@merv.news
There's a joke by a popular Pakistani comedian that goes like: "A Pakistani goes to Mecca for the first time. After getting off the plane, he sees a signboard with Arabic written on it, and starts kissing and prostrating himself in front of it. A few minutes later, an Arab dude taps him on the shoulder and says, 'bro, that sign says bathroom' "
This joke just played out in real life. Muslim extremists are beyond parody
I am an atheist living in Pakistan, and incidents like these send a shiver down my spine. If this woman had not been sheltered by shopkeepers and the police had not acted quickly, she would definitely have been lynched and murdered.
The mob of zealots that had gathered around her was chanting "“Gustakh-e-Rasool ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda, sar tan se juda”, which roughly translates to "what do blasphemers deserve? decapitation! decapitation!"
This country is fucked.
I wish I could agree. It really feels particularly bad here (though our neighbors in India have caught up in recent years). Have lost count of how many public lynchings/murders/breakouts of mob violence have happened in recent memory. I even personally know someone who was shot and murdered by a religious extremist. A year later, when the killer was arrested, I found I knew him too - he was my brother's batchmate in uni (a very expensive and popular business school) and had even been to my house.
I also have another friend, a feminist organiser, who got accused of blasphemy because she was standing next to an LGBT flag on stage during a women's march. She had to go into hiding for a few months for her own safety. I know other feminist organisers who have been accused of blaphemy too, from a different city. Their march was pelted with stones by counter-protestors from an extremist madrassah.
Beyond these personal anecdotes, I recommend reading about the cases of Salman Taseer, Junaid Hafeez, and Mashal Khan.
Don't get me wrong - conservative religious fascism is ubiquitous and bad everywhere. but dude it is straight up murderous here (and I feel much of the muslim world generally) in a way that is difficult to convey to outsiders.
There's a script for installing Photoshop with wine on Linux: https://github.com/Gictorbit/photoshopCClinux
it worked for me
It's alright, I didn't perceive you to be minimising the situation. It's just this issue touches a raw nerve for me and I felt compelled to point out how much worse it is here. Appreciate your empathy.
I disagree with that assessment. At least with respect to Pakistan, ideological capture by the right-wing was facilitated by anti-democratic forces. There is a very strong "Mullah-military connection". It was during the dictatorship of General Zia in the 1980s that Pakistan officially became an "Islamic Republic". He banned public dance/music performances, established Shariah courts, introduced anti-women rape laws and instituted the blasphemy law which is mentioned in the linked article. More recently, the army has been facilitating the rise of Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan through patronage, a right-wing reactionary party that primarily centers the defence of Islam and going after blasphemers. They also funded and armed several Islamist militant groups as proxies against India (not to mention the Afghan Taliban in the 80s with the help of the US).
Had Pakistan's democracy not been meddled with by the military, had we not gone through Zia's Islamization in the 80s, things would not be as fucked as they are today.
And from my vantage point as a Pakistani, the only reason things in India didn't get similarly bad until the recent rise of BJP is because India was founded as a secular democracy and had a functioning democratic system (at least relative to us). BJP is also a populist anti-democratic force, similar to MAGA in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, and Georgia Meloni and her alt-right peers in Europe. Religious populism is not unique to us developing nations, it is a rising threat around the world. However, I will agree that we are suffering the worst of it because lack of civil rights and weak civil institutions.
It is a complicated question.
Capital punishment for blasphemy is a mainstream theological position in Islam, accepted by the 4 major Sunni schools of thought. I do not know of any Shia tradition that goes against this position either. The only exception in my knowledge is one Sunni tradition, the Hanafi school, that prohibits the killing of non-muslims specifically for the crime of blasphemy, that too only if they are not habitual offenders. So, e.g. satirists like Charlie Hebdo would still face capital punishment, and of course any Muslim that commits blasphemy (e.g. ex-muslim atheists like me).
According to this Pew Poll, 84% of Pakistanis favor Islamic Sharia becoming the law of the land. This matches my personal experience. I know very few Muslims who think of Sharia as an unjust legal system.
I know many people who privately disagree with the idea of a death penalty for blasphemy. However, when you live in a country that is an "Islamic republic", Islamic jurisprudence as a big influence on the legal system, and with Islam in general having a hegemony over public morality, your private disagreement does not matter and has no political power. Basically, the whole country is held hostage by Islam. And every Pakistani knows that capital punishment for blasphemy is the mainstream position. Every single Pakistani knows that being perceived as committing blasphemy, or even publicly disagreeing with the blasphemy law puts you in danger.
In 2011, one of our sitting governors was assassinated by his own security guard for allegedly committing blasphemy. His killer, Mumtaz Qadri, became a hero for the religious right overnight and the killer's funeral (he was executed by the state for vigilante assassinating the governor; despite the blasphemy law, only the State has the right to execute convicted blasphemers) was attended by thousands of devotees. His grave has turned into a shrine.
The Tehreek-e-Labbaik party, a far-right Islamist party whose primary raison d'être is defending Islam from blasphemers has held protests large enough to paralyse the whole country and enjoyed significant electoral success in 2018.
So, no, it is not a law that is imposed by a tyrannical minority. It is a law imposed by the majoritarian hegemony of one religion.
And in my opinion, and subjective experience, this holds true for not just Pakistan but most muslim-majority countries. I would feel just as unsafe as an atheist in any muslim-majority country as I currently do in Pakistan.
✊ hang in there buddy and keep trucking. I was similarly in a low place when I started Odin. I'd just dropped out of college (for the second time).
Decided right then that I was going to become a developer and kept working away at it with a blank mind. I made tons of mistakes but felt liberated by working towards my goal.
The best starting point in my experience is https://regolith-desktop.com. You install it and get a noob-friendly, pre-configured unixporn desktop out of the box.
Once you start using it, the rest of the obscure programs referenced on /r/unixporn start making sense too.
I have been experimenting a ton with picks in the last few months. I bought three Bluechips, an assorted pack of TUSQ picks, and Taylor's "Darktone series" pick tin.
My favorites are, in order:
Dunlop Tortex. Old reliable. Just feels like home.
TUSQ picks. They are the most resonant picks I have ever used; they make month old strings sound like a fresh set. They also come in three different sound profiles, bass-heavy, treble heavy, and "warm" i.e. mids heavy. The differences are noticeable, and it feels like having an analog way to EQ my guitar. For the money they are the best
Taylor Thermex Pro from the Darktone series pick tin. It is the pick that gets closest to the sound of a fingernail
Bluechip - fancy but kinda underwhelming. They are definitely great picks but I'm not feeling the hype after using them for three months
thanks for using Leebra!
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