American Freethought Podcast

Original release November 6, 2016. Encore release December 26, 2018. Encore release September 18, 2017. Why has the Southern Poverty Law Center placed Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz on their list of "anti-Muslim extremists"? Certainly both Ali (who was the victim of female genital mutilation and narrowly escaped an arranged marriage before making a success of herself in the Western world) and Nawaz (himself once a jihadist who spent jail time in Egypt, and who now heads a counter-extremist think-tank in the UK) have been critical of Islam, but is it fair to call them extremists in turn? Plus: Virginia pastor Terry Wayne Millender and his wife have been arrested, accused of orchestrating a $1.2 million scam that victimized members of their church. In recent years, churches have organized "Hell Houses" at Halloween. Instead of traditional scares like vampires and zombies, Hell Houses showcase sadistic fundamentalist fantasies of the horrors that await the unsaved in the afterlife. This year, a Chicago area ch