Life In Technicolor: Glasses For The Colorblind

Source:Women Without Religion

وجمعة مباركة للجميع

While these may be controversial & provocative, Muslims have no right to be offended by it. What’s offensive is that atheism is punishable with the death penalty in Saudi Arabia & many other Muslim-majority countries both in the middle east & outside of it. Not all Muslim-majority countries have the death penalty, but there are other punishments like prison, lashes, annulment of marriage, loss of child custody & family inheritance, seizure of property, loss of employment, & others.

Even if these laws didn’t exist, atheists still experience oppression from society. Most will not come out to their families for fear of being disowned, kicked out, or even worse, killed. If the apartheid laws weren’t bad enough, you still have to worry about how your family, friends, & neighbours will react to your lack of faith. So these pictures aren’t offensive, they’re resistance against oppression & apartheid. When you oppress a group of people so much & take away their right to live, expect the frustration to be released one way or another, even if it pisses off your oppressors.

While one can try to argue that the death penalty has nothing to do with Islam, the politicians & clerics who advocate the law use Sharia, verses from the Quran, & hadiths to support it. Only a tiny minority of clerics & fiqh experts oppose it, & they are constantly being accused of apostasy themselves.

Thirteen countries punish atheism with the death penalty. These are Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Qatar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, & Sudan. All are Muslim-majority & use Sharia to varying degrees, except for Nigeria but the death penalty only applies in certain Muslim-majority states in the north.

Until these laws no longer exist & atheists can finally live, Muslims have no right to be offended by legitimate resistance & our response to oppression.

Testimonies from Saudi atheists I personally know:

“It’s hell. Religion is always pushed down our throats. We’ve worked so hard to get rid of the brainwash we’ve been receiving all our lives just to put on a mask every fucking day in front of people. A socially acceptable mask. It’s like we’re in a zombie apocalypse & we’re disguising as zombies to not have our brains eaten. You MUST agree with them. You MUST wear that mask every fucking day of your life. You start to get less & less chances in life of taking that mask off & relaxing for a bit & the more you wear that mask the more painful it gets because that fucking mask is poisonous. But you wear it anyway because the alternative is getting killed.”

“The first thing I’d start with is how hard it is to live a double life. Religion & the place I’m living in are some of the reasons why I’m suffering from severe depression. Religion haunts me. I’m always having nightmares that I’ve been caught & will face beheading. My life is in danger 24/7.”

“In Saudi Arabia, god is your judge, jury, & executioner. God is not in the sky but on the ground in the form of long bearded men with evil in their eyes. God wanted me dead but now god can’t reach me (thanks to getting asylum). How godly of him.”

“Being an atheist single mother is terrifying. I’m always paranoid someone will find out & take my son away from me because I’m an “unfit mother”. It breaks my heart that I have to lie to him about god & religion because he’s too young to realize how dangerous speaking the truth is.”

“I can’t think of anything that would describe it better than hell. It’s way too risky to say anything.”

“I seriously don’t want to think about this shitty place we live in becuse I’m already depressed as fuck.”

I’m 16 and I’m pregnant. My mother doesn’t believe in abortion. What do I do?

Someone asked us:

I’m 16 and pregnant. I hate to say it but I wasn’t smart when it came to protection. The problem is, my mom doesn’t believe in abortion. What are my options. I’m so scared that I’m going to be forced to have a baby I’m not ready for. I’m 16. I don’t even have a drivers license yet. How am I suppose to raise a baby. My mom is very unsupportive. How am I going to do this?! What are my options. If I do have to have this baby what can I do?? I’m so scared. I feel like my life is falling apart.

I know that’s hard to believe right now, but you’ll get through this. You’re in a tough situation — no doubt about it. But you’re already reaching out for help. That’s a great first step, and we’re here to help you.

When you’re in a situation that feels overwhelming it helps to take things one step at a time. It sounds like the first thing you need to do is talk with someone in person about your options. You seem pretty sure that your mother doesn’t believe in abortion and wouldn’t support you if you wanted to have one. I can’t tell from your message what exactly you want to do — if you want to keep the pregnancy and become a parent, have an abortion, or give the baby for adoption — but if talking with your mother won’t be helpful, talking with the staff at your nearest Planned Parenthood health center will be. First they can talk through your options with you, and then get you started on the right option for you depending on what you decide (prenatal care or abortion).

If you want to have an abortion, you may not need your mother’s permission. That depends somewhat on where you live. Some states don’t require permission from your parents at all. Other states do. But even most of those states have a way for you to have an abortion without a parent or guardian. That process is called judicial bypass: It’s when a judge says it’s okay for you to get an abortion without involving your parents in your decision.

It may sound scary, but the staff at your nearest Planned Parenthood health center can help with that process. So call them and make an appointment.

Once you’ve made your appointment, your second step is to find a way to get there. You said that you don’t have a driver’s license. For that and other practical reasons, you may need to let someone in your life that you trust know what’s going on, someone who can give you a ride. Otherwise, can you walk or take public transportation? Can you take a taxi? The health center staff you speak with on the phone may have some suggestions or directions for getting there.

The rest of the steps you need to take are going to depend on what you decide to do. But remember, the staff at your nearest Planned Parenthood health center will help you every step of the way.

Last piece of advice: don’t delay! If you’re pregnant, regardless of whether you’re going to have an abortion or stay pregnant, it’s important to get started on that path ASAP, to make sure you stay healthy. You can do this!

-Emily at Planned Parenthood

How Churchill engineered the holocaust of 3 million Indians

As the resistance swelled, Churchill announced: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” This hatred killed. To give just one, major, example, in 1943 a famine broke out in Bengal, caused – as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has proved – by the imperial policies of the British. Up to 3 million people starved to death while British officials begged Churchill to direct food supplies to the region. He bluntly refused. He raged that it was their own fault for “breeding like rabbits”. At other times, he said the plague was “merrily” culling the population.  Skeletal, half-dead people were streaming into the cities and dying on the streets, but Churchill – to the astonishment of his staff – had only jeers for them. “If food is so scarce, why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”

Source: The Independent, Time, IBT

As A Father, Jimmy Fallon Has Some Poignant Questions After Orlando Shooting

The star of “Grey’s Anatomy”, Jesse Williams, was presented a Humanitarian award at the BET Awards on Sunday, June 26. It’s a well-deserved win since Jesse has been fighting for equal rights for Black people and supporting the Black Lives Matter for a really long time.

If you happened to miss it, watch the full speech here.

#BlackLivesMatter   

#BETAwards

Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia—em(into) and pathos (feeling)—a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query.

Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams: Essays (via fyp-philosophy)

Leslie Odom Jr. discusses diversity at The Hollywood Reporter’s 2016 Tony Award Roundtable

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Cheez-y

Mac N’ Cheez (#bestcatnameever) is a 7-week-old kitten whose hind legs are temporarily paralyzed. So, the good folks at Massapequa Pet Vet built him a “wheelchair” out of K’nex. While they work on his treatment, he gets to scoot around the office on his rad new rig.

Godspeed, Mac N’ Cheez and get well soon.