New Pat Condell video on Sharia and special treatment for religion.

Christianity

1. Abandon the mythology of Genesis. God did not make the world in 6, 8 or 1000 days or 1000 days of years. Stop squabbling over Hebrew syntax and what you think the Biblical writers meant. They meant what they wrote and they were wrong. We know far too much about how things really came about to believe any of the nonsense written by a Hebrew-speaking priest of the sixth century BCE who thought things came about by a direct act of his hereditary deity.

[..]

Muslims

1. Give up the idea that the Quran is the most beautiful poetry ever written, the most perfect Arabic ever set to ink, the closest we can approach God in the scheme of time. Are you inhaling this stuff or just smoking? You have two hundred poets whose Arabic is better, any one of which could have won in a slam-down with Gabriel.

[..]

Judaism

1. There are no chosen people. There are just people. It is depressing, isn’t it? We all want to be special.

(via friendlyatheist.com)

Like Hemant says on Friendly Atheist, #4 under Judaism might require a bit of an exception, but otherwise this is a pretty dead-on accurate list.

New Conversion Tactic: Lies and Trickery | God is Pretend

If I hear another person ever claim that Islam is a “religion of peace”, I am liable to lose my shit.

The last line of the video makes me shudder, and I’m squarely in agreement with God Is Pretend’s comment above.

(via Atheist Media Blog)

I’m torn on this.  On one hand, I tend to think that Islamic extremism can be something that society should avoid at all costs, and on the other I very much appreciate that my freedom from religion comes from others’ rights to have freedom of religion.

Thoughts?

I do not say that all practitioners of woman-hating, anti-Semitic, sadomasochistic suicide immolations are themselves insane, but I do say that the teaching itself is demented. In the same way, I do not say that all Muslims are terrorists, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim. A paranoid or depressive person—of whom we have many millions in our midst—does not have to end up screaming religious slogans while butchering his fellow creatures. But a paranoid or depressive person who is in regular touch with a jihadist “spiritual leader” is presented with a ready-made script that offers him paradise in exchange for homicide.

I have nothing to comment on this article that isn’t in direct agreement with Hitchens…

CNN: Spreading Islam in Britain ~ Atheist Media Blog

“Alcohol will be banned, drugs will be banned, pornography will be banned, gambling will be banned […] We do expect to enter into a struggle, if you like, of words and maybe even more than that before we can see the fruition of the Sharia, really, on state level.”

Maybe even more than that? Way to blatantly promote violence in the name of your supposedly “peaceful” religion.

Commentators are working overtime to explain away the Fort Hood shootings as a personal breakdown rather than what it obviously was, three conservative columnists argue today: a terrorist assault by an Islamic extremist.

The explanation for Major Hasan’s actions should be crystal clear to anybody not afraid of offending Muslim sensibilities, Dorothy Rabinowitz argues in the Wall Street Journal. “It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments.”

Is it really so difficult to see this for what it likely is? It’s not someone “under stress”, it’s someone following what they believe is the correct interpretation of Islam.

Militants who control parts of Somalia’s capital city are beating women in broad daylight for violating their radical brand of Islamic law, according to local officials and witnesses in Mogadishu.

“Just today, Al-Shabaab dispatched men with whips to the streets around Bakara market and they are flogging any woman who is found not wearing socks,” according to a female maize trader at the Mogadishu market, who spoke Thursday.

She did not want to be named for security reasons.

Okay, now this whole woman-hating thing is just getting silly.  Socks? This is the best you’ve got?  Really, you’re beating them because they’re women, why won’t you just own up to it?

Remember the Danish “Muhammad cartoons” that set off riots by offended Muslims more than three years ago? The debate pitted freedom of press and speech against notions of freedom from insult of one’s religion. It rages still – but now in a forum with international legal implications.

For years, Islamic nations have succeeded in passing “blasphemy” resolutions at the United Nations (in the General Assembly and in its human rights body). The measures call on states to limit religiously offensive language or speech. No one wants their beliefs ridiculed, but the freedom to disagree over faith is what allows for the free practice of religion. The resolutions are misguided, but also only symbolic, because they’re nonbinding.

Symbolism no longer satisfies the sponsor of these resolutions – the Organization of the Islamic Council. Under the leadership of Pakistan, the 57-nation OIC wants to give the religious antidefamation idea legal teeth by making it part of an international convention, or legally binding treaty. Members of the UN Human Rights Council are passionately debating that idea in Geneva this week.
(via RichardDawkins.net)

There will be an amazing amount of backlash if this happens to make it through the UN.  Enforcement of sharia law even to this extent is an official validation of misogynism and intolerance. That being said, I absolutely do not think that this will be accepted by the US (it is, after all, a complete perversion of the first amendment).