Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
Last year, we told you what you can expect if you murder someone for Allah and you live in Pakistan. You might just become an instant folk hero. That’s what happened to Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri. In January of 2011, Qadri, a personal bodyguard, fired more than two dozen submachine-gun rounds into Punjabi governor Salmaan Taseer (pictured), the man he was sworn to protect. Taseer’s crime? He opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law and had worked for the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for allegedly having insulted Islam’s prophet. Read more
Oh, the irony: After rampaging across the region for years, forcing more than two million people to flee their homes and farms, Boko Haram appears to be falling victim to a major food crisis of its own creation. Farmers have fled, leaving behind fallow fields. Herdsmen have rerouted cattle drives to avoid the violence. Throughout the region, entire villages have emptied, leaving a string of ghost towns with few people for Boko Haram to dominate — and little for the group to plunder. That almost seems like good news, especially when you summarize it as the New York Times did today — “Boko Haram Falls Victim to a Food Crisis It Created.” But, as the paper also points out, tens of thousands of innocents are close to starving, and the Islamic terrorists are now exporting their violent handiwork, making deep excursions into neighboring Cameroon to plunder whatever food supplies they can find. Read more
I’ve always thought of the Bible as big in global impact but small in moral stature. After all, the tome describes how the Almighty drowns all the Earth’s creatures in a fit of pique; and after the planet is repopulated, He kills all of Egypt’s firstborns, has naughty children torn apart by bears, et cetera. That’s some God, and some “Good Book.” Now there is physical copy of the Bible that metaphorically matches the moral size of this preposterous page-turner. Read more
Bangladesh’s constitution dates back to 1972, when the country adopted secularism as one of its founding principles. Since then, subsequent governments have made a mess of things: [The] government of military ruler-turned politician slain president Ziaur Rahman scrapped secularism as the state policy and his successor ex-army chief HM Ershad, who followed [in] his footsteps, made Islam the state religion in 1988. Then, 20 years later, Assuming power with three-fourths majority…, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government revived secularism as one of the state principles but kept untouched the provision of state religion due to the sensitivity of the issue. Mustn’t upset the violent extremists. Read more
Religion and mental illness often appear to act as each other’s accelerants. Without religion, would evangelical Christian Andrea Yates have murdered her children, carrying out what Abraham was merely prepared to do on God’s say-so? Would fellow Jesus follower Jorge Beltrao Negromonte, who wanted to “deliver people to God” by killing them, have slaughtered his victims? And in the latest case: sans the plentiful examples of her head-severing religious brethren, would Moscow Muslim Gulchekhra Bobokulova have beheaded a baby in her care? I can’t say with certainty, but I sure wouldn’t bet against it. Read more