only

Based on an old story from 2013.


Discussion (27)¬

  1. Okay. Another spit take. Thanks again for a brilliant punch line, Author.

  2. Free Speech says:

    A “safe place”? Seriously, snowflakes?

  3. Robert+Andrews says:

    Yeah…He’s right about the fact that “islam was years ahead on granting rights to womem”. But that was 1300 years ago. They fell behind.

    “Atheism is a non-prophet religion”- From Atheist Empire website.

  4. Canneloni says:

    ‘ahead of its time’ is just illogical. Nothing can be ahead of its time – it is very obviously OF its time, or it wouldn’t be there!

    And Robert+Andrews is also correct.

  5. Herman says:

    “islam was years ahead on granting rights to womem”
    Is indeed one of the many stories about islam and women….

    That’s why mohamed married a business women!
    And that’s why later on all women had to cover up, had to stay at home, had to lower their gazes… in short were degraded to household animals and gardens for their men to go into at will.

    That is a lot of granting rights to women!!!

  6. Matt says:

    As a man, religion makes me apoplectic with rage, even though I’m their favoured sex. Christ knows how women cope with it.

  7. Nassar+Ben+Houdja says:

    Islam, and its fundamental misogyny
    A fundamental tenet of islamic theology
    A religion of peace, not in the least
    Mythological fiction preached by a beast
    No semblance to anything but scatology.

  8. two cents' worth says:

    As Orwell wrote, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” :-/

    Matt, some Christian and Muslim women are so well indoctrinated that they don’t need to cope (because they really believe women ought to be subservient to men); some are fighting for women’s rights, trying to change their religion’s system from within; and some are leaving their religion.

    Are there any women in the pub who used to be Christian or Muslim? If so, did you leave your religion because of its sexism?

    As for me (a former Roman Catholic), I left when I got to the point where I couldn’t honestly recite the Nicene Creed anymore. I didn’t like the sexism in the Church, but that’s not what drove me away; the theism did that.

  9. Jim Tonic says:

    In their defense: they all wear dresses…

  10. two cents' worth says:

    Jim Tonic, clothes make the (wo)man? I don’t know about J, but doesn’t Mo have rules against cross-dressing? Not that I would tease anyone about their clothes, but I can imagine a lively discussion with Mo on the topic. 😉

  11. Jazzlet says:

    @ two cents’ worth

    Im female and used to be a born again christian, now Im an undead atheist 😉 I didn’t leave bcause of the sexism, which wasn’t that evident in the congregations I attended, although I did encounter it in the form of a Belfast protestant male. I became undead because I couldn’t stand the cognitive dissonance believing required.

  12. 1lifemakeitcount says:

    I have tried to imagine what life would be like if everyone accepted we have one life/one chance. Perhaps anarchy with some people grabbing everything they can to have a perceived comfortable existence or others making the most of it in a positive way. I would like to find the seminal moment “someone” proposed “eternal life” and what the purpose was.

  13. white+squirrel says:

    re:
    but doesn’t Mo have rules against cross-dressing? Not that I would tease anyone about their clothes, but I can imagine a lively discussion with Mo on the topic.

    check out
    http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Abualrub/mhd_cross_dressing1.htm

  14. white+squirrel says:

    so clearly it is not muhammed himself who had a problem with crossdressing
    but only those muslims who idolise him

  15. two cents' worth says:

    Very educational, white+squirrel! Thanks for the link!

    Je+suis+Charlie, it’s a good thing that I turned off my irony meter before I clicked on the link you provided. It’s bad enough that Saudi Arabia is on the UN Human Rights Council at all. I hope that US Ambassador Samantha Power and EU foreign minister Federica Mogherini don’t just denounce the Saudi bid to head the Council, but also work with others to get a credible head elected this December.

  16. Tobias27772 says:

    The very idea that a religion has the power to GRANT rights to humans beings is absurd on the face of it – but I guess that being absurd is sort of religion’s gig.

  17. Cassandra says:

    two cents’ worth said: Are there any women in the pub who used to be Christian or Muslim? If so, did you leave your religion because of its sexism?

    I used to call myself a Muslim, though to be honest with myself, only because that’s what my parents told me I was. As I grew up, I simply realised that I didn’t actually believe any of that crap. For many moderate families such as mine I suspect that Muslim customs and practices aren’t so much about genuine belief in the 5 pillars of faith etc., as they are about having something to stake an ‘identity’ to.

    Which is not an inherently bad thing, I guess. But even in moderate Muslim communities there are throwbacks to 7th century values which I find deeply jarring. For example, the fact that when I visit the mosque on Eid day, I have to put some cloth on my head and go and sit in a tiny room at the back. The fact that I’m only allowed to listen to the imam on a tinny PA system while he stands in front of the menfolk, speaking directly to them in a spacious hall. The fact that I’m not allowed to sit with the men because they would view me as an unwelcome distraction.

    In the western, liberal society I live in, there is no other area or insititution where custom indirectly tells me that I’m not worthy of the men and am not allowed to share their communal space. OK, so compared to women who are kept covered up and controlled with threats of violence from their fathers & brothers, I don’t have it so bad. But it’s the same value set at work here and it’s one of the many reasons I’ve abandoned Islam and all its trappings.

