Transmissions From Closed Society: Khazana

The following was written by a young woman from Tunisia.  We'll call her Khazana. She is 28 years old.

I Want To Live: from Khazana in Tunisia

I am a woman, an Arabic atheist from Tunisia; do you know what it means to be an atheist in a country where 99% are Muslims?  It means you must keep your atheism to yourself and try not to reveal yourself to people around you. It means your life might be threatened at any time.  Your life is less valuable here because in my country being an atheist means you are a sinful person.  You are guilty. You are wrong.  For this you will be rejected, dissed or killed.

I am thankful for science and reason for opening my eyes to the truth. I am not a slave to illusions and lies anymore. I don’t believe in supernatural beings and I don't wish to be subject to morality based on outmoded religious beliefs.  I am capable of making up my own mind.  The people around me cannot find out that I have stopped believing.

I am 28 years old and I am desperate to have a relationship with some like-minded people. How can I get along with people if I don’t share the same beliefs and mentality!? I can’t be in a romantic relationship with men who might abuse me if they discover my secret.  I am afraid I will be forced to marry and obey a man that will treat me as if I am not an independent adult human worthy of dignity. I do not wish to live a secret life where I pretend to be religious and perform 5 prayers per day with a scarf on my head.

I would like to leave Tunisia, but it is hard to find a job.  I could not afford a plane ticket.  I am stuck here with no one to talk to, no one to listen.  It is just me, helpless and alone in the dark.

I am not the only one who is struggling. The unemployment rate among women is 41.1% and the unemployment rate among men is 21.4%.  I have spent 3 years trying and failing to find a job.

There is no future for me here. I am done with my situation I want to have a life.  I want to experience freedom. I want a job that makes me feel like a human. I want the opportunity to have an impact on society. I want rights. I want to defend those rights. I want TO LIVE!

Khazana,
Tunisia

Transmissions From Closed Society: Samat

The following is from a young man living in Pakistan. We will call him Samat. He is 23 years old.

Fake Prayers with my Jihadi Family: from Samat in Pakistan

I am a 23-year old Ex-Muslim in Pakistan who has been living underground for almost two years now. I say I’m underground instead of "in the closet," because underground is where I feel I’ve been for the past two years: I have an ‘Islamist’ family.

My uncle is a convicted terrorist. He was with the Taliban. I have a cousin who is a recruiter for ISIS in a village where I have other relatives on my mother's side. Many people in that same village morally and financially support some Islamist militant groups in Pakistan. Things are not so good on my father’s side as well, since my parents were distant relatives before they got married. I used to be the same as my militant family members. I used to be an admirer of Osama bin Laden. I had plans to join Hamas when I was 18 or 19, but I ended up losing my faith, for a variety of reasons.

I still go the mosque, to fake prayers. I do my best to pretend to fast in Ramadan. I help slay the goat at Eid. This is something you just can’t get used to. You can’t get used to hiding your identity all the time, because you are afraid that if you come out, you will get physically harmed for it. You can’t get used to constant fear. If there was no death penalty for apostasy under Islamic law that many Muslims (including my family) believe in, I wouldn’t be hiding my identity. I would only get disowned if that were the case. One can get over social ostracization in my opinion, but once you’re dead, you’re dead.

Previously my aim in life was Jihad and martyrdom. Now, it’s to get out of Pakistan somehow. I don’t think I can hide my identity forever. Not with these family members. I have been approached by the recruiter in my mother’s village to join ISIS. The recruiters present you with a warped, binary perspective of world politics, framing it in terms of Muslim vs Non-Muslim and they justify this worldview with a plethora of Quranic verses, hadith and their explanations. I’ve refused to join, mentioning half-forgotten peaceful verses in the Quran in an attempt to delegitimize ISIS in religious terms. Other times, I’ve said I’ll study Islam myself and then decide.

