Brights News Feed

In October 2000 a Pakistani, Dr Younus Sheikh, was arrested on the charge of “blasphemy” and he was later found guilty and sentenced to death. He had been an active humanist and campaigner, and only after a concerted effort on behalf of humanist and other NGOs and rights groups was he finally freed in 2004, after three years spent mostly in solitary confinement.

This week, another man who by coincidence is also named Younus Sheikh — a writer who has criticized Islam — has been found guilty of “blasphemy” and sentenced to life in prison. And once again, the media outrage is limited — at this moment there are just two related news stories on Google, one from Pakistani newspaper The News, and the other from the UK’s National Secular Society.

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Renowned Anglican theological college, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University (UK) “is in chaos following a barrage of resignations, forcing a crisis meeting of the governing body to limit the damage to the college’s reputation… From September 2007, Wycliffe Hall will have lost all its best loved and most respected staff members. [Principal Richard] Turnbull will replace them all with conservative evangelicals. More than half the teaching staff have resigned this year. Most will not be replaced in time for the opening of the next academic year…the college will not be capable of teaching its regular curriculum.”

The above text has been circulated to all remaining members of staff at the college. Since Richard Turnball’s appointment in the top job his alleged attempts to swing the college’s theological stance sharply in the conservative evangelical direction, especially with regard to homosexuality and the ordination of women priests, have led to allegations of bullying and intimidation, followed by a slew of resignations, and an alleged attempt to quash the concerns of radio personality Elaine Storkey which has now backfired in the extreme.

According to the Guardian:

The dispute appears to mirror splits in worldwide Anglicanism - and the Church of England - over theology and homosexuality, which have been aggressively led by conservative evangelical groups.

Dr Turnbull denies being a member of conservative evangelical pressure groups, although he did sign a covenant launched last December by leaders of such groups threatening to stop associating with more liberal churches and reject the authority of bishops they disagree with.

A 17-year-old woman from Ireland known only as Miss D had been told by the Health Service Executive (HSE) that she needed permission to travel abroad because she was seeking an abortion, which is against the law under almost all circumstances in Ireland, where many political and legal debates retain heavy Catholic influence. Miss D is four months pregnant and the foetus has anencephaly and will not survive long after birth. Even this does not constitute legal ground for abortion in Ireland.

Today the High Court ruled that the HSE’s decision that Miss D could not travel abroad for an abortion was entirely without merit and that no such law restricting her right to travel existed. Mr Justice Liam McKechnie also rebuked the HSE for trying to shoehorn her case into a model which they (falsely) believed necessary in order for her to travel abroad — they had advised her to claim that she was suicidal. The Justice praised Miss D’s moral stance of refusing to comply with the request and her courage in the face of her ad hoc travel ban.

Also see RTE News.

UPDATE (11 May): And Joan Bakewell has an astute comment piece in the Independent.

Numerous liberal bloggers quickly spread the word about the American Family Association’s transparently biased anti-gay internet poll over the last few days. The AFA clearly expected the poll — asking whether consumers will shun businesses which adhere to what the AFA called the “homosexual agenda” — to be filled out mainly by their own supporters.

But the traffic the AFA site actually received, thanks to the bloggers’ ad hoc democratic publicity, clearly turned the results they expected around. Having at first seemingly faked the results of their homophobic poll the American Family Association now appears to have pulled the page altogether.

For the present, however, you can still see the ridiculous survey in the Google cache.

You can even still see the fixed results in the Google cache (these exact same fixed results, as opposed to the real data, were being displayed to everyone who filled out the survey once the wave of bloggers’ traffic skewed the results in the opposite direction from the skew that they had wanted).

It’s worth pointing out that completion of the poll also submitted users’ details to a mailing list. Not only is this a further indication that the AFA had by and large expected only anti-gay responses from their own sympathizers, it also means that many liberal bloggers are now being emailed their rhetorical diatribes and details of the AFA’s anti-gay activist plans. So presumably the liberal blogosphere will now be able to keep an even closer eye on them.

(Also see: GoodAsYou.org)

The Christian “traditional morality” pressure group the American Family Association has posted an unscientific poll on homosexuality. Not only does the poll appear on their own site (where responses are likely to support the conclusions they want to find), but the results are rigged anyway, with every submission returning the same apparently bogus data.

