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.
Last week’s post by Veronica Chenik Gilmore, about her adopted children, held special significance for me. My daughters (see below), now 11 and 9, are adopted too. My wife and I worked through an international adoption agency, Gladney, that is at least nominally Christian, having been founded by a Methodist minister more than a hundred years ago. I wasn’t aware of this at the start, but wouldn’t have cared one way or the other. All that mattered to me was that the agency was staffed with experienced, caring, competent, and fair people. And it was. I have nothing but abundant praise for our case workers and everyone else up and down Gladney’s chain of command. Throughout the years-long process, there was just one hiccup that had to do with religion. Read more
Ivan Okhlobystin, a Russian actor who took time off from the big screen to become a priest, has said publicly that gay people belong in an oven: A popular star with fiercely conservative views, [he] told an audience in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk that all homosexuals should be burned alive. … “I would put all the gays alive into an oven,” the one-time Orthodox priest has been quoted as saying. “This is Sodom and Gomorrah! As a religious person, I cannot be indifferent about it because it is a real threat to my children!” Okhlobystin later tweeted to confirm his comments. “The meaning was rendered correctly,” he said. “Everyone has the right to express their opinions.” Read more
“We cannot live among the non-Muslims and see this evil take place,” intoned hardline wannabe cleric Anjem Choudary. Choudary, a London-based advocate of strict Islamism, was referring to the consumption of alcohol, and issued a warning to shopkeepers and restaurant staff in London’s Brick Lane area where the preacher and his following marched last Friday: Read more
Ever thought you could get arrested in an Islamic country for reading the Qur’an? It recently happened to Massood Ahmad. Masood Ahmad was arrested in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore last month when two men posing as patients questioned him about his faith and used mobile phones to secretly record him reading a verse from the Koran. Why is it a crime for Mr. Ahmad to read Islam’s holy book? Simple: He’s not the right kind of Muslim. He is … an Ahmadi, a sect that consider themselves Muslim but believe in a prophet after Mohammed. A 1984 Pakistani law declared them non-Muslims, and Ahmadis can be jailed for three years for posing as a Muslim or outraging Muslims’ feelings. Outraging Muslims’ feelings, as we’ve seen time and again, is as easy as breathing. Some Ahmadis get off lightly with a prison sentence: if what passes for a justice system in Pakistan doesn’t get them, “true” Muslims might. Some mullahs promise that killing Ahmadis earns a place in heaven. Leaflets list their home addresses. Read more
As noted earlier, the irreplaceable Christopher Hitchens passed away two years ago today. He earned a place in my heart forever not because he was perfect and not because he was a faultless humanitarian (he was neither). I cherished Hitchens, warts and all, because he was erudite and funny; because he was a sponge and a fountain at once. He was also, for those reasons, one of the best, most cutting orators I’ve ever seen or heard, whether he delivered a prepared speech or ad-libbed his way through a fiery discussion. Hitchens was never afraid to stake out an unpopular position, at the calculated risk of alienating those who admired him — and even at the risk of fatally biting the hand that feeds. Read more