  18. white+squirrel says:

    and for every Cassandra who speaks up there are probably 1000 who keep silent

  19. hotrats says:

    Meanwhile, the Catholic church in Ireland is trying to come to terms with the size of the vote in favour of gay marriage. A majority of 62% backed the constitutional change in the first referendum of its kind on Friday.

    Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, said the church “needed a reality check” after the outcome. “I ask myself, most of these young people who voted yes are products of our Catholic school system for 12 years. I’m saying there’s a big challenge there to see how we get across the message of the church.”
    The Guardian

    None so blind as those who will not see dept.;

    Contrary to the claim of the archbishop, the church has no problem at all in getting its message across; everyone knows that it finds gay sex to be a mortal sin, and gay marriage blasphemous and abominable.

    The ‘big challenge’ facing the church is to realise that its blatently homophobic message was heard loud and clear, and decisively rejected by people thinking for themselves; and that despite decades of its state-sanctioned indoctrination of children, its reactionary pronouncements are no longer socially privileged.

    It shows just how much social progress you can make as soon as the church loses its death grip. As Stephen Fry pointed out, Oscar Wilde would have been so proud.

  20. Stephen Mynett says:

    A good excuse to post this again, I wonder if he will be at the conference with Jesus and Mo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMbTFNp4wI

  21. wnanig says:

    The “No Woman, No Drive” link of course falls prey to geo-blocking due to music copyright issues… So glad the interests of the music industry and Saudi Arabia coincide. I believe clips from the Daily Show someone posted earlier suffered the same fate.

    Could some economist please develop a new business model for these people that not just maximises profit for executives with over-sized salaries, but also maximises the spreading of culture? Don’t underestimate “soft power”. The cost just comes on military expenses or loss of human life later anyway. If composers are starving we need to find another way to finance them that also does not include relentlessly hunting mothers of teenagers.

  22. Jaw Jaw Wool says:

    1lifemakeitcount said, “I have tried to imagine what life would be like if everyone accepted we have one life/one chance. Perhaps anarchy with some people grabbing everything they can to have a perceived comfortable existence or others making the most of it in a positive way.”

    I think it would be remarkably like the world we have. Not anarchy, but some people grabbing everything they can, while many more make the most of it in a positive way.

    It does make me wonder whether, despite many claims to the contrary, most religious people don’t really believe all the afterlife claims; they recognise that there really is only one life that we KNOW exists – and that’s the one we’re in.

  23. Maura says:

    wnanig, try using a proxy thingey like “hidemyass”. Why you would want to hide a donkey is a mystery but that’s what they call it.
    There are many, many others available.

  24. Maura says:

    According to the BBC some people think chimps deserve “human rights” yet many hundreds of millions of men are convinced that women don’t.
    It’s a strange world.

  25. wnanig says:

    @Maura, thanks, I am using Tor actually, but in the case of “The daily show” you even need to find an IP in the US, I think (not that I had the patience to go through all servers to find out). Seemed to be Germany that was blocked for the music rights.

    Education, communication and common references may be our best hope of getting people on the same page long term, so geo-blocking just seems like an extremely bad idea. Greed does not serve humanity well. How long has Bob Marley been dead again? And a patent lasts what – 30 years? How does writing a song need more return on investment than millions invested in research? And the rest of us actually have to keep working to get paid.

  26. tinkling think says:

    Jazzlet, it’s a bit late but: well done and congratulations on winning your intellectual freedom through sheer hard work and native wit. You did good. Very, very good. You are a shining example to us all.

    Cassandra, also well done and congratulations. You, too, did good and are very brave.

    Now, both of you, go forth and multiply your successes by bringing many disciples and acolytes into The Light Of Reason And Joy. 🙂

    Wnanig, it’s about five years too late but V.P.N.’s can simulate Internet Protocol addresses in the contiguous forty-eight. This does have the disadvantage of throwing them under the bus of USAlien laws on keeping records of through-put but it also fakes regionalisation – sometimes sufficiently well to enable the viewing of USAlien TV.

    As an aside, copyrights in USAlien markets can last the lifetime of the “author” [which can be, for this purpose, a corporation such as Disney] and an additional 75 years. Disney want this to become 100 years or longer.

    That would mean that a 20-year-old who published a book in 1920 and who lived to be 120 would retain the copyright – or, more accurately his estate and publishers would share it – until at least 2140. The publishers could profit from it, or keep it out of print so no one else could profit from it – or even share it freely as Project Gutenberg wishes to do – for at least two hundred and twenty years. Longer should Disney and others buy their way.

    The lengthy copyright terms would also mean that ripping a movie from a DVD to keep it as a playable copy to preserve the shiny disc – assuming the disc was printed in 2000 – is unlawful until at least the year 2100. Assuming Disney died in 2000, which, of course it did not. In reality, as Disney is still alive and well in 2020, the “back-up” copy can net you a huge fine and imprisonment until well after the year 2120.

    Longer if Disney buys new laws.

    Your great-grandchildren could be fined for possessing family heirlooms.

Comment¬

NOTE: This comments section is provided as a friendly place for readers of J&M to talk, to exchange jokes and ideas, to engage in profound philosophical discussion, and to ridicule the sincerely held beliefs of millions. As such, comments of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature will not be tolerated.

If you are posting for the first time, or you change your username and/or email, your comment will be held in moderation until approval. When your first comment is approved, subsequent comments will be published automatically.