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.
See what you make of this: Muslims should realize that if they need to save Canada from threats of terrorism, then they should shun the ruse of Islamophobia, and Jihadi conspiracy theories. They are living in Canada as a pampered minority, where the society accepts all their demands of exclusion, meets their request of providing prayers areas in private and public spaces, and lets them pull their children out of many secular programs. If they fail to reciprocate and keep yelling ‘Islamophobia’ to silence genuine debate, then the host society has an absolute right to act in revulsion towards them. I have a hunch that the likes of Ben Affleck and Reza Aslan and Rula Jebreal would easily take offense at the passage, considering it prima facie evidence of rank bigotry. Do you? Take your time, and don’t scroll just yet. Read more
One week after taping the CBS TV interview embedded below, firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary was arrested “on suspicion of being a member of a proscribed or banned organization… and encouraging terrorism.” Choudary, a well-known Muslim provocateur and lawyer who we’ve featured on this blog before, was in the company of his protegé Abu Rumaysah, an ex-Hindu who somehow turned into one of the most implacable Muslim fundamentalists you’ll ever see in front of the cameras (watch the footage below). Writes Griff Witte of the Washington Post: Counterterrorism officials and experts say Choudary and the many shadowy groups he has fronted have directly contributed to the indoctrination of dozens of people who have gone on to plan or commit attacks in the United Kingdom. That includes last year’s shocking butchery of British soldier Lee Rigby, a murder carried out by two men under Choudary’s ideological influence. [Choudary’s] network… has also become a vital facilitator in the flow of some of the thousands of Europeans who have swarmed to the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, and who could return to carry out attacks in the West. Choudary is an eager self-promoter who clearly longs to be seen as having out-strategized and outwitted a string of politicians, journalists, and law enforcement officials. Maybe his lucky streak has now come to an end; he will stand trial in January. There are no guarantees, though. He strikes me as smart enough to have plausible deniability about what he’s being charged with, possibly having stayed on the right side of British law… but clearly skating within a hair’s breadth of illegality time upon time. Read more
Apparently, if you’re an evangelical Christian, You have been marked, and you have been classified as a dangerous extremist. Don’t look now, but there’s the Christian persecution complex rearing its head again. Under the headline “Secularism Declares Open War On Religious Faith,” Michael Brown (below) at the Christian Post warns his fellow Jesus followers that atheists are out to get them, and he starts by saying … secularism has been waging war against religion for centuries. Don’t you think you might have that backwards, professor? Then Brown gives four examples of how atheists are waging outright war on faith. Curiously enough, he doesn’t seem to give a damn about any of the other major religions that we have to fight back against; only Christianity is worth mentioning. Fine. Let’s take a look then. Here’s Brown’s case: Read more
Last year, the comedy actor and activist Russell Brand did an eleven-minute interview with BBC Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman that was a bit of Rorschach test of one’s political sensibilities. Brand had full-scale political revolution on the brain, and he talked less than coherently on the matter, clearly exasperating the more practical (and more jaded) Paxman. Scores of moderate and right-leaning pundits found Brand confounding and lacking in intellectual heft. Many on the left, however, thought the interview was a thrilling example of someone finally speaking truth to power, possibly heralding a beautiful dawning of the Age of Aquarius Anti-Capitalism. The excitement transcended national borders, with the YouTube clip … being passed hand to virtual hand among Scandinavian intellectuals like a samizdat copy of Solzhenitsyn behind the iron curtain, … in the memorable phrasing of David Runciman. Read more
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the brutal murder of Dutch writer, filmmaker, and free-speech advocate Theo van Gogh. He died at the hands of a Muslim fundamentalist, Mohammed Bouyeri, who silenced Theo’s criticism of Islam with bullets and a butcher knife. For the crime of making a movie (with Ayaan Hirsi Ali) that called out Islam’s widespread misogyny, Theo was assassinated in public, in broad daylight — Bouyeri calmly and methodically almost severing his victim’s head while horrified bystanders looked on. Like the Islamic death sentence received by Salman Rushdie, it was a defining moment in one of the defining fights of our time. Back when I lived in Amsterdam, I’d met Theo a few times and interviewed him once (about local architecture, of all things; he was quite the renaissance man). I was struck by how easily he carried himself in all kinds of different company. As combative and fierce as he could be in print, in person he was a very social and genuinely curious man, always probing, trying out ideas and theories, soaking up new information. He was blunt but kind, passionate but not wrathful, eager to drive home a provocative point but careful not to twist the knife, so to speak. In short, he was the antithesis of his assassin. Read more