I know my pretense can’t last forever. Will I be faking prayers, faking fasting in Ramadan 10 years from today? Will I always be watching over my shoulder, concerned that nobody in the family finds out there’s an apostate in the family? Some classmates of mine from University know I’m an atheist and the news about my apostasy seems to be spreading around in my social circle. I have to get out, sooner or later. I’d rather die trying to get out than get caught my family…or the state for that matter. Officially, atheists don’t exist in Pakistan. We are an unrecognized minority. There have been cases where the state has imprisoned atheists in Pakistan over blasphemy charges. (1) Talks about apostasy bills have taken place in government (2). But my biggest fear is getting assaulted by a mob or physically beaten by family members. Even the accusation of apostasy can get you in serious danger (3). I was almost lynched once for eating in public in Ramadan. I had to beg people around me to forgive me and that I won’t eat again while others are fasting.


I’m uncertain about my future here and the uncertainty can be unnerving at times. I like to take comfort in the fact that, one way or another, this will end, eventually.

Samat,
Pakistan

Why They Hate Us

“Even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.” -ISIS

This is a statement from the most active and vocal manifestation of the global jihadist insurgency.   This theocratic fascism must be terminated intellectually and the practitioners must be extirpated from civil society.  Solidarity to all people.  Death to fascism.

Your Other Left: On Leftist Seppuku

Making ethical decisions in a world where everything is political can be challenging.  For instance slavery:  how can I signal to you my virtue as a hyper progressive without declaring my utter contempt for white people on the basis that some of them owned slaves before the civil war?  What about FGM?  Or the Jewish question?  Allow me to parse all of your hot button issues with my handy leftist decoder ring, from kiddie diddling cults to slavery it all comes down, as you'll see, to your inherent islamophobia.

Baby Vagina Mangling is part of the culture and when you talk about it you might fuel right wing narratives so don't talk about it.  When you talk about how islamic cultures treat women you are basically saying you're a racist neocon Zionist and I don't know what these words mean but I'll shout and play the part of victim while virtue signaling my moral superiority for supporting the myth of a Palestinian ethnicity.   Israel are like Nazi occupiers because I heard it somewhere.  I will defend the  suicide guerrilla mass murdering psychotics in fascist death cults in the Mideast countries I can't find on a map, and stand up for the oppressed Muslim race because even if you inform me that Islam is not a race you're still a racist islamophobe because reasons.  If you say islamophobia was coined by the Muslim brotherhood to make criticizing islam taboo in the west, I will merely say something about colonialism and call you a Nazi Zionist.  It is easier this way.

 If you assert that Islam is a revealed theistic religion started by a conman who became a warlord and kiddie diddler while managing to launch a revolution to liberate Arabs (and eventually everyone who submits to Islam) from the racist saturnalia of passive paganism,  the polytheistic whores who worship polyspecies mutant Gods who gave us the pi, atheists and Jews with their Christian baby Matsoh recipes, the Zoroastrian firebreathers and other infidel sodomized then I will just point your attention to our lovely multiculturalism: See Sarah from Haifa on the runway in the synthetic Syrian cotton thread scarf over giraffe print on the sleek new niqab with easy access holes for honor and grooming.  

Unless you would like to see the minorities within minorities cease being victims of such preternatural piffle, then I suggest you get with the program.  Hamas is your friend.  Now show me to the Kuffar room.  I think it is room 101.

Homegrown Demagogues and Theocratic Fascists

"Anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail." -PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA 7-27-16

There are encouraging signs of madness at play here, indeed the entire world seems to be coming into contrast with the Donald openly declaring himself in league with the enemies of freedom and Erdogan making zoo noises of a similar hue:
The Donald has crossed yet another line.  It is a line I would not have guessed was even in play for a major party nominee.  It is 2016 and Olympian swimmers will lap in sewage, the most despicable of our NATO allies briefly experience a sketchy coup and the GOP invites the Russian theocratic dictatorship into our political process.

Tighten up folks.

