Hagia Sophia Becomes A Mosque

Something that remains near constant across time and cultures is that when one group of people successfully invades, dominates, displaces, or conquers another group of people, members of the victorious group often, not always but often, decide to build their important political, social, or religious buildings and monuments on top of those of the defeated peoples, change the functions of those older buildings to something more in line with the values of the winning side, or just gleefully destroy the older structures altogether. 

It's a spike of the ball in the end zone complete with touchdown dance. It's hanging on the basketball rim after a particularly vicious dunk. It's watching the baseball soar out of the stadium, glaring at the pitcher, flipping the bat and taking a slow jaunt around the bases. In other words, it's something specifically designed to let the other group know that they lost and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. It's not a very nice thing to do. And that's the entire point. 

It's not often remarked upon or noted but Islam like Christianity, has its own history of invasion, conquest and imperialism. The Turks, who are originally from Central Asia, not only conquered the region known as Anatolia, now modern Turkey, but also much of Eastern Europe, including the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine), Constantinople, renamed Istanbul. 

Amber Guyger: And that I do not forgive!

There was a discussion on my Facebook page which is newsworthy enough to add here. As you may have heard former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was convicted of murdering Botham Jean in his apartment while he was sitting on his couch eating ice cream. She received a ten year prison sentence. She will be eligible for parole in five years. She can probably look forward to a lucrative post prison career as a Fox News contributing analyst and speaker at NRA events. 

Unsurprisingly, Guyger had a history of racism, some of which was revealed in ugly text messages with her lover, another police officer, as they mocked Martin Luther King, other Black police officers, and Black people in general. Given that are Black people who have received similar or worse sentences for less heinous crimes, Guyger's relatively lenient sentence is nothing to celebrate in my opinion. Of course Guyger might appeal her sentence. Who knows. The reason some people are happy is that it's very very very rare that white cops are ever charged and convicted of murdering a Black person. Her conviction is unusual. So good for that I guess. 

There was something that happened in this trial or more precisely in its aftermath which I think is worth discussing.

Pepperoni Pizza and Jelly Beans Lawsuits

I was raised with the injunction never to tolerate disrespect in small things or large. I was taught to get what you pay for. I was taught never to think that someone is doing me a favor by taking my money. I learned that if I ordered X to make sure I got X, not Y.

I would have a bigger problem with my parents than anyone else if I meekly accepted shoddy treatment or crappy goods from a business. And I wasn't the only one. Just recently I watched as an elderly irate profane gentleman explained to a clerk at the local grocery story that they had sold him a rotten onion. And even though he had to make a 10 mile round trip he wasn't going to let anyone sell him a rotten f***** onion, by God. 

I appreciate a customer who stands up for himself or herself. However the proper resolution is usually for the store or business to apologize, refund your money, or provide the good or service you initially purchased, occasionally at a discounted price or for free. I'm not sure that the customer needs to file a $100 million lawsuit.

A Muslim man is suing Little Caesars for $100 million after he says he was served and then accidentally ate pepperoni made with pork, a food prohibited by Islamic law. The complaint says Mohamad Bazzi of Dearborn ordered halal pizza twice from the shop on Schaefer in Dearborn. The boxes were labeled "halal," but the pies inside were topped with regular pepperoni. 

Religious Accommodation in a Diverse Society: Is It Still Possible?

We've previously discussed religious accommodations in employment and education. It's hard to find agreement on these issues. What is important or sacred to one person may be minor, downright stupid or immoral to someone else. Even people who have otherwise supported broad religious accommodations have also recognized the danger that unlimited religious exemptions poses to many societal mores or laws. Religious freedom can't be a "I don't have to do anything you say" card. I am not religious though I mostly respect those who are. I don't think that we can make a general rule about when religious accommodations should be made. There are just too many different religions and dissimilar ways of experiencing the world. We must examine situations case by case. Most of us will probably agree that we shouldn't force people to violate their strongly held moral or religious beliefs absent an equally pressing moral claim. We can say that we won't allow religious claims to override actual physical harm to another human (but in the case of circumcision of infant boys we do just that while holding to that belief to outlaw FGM). We either don't permit or strongly discourage people of the Hindu faith from burning offerings and throwing them in the local river. The idea of "physical harm" is of course subject to our subjective ideas about damage. While I grudgingly admit that the relevant or applicable state laws might require it, my personal bias is that I am queasy at forcing an objecting photographer, painter or baker to produce goods or services for a gay wedding. I'm skeptical that the alleged harm outweighs the individual's right to expression. But religious accommodation is available to people of all faiths. Religious accommodation is not just something used by "backwards" conservative Christians to "mess with" liberals and gays. Religious accommodation is about more than gays and birth control. Some Orthodox Jews in NYC have worked it out so that some public pools are separated by gender at certain times of the day. I have a problem with this arrangement because everyone is paying taxes for this. Other Orthodox Jewish men have refused to sit next to women on airplanes. I have no sympathy for their claim. If they want to move they should do so but the woman shouldn't move nor should the plane be delayed. An Orthodox Jewish woman obtained a job offer as a 24/7 oncall data manager but only then informed her putative employer, the Dallas County Sheriff's office, that she would need to leave work before sundown on Friday. Always. Additionally she wouldn't be answering the phone or driving during the sabbath. So if there was an emergency during that time period obviously she would be unavailable. The Sheriff's office withdrew the offer and since this is America the woman sued. I don't think she should get anything because she can't fulfill the job's core requirements. Some Muslims, who are required to pray five times a day, sued their employer because they don't think the employer is making enough of an accommodation to their prayer needs. As the country becomes more diverse these problems will occur more frequently.

