I laughed when I read this:
Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham and staunch defender of free speech and human rights…
Heh:
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thabet
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johnpi
The dirty seven letter words of Saudi Arabia.
In Saudi, if you would like to be dismissed and have everything you write or say never taken seriously, all you have to do is to declare yourself a liberal or secularist. That’s it. You’re done. You might as well be screaming in a thunder storm.
….There is no clear definition of liberalism and secularism in Saudi. However in a dichotomy they seem to be the opposite of being a God-fearing decent person.
For example, Saudis who believe that sciences and math should be the focus of the school day and not Islamic studies get categorized as secular. If they think that the PVPV should be merged with the police then they most definitely have secularist tendencies. Any type of idea related to keeping up with the rest of the world is deemed secularism. Insinuating that the ban on women driving goes against basic human rights, will brand them liberal.
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johnpi
Tired of trying to co-opt moderate, liberal, and progressive Muslims, some rightwingers are now resorting to identity theft.
Richard Bartholomew writes that Gina Khan, a Muslim activist against extremism in the UK, is listed as an officer on the Facebook page of the group that calls itself the ‘The Cheerleaders’, a bunch of self-described anti-Islamist vigilantes, who have excelled at threatening mostly moderate and progressive Muslim bloggers, and especially liberal critics of conservative politicians in the UK, like blogger Tim Ireland. (Again, I see this theme of ‘Eurocon’ extremists using an anti-Muslim platform to attack a bigger ideological target, European liberalism – which has been done before).
After I published a mocking post about them last year, the Cheerleaders – or the individual who pretends to be the group – threatened several Talk Islam contributors and published their home addresses online. They (or he) also sent mail to at least one TI contributor’s house.
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johnpi
Contemplating changes that the Taliban are provoking in Pakistani society:
Pakistan has important left and secular traditions and you wonder whether the Taliban are reinvigorating them by tying religion to mindless violence and Draconian repression.
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johnpi
Interesting conversation I was having with another moderate Muslim.
Her point: Mainstream/moderate American Muslims deserve the suspicion of our fellow Americans for having allowed this thing to grow among us that resulted in the violence at Fort Hood and other recent expressions of extremism, for shrinking back from mosque boards and private school committees when those of the puritanical strain among us take them over, for allowing ourselves to be put on the spot at mosque functions and social events instead of turning it around and not putting them on the spot.
Agree or disagree?
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johnpi
Researchers have discovered that having daughters rather than sons makes you more liberal.
In remarkable research, the sociologist Rebecca Warner and the economist Ebonya Washington have shown that the gender of a person’s children seems to influence the attitudes and actions of the parent.
Warner (1991) and Warner and Steel (1999) study American and Canadian mothers and fathers. The authors’ key finding is that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. This result emerges particularly strongly for fathers. Because parents invest a significant amount of themselves in their children, the authors argue, the anticipated and actual struggles that offspring face, and the public policies that tackle those, matter to those parents. . . The authors demonstrate that people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views (for example, to favor affirmative action).
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thabet
This is why I regard the Quilliam Foundation (or is it just Quilliam?) with disdain: they attack Osama Saeed (who I have also disagreed with in the past) over his support for ‘extremists’, yet they defend a warmongering idiot like Michael Gove on their FAQ page.
In fact, this is why I regard a number of Muslim liberals* with disdain: their silence on racism, empire and war, if not outright complicity with it.
*Or ‘liberal Muslims’ — should there be a difference?
