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DHAKA, Bangladesh — A prominent U.S. blogger, known for his writing against religious fundamentalism, has been hacked to death by unidentified attackers in Bangladesh’s capital, police said Friday.
The attack on Avijit Roy, a Bangladesh-born U.S. citizen, took place late Thursday when he and his wife Rafida Ahmed, who was seriously injured in the attack, were returning from a book fair at Dhaka University.
It was not known who was behind the attack, but Roy’s family and friends say he was a prominent voice against religious fanatics and received threats in the past. No groups have claimed the responsibility.
The local police chief, Sirajul Islam, told The Associated Press that the assailants used cleavers to attack Roy and his wife, who is also a blogger.
“Several attackers took part in the attack and at least two assailants hit them directly,” Islam said, adding that two blood-stained cleavers were found after the attack.
Roy had founded a popular Bengali-language blog — Mukto-mona, or Free Mind — in which articles on scientific reasoning and religious extremism featured prominently. Read more
Reuters) – An Islamic court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to death for renouncing his Muslim faith, the English-language daily Saudi Gazette reported on Tuesday.
The man, in his 20s, posted an online video ripping up a copy of Islam’s holy book, the Koran, and hitting it with a shoe, the newspaper reported.
Saudi Arabia, the United States’ top Arab ally and birthplace of Islam, follows the strict Wahhabi Sunni Muslim school and gives the clergy control over its justice system.
Under the Wahhabi interpretation of Sharia Islamic law, apostasy demands the death penalty, as do some other religious offences like sorcery, while blasphemy and criticism of senior Muslim clerics have incurred jail terms and corporal punishment.
Executions in Saudi Arabia are usually carried out by public beheading.
International rights groups say the Saudi justice system suffers from a lack of transparency and due process, that defendants are often denied basic rights such as legal representation and that sentencing can be arbitrary.
Only fake gods/religions need humans to protect them*.. eh
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BEIRUT — A Lebanese satirist appeared before a prosecutor in Beirut on Monday, after the country’s top Sunni religious authority filed a judicial complaint against him for allegedly defaming Islam.
Charbel Khalil found himself in hot water after he shared a photo on social media last week that was perceived by some as insulting to Islam.
The photo shows a woman wearing a short dress under a black robe, sitting on a black bed-cover with the Islamic slogan “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet” on it in white Arabic letters. The cover resembled the banner of the extremist Islamic State group, which has seized large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.
The photo was accompanied by the words: “sexual jihad under the Prophet’s umbrella??” Read more
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*Disclaimer
All gods/religions are fake
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A student from Ismailia was given a one year prison sentence by a court Monday for contempt of religion relating to activities on campus and atheist statements online.
Sherif Gaber, 22, was studying at Suez Canal University in 2013, when teaching staff and fellow students reported him via a petition to the institution’s President. They said he had made posts supporting atheism on Facebook, and suspected him of being behind a page called ‘The Atheists’.
Subsequently, the university’s then-president Mohamed A. Mohamedein personally filed a legal complaint against the student to the local prosecution on the grounds of contempt of religion. Monday’s verdict on the case allows Gaber to avoid the prison sentence on a bail of EGP 1,000. However, a retrial that could increase the sentence to over two years is due to take place in the coming weeks.
Speaking to Daily News Egypt, Gaber said how he was a “good student… top of his class”, but that his run-in with the university began after he challenged a science teacher. This arose over the teacher calling homosexuality a sin, and for homosexuals to “be crucified in the middle of the streets”.
According to Gaber, a lecturer from the university proceeded to print posts from
Gaber’s Facebook page that questioned religion. In front of a class, the lecturer declared that he would submit them as evidence to the University’s president and the prosecutor general. Read more
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(RNS) Atheists and other nonbelievers have pitched in more than $20,000 to support the pet charity of one of the three Muslim students slain in North Carolina last week, allegedly by a man who harbored anti-theist sentiments.
One of the slain students, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, was a graduate dental student at the University of North Carolina and planned to travel with the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation to Syrian refugee camps. He was shot and killed along with his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and sister-in-law, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, in what police say may have started as a neighborhood parking dispute.
Barakat’s cause has now been adopted by atheists, humanists and other nonbelievers who are raising funds for SAMS in his name. The drive has so far collected $20,125 a week after the killings were committed on Feb. 10.
“We are very happy with the response,” said Dale McGowan, executive director of Foundation Beyond Belief, a humanist organization that encourages giving among nonbelievers. “This is about the response we would get for a natural disaster.”
As of Tuesday (Feb. 17), Barakat’s crowd-sourced fundraising campaign had raised nearly $450,000; the original goal had been $20,000. Read more
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Religion… = Fancy word for stupid/insane :)
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Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari claimed Earth is stationary and the sun rotates
Offered religious statements and clerical comments to back up his belief
Also launched into baffling explanation about airliners never being able to reach their destination if the earth was truly moving
“All In” with Chris Hayes, MSNBC, 2-13-2015,
Jamila Bey, Journalist & Board Member of American Atheists, Inc.
Dean Obeidallah, “The Daily Beast” & documentary: “The Muslims Are Coming”
Karen Hicks, the wife of Craig Hicks, the man accused of gunning down three Muslim students in North Carolina, insists the killings were not tied to the victims’ race or religion.
According to the gawd of Abraham dogma, all this discrimination and madness will continue after death, eternal torture and shit from their tiny little crybaby gawd
— ISLAMABAD (AP) — This slum on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital looks like many others ringing it, with dirt roads and cement-block homes, until a passer-by sees a simple black banner bearing a Bible verse about Jesus Christ’s resurrection.
The Christian Colony on the edge of Islamabad is home to many Christians who once lived elsewhere in the capital, but fled in fear after a string of blasphemy allegations and killings. In this country of 180 million people, where Islam is the state religion and 95 percent of people are Muslims, Christians represent just a sliver of the population.
Most face daily discrimination and eke out a living by holding low-paying jobs, like street sweeping. However, they’ve carved out their own lives in a country that faces near-daily attacks by Islamic extremists.
“I wish to save my people by providing them faith and some education,” said Pastor Orangzaib Maseeh, who teaches locals how to read at his simple, open-air church. “I want them to have a life of a normal person. They used to have one.”
That normal life for many disappeared in August 2012. Authorities at the time arrested a young Christian girl over accusations she burned pages of the Quran. Christians fled, later settling in this vacant spot of land where they’ve built homes out of concrete blocks and plastic sheeting. The girl was later freed and a local cleric accused of planting burned Quran pages in the girl’s bag.
Under Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws, anyone convicted of insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad can be sentenced to death. However, some Muslims often take the law into their own hands, killing those suspected of blasphemy and attacking Christian neighborhoods or others accused of blasphemy. Some blasphemy allegations also have been made to settle personal scores. Read more
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