I think an employer should try to be reasonable (and that's what the law requires as far as I know) but I also can't have half my staff disappearing for 10-20 minutes or more for three times during the workday, especially if I am in a business where productivity is easily measured and has an immediate impact on profit. Other Muslim taxi drivers have tried refusing to pick up blind people with guard dogs or have refused to allow women to sit next to them. So one person's religious freedom or accommodation is often another person's unfair discrimination or special treatment. I heard about the Charee Stanley vs. ExpressJet case while listening to the radio on my commute home. I thought that it was an example of where things have probably gone too far.
A Muslim flight attendant is suing ExpressJet after it suspended her for refusing to serve passengers alcohol. The lawsuit accuses the airline of “revoking a reasonable religious accommodation and wrongfully suspending her from her employment,” the Council on American-Islam Relations Michigan Chapter said in a release Tuesday.
On Aug. 25, 2015, Charee Stanley was placed on unpaid leave after a colleague complained about her refusal to serve customers alcohol — which she did in deference to her religion. 

Stanley was hired by ExpressJet before converting to Islam, and was later asked to make arrangements for the flight attendant on duty to fulfill alcohol requests. Stanley poured all non-alcoholic beverages. “It was obviously seen as a reasonable accommodation and it was working for dozens of flights — so it was not an accommodation that was burdensome nor restricted people from getting alcohol on the flight,” Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the CAIR-MI, told the Daily News in an interview.

But in August, after Stanley's new partner complained, the airline lifted the accommodation. Stanley was placed on unpaid leave “and on track for eventual termination for her requesting an accommodation of being allowed to not personally serve alcohol rather than abandoning her religious belief and practice,” according to the lawsuit.
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It's important to note that the EEOC dismissed Stanley's complaint without deciding if the airline broke the law. Now I don't drink so I would not be impacted by Stanley's refusal to serve alcohol. But just as with the Christian bakers or photographers being forced to provide services to gay weddings, when you serve the public sometimes you end up doing things that don't line up 100% with your religious or moral beliefs. If we're going to play hardball with that baker then we have to do the same with Stanley. If not serving alcohol is of supreme importance to Stanley then the proper next step for her is to find a job that better fits her religion. As a country we can't allow one religion to constantly win workplace accommodations while another religion constantly loses. That's not fair. It adds to bad blood. It seems as if some people suing for religious accommodation are crossing the line between seeking to live according to their religion and making other people live according to their religion. Occasionally serving alcohol is part of the job of being a stewardess flight attendant. It's minor but if you can't do it then you should find something else. You couldn't be a vet or pet groomer and refuse to touch dogs because your religion finds them unclean. Things are starting to get ridiculous in my non-legal opinion when Somali Muslim delivery drivers can refuse to deliver loads which contain alcohol and actually win a $240,000 judgment against their employer. To me it all depends on whether your religious accommodation request involves a critical part of your job. If profoundly devout people or more likely people of certain faiths or sects obtain a reputation for trying to make their workplace bend to their will, there's a non zero chance that some employers will do what they can to not hire certain people, illegal though that is. And that's lose-lose for everyone.

What's your take on these stories?

Has the demand for religious accommodation gone too far?

Donald Trump: Racist White Man's Badass Revenge

Donald Trump is the walking unalloyed id of fearful white reactionaries. He says what a lot of people are thinking (if you believe that various online comments are a window into some people's souls) but until recently have not said out loud in mixed company. Trump opened his presidential campaign with slurs against Mexicans and Hispanics. He has continued it with broadsides against and snide comments about Blacks, the media, disabled people, President Obama, Jews, women he finds uppity, and of late, Muslims. It is arguable as to whether Trump truly believes all that he says. Much of what he says is demonstrably untrue. There were not thousands, hundreds or even dozens of American Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9-11 attacks. Black people do not commit 81% of murders. And so on. And it would be neither wise nor constitutional, as Trump suggests, to employ religious tests for immigration to and ultimately citizenship in the United States. The US military and law enforcement agencies should not and must not, as Trump has suggested, go after the families of suspected or convicted terrorists. And Muslims should not be forced to have special IDs or sign up for a database. Trump thinks that the United States should use a religious test for entry into this country. And the test would be simple. If you are a Muslim, you don't get to enter. How he would square that with the Constitution is anybody's guess. Obviously, for quite a lot of people, apparently most especially Trump, the election of a black man to the highest office in the land was a severe shock from which they've never truly recovered. As a result some folks think if that Barack Hussein Obama can do it, I KNOW I could. It's one thing to think that the President is incorrect on this or that issue or even incompetent. That comes with the job. But when you, as at least some Republicans do, view the election of a black man as prima facie evidence that something has gone very badly wrong in the system then you're playing with some very dangerous forces.

For some people, the fact that the President is black, regardless of how much of a centrist/Eisenhower Republican Obama can be, means that America is in decline and must be restored. Those are the people to whom Trump speaks. I don't think that Trump is a stupid man by any means. However I don't believe he's as smart as he would have us conclude. 

It is darkly humorous and quite revealing that Trump supporters, some of whom froth at the mouth over President Obama's executive orders and aggressive bureaucracies, cheer at Trump's "Me, me,me, I, I, I" rhetoric and promises to make changes that simply can't be made without the agreement of Congress, the courts, and occasionally other countries. But when Trump defends his idea by saying well it's not as bad as FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans then as I wrote, you're dealing with someone who is downright dangerous. It has become popular in some circles for people to claim that they would rather have their racism and bigotry upfront and honest, rather than hidden behind politesse and smarmy denials. Well those people will have their claims put to the test should Trump ever become President. Trump is in full "attack the other" mode. And for him the other is anyone who is not Caucasian and Christian. Many people find the whiff of fascism, racism and sexism in anyone who's to the right of Noam Chomsky and more masculine than pajama boy. Those folks can usually be dismissed. But this time they are dead on accurate. Trump may or may not become the Republican nominee for President. But if he does then the American voter will have a quite clear choice to make. I can understand why people who didn't care for George Bush's cowboy certainty were initially attracted to Obama's cool as a cucumber persona. And I can understand why some of those people, now frustrated with what they view as Obama's confusing lack of passion, are excited by Trump's bombast. But blaming all Muslims for the acts of a few makes no sense. That's not how America is supposed to work. I think that most Americans still get this. But quite a few Republicans do not. For them the descriptor  "American" simply can't be easily fit onto anyone who isn't a White Christian. That is why so many of them still believe that the President is neither American born nor Christian. These people aren't going anywhere for a while. And they vote. Buckle your seats because this election cycle just became a lot more interesting and vital. I wonder if the Christian right-wingers who mutter about exercising their Second Amendment options accept that Muslim-Americans, facing talk of id cards, immigration restrictions, calls to "go after" family members of suspects, and internment camps, might themselves decide to get better armed...just in case.

