by Heather Hastie | Nov 6, 2016 | Freedom of Speech
On 25 October the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a ‘Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists’. The guide includes a list of fifteen people, two of whom have caused a great deal of controversy – Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ahnaf Kalam...
by Heather Hastie | Aug 22, 2016 | Religion
Fareed Zakaria’s Why They Hate Us, updated to include the Orlando massacre, has been playing on CNN again this weekend. It’s an excellent documentary by one of my favourite commentators. (The full 40 minute documentary is at the bottom of this post.) Reza Aslan,...
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 4, 2015 | Atheism
Back in mid-September I did a post called ‘Is New Atheism a Cult?’ The discussion is still going on – so far there are 336 comments. A few days ago a link was posted there by a commenter to an Alternet article by Guardian journalist Jeff Sparrow...
by Heather Hastie | Sep 19, 2015 | Atheism
Wikipedia says: New Atheism is a social and political movement that began in the early 2000s in favour of atheism and secularism promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that “religion should not simply be tolerated but...
