On Discussing Islam

Yesterday I sent the following two tweets:

If you're a Muslim who spends time online threatening Ahmadiyya Muslims, know that you aren't giving a favourable impression of Islam.
— Geoff Shorts (@geoffsshorts) September 5, 2013

If you're an Ahmadiyya Muslim who responds to frequent online threats with dignity and composure, know that you represent Islam well. (2/2)
— Geoff Shorts (@geoffsshorts) September 5, 2013

They got 41 retweets and 21 favourites from my Muslim friends and followers, and I found some really interesting new people to follow as a result. That said, I did come in for a bit of flack from my non Muslim followers for these comments, and I felt a blog post was the best format to try to best address the criticisms raised. If I offended you, please take the hour this blog was posted as a symbol of my genuine desire to understand your position and better communicate mine. I'll group the tweets by what I feel was their focus and do my best to summarise the point - I don't think there's much to be gained by adding the authors, but if you'd prefer your tweet credited do let me know and I'll be happy to add it.

Naturally, I welcome comments and discussion below.

Criticism 1: It would be inappropriate to compliment a feminist on maintaining composure and dignity when threatened as this suggests someone who loses composure or displays anger is less of a feminist.
Tweets:

""Feminists who handle threats with grace instead of anger represent feminism well." Sound problematic? Because it does to me. I don't handle threats with grace nor do I think I should be expected to. Nor do I think that my lack of patience with those who threaten me makes either women or feminists look back. [bad?] I'd be v uncomfortable to be told I was a 'credit' to feminism/women because I handled something without anger." 

What can I say? I agree. I don't think less of Caroline Criado-Perez for swearing at people after months of death and rape threats. I just don't feel it's a particularly apt comparison. The Ahmadi Muslims represent a reformist movement within Islam that, for over a century, has embodied their motto of "Love For All Hatred For None". It would be wrong to call them pacifists - many in their community have distinguished themselves in their countries' militaries - but nonretaliation is at the core of their beliefs. When a spiritual leader was stabbed in the neck while at prayer in his mosque, his final instruction before losing consciousness was that the assassin not be harmed. The attacker was jailed, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim community voluntarily paid a stipend to to the wife and children of the would be killer rather than see them destitute.

In Support of Chelsea Manning

I've maintained a focused disinterest in the Manning case. I genuinely have little interest in the administrative affairs of the military of other nations and choose to employ the time saved in perhaps more productive endeavours.

That said, it has come to my attention that Chelsea Manning has asked that she be referred to by the name she chooses, and by the pronouns with which she most identifies. This minor request seems most reasonable for a woman who will likely spend the next three and a half decades in prison.

I don't speak of it often, but I've had genital surgery. Several times. I've had medically necessary circumcision at age two, I had an undescended testicle corrected when I was about 11, and at the age of 16 I had another testicle ruptured in a kickboxing competition. As it healed a fluid filled sac developed around the injury which had to be surgically removed.

Richard Dawkins' Twitter Followers

I remember the first time I met Muslim apologist Adnan Rashid. He, Hamza Tzortzis and other members of the Islamic Education and Research Academy were running a stall on my route home and he attempted to convince me evolution could not be true because of 'irreducible complexity'. As he waxed lyrical on the complexities of bacterial flagellum (a whiplike appendage that enables movement in bacteria) I realised he was liberally borrowing from the work of Christian creationist Michael Behe.

Rather than point out the incongruity of relying on such a source I said it seemed odd to offer a mechanism that allows the spread of devastating diseases like Legionnaire's as evidence for a loving God. He paused, folded his arms, fixed me with a gaze that conveyed seriousness and then asked "what would happen if all the cells in your body lost their flagellums?".

Some with an interest in biology may have chuckled at the above. Bacterial flagella by definition are attached only to bacteria, facilitate movement, and as a general rule the cells in my body have no particular need to independently decide to relocate. It demonstrated the lightest skimming of Christian creationist material and a near complete misunderstanding of Behe's rather poor argument. (Those interested can see it debunked in full here. You can watch footage of Rashid losing an argument with PZ Myers here.)

The second time I shared a room with Rashid was at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin, 2011, when he asked a ponderously long and dreary question of Dawkins. I shared my anecdote with Dawkins who chuckled briefly. I thought it might be interesting to look at his Twitter account.

Word Cloud
I took a sample of five thousand of Dawkins' followers and examined their Twitter biographies, running them through a program that counts the frequency of words folk use to describe themselves and assembling an image where most frequently used words are shown in greater sizes. Dawkins' followers are likely to describe themselves using words like student, science, university, teacher and atheist. (On a general note, an improbably high number of tweeps describe themselves as writers. I do hope they have day jobs.)

Words noted by their absence include homeopath, Hare Krishna, acupuncture and miracle. It seems the head of the foundation for reason and science has done an admirable job of attracting those interested in both fields.

Gender
These results are indicative only. Again working off the same sample of five thousand Twitter accounts, I ran the first names through a script I wrote to estimate gender. It isn't overly complex - I have a list of known masculine names and a list of known feminine names. Based on the results it seems that 75% of Dawkins' followers have masculine names.

