Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Mariah Walton was born with a small hole in her heart. It could have been fixed with a relatively low-risk procedure when she was still a child, but her parents, devout Mormons, did nothing. They believed that through acts of faith, including lots of prayer, God would heal Mariah. It’s an odd position, considering that, in their world, the Almighty created her, birth defect and all. Why would you beseech God, who is supposedly omniscient and has the perfect plan for everything and everyone in the cosmos, to undo what He knowingly created? But that’s mere logic, and logic isn’t something that holds sway over most believers. For some unfathomable reason, praying did nothing for Mariah (pictured). Now, at 20 years, her health is as bad as it’s ever been. She’s permanently disabled with pulmonary hypertension. A respirator and an oxygen tank go everywhere she does. Mariah left home two years ago, and ultimately decided she wants her mother and father to get their comeuppance: Read more
In Egypt, the Arab Spring is well and truly gone, replaced by more religion-based fear and oppression despite the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi. To appease Muslim hardliners, the government of Morsi’s successor, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been cracking down on the scourge of “indecent dancing” and “contempt of religion.” Read more
A wicked-good tearjerker from Louisiana’s Daily Crawfish: (IT’S SATIRE!!) NEW ORLEANS, LA — Aid has officially begun trickling out of the state, as the first aircraft laden with thoughts and prayers departed New Orleans Louis Armstrong Airport early this morning headed for earthquake victims in Ecuador. A flight also took off shortly after headed for Japan. Both countries have been affected by strong earthquakes in the last week, and the generosity of Louisiana residents was clear as almost 1.5 million thoughts and prayers were donated to the American Red Cross in the past five days alone, all of which will definitely help victims in rebuilding their lives. Read more
Imagine that you’re suffering from a debilitating clinical depression or a severe personality disorder. Now also imagine that you have no access to psychiatric or pharmaceutical help; the only treatment you get is being stripped, then chained to a concrete block or a tree, and beaten in the name of Jesus, so that the evil spirits will finally release you. Via Al Jazeera: For sufferers of mental illness, Togo is one of the worst places in the world to live. The country is so severely under-resourced and so little is understood about this form of disease that many desperate families see no option but to take sick relatives to so-called prayer camps. Read more
To millions of hardline Muslims, music is against Islam — any music but the muezzin’s call. It could lead to joy… and sometimes even dancing. And so, Playing instruments was banned outright during the period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and even today, many conservative Muslims frown on most forms of music. Negin [Ikhpolwak, 19 years old] took her first steps learning the piano in secret, before eventually revealing her activity to her father. He encouraged her, but the reaction from the rest of her conservative Pashtun family was hostile. “Apart from my father, everybody in the family is against it,” she said. “They say, ‘How can a Pashtun girl play music?’ Especially in our tribe, where even a man doesn’t have the right to do it.” Read more