Cemeteries, Mosques and Anti-Muslim bigotry

An ugly fact of the human condition is that the negative generalizations that we are so quick to detect and oppose when used against us we often eagerly apply to the other. Few of us completely lack this trait. Witness the ugly bigotry some people have against Muslims. There are four recent incidents which reminded me of these thought patterns. In the first case, former baseball great, born-again Christian, ESPN analyst and proud conservative Curt Schilling approvingly posted and later deleted the meme comparing Muslims to Nazis. He apologized and removed the tweet, but was briefly suspended from ESPN activities. His employer made it clear that Schilling did not speak for ESPN. Unsurprisingly the NY Post defended Schilling as telling "the truth" about Muslims. In the second case a group of apparently low information American citizens in the town of Farmersville, Texas are protesting plans for a "Muslim invasion" of their town. Well, what exactly has these people so up in arms you might ask? Is there some wealthy Arab expatriate sheik who is building a compound for his harem and is going to seize all the town's young women for his own libidinous purposes? Or maybe it's a smooth talking charlatan who is building a secret bomb making and terrorist training facility. When the time is right he'll give the secret radio signal. Every Muslim in Texas will start screaming Allah-u-Akbar and chopping off heads. Perhaps it's just a whole bunch of fiendishly clever Muslim parents who, just for s***s and giggles, intend to have massive numbers of children and so within a few generations take over the United States. The people of Farmersville apparently believe that some of that might be going on but in reality the plan that has them so upset, fearful and blurting out stupid or hateful comments is that some American Muslims, you know, fellow citizens, are planning to build a cemetery. Yes, some people in Texas are so scared of Muslims or hate them so much that even dead ones make them cry for their Mommy. 

Not to be outdone, some people in my own state, in the city of Sterling Heights, are protesting a planned mosque. Some people opposed to the mosque claim to have and may indeed have no religious or ethnic bias as a motivating factor. But many others are quite clear about their prejudices against and hatred for Muslims. When you say that "these people scare us" or "you should have homeland security investigate these people" or "I don't want to live next to people like this", you don't leave much room for misunderstanding. Finally, in Houston Texas, about thirty or so brave yahoos protested against a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten magnet language immersion school for the horrible crime of teaching Arabic. That'll show those five year old little terrorists in training! Don't mess with Texas!!!

Some Americans hold all Muslims responsible for the actions of a few. They think that Islam itself is wrong and evil. They piously point out that a small percentage of Muslims can do a great deal of harm. They feel justified in hating or distrusting all Muslims. Whether such Muslims are American citizens doesn't matter. The more historically minded among such folk or more likely those who can remember and repeat simple talking points will talk at length about past Muslim atrocities or point today to the savagery of ISIS as an example of the typical Muslim. That's all well and good for what it's worth. I have no interest in defending any form of conquest or imperialism, religiously motivated or otherwise. And if you want to be a bigot, as long as your behavior is not unduly or unlawfully influenced by your bad thoughts, I don't care as much as I used to care. The only problem I have is this. If you are living in the United States or Canada or Argentina or just about any place in the so-called New World you're standing on land which witnessed one of the greatest and most successful genocides in world history. For the past five hundred years people of European descent and primarily Christian belief conquered the word and raped, enslaved or exterminated millions of their fellow human beings. In the United States it's only really in the last fifty years or so that the idea that this might not have been such a nice thing to do has penetrated the mainstream consciousness. And it's still a very controversial concept. The New York Times, hardly a conservative or white nationalist publication, just published a fawning review of Hugh Thomas' World Without End, which is apparently one long apologia for Christian Spain's invasion and genocidal conquest of large swaths of the non-white and non-Christian areas of the planet. It's hard to imagine the NYT doing the same thing for someone who strenuously argued that, sure maybe a few people got hurt, but by and large the Islamic Caliphate's or Ottoman Turk's repeated invasions of Europe were noble attempts to spread civilization.

What's beyond the pale (pun definitely intended) is that people who were victims of all this and/or their descendants should judge all whites or all Christians the same way that others wish to judge all Muslims. So why is that? Why is it that because of 9-11 it's okay to say that Islam itself is the problem or that every single Muslim must immediately be held accountable for anything that one of the other 1,599,999,999 Muslims on the planet says or does? Is it okay for people who have suffered multiple 9-11s for centuries to say that white people are the problem? The racism which pervades the Western world is not something that can be laid at the feet of Islam or Muslims. I am less concerned about being blown up by Al-Qaeda than I am about being shot or beaten by a police officer. Nevertheless I try to judge people on an individual basis. And despite problems I think many Americans still attempt to do the same. Judging every member of a group because of something that a small subgroup did is wrong. Judge people for their own actions. Actually if Christians really want to live up to their teachings they should definitely not be judging people at all or even resisting evil. Good luck trying to get people to live up to that scripture.