Pope on Gay Men: If You Squint, It Almost Looks Like Progress

"These twelve hour flights can grow a little dull, so we switched on the speakers in the cockpit to listen in."

I'm fortunate to have secured an e-mail interview with Padre I. A. Roddy, the pilot who flew Pope Francis on the occasion of his unparalleled olive branch to the LGBTQ community.

"I briefly lost control of the aircraft," he continued "but fortunately the advanced training of the Vatican Air Force saved me and those on board. That, and my copilot was listening to DoubtCast at the time so wasn't as badly affected. I don't mean to criticise the Holy Father, but he really should consider the safety of the crew before launching such a wild change of course."

"Sticking to the strictest conceivable definition of progress, I suppose this qualifies." observed an air steward, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He was speaking specifically about priests, so what we can really take from this with certainty is that if you're celibate, stay in the closet and don't lobby for gay people he won't judge you."

"To be fair, at least his cabin baggage was a reasonable size." he added.

The Holy Father did not comment directly on bisexual people, transgender people, or people who identify as queer.

"I think many are underestimating the great message of hope the Bishop of Rome is offering to young, gay Catholics. As long as they're male." Padre Roddy defended. "Before today they would have felt trapped by restrictions that promised only a life without romantic love. A lonely road of self denial under the label of 'fundamentally disordered'. All that has changed. Well, not all, obviously. But the Vicar of Christ has offered a vision of gay men, gay men who live in community with purpose to their lives, gay men who he does not judge."

"Now, naturally, this is not a licence to do anything gay. The Supreme Pastor made it clear in his talk that existing teaching is affirmed. Sex is out. As is marriage. And lobbying for gay rights came in for specific condemnation. Basically think of it like the US military's don't ask, don't tell policy. Only without the 'don't ask' part, because the Vatican will still be investigating to find gay people in its ranks. And on the subject of investigations, these hopeful gay Catholic men should rule out applying for the priesthood, because as of 2005, gay men, celibate or not, are barred from applying."

Where are the Women of New Atheism?

Travel by rail is so civilised. I arrived at Barcelona perhaps 20 minutes before departure and had time for a coffee and croissant before having to board. No weight restrictions. No lengthy security checks. Comfortable armchairs, individual power points and a pleasant view of rolling Spanish countryside will be my home for the next five hours.

The only thing I lack is WiFi. I sit here with a Nexus, foldable Bluetooth keyboard and a vague memory that a friend on Facebook suggested an article to me entitled "Where Are The Women of New Atheism?"

Normally I'd read it. I can't. Still, it's an interesting question and stands on its own merit. I recently ran Twitter statistics on two different (male) atheist bloggers, covering how their followers described themselves, the breakdown of masculine and feminine first names, and the top 200 accounts most popular with said followers. (To illustrate with an example: those who follow @EmbarrassingBodies, a popular TV show, are likely to also follow @DoctorChristian, one of the hosts. I determine this by pulling a list of everyone's followers and counting the common elements, then ranking by popularity.)

I gave the stats to another blogger and will let you know if the material turns out to be strong enough to justify a story. I think the technique is interesting because it lets you judge the following:

How popular is the tweeter's message with women?

David Quinn holds strong opinions on the regulation of uteruses, yet his message seems to resonate most powerfully with men - over 70% of his followers seem to be male. It seems reasonable to conclude that being female is correlated with not welcoming his views on females.

What sort of person follows the tweeter?

I once contrasted the followers of William Lane Craig, a Christian apologist, and Stephen Law, a philosopher and author. Craig's followers were overwhelmingly interested in Christian apologetics, Law's preferred science and philosophy. Neither designation is a negative, obviously, but I found it interesting to be able to gauge followers in this manner.

How likely are the tweeter's followers to follow women?

In other words: does the tweeter attract a bunch of raging misogynists? Being highly unlikely to follow female tweeters may prove indicative. It could also show that the tweeter isn't making much effort to promote female tweeters.

I can congratulate myself on this excellent plan which would allow me to examine all sorts of prominent atheists and bring unique insight to the conversation, but as I gaze out on traditional Catalonian architecture, narrow stone streets, olive trees and windmills while my WiFi signal reads 0 I find it is one I cannot implement.

But let's give the question some thought, shall we?

I'm a white cis male. I have a naked lady fetish. There are no great numbers of folk out there who wish to oppress me, though I do experience a wrinkle of discontent from a small minority of Theists who don't welcome my absence of belief. (Only fair to add context - my interactions with Theists have been almost always positive.) I blogged exclusively about atheism for quite some time, back when I viewed the world's most pressing problems to be Muslim apologists copying Christian apologists, or Creationists lying about science.

