Tag Archives: human rights

Ask an Interesting Question, Get an Interesting Answer. Zygmunt Bauman’s Question: Who or What is Responsible for Making the Modern World Go Along As It Is?

In The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior (1980), George Kren and Leon Rappoport write the following: “. . . Auschwitz expands the universe of consciousness no less than landing on the moon” (qtd. in Bauman 11). As you … Continue reading

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Censorship Watch: For Sake of Mohammad, Valentina Sereni Seeks Ban on Dante, Gustav Dore, William Blake, and Botticelli

I feel personally broadsided. As someone who assigns Dante’s Divine Comedy (in Allen Mandelbaum’s great translation) to college students at least once every year-and-a-half or so, the following news headline, from London’s Telegraph, is disconcerting (to say the least): Dante’s Divine Comedy … Continue reading

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Two Men Kiss at a Santorum Rally; Get Chucked Out for It

Here’s the Huffington Post this morning: Two men who kissed one another were kicked out of presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s rally Friday evening at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights. As the guards ejected them, the crowd chanted “U-S-A!” Lesson: … Continue reading

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Rick Santorum: Pro-Torture Catholic

There’s something grimly ironic in a contemporary politician claiming to be a serious Catholic while supporting the torture of prisoners. But this is what Rick Santorum does: he supports the return of Bush-era torture practices. And this, of course, is … Continue reading

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Twitter Blasphemy Watch: 26,000 Now Call for Death of Hamza Kashgari

As of this morning, over 26,000 Facebookers are calling for the death of poet and feminist Hamza Kashgari for Twitter blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad. The number has been steadily climbing over the past week. If you find this as distressing as … Continue reading

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A Powerful Plea for Gay Marriage from a Republican

Maureen Walsh (R), 16th District, Walla Walla, Washington:  

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Twitter Blasphemy: 16,000 Facebookers Agree That Hamza Kashgari Should Be Executed for Insulting the Prophet

The number of people who have joined a Facebook page calling for the death of Hamza Kashgari for Twitter blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad has climbed from 8,000 on Thursday to 16,000 this morning (I just checked the page). Yesterday, … Continue reading

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Hamza Kashgari’s Muhammad Birthday Tweets Unleash the Jihad on Him—and Silence from the Obama Administration

Saudi writer Hamza Kashgari’s handful of ambivalent tweets about Islam’s superhero, Muhammad (such as this one, “On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile … Continue reading

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Australian Sentenced to 500 Lashes in Saudi Arabia

Mansor Almaribe, an Australian man visiting Saudi Arabia, didn’t insult the Prophet Muhammad, but one of Muhammad’s companions. It was enough. The Australian reports the result: a sentence of 500 lashes and a year in prison. Isn’t Sharia grand? The … Continue reading

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American Cop Pepper Sprays Nonviolent Occupy UC Davis Protesters

____ Since when is it okay for an American police officer in full riot gear to step up to nonviolent, hunkered down, university students and use pepper spray on them as if they were insects in need of insecticide?  

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Anti-Gay Marriage Watch: What’s Your Argument Again?

Notice that the below commercial in support of excluding gays from civil marriages in Minnesota actually offers no direct argumentative supports for the position at all. Watch: ___ In the intellectually bankrupt culture surrounding the anti-gay marriage movement, it’s taken to be acceptable to … Continue reading

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The Ummah Curtain: Tunisia’s “Moderate Islamist Party Ennahda” is Coming to Power

So long, secularism in Tunisia. Concerning the Tunisian elections, AP reports today that secularism appears to be in retreat there: [A] once-banned Islamist party is leading in many constituencies in the country that unleashed uprisings across the Arab world. But, AP … Continue reading

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Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria Comments on the Maspero Square Massacre of Egyptian Christians

Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria is a graduate of Cairo University and has been the leader of Coptic Christians in Alexandria (and most other Christians residing in north Africa and the Middle East) since 1971. Coptic Christians make up about 9% of the … Continue reading

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Youcef Nadarkhani Execution Watch: Where’s President Obama on This?

In a recent Washington Post opinion piece on Youcef Nadarkhani, a Christian pastor under a death sentence for apostasy in Iran, Jordan Sekulow describes Nadarkhani’s attorney as: . . . a brave Muslim who has been sentenced to nine years in prison and banned from … Continue reading

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Dearborn Free Speech Watch: ACLU Supports Pastor Terry Jones’s Right to Free Speech Outside of an Islamic Center

Great news! The ACLU filed a friend of the court brief in favor of Pastor Terry Jones’s right to speak outside of an Islamic Center in Dearborn, Michigan. The following was in the Detroit News on Friday: The ACLU’s brief … Continue reading

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Heart of Darkness: Kill Them All?

I find the following recent comments of reporter Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times jarring: [I]t is just plain heartbreaking to be in modern, moderate Bahrain today and watch as a critical American ally uses tanks, troops, guns and clubs to … Continue reading

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Taking the Religious Conservative Pulse in Egypt: Watch Mohamed ElBaradei

This brief bit from a New York Times report this weekend jumped out at me: Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric known as Abu Omar, said that many conservative Muslims would not support a secular politician like Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize … Continue reading

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Atheist Walid Husayin Didn’t Watch What He Was Sayin’ on Facebook—and Has Been Arrested by the Palestinian Authority

An otherwise quiet 26-year-old Palestinian barber who happens to be an atheist did a no-no. He went on Facebook, expressed blunt opinions about his father’s religion (his father is a Muslim scholar), joked that he—Walid—is God, supported atheist views on some … Continue reading

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An American Muslim Walks into a Bakery . . .

How do people respond when an American Muslim is denied service in a bakery? ABC News did a little experiment:

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An Articulate and Sustained Smack Down of Fox News Talking Points on Gay Marriage

Here’s human rights attorney Ted Olson deflecting Chris Wallace’s bigoted anti-gay marriage talking points, one by one. Beautiful.

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