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Man Sentenced to Death For Blasphemous Facebook Comments In Pakistan (gizmodo.com)
In what is believed to be "the first time the death penalty had been awarded in a case related to social media," a 30-year-old man in Pakistan has been sentenced to death for blasphemy in comments made on Facebook. Gizmodo reports: The prosecutor told The Times of India that Taimoor Raza was arrested "after playing blasphemous and hate speech material on his phone on a bus stop in Bahawalpur, where a counter-terrorism officer arrested him and confiscated his phone." It was the material on Raza's phone that led to his arrest. The Guardian reports that the accused's brother said Raza "indulged in a sectarian debate on Facebook with a person, who we later come to know, was a [counter-terrorism department] official with the name of Muhammad Usman." Raza's defense attorney told The Guardian the initial charges were limited to "insulting remarks on sectarian grounds," which carries a maximum two-year jail sentence, but that "derogatory acts against prophet Muhammad," which carry a death sentence, were added later. According to The Times of India, Raza will be able to appeal the ruling to the Pakistani High Court and the Supreme Court. Facebook said in a statement: "We are deeply saddened and concerned by the death sentence served in Pakistan for a Facebook post. Facebook uses powerful systems to keep people's information secure and tools to keep their accounts safe, and we do not provide any government with direct access to people's data. We will continue to protect our community from unnecessary or overreaching government intervention."
> Facebook uses powerful systems to keep people's information secure and tools to keep their accounts safe, and we do not provide any government with direct access to people's data.
So was Snowden lying when he said the NSA could look up phone, e-mail and other private communication? Or is Snowden a Limited hangout? Has America forgotten about the spy network?
This has less to do with Facebook and more with what happens when you let imaginary friends rule your life.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
At what point do we drop the political correctness and accept that Islam in the present day is more violent than other religions? I don't care about the past of Christianity, Judaism, and other religions. Violence committed in the name of the Gods of those religions is generally considered blasphemy. Christians might tell you that you're going to hell and say offensive things to you, but they're thankfully not killing people like the Muslims are.
When do we decide that the Islamic religion of the present day is too violent and insist that it reform or be banned? If religion were generally the problem, we would see Christians committing violent acts the way Muslims are. The fact is, they're not. There is a Christian state, specifically a Catholic one. It's called the Holy See. They don't have a military outside of the Swiss guards, and the Holy See is pretty pacifist in its nature. Contrast that with fundamentalist Islam and you'll see a huge difference. The "religion of peace" isn't peaceful at all. In fact, it's incredibly violent compared to other contemporary religions.
Do as the Romans.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
End of discussion.
This is frighting. With friends like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia who needs enemies?
On to Facebooks statement
> Facebook uses powerful systems to keep people's information secure and tools to keep their accounts safe,
Bullshit because they sell peoples data to companies. They have for a long time and privacy is deliberately made difficult by them.
> and we do not provide any government with direct access to people's data.
No. All they need do is call you up and say "pretty please". If FB is serious they will go all out with their influence over US politicians and their billions of dollars and their lobbying efforts to save this guy instead of hand wringing and weasel words while he's carted off to die.
"Islam is evil!" No, shitty third world governments are evil. They find all sorts of reasons to oppress people, Christian, Muslim, or whatever,
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Isn't that where they charged a toddler with murder? Classy place. Another example of how religion just makes everything better.
Pakistan tourism advice; don't go, and tell everyone you know not to go (they already know).
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
[Insert pseudo-intellectual, possibly funny thing about how there's no god and/or religion is bad]
[Insert something anti-Islamic and possibly confuse Arabs and Pakistanis]
[Not realise Pakistan is not in the Middle East and post something potentially or obviously anti-Islamic]
[Argue whether or not the second and third options are the same thing]
This is a good example of why religion should be abolished throughout the world, ANY religion.. Religion has always been about control of the people, nothing more, nothing less. No law should EVER be based on religious stuff, and certainly religion should never be a reason why should be able to discriminate without problems, but if you say the same thing outside religion your bound to get in trouble.. Most wars are in the name of some religion, but all are about power and control..
well.. go to Russia 2017 mkay?
but don't be gay okay?
or some well chosen place in Africa.
so why not lump them together? because blasphemy kind of needs it. you think Pakistan would be different if they were ultra right wing buddhists? of course not. It would still be a religious backwater place with authoritans trying to fight other authoritans for power to get power - that's really the whole point.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
AC Are SJW in the US going to report people for blasphemy?