I'm still an atheist, I still blog about atheism, and I still view atheism as something which should be talked about and advanced openly. There's quite a lot more I'd like to write on the topic. But right now the rights of my fellow citizens to expect lifesaving medical treatment seems more pressing. The hope that pregnant people might one day enjoy an unconditional right to health is more likely to occupy my mind than the prospect of reading another John Lennox book of apologetics. And while I write pro choice material from an atheist point of view, it's probably fair to say that this is now more of a pro choice blog.

I hear murmurs of discontent from the back. When, they wonder, will Geoff cease this self indulgent piece about the trials of being a straight white male? When will he answer the question posed in the opening paragraph? When will he stop referring to himself in the third person?

Maryam Namazie, atheist, is best known as a human rights activist and a campaigner against Sharia law in the UK. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also an atheist, campaigns for women's rights, against female genital mutilation and against Sharia law. Her energies are mainly devoted to her political office theses days. Thinking back to the speakers Atheist Ireland has arranged over the years I remember Sinead Redmond, atheist, campaigner for abortion rights in Ireland, Deirdre O'Byrne, atheist, campaigner for trans rights, and Aoife McLysaight, atheist, who focused her talk on the importance of science and on plugging Alom Shaha's (rather good) The Young Atheist's Handbook. I gave a talk. It was on conversations I'd had with street preachers. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide which of us were making the best use of their time, and I can't help but feel that being a straight white guy is the primary reason I had space to consider Hare Krishna cosmology so deserving as a primary area of concern while remaining blithely oblivious to issues facing others.

It's fair to say we need a conversation about making atheism less of a guy thing. And there are questions to be answered on whether Atheist women are being held back by the way things are done now. But I feel that at least part of the answer that should be given to those wondering at the absence of prominent female atheists is this: they're often working on something more important.

Book Review: The Young Atheist's Handbook by Alom Shaha

It's rare for me to read books about atheism. Having gone through the effort of transitioning from Catholic to atheist just shy of two decades ago it feels somewhat redundant to reaffirm my absence of faith through the works of others. I do not mean to discourage such reading, of course, I merely say why the genre is but a small part of my library.

Of those authors on atheism that I have read there is something of a theme. Christopher Hitchens described himself as an atheist of the Christian sort. Richard Dawkins is a hymn singing bible reader. Sam Harris holds the Christian faith of his upbringing in higher regard than that of other world religions. Dan Barker is an ex Christian preacher. Stephen Law (a favourite of mine, do read everything he's written) also comes from a Christian heritage. The road from Christian upbringing to atheism is one well plodded, the guidebooks are myriad, the signposts abound. But when we reach this destination we meet others who have travelled less celebrated paths, often covert, alone, and in trepidation more pronounced than that found by their former Christian associates.

Alom Shaha trod such a path. His third birthday was the last he celebrated in Bangladesh. He writes a frank account of being raised in a British Muslim community and the influences on his path to atheism. He speaks with an honesty few authors attain - for instance his description of fleeing an Imam's circumcising blade at age twelve, or his rejection of the concept of a soul illustrated by intimate details of how illness and medication, by affecting the brains of family members, radically changed their personalities.

He shows his skills as a teacher through use of analogies to help us atheists of a Christian sort better understand elements of Muslim culture. Take veiling. I read with a sympathetic cringe Shaha's description of his teenage appearance - long hair, makeup, earrings and a jacket with a stitched in hood standing in some contrast to his current straight laced middle aged physics teacher appearance. But he described it as his attempt to assert his own identity, to push back at authority, and to draw the relevant boundaries necessary as one reaches adulthood. He then recounts meeting former members of his secondary school's Christian union, one of whom spoke of how she found being so public about her faith held much the same benefits in carving out space for an identity as Shaha's dalliance with goth garb. The final step is the often overlooked yet important point - a woman's decision to veil herself (or, for comparison, a man's decision to wear Arab clothing) can be a perfectly valid expression of this desire to demarcate the borders between oneself and one's family and community. He cautions rightly that this is often not a choice - on asking a friend why she had started dressing so conservatively the dismaying response came "my brother has become a strict Muslim".

Personally I oppose those who try to regulate what women wear. I oppose both those who would enforce and those who would ban veiling.

No publisher would go to print on a title of this sort without some arguments for atheism in general, and Shaha makes a good fist of the argument from evil, but if you buy The Young Atheist's Handbook for this sole purpose you're rather missing a trick. (Get Stephen Law's "Humanism - a very brief introduction" instead. Or better still get both.) The real magic in Shaha's work is his ability to take white atheists of the Christian sort into a community that we live beside, but not in, and give us the means to relive a journey that would otherwise be hidden from us. If you'd like to understand the journey of an ex Muslim, buy this book.

Guest Blog on Thoughts of a Lost Girl

I've been trying to find new ways of promoting blogs I think you should read. In the end it seemed simplest if I just write a guest post for them.

I've found a gang of plucky American students who've taken on the mission of saving the Irish from themselves. They enjoy marching across the country and blockading the IFPA. Want to find out more about them? Read here: http://thoughts-ofalostgirl.blogspot.ie/2013/07/women-of-ireland-your-saviour-is-here.html And while you're there, stick around a while. She's written some interesting stuff!