by Heather Hastie | Jun 20, 2016 | Middle East, Religion, Terrorism
Qatari professor Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari appeared on Saudi Arabia’s Rotana Khalijiya TV on 3 June 2016 as an advocate for the more modern form of jihad that many Muslims today are embracing. I found it particularly interesting as he is saying the same thing I...
by Heather Hastie | Apr 24, 2016 | Middle East, Religion, Women
Over and over again conservative representatives of Islam try to tell us that not only are women respected within their religion, they are more respected than women in secular countries. Any criticism of the treatment of women is dismissed as lack of understanding, or...
by Heather Hastie | Mar 6, 2016 | Middle East, Religion
Just when you thought the most ridiculous thing you’d read this year so far was my post about Saudi cleric Ali Al-Maliki confidently asserting that the West tampers with burgers so more female babies will be born there, I can go one better. According to MEMRI TV...
by Heather Hastie | Feb 7, 2016 | Middle East, Women
This should be this week’s Auē Tēnei Wiki, because it really does deserve a big face palm, but the title is long enough already. From MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) we have another example of the kind of delusion often spread about the West in the...
by Heather Hastie | Jan 7, 2016 | Atheism, Guest Posts, Middle East
Regular readers will know that one of the most frequent commenters here is Paxton Marshall, a retired professor, most recently of the University of Virginia. He and I (and other commenters) disagree a lot, and the topic of that disagreement has often been the opinions...
by Heather Hastie | Dec 13, 2015 | Human Rights, Middle East
As most of you will already know, Raif Badawi is a Saudi Arabian blogger who was sentenced to ten years prison and 1,000 lashes for criticizing his country’s form of government. As the country’s law is Sharia, that amounts to criticizing Islam and is thus...
