstrable, but these furious, irrational lunatics appear not to get it.

Tags: cartoons, censor, censorship, facebook, internet, Islam, khurram mehran, muhammad cartoon, muhammad cartoons, muslim, muslims, pakistan, religionism, religionist, religionists, sacrilege, sacriligious, youtube

Cartoons of Muhammad have drawn the ire of Pakistan’s courts, so that country — packed to the rafters as it is with childish, raging lunatic Islamist extremists — has blocked access to Facebook within its borders. The Los Angeles Times reports on this juvenile reaction (WebCite cached article):

It was a Facebook campaign meant to make a stand for free speech. But in Pakistan, a contest encouraging users of the social-networking site to submit caricatures of the prophet Muhammad has been viewed as blasphemous, prompting a court-ordered nationwide ban on the website Wednesday. …

The ruling was triggered by a campaign on Facebook asking users to post images of Islam’s founder on a page called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!”

The campaign was aimed at expressing solidarity with the creators of the Comedy Central television show “South Park,” which recently drew the ire of a radical Muslim group for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year.

I blogged about this particular event back when it happened. This contest also follows attacks on Lars Vilks, which I’ve blogged about more than once, and on the heels of continued Muslim outrage over the 2005 Jyllands-Posten cartoons.

I will, of course, continue my policy of posting some of the cartoons that have so enraged Muslims, as my own act of defiance against them, and to show my own support for free speech around the world. Muslims’ demand that everyone else in the world — Muslim and non-Muslim alike — obey their own metaphysical prohibition against depicting Muhammad, is not only unreasonable, it’s irrational and childish.

There is no amount of reasoning with them on the matter … so I have no intention of trying to reason with them about it. I will simply continue posting the cartoons they find offensive, as long as they keep stamping and fuming over their existence. There is a way to make these cartoons go away … and that’s to stop raging and fuming over their existence. I wonder if Muslims will ever find the fortitude and maturity to follow that strategem?

Tags: bombhead, cartoon controversy, cartoons, draw muhammad day, everybody draw muhammad day, facebook, Islam, islamism, islamists, Jyllands-Posten cartoons, jyllands-posten muhammad cartoons controversy, lahore, lars vilks, muh-hund, muhammad, muhammad cartoons, muslim, muslims, pakistan, pakistani, south park

Just a few days ago I blogged about Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks being attacked over his cartoons, which had depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a dog. Muslims enraged by his cartoons have decided to ratchet up both the violence and the immaturity, and tried to burn down his home. The CBC reports on this latest childish Muslim rampage (WebCite cached article):

The home of a Swedish artist whose 2007 drawing of the Prophet Muhammad offended Muslims has been subjected to a suspected arson attack after another incident in which he enraged Muslims.

Lars Vilks, from Nyhamnslage in southern Sweden, was not at home during the attack and no injuries were reported.

The attack failed, but Muslim anger over his “Muh-hund” cartoons appears not to have relented. As I promised in my previous entry on the subject, I will repost incendiary cartoons that have Muslims in a tizzy. As often as you people keep stamping and fuming over these cartoons, I will continue to repost them.

Maybe someday you childish, raging Muslims will figure out what the Streisand effect is, and realize the best way to handle things that offend you is not to scream, holler, riot, attack, maim, burn and kill over them … but rather, to ignore them. Your fury only serves to call attention to things that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. It’s time for you all to grow up and figure that out.

Hat tip: AntiBible Project on Delphi Forums.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: arson, cartoons, childishness, dog, immaturity, Islam, juvenile, lars vilks, muh-hund, muhammad, muhammad dog, muslim, muslims, nyhamnslage, nyhamnslage sweden, offense, sweden

If anyone is unsure of the the immaturity of Islam and the inability and unwillingness of its adherents to accept there are non-Muslims in the world, we have another example, in an attack on a cartoonist over his depiction of Mohammad, as reported by the (UK) Telegraph (WebCite cached article):

Lars Vilks, who depicted the Prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog in 2007, said he was headbutted by a man sitting on the front row as he spoke at the University of Uppsala, about 44 miles from Stockholm.

“He head-butted me and I fell into the wall and lost my glasses,” Mr Vilks said. He added he was unharmed.

A spokesman for Uppsala police said about 20 people tried to attack Mr Vilks after interrupting his lecture, adding that the police had to intervene to stop them. Two people were detained.

Yes, folks — this is the “Religion of Peace” in action!

Vilks’s cartoons were not directly connected with the the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoon controversy, but in the minds of some, they have fused. And as I blogged just a few months ago, there are lots of Muslims who are still hung up on those, too.

Isn’t it time for Muslims worldwide to finally just grow up, already, and get over this notion that they get to control what other people say and do?

In defiance of these violent hyperreligionists, I’ve included one of Vilk’s cartoons in this post, above, as well as the “Bombhead” cartoon by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. I plan to post these cartoons every time I have to address this controversy, in protest against the violence perpetrated by Muslims against others, because of them. The more you guys rage, fume, attack and destroy, the more these cartoons get posted. See how that works?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: bombhead, cartoon, cartoonist, cartoonists, cartoons, free speech, hyperreligious, Islam, islamism, islamist, islamists, lars vilks, muslim, muslims, religion of peace, religionism, religionist, religionists, sweden, university of uppsala, uppsala, uppsala sweden