A person in the USA would expect to have freedom of speech and freedom after speech.
Is the US going to pass blasphemy laws and send out officers to explain what social media is and why blasphemy is bad?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
What makes religions different?
Christianity and Islam are not really that different. Both claim to be the one true religion and both demand from their cool-aid drinkers to off everyone who doesn't follow the same delusion.
The main difference is that the group with the green flavor takes it more serious than the group drinking the red flavor.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
that religion should be made illegal in every nation possible, because everywhere that islam dominates they quickly become an oppressive theocratic tyranny.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Yet Pakistan is a classic example of a majority muslim country, and this is what happens. If you transferred all the Pakistanis in the world to the United States, do you think their beliefs and personalities would magically change just because they were standing on a different piece of land? Probably...
It is up to people in the free (i.e. non-muslim) world to continually expose and fight against the evil that is Islam, before the entire planet is living under this insane, tyrannous system.
*THIS* should be raised whenever some politician goes "Government must have access to Facebook/WhatsApp/etc. for security"!
In the UK, the current government has been hysterically running around shouting that Facebook is allowing all sorts of nasty illegal content to be disseminated. While that's certainly true, it bears remembering that one country's "illegal" is another country's "cherished freedom".
If the UK government has the right to access it's citizen's Facebook pages for "illegal" content, then you can guarantee Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia, Russia and all sorts of other ghastly states will demand the same right. And then, through the law of unintended consequences, a lot of people (who the liberal west would consider friends), will either wind up behind bars or six feet under.
If we are willing to give our governments access to our data to "keep us safe", we have to accept that governments we may not like will use the same powers to do harm to their own citizens. This is the moral choice that's not raised by the screaming "think of the children" brigade.
I'm not sure if you've read the New Testament, but it kinda outright says you should be loving everyone even if they hate on you. Perhaps you are confusing it with sections of the Old Testament, which had specific instances of God instructing the Isrealites to go to war and take out other nations (and not permission for them to make that call themselves), or the Law of the Old Testament which had legal punishments that were for the Isrealites to govern themselves, not to use on foreigners. People who claim that Christianity supports killing non-believers (or blasphemers, or whatever) are people who have never actually read the Bible (or grossly misunderstood it on a basic level)
"That thing you might not until now have suspected we do, well... we don't do it".
Requiem for the American Dream
Matthew 10:34-36
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.
Luke 14:26
If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
Luke 19:27:
But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.
How this connects to the story of the minas right before where Jesus essentially says that capitalism is a great idea is beyond me, though.
But anyway, it doesn't really matter. For all the nitty-gritty OT stuff stays valid. Said the boss himself:
Matt 5:17-20
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Your turn.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would challenge your interpretation. Jesus was saying that the OT was not wrong, but that HE was the realization of the prophecies and that his life and eventual sacrifice was to meet the objectives of Gods laws. Jesus does not change the fact that we need to obey God but his life changes virtually everything about how we obey God.
The OT is still useful in enhancing our understanding. Even later prophets like Timothy explicitly say so. As a Christian though you must look at the OT thru a NT lens.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Those secret Star Chamber campus tribunals that try people for maleness and paleness will lobby to get Title IX updated to include the death penalty.
Face book will do what its told by the government within the bounds of the law. In america, Facebook might be able to deny disclosure based on the the freedoms we enjoy here, but in Germany (any other place with very little freedom of expression/speech) , if the government says give me the data, they will do it or be in big trouble.
So, we're supposed to have a meaningful relationship with an imaginary person in the heavens, and meaningless relationships with real people in the cloud. If people who live in Pakistan try to sort out this silliness by engaging in meaningful discussion with the real people in the cloud, they gets sentenced to death for blasphemy and the fault lies in the West for creating the cloud. Yet the imaginary person who supposedly created the West, and indirectly the cloud, bears no blame for remaining silent while this guy dies as a scapegoat to those who go all extreme in trying to compensate for his lack of ability to stand up for himself. Wow, this world is messed up.
