• The revered Islamic tradition of stifling dissent and its 21st century displays

    Demanding change: Thousands of Bangladeshis attend Friday prayers during a rally in Dhaka calling for new blasphemy laws
    Islamic worshippers in Bangladesh demanding crackdown on atheists

    Silencing dissent in a very old Islamic practice, going back to prophet Mohammad himself. According to Islamic Hadith, Mohammad had Jewish poet Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf assassinated by knife wielding thugs. I am sure he’d be proud of what his followers are doing today all over the world. Today, as in the last 24 hours.

    In the Western world, Islamic apologists are using the tool of political correctness to silence criticism of their religion, using the newly-coined word “Islamophobia”, while the faithful are hacking atheist websites.

    But while political correctness and web hacking weren’t tools available to Mohammad, in Muslim majority countries the good old techniques of violence are still popular.

    Tens of thousands of Islamic activists prayed  on the streets of the Bangladeshi capital today during a rally calling for the  introduction of blasphemy laws and the restoration of a caretaker  government.

    Members of the Islami Andolan Bangladesh are  demanding the arrest of ‘atheist bloggers who insulted Islam’ and to pass laws  punishing those who ‘insulted Islam’ in the parliament.

    See. Where Islamists have the power, they don’t need to resort to accusations of “Islamophobia” (whatever the heck it means) to deal with dissent. Rules on how to deal with blasphemy and heresy have been in existence since the dawn of Islam. It is only where they don’t have power that they have to resort to tactics of political correctness to deal with dissent.

    Quite a step down.

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    Article by: No Such Thing As Blasphemy

    I was raised in the Islamic world. By accident of history, the plague that is entanglement of religion and government affects most Muslim majority nations a lot worse the many Christian majority (or post-Christian majority) nations. Hence, I am quite familiar with this plague. I started doubting the faith I was raised in during my teen years. After becoming familiar with the works of enlightenment philosophers, I identified myself as a deist. But it was not until a long time later, after I learned about evolutionary science, that I came to identify myself as an atheist. And only then, I came to know the religious right in the US. No need to say, that made me much more passionate about what I believe in and what I stand for. Read more...