How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging.  Read more 

Nice people are respectful of religion.

Occasionally, a journalist just doesn’t play nice enough:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Conservative clerics and elders demanded Thursday that the Afghan government not interfere with a controversial death sentence handed down to a young journalist convicted of insulting Islam for distributing a report questioning polygamy.

…clerics and elders worried that Kaambakhsh would be let off the hook like Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert imprisoned in 2006 on charges of apostasy who was whisked off to Italy, where he had been granted asylum.

The guy who decided he was so weak in the loins that the sight of a woman’s face drove him to distraction. And all the guys who went along with that notion, however many hundreds or thousands of years ago this crap started, thus enshrining it in the cloak of “tradition” and giving it the cover to survive as legitimate practice all over the frakking modern world.  Read more 

One question I always want to ask religionists: so if God is “the father,” just how big is His Willy? Looks like a whole passle of ladies aren’t going to find out.

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TPM has a new piece up that I’d like to riff on, as it’s a subject near and dear to my heart and frankly, it’s been driving me crazy for several years now. I am sick and tired of the mythology of “Islamofascism” and the attendant narrative that the world approaching a global conflict and crises akin to 1936. A sober mind reflects:  Read more 

Might even help. To “convert” after all means, if nothing else, to get a new perspective on things. Per the AP, via Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir… called on Bush and [Australian Prime Minister John] Howard to convert to Islam, saying it was “the only way to save their souls.”

I think that may be asking a bit much of even the most omnipotent of deities, but hey, nothing we mere mortals have tried has worked.  Read more