Bottom line though, and this is apparently difficult for some people to accept, is that this country has no religious tests for citizenship or political office. Nor should it. And every religious freedom or exception to general law which is won by Christians can also be enjoyed by Muslims, people of other faiths or people of no faith at all. Whether it's Muslims building a cemetery, entering a gun shop, or building a house of worship, Muslim citizens enjoy all the same rights as any other citizen. And well they should. And if you wouldn't tolerate negative generalizations about Jews or Christians, blacks or whites, don't make them about Muslims. 

Religious Freedom, Discrimination and Airplanes

I am not religious though I have respect for people's religious beliefs. I avoid needlessly poking fun at them. There are limits to this respect but in general I don't see the point in deliberately pointing out fallacies and flaws in someone's faith unless they try to push it onto me. Lately religious freedom has come to be used primarily by people on the political right to avoid otherwise generally applicable laws. There's no reason that religious freedom should be a partisan issue. There are just as many historical and current controversies where people on the political left have cited religious freedom to avoid participating in things the right supports (saluting the flag, pledging allegiance, being drafted, etc..). So it should go both ways. I see religious objections as just a smaller and fiercer subset of conscience objections. And I often admire people who are truly motivated by individual conscience. There is one small caveat though. I may respect people who are standing up to the state or business or other members of society who are trying to make them do something. I don't have any use for people claiming religious freedom who are trying to burden OTHER people. I have the religious freedom to abstain from eating pork or shellfish. It's not religious freedom however for me to try to make you live by my dietary restrictions. It's a small but crucial distinction. Recently some male members of the growing and politically active ultra-Orthodox Jewish community have made some news by refusing to sit next to unrelated women while using transportation. Presumably this problem would also extend to unrelated men sitting next to traveling ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. 



Francesca Hogi, 40, had settled into her aisle seat for the flight from New York to London when the man assigned to the adjoining window seat arrived and refused to sit down. He said his religion prevented him from sitting beside a woman who was not his wife. Irritated but eager to get underway, she eventually agreed to move. Laura Heywood, 42, had a similar experience while traveling from San Diego to London via New York. She was in a middle seat — her husband had the aisle — when the man with the window seat in the same row asked if the couple would switch positions. Ms. Heywood, offended by the notion that her sex made her an unacceptable seatmate, refused. “I wasn’t rude, but I found the reason to be sexist, so I was direct,” she said.  

A growing number of airline passengers, particularly on trips between the United States and Israel, are now sharing stories of conflicts between ultra-Orthodox Jewish men trying to follow their faith and women just hoping to sit down.
Representatives of the ultra-Orthodox insist that the behavior is anomalous and rare. “I think that the phenomenon is nowhere near as prevalent as some media reports have made it seem,” said Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public affairs at Agudath Israel of America, which represents ultra-Orthodox Jews. “The haredi men I know,” Rabbi Shafran said, using the Hebrew word for the ultra-Orthodox, “have no objection to sitting next to a woman on any flight.”

The ultra-Orthodox have increasingly seen gender separation as a kind of litmus test of Orthodoxy — it wasn’t always that way, but it has become that way,” said Samuel Heilman, a professor of sociology at Queens College. “There is an ongoing culture war between these people and the rest of the modern world, and because the modern world has increasingly sought to become gender neutral, that has added to the desire to say, ‘We’re not like that.’”
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I don't really care how you behave in the privacy of your own home. And as mentioned I modestly sympathize with some people who feel that they are being bullied by an ever expanding government determined to enforce, pardon the pun, orthodoxy, around questions of gender, child raising practices, sexuality and what have you. But that sympathy stops here. If you are older than say five years old and still believe that women have cooties, if you think that you will be tempted, seduced or made impure by every single non-related women you run across in life, if you think that you have the right to demand that society adapt to you rather than the other way around, maybe this country isn't really the right place for you. You're a dummy. There is no other way to put it. Being descended from people who did indeed have to give up seats, switch seats or otherwise adjust their lives to the fears and anger of bigots, I have absolutely no truck with any man or woman, regardless of their religion, who seeks to impose any sort of segregation in public accommodations. If you want to do that in your synagogue, mosque or church, knock yourself out. But don't try it in the public square. And certainly don't try it around me. Because you're opening up yourself and your religion up for public mockery. Nobody should ever switch seats because someone refuses to sit next to them due to gender. Nobody. And if some idiot is preventing the departure of a bus or plane because of this, throw them off the vehicle, and do not refund their money. If this happens often enough, word will get around. I believe that similar to how the Mormons had a revelation that black men could actually be priests, the Orthodox Jews pitching a fit over the possibility of sitting next to an unrelated woman, will suddenly discover a new interpretation allowing them to do just that. Ridiculous.

What do you think?

If you are a woman would you move?

If you are a man would you switch seats with a woman to remedy this situation?

Religious exceptionalism and the law

I am not religious but many people I deeply care about are. Even if everyone I loved, admired or respected were an atheist I would still think that common courtesy means that generally I am not going to go out of my way to insult someone's religious beliefs. For other personal and political reasons I even occasionally have some sympathy for religious people who feel that they are set upon by a government which is determined to drive all religion out of the public square or force religious business owners or individuals between a rock and a hard place where they must choose to violate religious beliefs or pay exorbitant fines. But I said some sympathy not a lot. As religious people, usually on the right, have fought back against what they see as government overreach by claiming religious exceptions to generally applicable laws, they have generally done so by citing Christian or occasionally Jewish doctrines. That's all well and good but this is a big country with lots of different religious traditions. What may be profoundly silly to someone of a Christian faith tradition may be a matter of serious import to someone of a non-Christian faith tradition. Many of the right-wing Christians who are seeking or have won religious exemptions to such things as birth control provisions or wish to allow government judges, magistrates and mayors to opt out of issuing marriage licenses to gay couples or who have the bright idea to limit marriage to religious people alone should remember that they aren't the only people to have religious objections to something that seems pretty cut and dry otherwise.