Killing someone because he said something about {insert name of 'diety' here} that other people didn't like
Seriously, people: What the actual FUCK does it say about Humans that in 2017 something like this can actually happen!?
This is not the act of a truly intelligent, sentient, civilized race of beings, it is the act of a race of uppity animals -- and make no mistake, I am including the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE in this, not just Pakistan!
Mad? FUCK YES I'm MAD when I read this. Bullshit like this is why I HATE ALL RELIGION, think it's a CANCER on humanity in general, and I wish SO MUCH that we'd somehow evolve past the point of needing 'gods' and 'religion' and all the stupid bullshit that goes with all that.
Seriously, people: A MAN IS GOING TO ***LOSE HIS LIFE*** FOR SOMETHING HE ***SAID*** -- NOT ***DID***, BUT JUST FOR ***WORDS***. What does that say about us, AS A SPECIES!?
I am ASHAMED to admit being part of the species Homo Sapiens when I see shit like this. ASHAMED!
I shall use this thread whenever people complain about the quality of my documentation.
I'll say: "Look, if even the omnipotent mega-being that single-handedly constructed the universe and life itself was incapable of writing a clear, readable, consistent and accurate user manual, how the fuck do you expect me to?"
Read Matthew 5 and 8.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'm not a Christian, but I can attempt to make sense of Christian logic. The OT says all these sins are punishable by death. Christianity has a concept of transference of sin. So, homosexuality is punishable by death, but it doesn't have to be the death of the homosexual. Rather, the punishments are transferred to Jesus, who supposedly died for your sins. Conveniently, Jesus can absorb or absolve an unlimited amount of sin with a single death.
Religious belief is a mental disease
Such as your real name policy that requires people use their legal names, making it easy for governments to track people through their posts, without compromising Facebook's systems?
Jesus is my Bag of Holding.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Assuming the victim does all the charging and enforcement.
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Ironically, all Communist countries - Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, et al persecuted gays just as happily as they persecuted everyone else. Same is true about Islamic countries. Given that fact, it's ironic that gays happily support both Leftist & Islamic movements everywhere. If they had their way, they'd be among the first to be stoned (and I don't mean the narcotic variety)
The "greatest love story ever told" is really just a sub-plot of the most terrifying horror story ever told.
That's true. When considered objectively, at least it does make for some great comic material. RIP, Carlin, you will be missed.
Well there's his problem, Facebook.
and I'll stop confusing the Old and New Testaments just as soon as the rest of my countrymen do.
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while your mind is still malleable and vulnerable. Just like any other religion.
For my part I pretty well nigh hate it all. Our House/Senate/Executive/Judicial is designed to keep wealthy landowners from being taxed and our Jury system was meant to let racist southerners commit acts of terror with impunity. I'd like the English system minus the House of Lords and the state religion. Basically Canada or Norway.
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because it repeatedly punishes the faithful for the sins of the heretic. The Flood. Sodom & Gomorrah, etc, etc. When you think about the consequences of that doctrine it's terrible. Every sin puts you and your family at risk of God's wrath. And don't think they haven't noticed. Over and over I've heard how gays are bringing down God's wrath. 911. Iraq War. Tornados. Mass shootings. London Terror Attacks.
If you're a Christian, and you read you're bible literally, then every single non-Christian is a threat to your family's safety and well being. God's not a sniper picking off the bad apples. He's more the 'spray and pray' type.
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Iran was well on it's way to modernizing. Iraq was too. In both cases we stuck our nose in and put religious nutjobs in charge. Saudi Arabia's royalty isn't even slightly religious. It's just something they tell the rubes to take all the oil money for themselves.
Islam is just the Rhetoric the ruling class uses in those regions to oppress and divide the working class. If they didn't have Islam they'd use something else. Here in America we use Welfare Queens and racism. In India it's a caste system. In China it's communism. The patterns are always the same. If you want to solve these Problems you need solidarity with the working class and a watchful eye on your ruling class (Notice I didn't say kill the bastards. China/Russia tried that and they just changed masters).
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So sweet. So decent. Why wouldn't we embrace them coming to live their lifestyle in the U.S.? We should welcome Shariah Law in America, right? http://www.newser.com/story/24... (and why not? Don't you want to wear a mask?)
Religion was born when first con-man met the first fool; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism