Atheists of the Left – “Humanists” some call themselves – often reveal with unconscious irony how close Leftism is to Christianity: the same moral myopia, hubris, and sentimentality.

In order to enjoy the cheap emotional satisfaction of feeling they are “good people”, they go in for this sort of thing.

We quote from the Friendly Atheist at Patheos:

After the Daily Caller News Foundation posted a map of supposed “radical mosques” in the U.S., it wasn’t long before threats were made against them.

But in a wonderful gesture on Monday, the Humanists of the Palouse reached out to the Muslims, sending them a letter of concern and offering whatever help they could:

To our Muslim friends in the Moscow/Pullman area,

Recently, we have been made aware of threats to our community, centered on the Pullman Islamic Center and it and many other Mosques being mis-reported as “radical”. In today’s climate, these threats should not be taken lightly, and we certainly do not. We fully support your right to practice religion free from harm and harassment.

We recognize your members as valued residents of the Palouse. The Humanists of the Palouse want you to know that we will always defend religious freedom and cultural diversity, and threats against these are threats against our very way of life. We stand with you, and offer our support.

If you feel threatened, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would be happy to accompany anyone who feels that their safety is at risk (e.g. grocery shopping, on a walk around town, or just for someone to talk to). If we can advocate for you in any way, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us, and know that you have friends and allies amongst The Humanists of the Palouse.

The Center’s Board of Trustees soon issued this heartfelt response:

The entire Board of Trustees of the Pullman Islamic Association joins me in thanking you and the Humanists of the Palouse generally for this powerful statement affirming civil rights in this country. We are especially moved that a humanist group so completely supports the local Muslim group, since Islam is the most disrespected group in this country. We have noticed that the correct way to define and appreciate humanist groups in general and yours in particular is as lovers and defenders of civil rights, individual and group democratic dignities and freedom of thought, not as haters of religion. Your group’s neighborly defense of freedom of religion in the Palouse demonstrates your focus on freedom and social justice. We are impressed by and thankful for your firm support and offer of assistance and solidarity.

One of our Board of Trustees members is meeting with an FBI agent today, which demonstrates that the federal police are taking this threat seriously. Given this sobering reality of threatened arson and violence your support will always be appreciated by the leaders and membership of the Pullman Islamic Association. We hope we will not need to ask for your offered assistance, but if we do need or want such support, we will indeed reach out to Humanists of the Palouse.

That’s how you do it, friends.

You can disagree on theological issues, but I’d hope local atheist groups around the country would be willing to reach out to Muslims who are actually being persecuted by overzealous conservatives eager to shut them down.

If they lose their religious freedoms, we all do.

Can they possibly not know that sharia law – inseparable from the ideology of Islam – condemns apostasy, which is what atheism is deemed to be? And prescribes death as the punishment for atheists? (Atheist men; women not always.) In some Islamic lands they are imprisoned rather than executed. But all risk their lives, and such freedom as anyone has in a Muslim majority country.

These are reports of atheists, apostates, free thinkers who have been sentenced to prison, and/or flogging, and/or death in Islamic countries recently – the crime of atheism often being euphemized into something else in court. And some who have been killed by their Muslim compatriots.

1. From the Economist, on Alexander Aan in Indonesia:

A MOB attacked Alexander Aan even before an Indonesian court in June jailed him for two and a half years for “inciting religious hatred”.

His crime was to write “God does not exist” on a Facebook group he had founded for atheists in Minang, a province of the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Like most non-believers in Islamic regions, he was brought up as a Muslim. And like many who profess godlessness openly, he has been punished. …

Sharia law, which covers only Muslims unless incorporated into national law, assumes people are born into their parents’ religion. Thus ex-Muslim atheists are guilty of apostasy—a hudud crime against God, like adultery and drinking alcohol. Potential sanctions can be severe: eight states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Sudan have the death penalty on their statute books for such offences. …

Most atheists are prosecuted for blasphemy or for inciting hatred. (Atheists born to non-Muslim families are not considered apostates, but they can still be prosecuted for other crimes against religion.) Even in places where laws are lenient, religious authorities and social attitudes can be harsh, with vigilantes inflicting beatings or beheadings.

Many, like Kacem el-Ghazzali, a Moroccan, reckon the only solution is to escape abroad. The 23-year-old was granted asylum in Switzerland after people found out he was the author of an anonymous blog, Atheistica.com. …

Nahla Mahmoud, a 25-year-old Sudanese atheist … fled to Britain in 2010. …

Ibn Warraq, the pseudonymous Indian-born author of “Leaving Islam”, a collection of essays by ex-believers, … lives in exile and has received death threats for campaigning on the behalf of apostates. … Arguments for the death penalty [he says] are usually based on a Hadith, one of the sayings which, along with the Koran, form the basis of Islamic law: “The Prophet said: whoever discards his religion, kill him.” …

Ibn Warraq says that the nub of the problem is that sharia makes atheism the number one sin, ahead of murder.  …

2. From the Guardian, on Ashraf Fayadh in Saudi Arabia:

A Palestinian poet and leading member of Saudi Arabia’s nascent contemporary art scene has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam.

A Saudi court on Tuesday ordered the execution of Ashraf Fayadh, who has curated art shows in Jeddah and at the Venice Biennale. The poet, who said he did not have legal representation, was given 30 days to appeal against the ruling.

Fayadh, 35, a key member of the British-Saudi art organisation Edge of Arabia, was originally sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes by the general court in Abha, a city in the south-west of the ultraconservative kingdom, in May 2014. But after his appeal was dismissed he was retried earlier this month and a new panel of judges ruled that his repentance did not prevent his execution.

3. From Patheos, the Friendly Atheist itself, on Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia:

December 26, 2013 by Paul Fidalgo [who is admirably scathing in his disgust – ed).

Saudi blogger and religious dissident Raif Badawi has been cruelly punished and toyed with by the Saudi legal system for about a year now, and things have taken a darker turn. According to Badawi’s wife, now living in Lebanon, the high court will try Badawi on the charge of apostasy. If convicted, Badawi could be executed.

This comes after a court opted not to charge him with apostasy in January, but did put him up on charges of “insulting Islam and showing disobedience”. How did they come to this decision? Badawi is the co-founder of a website called the Liberal Saudi Network, which is bad enough, but imagine the horror that washed over Saudi society with this kind of action:

The evidence against him included the fact that he pressed the “Like” button on a Facebook page for Arab Christians.

As a result of this heinous behavior, in July, Badawi was sentenced to 600 lashes and seven years in prison.

Which was horrifying enough. But now it looks like Badawi is being brought up on apostasy charges in earnest. Badawi’s case is one of many being watched by the Office of Public Policy at the Center for Inquiry, where I work, and our Campaign for Free Expression. Browse the cases we have listed there, and you’ll see that, sadly, Badawi’s case is hardly unique.

Cases like this need more international attention, and those who position themselves as “allies” of Saudi Arabia, such as the United States, need to discover their consciences. How can the civilized world refer to itself as such when an ally practices such barbarism, it looks the other way?

The judge in Badawi’s subsequent appeal stiffened the original 2013 sentence – seven years in prison and 600 lashes – to 1000 lashes, ten years in prison and a fine of $266,000. See our post, The punishment of reason, January 12, 2015, where there is an eyewitness description of the first of the series of lashings Badawi is being subjected to.

Badawi had written, “My commitment is… to reject any repression in the name of religion… a goal that we will reach in a peaceful, law-abiding way.”

This was interpreted by the judge as “insulting Islam”.

Badawi’s health is now frail. He is unlikely to survive the lashings.

4. From Poetry Foundation, on Hashem Shaabani in Iran:

We were saddened and horrified today to learn of the death of Hashem Shaabani, who was executed on January 27th by the order of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

From Radio Free Europe:

An Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal reportedly had sentenced the poet to death, along with 14 others, last July on charges that included “waging war on God”. 

Press reports said Shaabani was hanged after his sentence was approved by President Hassan Rohani.

In a statement on February 5, Freedom House said Shaabani was subjected to severe torture and interrogation during his three years in prison.

Human Rights Voices also reports on the execution, writing:

To those who knew him, was a man of peace and understanding struggling to extend spaces of individual freedom within the despotic Khomeinist system … In one of his letters from prison, made available to use through his family, Shaabani says  … “I have tried to defend the legitimate right that every people in this world should have which is the right to live freely with full civil rights. With all these miseries and tragedies, I have never used a weapon to fight these atrocious crimes except the pen.” 

5. From the Guardian on Avijit Roy and Rafida Bonya Ahmed in Pakistan:

No one could have predicted that the Bangladeshi writer Rafida Bonya Ahmed would make it to London last week. …  In February, Islamist fanatics hacked her husband, Avijit Roy, to death with meat cleavers as the couple left a book fair in Dhaka. They nearly killed Ahmed too: slicing off her thumb and covering her body with wounds. …

Together, Ahmed and Roy ran a secular blog that promoted the writings of young liberal Bangladeshis They wrote on evolution and humanism; they condemned extremism fearlessly, as the title of Roy’s 2014 book The Virus of Faith makes clear. Seeing and fearing a courageous opponent, the enemies of free thought killed him for his ideas. …

6. From a Reuters report on Ananta Bijoy Das and others in Bangladesh:

Third Atheist blogger killed in Bangladesh.

A blogger was hacked to death by machete-wielding attackers in Bangladesh on Tuesday (May 12), the third killing of a critic of religious extremism in the Muslim-majority nation in less than three months.

Ananta Bijoy Das, a blogger who advocated secularism, was attacked by four masked assailants in the northeastern district of Sylhet on Tuesday morning, senior police official Mohammad Rahamatullah told Reuters.

Rahamatullah said Das was a 33-year-old banker.

He was also editor of science magazine “Jukti,” which means “logic,” and on the advisory board of “Mukto Mona” (Free Mind), a website propagating rationalism and opposing fundamentalism …

According to the monitoring service SITE Intelligence Group, Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam Bangladesh said al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) had claimed responsibility for the attack. …

Imran Sarker, the head of a network of activists and bloggers in Bangladesh, said Das was “a progressive free thinker and a good human being”. …

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years …

On March 30, Washiqur Rahman, another secular blogger who aired his outrage over [Avijit] Roy’s death on social media, was killed in similar fashion on a busy street in the capital, Dhaka.

Their deaths followed the killing in 2013 of Ahmed Rajib Haider, who backed calls to impose the death penalty on Islamist leaders accused of atrocities in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

Why do our fellow atheists – of the leftist “Humanist” persuasion – not burn with anger against the ideology that persecutes atheism, secularism, rationalism, and shun the company of its devotees?

If they think they are earning the goodwill and tolerance of the Muslims towards whom they’re making this gesture, they’re pathetically deluded. Their nice little letter is not going to change sharia law, or the minds of those who want to impose it on us all.

They seem simply not to believe that the Muslims they contacted might be members of “radicalizing” mosques – which is to say, mosques with imams who urge them to support terrorist groups or join ISIS. There’s no hint that they explored the possibility. In their minds, the accusation must be wholly unjustified.

And one more thing. When those poor persecuted Muslims “in the Moscow/Pullman area” whimpered that “Islam is the most disrespected group in this country”, they are lying. The president of the United States is the son of a Muslim and an Islam lover who has brought Muslim Brotherhood advisers into his administration – and has clearly formed policies on their advice..

At the time of this writing there have been 27,322 deadly attacks carried out by Muslims since 9/11. (See the tally in our margin, taken from The Religion of Peace.) Muslim terrorists do all they can to terrify non-Muslims, and then cynically accuse them of an irrational fear of Islam, calling it “Islamophobia”.

Muslims are the target of few “hate crimes” in the US. But they perpetrate more than any others do.

We quote from an article by David J. Rusin at Islamist Watch. His staistics come from a December 2014 report of 2013 figures. (We await the 2014 report this coming December):

New FBI Hate Crime Stats: Another Blow to Islamist Fictions

There were 1,031 incidents inspired by religion last year, 625 (60.6 percent) of which were anti-Jewish. Anti-Islamic ones constituted just 13.1 percent.

On April 15, 2013, Muslim terrorists murdered three and injured hundreds at the Boston Marathon, prompting familiar warnings about an imminent anti-Muslim backlash. The FBI’s findings are proof that such collective punishment did not materialize — as it almost never does.

How have Islamist groups greeted the FBI data? With silence. It is the sound of disappointment on the part of radicals who need Muslim victims, preferably real ones, to serve as human shields for the Islamist agenda. Bad news for Islamists is once again good news for the rest of us.

This post follows on from How goes the jihad?, posted four days ago after two lethal bombs were exploded near the finishing line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people – one of them Martin Richard, aged 8 – and wounding about 180 others, crippling some for life by blowing off their limbs. We quoted a short article we had first posted seventeen months earlier, to focus attention on jihad, because we suspected that the Boston bombing was a continuation of Islam’s perpetual “holy war”. We didn’t mention the bombing. We were waiting to know who the Boston bombers were.

Now we know. We are not surprised. They were Muslims. A pair of Muslim brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were zealously fighting the jihad, as their religion commands them to do.

The Left however will remain utterly at a loss to imagine what their motive could possible be. Typically Politico, for instance, reporting who the bombers were and many things about them, including their religion, comments: “It remains unclear at this time what the motive was behind the Boston Marathon bombing.”

In another piece on the subject, Politico asks and comments:

Why would Chechen refugees, who’ve been locked for nearly two decades in a bitter, violent conflict against the Russian government, harbor such anger against the United States that they’d want to carry out a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon?” Politico asks.

“The answer is far from obvious,” it concludes.

Which prompts Daniel Greenfield to point out rightly at Front Page:

Those few lines sum up the whole problem with our war on terror. A Muslim terrorist attack by Muslim terrorists? Why? The political establishment has spent decades choosing to ignore the basic facts. Then each time it’s baffled when the obvious happens.

Greenfield lists a few of the facts about one of these Muslim terrorists:

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel had a playlist titled “Islam” and another playlist titled “Terrorists”. That should be obvious enough even for Politico.

His last subscription was to a channel “Allah is the One.” His Islam playlist includes “The Emergence of Prophecy: The Black Flags From Khorasan”, a Jihadi video that refers to those black flags you see Salafists, including Al Qaeda, waving around.

The video deals with a key part of jihadist mythology: That one of the most significant battles fought against the “infidels” will take place in the Khorasan, a geographic area that includes parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

And where the final battle, the Muslim Eschaton, will take place according to Islamic prophecy.

But the Left, which includes the mainstream media, will ignore all this, because –

Muslim terrorists are non-persons. The political establishment pretends they don’t exist. And then they kill a bunch of people and the media has to explain why the people they can’t see and who they don’t believe exist somehow carried out an atrocity for no reason at all.

And Greenfield concludes with a quotation from the Muslim prophet – that also the Left will ignore:

“I have been made victorious through terror” Mohammed said.

NBC News can find out nothing bad about the brothers, and gathers glowing testimonials for them:

One became an American citizen last year on Sept. 11. The other was a boxer who once said: “I like the USA.” …

The suspect at large early Friday was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, born in Kyrgyzstan, who became a naturalized American citizen on Sept. 11, 2012 … He had a Massachusetts driver’s license and living in the Boston suburb of Cambridge. …

His father, speaking from Russia, told The Associated Press that he was “a true angel” with an interest in medicine. He was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the school said. He was awarded a $2,500 city scholarship toward college two years ago. …

A high school friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told NBC News that he had lots of friends … He was a nice guy. He was shy … As we knew him, he was funny.”

[Another admirer said he was] “just a light, airy, curly-haired kid. I can’t tell you enough what a beautiful young man this was,” she said.

The other brother, killed in a firefight with law enforcement, was identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, born in Russia. He became a legal permanent resident in 2007 …

Tamerlan Tsarnaev studied at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and wanted to become an engineer, according to a profile that appeared in a Boston University magazine in 2010. He said that he hoped to become an American citizen and one day join the U.S. Olympic boxing team. …He also said that he was a Muslim who did not smoke or drink. …

Tamerlan Tsarnaev boxed in a 2004 tournament as part of a program called Golden Gloves, according to The Lowell Sun newspaper. He told the newspaper then: “I like the USA.”

He said that his first love was music, and that he played the piano and violin.

“America has a lot of jobs,” he said. “That’s something Russia doesn’t have. You have a chance to make money here if you are willing to work.”

His former wrestling coach … described him to NBC News as quiet and courteous …

The father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that he had seen on television that his son was killed. “They were set up!” he exclaimed …

Both men were believed to have entered the country with their family in 2002 or 2003, when the family sought asylum.

Most of the Muslims of Chechnya are Sufis. The Sufis are the Gnostics of Islam. (Dervishes – those mystics who ritually whirl wearing tall hats – belong to the Sufi order.) By reputation they form an especially peaceful branch of that reputedly peaceful religion.

Most, or more probably all, of the terrorists who seized a school at Beslan and killed hundreds of small children (southern Russia, September 1-3, 2004) were Chechen Sufi Muslims.

Here’s a quotation from the Washington Post describing what they did:

Hundreds of children, their parents and teachers died in the bloody culmination of a 52-hour siege that began when heavily armed Muslim guerrillas [Washpo for “terrorists”] stormed their school Wednesday and ended in an hours-long battle with Russian troops Friday.

The battered, burned and scorched survivors of Beslan’s School No. 1, many of them half-naked children, filled the region’s hospitals as troops continued to fight through the afternoon with guerrillas [Muslim terrorists] holed up inside the school. …

Between 500 and 700 injured former hostages were hospitalized Friday, more than 300 of them children … Hundreds were still unaccounted for … Officials acknowledged that the death toll would exceed 250.

The worst carnage, according to escaped hostages and rescuers, came at the start of the pitched battle just after 1 p.m. Friday, when the [Muslim terrorists] exploded the bombs they had rigged inside the school’s cavernous gym. The children had been held there without food or medicine, and scores perished [were crushed to death] when the gym’s roof fell on them. …

The siege of School No. 1, attended by 6- to 16-year-olds, began just after 9 a.m. Wednesday, when the [Muslim terrorists] blasted their way into the building at the end of the opening-day assembly. …  They … demonstrated their seriousness by mining the school with explosives and threatening to blow it up if Russian forces moved in on them.

For 52 hours, that didn’t happen. Then came what looked to be progress midday Friday, when the hostage takers agreed to allow Russians to collect several bodies … of adults killed in the initial shootout. At 1 p.m., four doctors from the Emergency Situations Ministry arrived to do so.

Instead, a battle erupted.

First, two powerful explosions from inside the building rocked Beslan. Soon, scores of hostages started fleeing, some of them dodging gunfire from the guerrillas. “When the children ran, they began to shoot them in their backs,” said [a] Putin aide …

“Bandits [Muslim terrorists] opened fire on the escaping children and adults,” said [the] regional head of the Federal Security Service. “To save their lives, we retaliated.” …

After initial confusion, the Russian attack began. Helicopters roared overhead, special forces stormed the building, tanks swerved into position. Many of Beslan’s anxious fathers also ran toward the school, some armed, some not – intent only on rescuing their children.

Amidst the shooting, many young hostages, most of them barefoot and almost naked after three days in the withering heat of their gym-turned-prison, ran or limped or were carried to safety. Those still standing gulped bottles of water handed to them by rescue workers. “They’re killing us,” a young girl on a stretcher told a police officer. “They’re exploding everything.”

Many of the injured were bloodied and burned and covered in dirt. A man came out carrying a naked girl, her hair matted, her body streaked with shrapnel cuts, her head lolled back. He laid her on the ground and tried to revive her. When she didn’t respond, he started to cry.

The rescue operation was interrupted by a new round of shooting, right near the line of makeshift ambulances. Rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire from automatic rifles sent the volunteers retreating a block farther from the school, and it was there that four children’s corpses soon appeared, laid out under bloodstained white sheets. Several parents came up and looked under the sheets, searching. Then an old woman in a torn flowered dress was brought out on a stretcher, also dead, and rolled onto the grass next to the four children. …

Across the railroad tracks that divide Beslan, the scene at the hospital was bedlam. The courtyard was crowded with rank upon rank of stretchers with injured and dazed children. Hundreds of relatives clamored to inspect the handwritten lists of the wounded.

Through it all, the battle with the remaining [Muslim terrorists] continued. Some apparently remained inside the school well into the evening  … Others escaped and fought elsewhere in Beslan with Russian troops. As night fell, the school’s gym was still smoldering, its massive windows blown out. The walls inside were pocked with bullet holes and echoed with periodic gunfire and explosions. …

Russian officials have long claimed that Chechen rebels were connected to international Islamic fighters [terrorists], including al Qaeda. Late Friday, they announced that 10 of the dead guerrillas in the school siege were Arabs, and state television showed video from inside the building showing several dead fighters who appeared to be foreign.

And again we pick information and apt comment from an article by Daniel Greenfield, titled Beslan Comes to America:

There has been too much sympathy in some circles for Chechen terrorists. After the Beslan Massacre, Time Magazine asked, “Does Russia Share Blame for Beslan?” The London Times reported that the mastermind of the massacre was “is in a state of shock over what happened, but blames the Russians.”

This was Beslan.

Survivors told how screaming teenage girls were dragged into rooms adjoining the gymnasium where they were being held and raped by their Chechen captors who chillingly made a video film of their appalling exploits. They said children were forced to drink their own urine and eat the petals off the flowers they had brought their teachers after nearly three days without food or water in the stifling hot gym.

These are the types of savage monsters who could place a bomb next to an 8-year-old boy.

Beslan has come to America and it should be a wake up call. There should be no more sympathy for Chechen terrorists. Or for that matter any Muslim terrorists.

And we need to stop bringing refugees from Muslim conflicts to America. That goes for Chechens, Afghans, Syrians and all the rest. All we’re doing is importing bloody wars from around the world here.

Events like the Marathon Massacre are inevitable if we keep maintaining an immigration policy that invites the people responsible for atrocities such as Beslan to repeat them in this country.

The jihad goes on.