Case in point: in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights, a woman named Malak Kazan was caught driving on a suspended license and then subsequently arrested. But when she was taken to booking things got interesting.
Before reading further you should know that the tri-country area of SE Michigan has the United States' largest grouping of people of Middle Eastern and Southwest Asian descent. It is not all odd to see women wearing hijab or to drive down the streets of certain neighborhoods and see Arabic script on billboards or storefronts. The population of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights is at least 1/3 or more of Middle Eastern descent, something that has caused some right-wing bigots commentators to refer to the general area as "Dearbornistan". It's also important to know that not every local person of Middle Eastern descent is Muslim. There are a lot of Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Maronites and so on. Anyhow Kazan was of the opinion that to remove her hair covering in the presence of an unrelated man was not only demeaning and degrading but unconstitutional. When she was forced to remove her hair covering she filed a federal lawsuit.

A Muslim woman filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Dearborn Heights police of violating her constitutional rights by making her remove her Islamic head scarf after they arrested her for driving on a suspended license. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Detroit, asks for Dearborn Heights to "modify its current policy" so that Muslim women can wear Islamic head scarves during booking procedures. Malak Kazan of Dearborn Heights was pulled over by police in July on a traffic violation and then taken into custody on a traffic misdemeanor because of her suspended license, according to the lawsuit.

The male police officer then asked Kazan to remove her head scarf to take her booking photo, which usually requires no head coverings or hats. Kazan objected, saying her Islamic faith required her to cover her hair and neck in the presence of men who are not part of her immediate family, the lawsuit said.

LINK
Initially I was a little torn on this. There are people in prison who have successfully won the right to kosher or halal food or access to the religious books of their choice. There are Orthodox mohels who use their mouth to draw blood from newly circumcised baby boys. There are a handful of religious exemptions to PPACA. And so on. So what was the big deal right?

Now there are lawyers around this blog who could quote you all the relevant case history and Supreme Court decisions. Perhaps they will drop by and leave some more knowledge. But my interest was less with the legal specifics and more with common sense. After some more thought I don't see it as a horrible violation to have to remove a hair covering for a booking photo. The point of the booking photo is identification. It's not to humiliate you. It's something that anyone who is arrested will have to do. So, if everyone who's arrested has to remove head/hair coverings that could interfere with their identification I would not be in support of Kazan's lawsuit. There are however some people who see situations like these and look jealously at existing exemptions or special treatment given to other religions and ask, why should we assimilate. This case reminded me a little bit of another Muslim woman, one Sultana Freeman, who wanted to have her driver's license photo show her in a veil with only her eyes showing. Some things just won't work. I don't think we can chase all religion out of the public square. I doubt we can come up with bright line rules that automatically make the answers obvious whenever someone raises a religious objection to secular law. But I also think that there are some generally applicable laws and rules that must apply to everyone regardless of their religious beliefs. You get arrested; you take off your hair covering. You want a driver's license; you show your face. And if you're a state justice of the peace or magistrate and a same sex couple wants to get married, you marry them.

How do you see all of this?

Je Suis Charlie: Paris Attack on Charlie Hebdo Offices

I think that one of the keystones of modern civilization is the ability to say, believe or write things which others find offensive without being killed for your expression of thoughts. I don't think that anyone who believes in freedom of speech can hold otherwise. And even people who aren't necessarily the biggest fans of free speech still usually aren't big fans of murder. So all right minded people deplored the Paris acts of murder directed against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. At least two armed French-Algerian men, presumably angered by satirical and scatological cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, stormed the magazine offices, killing twelve people and wounding eleven others. At this time the men are still at large. They are believed to be the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. 

On Wednesday, eight journalists - including the magazine's editor - died along with a caretaker and a visitor when masked men armed with assault rifles stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices during an editorial meeting. Eleven people were also wounded, some seriously. Two policemen were also killed.

Witnesses say the gunmen shouted "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "we killed Charlie Hebdo", as well as "God is Great" in Arabic. The attackers fled to northern Paris before abandoning their car and hijacking a Renault Clio, police say. The magazine's office was firebombed in 2011. It had angered some Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of its irreverent take on news and current affairs.

These murders and attempted murders were immediately condemned by the overwhelming majority of Muslim leaders, religious and otherwise, in France and beyond. Nevertheless, the murders of French cartoonists for blasphemy feeds into the idea of a clash of civilizations, much beloved by extremists in all of the Abrahamic faiths. In this Manichean understanding, certain religions are simply incompatible. We must eliminate or suppress them. We can not possibly live with them. They are evil. Obviously "we" and "them" and "they" depends on who is speaking or writing. Strangely enough the people rushing to condemn all Muslims for the depraved acts of a few don't think that others should condemn all whites or all cops or all Christians for similar acts in the past  or the present. A Muslim acting badly reflects on all Muslims but a Christian acting badly is one individual. Right. Doesn't that seem a little, well, wrong?

In this country I am more worried about home grown indigenous right wing terror or a trigger happy cop than I am about some immigrant religious nutter or first generation resident. Given the size of the faith communities on the planet, it is a pipe dream to imagine that a faith you don't like could ever be eliminated but fundamentalists of any stripe tend not to deal in practicalities. No, what these murders could do is to increase the growing sentiment among some Europeans that there are too many Muslim immigrants and citizens already resident in Europe. Some people may start to wonder where is Charles Martel when you really need him.

