Comment

Comment by Stephen 1 minute ago

Jordanian writer shot dead outside court before trial over cartoon

Suleiman Al-Khalidi

Reuters |

A gunman shot dead Jordanian writer Nahed Hattar on Sunday outside the court where he was to stand trial on charges of contempt of religion after sharing on social media a caricature seen as insulting Islam, witnesses and state media said.

The gunman was arrested at the scene, state news agency Petra said. A security source said he was a 39-year-old Muslim preacher in a mosque in the capital.

Hattar, a Christian and an anti-Islamist activist, was arrested last month after sharing on social media a caricature depicting a bearded man in heaven smoking in bed with women and asking God to bring him wine and clear his dishes.

Lebanon's powerful Shi'ite Hezbollah militant group mourned Hattar as a "brave and vocal voice" against the Takfiris, a derogatory term used to describe hard-line Sunni fundamentalists such as Islamic State.

Many of Jordan's conservative Muslims considered Hattar's move deeply offensive. Still, such politically motivated assassinations are rare in the U.S.-backed Arab kingdom, whose relative stability has distinguished it from war-ravaged neighbors such as Syria and Iraq.

Hattar, who was also Jordan's most vocal supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was charged with contempt of religion and sowing sectarian tensions. The country's highest official religious fatwa authority criticized Hattar for what it said was the "insult to the divine entity, Islam and religious symbols".

"The assailant was arrested and investigations are ongoing," Petra quoted a security source as saying, adding that the killer, who held a degree in civil engineering, had fired three shots at Hattar.

Two witnesses said the gunman was wearing a traditional Arab dishashada, worn by ultra conservative Sunni Salafis who adhere to a puritanical version of Islam and shun Western lifestyles.

"This killer drew his weapon from his briefcase, or the bag he was holding, and shot Nahed Hattar’s chest, causing Hattar to fall to the ground. He then shot at him again, a second, third..,” said Mohammad Jughbeir, who was standing close to Hattar at the time of the attack.

While many Jordanians thought Hattar had crossed a red line with the caricature, some of his secular and liberal supporters said his arrest was a breach of freedom of speech.

Read more= read:http://www.reuters.com/article/us-jordan-writer-shooting-idUSKCN11V...

Comment by Stephen 19 minutes ago

Facebook post on Islam leads to Jordanian atheist writer Nahed Hattar’s murder

AP 

cbsnews.com | September 25, 2016, 1:44 PM 

Last Updated Sep 25, 2016 2:14 PM EDT

AMMAN, Jordan - A prominent and outspoken Jordanian writer on Sunday was shot dead in front of the courthouse where he had been on trial for posting a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam on social media.

A Jordanian security official said the shooter was a former imam, or prayer leader, at a local mosque, and said the man had been motivated by his anger over the cartoon posted to Facebook by writer Nahed Hattar. The shooting was the latest in a string of deadly security lapses in Jordan.

Witnesses and police said Hattar, 56, was preparing to enter the courthouse for a hearing when the gunman shot him at close range.

“He was standing at a short distance of about one meter (yard) in front of Nahed on the stairs of the Supreme Court,” a witness told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, fearing repercussions. The official Petra News Agency said Hattar was shot three times.

The witness said the shooter, who was immediately arrested, was wearing a long grey robe and long beard characteristic of conservative Muslims.

Jordanian media, citing anonymous officials, identified the shooter as Riad Abdullah, 49, a former imam in northern Hashmi, a poor neighborhood in Amman. The reports said Abdullah had recently returned from a trip abroad, but gave no further details.

The security official declined to confirm the suspect’s name. But he said he had confessed to the shooting and claimed he had acted alone and had no connections to any militant group.

Read more= read:http://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-post-on-islam-jordanian-writer...

Comment by Chris yesterday

This is old news.Texas GOP rejects ‘critical thinking’ skills. Really.

By Valerie Strauss July 9, 2012

(Update: Stephen Colbert’s take; other details)

In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff department, here’s what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its 2012 platform as part of the section on education:

Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Yes, you read that right. The party opposes the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” because it believes the purpose is to challenge a student’s “fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.”

It opposes, among other things, early childhood education, sex education, and multicultural education, but supports “school subjects with emphasis on the Judeo-Christian principles upon which America was founded.”

More follows.

See above link for more information.

Comment by Stephen on Monday

Will creationism be stripped from Texas curriculum standards?

