The Atheist Blogger

The popular web-comic “Indexed” has a somewhat controversial Venn diagram out today, listing Osama Bin Laden (and Santa) as a “symbol of a popular religion”.

Santa? Rarely seen? Surely not!

Now Santa is hardly a symbol of a popular religion, a symbol of a certain holiday usually associated with a popular religion maybe, but not of actual Christianity itself. However, is Bin Laden a symbol of Islam? The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the name Bin Laden is “terrorist”, or “9/11″, but it was Islamic terrorists who committed that atrocity (as well as many others). It seems almost too easy to associate terrorists with Islam, and vice-versa; the religion certainly encourages followers to kill unbelievers, even if the “moderates” deny it.

Proponents of Islam will often refer to it as the “religion of peace”, and yet you have to take a step back and look at what this so called peace has brought. I have to admit, every time I hear Islam described in such a way, I just stare in disbelief. It all boils down to a couple of things; namely, whether it is right to judge a religion by its extremists, and whether the religious beliefs of the terrorists were the influencing factor in their decision to carry out their plans.

Religion being an influencing factor is, in my opinion, undeniable. The hijackers died as martyrs for Islam, and we all know what their last words were, so the factor that remains is whether religious extremism is a good indicator of the actual religion. There are extremists in all religions; many simply twist the words of prophets to force their own agenda, but others are quite the opposite. Islam rewards those who kill infidels in battle, whilst Christianity makes no such promise. When considering the religion of Islam purely from scripture, I’d say it is more of a religion of hate than of peace.

As a religion of hate, Bin Laden is a good a symbol as any, although he is one of many, including the hijab (symbol of the Islamic oppression of women), and the scores of young Islamic girls who know all too well the religion’s position on child molestation.

I noticed we haven’t had a poll recently, so this is a good point to have one. Simple yes or no question: Do you think of Osama Bin Laden as a symbol of Islam? Leave a comment on why you voted, or if you think I’m talking complete nonsense.

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Over a year ago I wrote about how my “atheist union” posters were ripped down and vandalized by unknown religious students, but whilst I was annoyed and angry at the attacks, they simply do not scale in comparison with the actual death threats that some students have received. The Leeds University Atheist Society runs an annual “rationalist week” to promote freethinking, atheism, skepticism, etc. During the event, a member of the society was threatened by a suspected Muslim student. The death threat took place outside the main festival tent, and was a face to face encounter.

The society has received death threats before from a Muslim student group, and nobody has been harmed. The victim this time has decided not to go to the police, possibly because the last threats were not followed through. It seems like the Muslim society is using the scare tactics that religions have used for thousands of years, and such tactics tend not to work on the rationally minded. Nevertheless, this is completely unacceptable behaviour, and a sure sign that the Muslim groups are participating in a campaign to destroy freedom of speech.

Further evidence of this can be seen in the attempts made by the Southampton Atheist Society to hold a debate on freedom of speech that contained a viewing of the “controversial” movie Fitna. It took two months to organize after the Muslim society continually objected to it, and the debate was finally held under the condition that police were there, and every student was searched by security. What exactly are Muslims afraid of? That we will expose their religion for the fraud it is? If so, they needn’t be afraid; we’ve known that ever since it was formed. If Islam was really the most truthful religion, then what harm can some atheists do? Why not come along to the debate and refute the claims made by the atheists? My guess is that the atheist’s claims are completely accurate, and the Muslim is simply too indoctrinated to accept anything other than what the Qur’an tells them.

Chloë Clifford-Frith of the AHS (National Federation of Atheist, Humanist, and Secular Student Groups) noted that there were an increasing number of examples of prejudice against atheists.

Leeds have experienced death threats, vandalism, theft and SU discrimination in the past. Warwick Atheists were also stripped of their ‘Best New Society’ award and prize money in 2008 after a complaint that a poster for one of their talks was offensive. The award, but not the prize money was returned some months later. Some societies have experienced problems with their SUs refusing to ratify their existence. Again, this is symptomatic of a wider suspicion of people who profess to be atheists – as if there is something threatening about not believing in a god or gods. Even Prof Richard Dawkins, when attempting to set up the charitable educational foundation ‘The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science’, had his forms returned to him with the suspicious question: ‘Please explain how “science” has benefited humanity’!

We shall have to see what lies ahead for my student group when we try to hold events this year. I’ve already emailed the Muslim society asking for a debate, but I doubt they will respond to my request.

If there is anything to be said of the UK government’s actions on free speech this week, it is that they are consistent. First, they ban Geert Wilders, an elected politician in the Netherlands from entering the UK to show his film to the House of Lords (an event he was invited to I might add). Geert Wilders’ movie “Fitna” portrays the Qur’an as a book filled with hate, and argues that the teachings within it have encouraged followers to commit terrorism and violence towards women. All of his accusations are accurate. The Qur’an has many examples of both intolerance and violence in its pages, and this needs to be brought to attention of politicians if they are going to start making laws against “discrimination” of religions.