Overnight, seven people believed to be connected to the Kouachi brothers were detained in the towns of Reims and Charleville-Mezieres, as well as in the Paris area. Cherif Kouachi was sentenced in 2008 to three years in prison for belonging to a Paris-based group sending jihadist fighters to Iraq. Following the shootings at the magazine, there appear to have been a number of revenge attacks on Muslims reported by French media, though nobody was hurt:

• Two shots were fired at a Muslim prayer room in the town of Port-la-Nouvelle in the southern region of Aude on Wednesday evening
• A Muslim family was shot at in their car in Caromb, in the southern region of Vaucluse
• Dummy grenades were thrown during the night at a mosque in Le Mans, western France
• The slogan "Death to Arabs" was daubed on the door of a mosque in Poitiers, central France, during the night
• A blast hit a kebab shop beside a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saone in central France

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European countries have traditionally been ethnic homelands and not settler states or targets for immigration The murders may increase the stigma around Islam. It is also important to make it clear that "free speech" in the abstract includes a lot of things that I do not like and that I think that most decent people would not like. Some which Charlie Hebdo published were roughly about the same quality and tone of work that Hustler owner Larry Flynt might have featured. Some cartoons were deliberately offensive. Worse, some of them just did not amuse. But I don't have to agree with them or find them funny to be upset that other people murdered the cartoonists. I feel very strongly about freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to have your own beliefs. If I want to reject your religious views that's my right. If I find them silly and harmful and decide to spend my time making fun of them that's also my right. Your moral choices when faced with that situation are to counterattack with your own speech, ignore me, or perhaps try to get me fired from my job. It's not a moral choice to beat me into submission or kill me. Not in the US or most Western countries anyway. Other countries have different ideas about mocking religion.

All that said we should remember that in many aspects the US has greater freedom of speech than France. In the US, you can deny the Holocaust or make fun of it. If you're funny enough you can build a career out of telling racist jokes. You can suggest that Black people were better off under slavery and/or are less intelligent than everyone else. You can write books earnestly explaining how white people are genetic Ice Age mutations predisposed to violence or how your particular ethnic group just happens to be smarter than everyone else. In France such things can get you banned, fined or arrested. So it's not that France is some free speech paradise. It's not. If I were a French Muslim religious extremist I might well be peacefully agitating for my religious sensitivities to get the same free speech carve out as other people's ethnic or racial sensitivities. 

But the bottom line is that if your understanding of your religion requires you to kill people who make fun of it, then a modern secular society with separation of church and state is simply not for you. You should depart such a place at once and resettle in a country which features ruthlessly enforced blasphemy laws. You would be much happier and so would I. It's a win-win situation. Quite simple really. #JeSuisCharlie

What are your thoughts? 

Lansing Michigan Satanic Temple Holiday Display

I am not religious. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am also however a big believer in the right of the individual to make a stand based on his or her sincerely held moral, ethical or religious beliefs. Sometimes, these tenets can conflict. What is right or good is not immediately apparent. In the past few decades though what has been apparent is that some devoutly religious Christian people feel that there is a "war on Christmas" or that they are losing ground in American culture. This has provoked a backlash in which some Christians seek to leverage their majority status to place a Christian imprimatur on government and/or secular functions. The classic examples of this are attempts to make Christianity the official religion of a state or the entire country, Christian prayers at legislative sessions, which the Supreme Court upheld (wrongly imo) and the never ending battles over holiday nativity scenes at government buildings. When challenged over the last, people supportive of such scenes often ask those opposed what's the big deal, advise them to quit being so sensitive and suggest that they have a nice warm steaming cup of STFU. Well.
I am not among those who are outraged by nativity scenes but I definitely sympathize with those who are. And once you open the gates to allowing religious displays on government property, well then you need to understand that it's an all or nothing type of rule. The people in Lansing, Michigan, our capital, are learning that this holiday season as the Satanic Temple (Detroit Chapter) is moving ahead with plans to place its own holiday display on the Capitol lawn. The Satanic display was originally planned in response to a Christian nativity scene but the Christians were apparently lacking in organizational skills and so far have not finalized plans to get their nativity scene in place.

 I guess the Satanists were a bit more motivated. Being in the minority or being the underdog can certainly tend to make someone work a little bit harder. Until the Satanists announced their plans the only Christians who were working seriously on a nativity scene were from out of state.

The group, which describes itself as a collective of “Satanists, secularists and advocates for individual liberty," has received permission to put up a display on the north Capitol lawn from December 21 to 23.

"We would prefer that no religious iconography was displayed on Capitol grounds or on state grounds for that matter," said Jex Blackmore, founder and head of the Detroit chapter. "But if there was going to be a singular voice represented, we felt it was best to add to that representation of diversity here in Michigan."

John Truscott, a member of the Michigan State Capitol Commission, confirmed that The Satanic Temple has been granted approval for the temporary outdoor display.

"We are restricted by the Constitution and bound by the Constitution to recognize their First Amendment rights," said Truscott. "We don’t have the ability to reject them if they meet the guidelines of the Capitol."

But on a personal level, Truscott said he thinks it is "absolutely disgusting to hijack a Christian holiday," and he expressed hope that the public will "just completely ignore these negative forces."

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Blackmore said that Satanists do not worship Satan as some might think but rather seek to separate superstition from religious beliefs and advocate individual liberty, rationalism and human knowledge. She said that is the reason that their display will be a "snaketivity" scene featuring a snake granting a book of knowledge. Blackmore's point is that the greatest gift is knowledge. People being who they are, once the news got out that the Satanists, of all people, would be placing a display on Capitol grounds, every politician and their mama ran to the nearest microphone to denounce the Satanists as evil, talk about how much they loved Jesus, and promised to ensure that a Christian nativity scene actually was erected. This last didn't seem to bother Blackmore as she said that the snaketivity scene would actually work better in conjunction with Christian iconography. But she did say that "If our Legislature finds it morally incomprehensible to respect the diversity of differences among Michigan citizens, then perhaps they are much better served as members of the clergy rather than representatives of the people." I can't disagree with that in this context. I certainly understand how some devout Christians might find the display of Satanic iconography offensive but just about every religion by definition has a bone to pick with someone else's religious claims. It's baked into the cake. People can try to paper this over by saying well, as long as we're all Christian we should have no issues, or as long as we're all followers of Abrahamic religions we're all good or as long as you're not an atheist I have no issues with you but the bloody history of inter and intra-religious conflict shows otherwise. The fact that a Christian finds Satanism offensive is irrelevant to whether a Satanist should have the same rights as anyone else to put up displays on public property. I would prefer no religious displays on public property but if we're going to allow it, we have to allow it for everyone. And the same logic applies to Christians who want to use religious beliefs to avoid or ignore certain secular laws. They should remember that everyone else also will get that same right. 