By Julie Chang - American-Statesman Staff

mystatesman.com |

Highlights

The standards drew much publicity when they were adopted in 2009.

The State Board of Education will ultimately decide whether the standards will be removed.

The state committee is considering removing four curriculum standards that challenge the theory of evolution.

A state committee has drafted preliminary recommendations that would no longer require Texas public high school biology teachers to teach theories that challenge the scientific understanding of evolution.

The State Board of Education has tasked a 10-member committee of school district officials and scholars to whittle down the state’s biology curriculum standards, also called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. The streamlining comes as teachers have long complained that the amount of material the state requires them to teach in all subjects is too voluminous to cover in a school year.

At its July meeting, a majority of the biology committee took a preliminary vote to remove, among others, four curriculum standards that some members say challenge the theory of evolution.

Skeptics of evolution say the standards in question — out of 58 total biology standards — are meant to spur students’ critical thinking on scientific evidence that evolution can’t readily explain. Evolution proponents say the four standards promote the teaching of creationism and intelligent design.

“I don’t advocate for any kind of creationism to be taught in the school. That does not belong in the TEKS. I’m simply concerned about the fair representation of the evidence for evolution,” said Ray Bohlin, one of two committee members who opposed removing the four standards. Bohlin works for Probe Ministries in Plano and holds a doctorate in cell and molecular biology.

Fellow committee member Ron Wetherington, an anthropology professor at Southern Methodist University, said he and others voted to remove the standards because they are redundant and irrelevant.

“How can we improve the TEKS by paring it down and giving you more time to teach what you need to teach? For the most part, we were looking at duplications, non sequitur and grammatical problems, and other structural problems in the TEKS that made it difficult to interpret,” Wetherington said.

Read more= read:http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/w...

Comment by Chris on September 22, 2016 at 8:14am

I worked with some poeople who among other things were members of New Hope Church and also belonged to groups such as the Promise Keepers both of which appeared to be part of the Christian Identity movement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center kept an eye on some of the groups in the North West of the U.S. (Oregon, Washington, and Idaho) as well as they do with other hate groups through out the U.S.

Aryan Nationalists were committing murders in the North Western U.S. The Southern Poverty Law center sued an Arayan group after Metzer's group murdered an Etheopian student in Portland Oregon.

The civil suit after that crime and other acts of violence resulted in damages forcing the group to sell their compound in Idaho and fortiture of most of their money.

Metzer sill expouses his white supremist message.

The Don seems to be fliriting with these groups in his run for office as he expouses his distain for 'others.'

The Christian Identity movement continues to terrorize and hold a lot of political power expecially in rural areas. I'm more affraid of them than I am of most other religious radical groups in the U.S.

Comment by Onyango Makagutu on September 22, 2016 at 7:50am

Natoinalism, tribalism, religion, patriotism can all be classed together.

Comment by Chris on September 22, 2016 at 4:22am

The current debacle about sports figures refusing to stand for the National Anthem is silly to me.

Why is the national anthem played at sporting events to begin with?

That doesn't make sence to me.

Thankfully Jehovah's Witnesses stopped the pledge of Allegience to the Flag of the United States of Americs in public schools.  Why pledge alegiance to a flag?

That seems to be the dumbest thing I ever heard - Nationalism!

I swore an oath and pledged to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution from all enimies foreign and abroad.

I don't recall the "so help be god" part of part of the swearing in cerimony.

For that matter as a left hander with a right dominant eye raising the right hand also seems silly to me.

I didn't seem, to me that while doing my best to protect and defend the constitution while working for the U.S. government none of cerimonies were pushed upon me.

Comment by Chris on September 22, 2016 at 3:55am

There was a huge sign post along a highway I used to drive by along a highway in the contry - that many motorists drove past that must have been sponsored by a local religious church.

it said something to the effect of:

There is only one truth - that had a image of the King James Bible.

When taking an oath in court when swearing to god is that licence to lie?

Cross your fingers an hope to die.

Comment by Onyango Makagutu on September 22, 2016 at 2:46am

Why is the story of Jesus true and others myth? The bible says so and you know the bible is true.

I like Mark Twain. 

Comment by Chris on September 22, 2016 at 2:05am

Unfortunately many don't understant the beauty of the myths.

Perhaps it's lack of exposure to different cultures, literature and etcetera, while being subjected to narrow mindedness.

Samuel Clemmins/Mark Twain's quote:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

Sums it up well.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• …
• 242
• Next ›
• Page