Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
In September of 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of “blasphemous” cartoons (including the one below) featuring the Islamic prophet Muhammad: You remember what happened (months) after that. Mass chaos. Violent demonstrations. Death threats against the artists. Death, period. Ahmed Akkari, 28 at the time, was one of the leaders of that reactionary movement. A New York Times article from 2006 talked about his role in the protests: Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons. … “Then the case moved to a new stage,” Mr. Akkari recalled. “We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world.” Not long after his group went to the Muslim leaders, the riots began. Akkari is 35 now and, in a really amazing twist, he regrets his role in creating this shitstorm: [Click headline for more…] Read more
This is really an incredible story… with two distinct interpretations of what went down. The first narrative that’s getting passed around is this one: 19-year-old Katie Lentz was driving in her convertible recently when a drunk driver crashed into her. As she got ever-so-close to dying, with the firefighters’ equipment failing, a mysterious man dressed as a Catholic priest randomly appeared, prayed, used some anointing oil, and left before anyone could get his name. (Stranger still was the fact that a perimeter had been created around the crash site to block out random people… which the mystery man got past.) All of a sudden, new equipment arrived from a nearby fire department and Lentz, still alive, was taken to a local hospital where she’s currently in critical condition. “I think that this time I’ve actually witnessed a guardian angel at work,” Jeremiah See of the New London Fire Department told ABC News. … “Whether it was just a priest as an angel, or an actual angel coming down,” Lentz’s friend Travis Wiseman said, “he was an angel to everyone and to Katie.” Amazing, right? [Click headline for more…] Read more
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Yes, but only with strong oversight. Samuel G. Freedman at the New York Times has an article in today’s paper about how a group of evangelical Christians are helping revitalize Roosevelt High School, a public school serving a lot of low-income families. They paint walls, repair bleachers, offer tutoring, help coach the football team, etc. Normally, that’s not a good match… but it seems to have worked out fairly well for this school and many others in the area: [Click headline for more…] Read more