What do you think?
Does Blackmore have a point?
You're Queen or King for the Winter. Do you allow this Satanic holiday display?

Who Makes Medical Decisions for You (or your kids)?

I have a bit of a libertarian left leaning streak when it comes to private decisions around your life, health, sexuality and so on. Basically if you're not bothering anyone I think the government should leave you alone. That's true whether you're a black New Yorker walking down the street or a white twenty-five year old who doesn't see a need to purchase health insurance. And I feel even more strongly about someone coming between a parent and a child. However intellectual honesty compels admission that there are some cases where government not only has the right but the duty to interfere with your decision making and/or that which impacts your children. We don't look kindly on heroin addicts. We look even less kindly on heroin addicts who share their drugs with their children. I don't care if someone wants to be a sex worker. If that person wants to recruit their underage child into their line of work then they should be as Bo Diddley sang, placed "so far back in the jail that they'll have to pump air in". You can't open a factory and dump lead in the water. And so on.

Those are obvious calls though. Medical care decisions are more complex.
Doctors and scientists have knowledge and information that the rest of us lack. There's nothing magical about that. It's their line of work. A doctor would likely look just as out of place in your line of work if you're not a doctor. If a doctor suggests an action plan for a particular disease you're probably going to listen to him/her..again assuming you're not a doctor yourself with the same or greater knowledge as the bozo who barely made it through medical school and has his papers routinely rejected by scientific journals.

BUT

The doctor does not own you. You can ignore the doctor's advice and continue doing everything the doctor told you not to do. None know the hour or day of our death. Ignoring the doctor's advice is probably a bad idea (lung cancer patient continuing his three pack a day habit, diabetes or gout sufferer continuing to eat second/third helpings at dinner and TONS of sugary desserts), but again, there are people who do just that and against all odds live longer and healthier than they should. There are some diseases for which the cure is almost as bad as if not worse than the disease. If the doctor tells us that we need to have a limb amputated, have our reproductive systems removed, have our digestive systems altered so that we have to use a colostomy bag or have chemotherapy, some of us might decide that we'd rather live with the disease instead of taking the cure. At least we might want to consider options. So we'd tell the doctor no thanks and keep it moving.

But what if the doctor smiled nastily and said, "No dummy I don't think you understood. That wasn't a request.You're getting the treatment whether you like it or not!"

An appeals court has sided with a hospital that wants to force a 10-year-old Amish girl to resume chemotherapy after her parents decided to stop the treatments. The court ruled that a county judge must reconsider his decision that blocked Akron Children's Hospital's attempt to give an attorney who's also a registered nurse limited guardianship over Sarah Hershberger and the power to make medical decisions for her. The hospital believes Sarah's leukemia is very treatable but says she will die without chemotherapy.

The judge in Medina County in northeast Ohio had ruled in July that Sarah's parents had the right to make medical decisions for her. The appeals court ruling issued Tuesday said the judge failed to consider whether appointing a guardian would be in the girl's best interest. It also disagreed with the judge's decision that said he could only transfer guardianship if the parents were found unfit. The family's attorney, John Oberholtzer, said Wednesday that the ruling essentially ordered the judge to disregard the rights of the parents. Andy Hershberger, the girl's father, said the family agreed to begin two years of treatments for Sarah last spring but stopped a second round of chemotherapy in June because it was making her extremely sick.

"It put her down for two days. She was not like her normal self," he said. "We just thought we cannot do this to her." 

Sarah begged her parents to stop the chemotherapy and they agreed after a great deal of prayer, Hershberger said. The family, members of an insular Amish community, shuns many facets of modern life and is deeply religious...

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I'm usually going to follow my doctor's orders. But there have been people quite close to me who have died from cancer. And it's my firm unyielding belief that the treatments killed them just as much as the disease did. If I ever got a cancer diagnosis I would think long and hard about my treatment plan. I've also known loved ones who, despite being repeatedly told that their diet and lifestyle would literally kill them, stubbornly refused to make changes and promptly died, just as the doctors told them they would.

For me the fundamental question is who decides on the course of treatment, the doctor or the patient? I believe that freedom requires that the patient decides. 

And if the patient is too young to decide her fate, then her parents get the last word. If the parents happen to be moronic that's unbelievably unfortunate, but as most parents are not moronic I don't want the government stepping in to override medical decisions unless the decision is obviously insane and the person will die immediately. For example, some devout fundamentalists of various religions do not believe that a woman should be viewed (naked, without her hair/face covered, at all) by any man except her husband. Let's say there was a car accident and a badly injured woman was trapped in a burning car. The only way to save her requires cutting through her outer garments. She will temporarily be only partially clothed. Her husband (sitting safely on the curb) objects on religious grounds. Clearly emergency personnel should ignore him and rescue the woman before she's burned to death. If that same woman goes to the doctor, is told she needs a hysterectomy and declines it on religious or personal grounds, I don't want the government overriding her choice and sending her to the surgeons. 

But those are adults. What about kids? Isn't that different? Doesn't the government have a role to play?