Secondly, the UK government announced today that the Westboro Baptist Church were banned from the UK. The group, known for protesting the funerals of dead soldiers and pro-gay events, had planned on coming to the UK to protest a play that was being performed. The play was about the torture and murder of a gay American student, and has been the target of the church before in the US. I wrote a blog post yesterday that argued for the right of the WBC to picket the event, on the ground of free speech. They weren’t telling people to go out and kill gay people (as Muslim clerics often preach) but instead they were preaching what the Bible says, that homosexuality is an “abomination”.

This is what angers me the most. That it is somehow “ok” to pick and choose what freedom of speech entails; that just because large amounts of Muslims believe that killing non-believers is a divine right, to reject that view and argue against it is a violation of religious freedom; that fringe groups wanting to express ideas cannot express them if they might somehow upset the status quo. Sure, what the WBC preach is hatred, but the fact that we recognise it as hatred is evidence enough that people are going to reject it and counter it with their own opinions. Banning such opinions isn’t going to make them go away, and I suspect that the “prohibition” effect will simply make their words louder and heard more often.

Freedom of speech has limits, it has to in order for it to work. The point is though, that any limits need to be kept to a minimum, and it can usually be kept to just one, namely, any speech that incites people to commit crimes. You can say you dislike  someone, or that you hate them for whatever reason, but as soon as you encourage people to harm them, or kill them, or commit crimes against them, you are stepping out of the boundaries of freedom of speech. It is for these reasons that I do not support banning the Bible or the Qur’an for their content, but rather make sure that the content can be critised in every medium available, and why I support the right of the WBC to say what they do about homosexuals, atheists, muslims, etc. As long as I have my right to say what I think in return, then we have no problems. It is when you suppress freedom of speech, as the UK government has done in the cases of Geert Wilders and the WBC, that the entire system becomes worthless. We might as well not have freedom of speech in this country if our government can decide what is and what is not acceptable on the fly as it appears they currently think they can do.

I came across the site MeetUp again through random clicking of links earlier this week. I randomly did a search to see if there were any atheist groups near to where I live (Egham), but nothing showed up. However, I did find a few groups operating within London, which is only 30 minutes on the train for me.

One of them, called the “London Atheists Meetup” is having a meeting later today (Saturday) to discuss Britain’s response to Islam. I’ve decided to go along and see what it’s like…if I can find the place of course. I may have to call upon my GPS enabled phone to get me some of the way.

I’ve also signed up to the showing of the film “The God Who Wasn’t There” with the Humanist Group of Central London on the 17th December. Whether I can actually attend that one will be a toss up on the day, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to make it down.

So I’ll be writing about how the discussion goes later today, and hopefully I’ll meet some nice people whilst doing it. If any of you can make it down to the 17th December showing, I’m sure it’ll be a great event.

I’ve been invited by some of my Hindu friends to a event on facebook, asking people to “wear a white shirt on monday” to show respect to the 150+ people who died in the Mumbai terrorist attacks that happened earlier this week. When perusing the event details, I came across an interesting section on t-shirt ideas.

Front: 150+ Dead in Mumbai…
Back: Why?

I guess the “Why?” is more a metaphysical question concerning why so many people could have died, but to me, the actual answer to the question seems quite obvious. Islam. The terrorists who slaughtered over 150 people did so because they were deluded by the idea that it was somehow the will of Allah. Reports have already confirmed that the terrorists went after American and British passport holders, letting a British man who claimed to be Italian live.

The event coordinators have already made it very clear they don’t want to answer the question themselves, even though deep down they know the answer.

****ANYTHING HATEFUL TARGETING ANY SPECIFIC PERSON, GROUP, RELIGION, ETCETERA WILL BE DELETED AND REPORTED.
this event is to not target and attack certain people/etc but to create UNITY & SUPPORT.

So you can create “unity and support” groups, keeping people happy by blaming the governments and police for the mistakes they made, without caring at all about the real problem. Groups like these simply push the problem under the rug, and instead of trying to stop the problem at the root, they work on the premise that these things are going to happen and that we should work on preventing them from ever reaching a climax.

That is a ridiculous view to take. Police do not work on the premise that racial attacks are bound to happen, they go around actively trying to promote harmony between people of different races. Instead of going after the terrorists before they strike, we should be working to stop people from joining terrorist organizations in the first place. Unfortunately, for as long as we have religious doctrine, we will have people who resort to killing in its name.

Here is a better idea for a t-shirt:

Front: 150+ Dead in Mumbai.

Back: Why? Islam. Religion Kills.

People will probably call it hate speech, but I don’t care. It’s the truth, and that should be all that matters.