Your Other Left: Freedom is Gross and Racist

(Originally published in April 2016)
It came and went without notice.April 6th was the tenth anniversary of the Euston Manifesto, the declaration of left liberal principles by British academics, journalists and intellectuals spearheaded by the late Norman Geras and co-written, signed and promoted by a coterie of principled lefties, Marxists and liberals.The most vocal proponent and signatory besides Geras was the original first principles left opposition writer, Nick Cohen.Now, after a decade of regressive masochism spreading through the left like termites on PCP, it is impossible and inexcusable for liberals and anti-totalitarian leftists to ignore the mass felones de se of the anti-West reactionaries commonly mistaken for the liberal left these days.

The Euston Manifesto is an excellent statement and I hope it is rediscovered over time since it, sadly, made few waves in 2006.There is another document which is more widely known and available to every person in any somewhat free society.In fact: your country is probably a signatory of it.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December of 1948. This Declaration is an excellent guide for deciding where you stand as a human.If we distill it just a bit, we can make these complicated political and ideological questions simple for folks.

If you believe that tolerance of different cultures, regardless of how brutal and oppressive they might be, is more important than recognizing equal rights, equal protection under the law, inherent dignity and inalienable rights of each and every member of the human family, then there is no need to read on.You can proceed to the Intercept, the alt right message board, the ISIS twitter feeds, or join whichever orthodox collection of paranoiac righties, regressive lefties or Putin blog trolls you engage in victim group therapy and rage boner Saturnalia with this month.

If you are willing to tolerate theocratic fascism, female genital mutilation, antisemitism, racism and genocide in the name of political correctness, moral relativism and your anti-capitalist fantasy, then grab your Cliche Guevara t-shirt and your issue of adbusters.That'll be $50.

If you really believe that barbarism is subjective, that freedom of speech and belief are not paramount to justice, that the collective interest of identity groups trumps individual liberty, then grab a number and wait to receive your privilege score.Be prepared to apologize to people you've never met.

If you believe that all geopolitical, ethnic and religious conflicts are always to be blamed on colonialism, western imperialism and/or Israel, that acts of terror can be only attributed to the foreign policy of the United States despite the assertions of the terrorists themselves, then pass along your resume. I hear the chief British lobbyist for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jeremy Corbyn is hiring a new Minister of Truth.

If you believe that we need to maintain separate standards of ethics based on culture, race, religion and nationality, and that freedom of speech is a scourge that only serves to hurt fee-fees, if you embrace moral equivalence rather than distinguish orders of magnitude when peering through the lens of history, if you can no longer pretend to support fundamental rights and freedoms, if you place a higher value on aesthetic frippery and ideological orthodoxy than on intellectual honesty and objective truth, if you are ready to sever any commitment to common standards of freedom and equality and abandon the notion that truth is sacred and noble, or that all people are created equal and derive inherent and inalienable rights, if you are ambivalent or hostile to the preservation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness........

You are not alone.There are millions of these masochistic regressive cuckolds out there.You can join them in the bacchanalia of cultural self loathing at your nearest University or wherever regressive leftists, antisemites, Chomskyites and social justice worriers congregate near you.

Your Other Left: Micro-Aggression Re-Education Begins After Recess

Some students at Brown University are meeting in secret to practice their first amendment privilege.

In related news: All Bolsheviks, brownshirts, and Salon readers should meet in the quad beneath the black standard emblazoned with the white shahada to receive your throwing rocks and torches.

The first 50 students to arrive will receive a complimentary copy of Noam Chomsky's latest pamphlet: 1000 Years of American Genocide, now available in paperback with a new foreword by Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei.

Note: Don't forget to look in the back of the latest issues of Adbusters and Dabiq for your Guy Fawkes cut-out mask.

After protesting the secret society of microaggressors, all students* are welcome to play with legos in the campus safe space.Gluten free, non-GMO, organic cookies and soy milk will be served.If you suspect that your skin, height, genitalia, weight, GPA or bank account balance might invalidate the experiences of other students then please stay in your dorm. Someone will be by later to call you names.

* Excluding white cisgendered male heterosexual atheists, Jews and anyone listed on the student union list of oppressors and offenders.