The poll question is:

If a corporation supports the homosexual agenda, would you:

Be more likely to do business with that company
Be less likely to do business with that company
It would not affect my buying decision

At the time of writing, the results that will be returned after you vote are:

Be more likely to do business with that company. 6,238
Be less likely to do business with that company. 188,722
It would not affect my buying decision. 3,946

These “results” are clearly intended to imply that businesses should avoid supporting “the homosexual agenda”.

(Via Seldo)

The automatic rights of a certain number of Anglican bishops to sit in the British House of Lords was seriously undermined last week, by comments from the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, which displayed a dazzling lack of human insight. His speech is proudly displayed on the Diocese website. How do we know that, deep down, everyone is religious? This is how:

Twenty-seven years ago I was chaplain to a young offenders remand centre, Latchmere House. Every inmate was asked to declare his religious affiliation, and four young men were registered as having no religion. One Sunday, all the inmates were offered the chance to go to worship.

The four young men with no religion declined the offer, while their fellow inmates on the A wing took up the offer. The prison officer, not wanting the four men to remain locked up in their cells, asked them to clean the toilets on the wing. The following Sunday, our four non-religious young men took up the offer to go to worship. The prison officer was puzzled why they had opted in this week. “Why are you going to chapel?” he asked. The four replied, “Sir, we didn’t like the ‘No Religion’ place of worship”. Crudely as they put it, those four young men were saying in their naivety that we are all essentially religious.

So, not only does the bishop fail to understand why someone would rather sit in a quiet room than scrub a prison bog, but he passes without remark the notion that non-religious inmates should be given undesirable chores. Indeed, it sounds as if he did not object in any way to this policy at the time.

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British Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Professor Richard Dawkins, has had a relatively large media footprint since the release of The God Delusion, globe-trotting his way from interview to interview. But yesterday’s CNN slot with Paula Zahn deserves a special mention, because it seems to have taken place after pressure from complaints generated by RDF site members.

Last week a lengthy panel discussion was aired on the subject of atheism, in which no atheists were invited to take part. The anchor opens the new interview with Dawkins by saying “Well after we first brought this topic out in the open, most of the emails that we received were from people who thought that we should have included an atheist in our discussion.” See Richard Dawkins interview with Paula Zahn.

A budding editor at Clare College, Cambridge (UK) has faced harsh disciplinary action over re-publishing a Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoon in his college newspaper, Clareification. The cartoon was used to illustrate a special issue on religious satire. The National Secular Society respond:

We are shocked that the staff and even the students union at this supposedly liberal college have joined the attack on this student because he had the temerity to poke fun at religion. Free expression is such a precious commodity and is under such ferocious attack at present from religious interests that it is disgraceful that no-one is standing up for this young man’s right to be rude about religion – even about Islam.

(Also see MediaWatchWatch.) GagWatch also points out that from France there is some:

good news. The state prosecutor has called for the dismissal of the court case brought by two French Muslim groups against satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, saying that the cartoons denounce terrorists’ use of the Muslim faith but do not damage Islam. A verdict was expected March 15.

As announced yesterday, the Humanist Society of Scotland has used Darwin Day to launch Humanist Thought for the Day, at www.ThinkHumanist.org (RSS). To start things off, A. C. Grayling talks about the Paradox of Tolerance. The HSS will be encouraging humanists from around the world to voice their own “thoughts for the day”. To that end you can get in touch with them, or subscribe to receive the podcasts by email, here.

Is Google-aquisition YouTube censoring some videos that are critical of Islam? Slashdot notes that YouTube banned “popular atheist commentator Nick Gisburne” recently. Gisburne was Flagged as Inappropriate by users — by a “pressure group”, he speculates — in response to a video he posted consisting only of disagreeable quotes from the Qu’ran. This lead to the closure of his account. He opened a new account, and re-posted all his videos, but the Qu’ran-quoting video was again deleted by administrators. A very similarly formatted video of disagreeable quotes from the Bible was left in place. (The Qu’ran video can still be seen, mirrored by another user… for now? He talks about the account deletions here.)

In another emotional video response (”CENSORED again“) Gisburne thanks other YouTubers for re-posting his content, putting their own accounts on the line, but knows he cannot upload the video again or he will face the closure of his new account.

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