Parents, not the government, are the primary and best caretakers. They have responsibility for their child's medical care. Obviously they will need help on occasion. There are many decisions that parents make regarding their children. This includes everything from when, if or how to tell them the facts of life, to their diet, to what sort of social activities they engage in, to which books they can read, to when or whether to take them off life support after they've been in a coma. It's truly an awesome responsibility. So absent some immediate certainty of death, provable neglect or irrationality, I think the parents should have final say. Choosing not to undergo chemotherapy is not to my mind the same thing as drilling a hole in your child's head in order to let the demons out. It's not an easy call to watch a parent make what I think is a bad decision but I think it's the right one. Of course I could be full of it. It wouldn't be the first time. 

What do you think is the right decision here?

Who should have the final word? The state and/or hospital or the parents?

Pakistani Muslims Riot Over Blasphemy Charges

Here we go again. Let's just be blunt. There are a lot of things the US Founding Fathers and later judges and politicians got wrong when they created the legal and social standards for our country but refusing to create a state church and generally enforcing a separation of church and state wasn't one of them. I am not religious. The issue with most religions is that many creeds feel that they have a monopoly on "truth". I totally get that. I disagree but as long as they don't bother me I won't bother them. But in some countries, and Pakistan is one of them, there isn't quite a relatively robust separation of church and state. Religion may not run the state but it has entirely too much influence.

In the US or most of what's referred to obliquely as "The West" if I want to make a movie or write a book mocking Jesus or making fun of Moses or criticizing Muhammad I can do so. I may be insulted or mocked in turn but generally speaking no one is going to try to burn my house down. Police won't charge me with blasphemy. No one will try to shoot my wife or children. You can't say the same about Pakistan. In fact you don't even have to have been convicted of committing "blasphemy", just have someone in the majority group (Sunni Muslim) accuse you of having committed blasphemy and the lynch mob is ready to go.

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Hundreds of people in eastern Pakistan rampaged through a Christian neighborhood Saturday, torching dozens of homes after hearing reports that a Christian man had committed blasphemy against Islam's prophet.

Blasphemy is a serious crime in Pakistan that can carry the death penalty but sometimes outraged residents exact their own retribution for perceived insults of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Pakistan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and people of other faiths, including the nation's small Christian community, are often viewed with suspicion.

The incident started Friday when a young Muslim man accused a Christian man of committing blasphemy by making offensive comments about the prophet, according to Multan Khan, a senior police officer in Lahore.

A large crowd from a nearby mosque went to the Christian man's home on Friday night, said Khan. Police registered a blasphemy case against the man after the crowd gathered and demanded action, the officer said.

Fearing for their safety, hundreds of Christian families fled the area overnight.Khan said the mob returned on Saturday and began ransacking Christian homes and setting them ablaze. He said no one in the Christian community was hurt, but several policemen were injured when they were hit with stones as they tried to keep the crowd from storming the area.

But Akram Gill, a local bishop in the Lahore Christian community said the incident had more to do with personal enmity between two men — one Christian and one Muslim — than blasphemy. He said the men got into a brawl after drinking late one night, and in the morning the Muslim man made up the blasphemy story as payback...Only in Christian cases will violent mobs punish the entire community for the perceived crime of one Christian...Two prominent politicians were assassinated in 2011 for urging reform of the law. The killer of one of the politicians was hailed as a hero, and lawyers at his legal appearances showered him with rose petals.

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Unfortunately in places like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or other portions of the Muslim world freedom of speech and freedom of religion are not considered to be important human rights. They are often though to be dangerous foreign imports. Well the world is a big and often ugly place right? It's full of countries that don't have US values and don't want US values thank you very much. Why should we in the US or the more rational parts of the planet care what a bunch of Pakistani morons do? Well we should care because injustice anywhere in the world is wrong and should be challenged. Although the particulars are different the underlying human evil is the same. The majority seizes on a flimsy pretext to bully, humiliate and occasionally kill the minority. On that level it's no different than what might have occurred in 1920s Alabama or in several other places or times around the world. In-group, out-group: the names change but the game is always the same.

We should also care because the sorts of people who think that blasphemy is a serious crime are not content with either staying in the backwaters of Pakistan or having blasphemy laws only apply in similarly benighted places. No. Not only are some Muslim immigrant communities in Europe aggressively seeking to have blasphemy laws reinstated there, some majority Muslim countries are attempting to create an international standard blasphemy law.

Although I think every human being on the planet is of equal worth, more or less, every idea isn't. Blasphemy is incompatible with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the freedom to think what you want to think or say what you want to say. Although I think for simple politesse it's usually best not to insult people needlessly the fact remains that some people (a small violent minority?) in the Muslim world tend to take almost any statement about Islam that's not cloyingly complimentary as an insult. This is no good. There is no reason in my view to grant Islam deference that I wouldn't grant other religions. And a rioter's veto is not a reason. Pakistan's ambassador to the US was accused of blasphemy. It's insane. Blasphemy is a stupid idea promulgated by stupid people. The idea that your God needs the state to protect him is asinine. 

Obviously there are plenty of people throughout the Muslim world who recognize this, perhaps even the majority of Muslims. I think that most people are basically good. It's important that we stand firm against blasphemy laws and shine the light of truth on to what is essentially state sponsored bullying. I think that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and other such places need an Enlightenment or Reformation. But only Muslims can lead this. Until then it's critical that we reject and prevent blasphemy laws from taking hold in the West. I have no desire to write or say something that some loon finds objectionable and then have my life or home damaged. The people that support blasphemy laws don't seem to realize that they are doing far more damage to Islam's image than any "Islamophobe" ever could. How often in the Mid-East or South Asia do you hear about Christian mobs attacking Muslim minorities because they said something about Jesus? Exactly.