Apostasy, Blasphemy and Free Expression in the Age of ISIS

Not too long ago Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born secularist and human rights activist, was invited to give a talk to the Atheists, Secularists and Humanists Society at Warwick university. That however was then cancelled by the students union because they feared she might “incite hatred” because as an ex-Muslim she would simply dare to criticise Islam. After a huge uproar (it made … Read more

Bangladesh publishers burn books in protest at killing of secularists

Publishers, whose very life blood is printing books, have been burning books in Bangladesh as a very public protest against the governments refusal to take any decisive action in response to the growing campaign of orchestrated murder that is being directed against writers. The Guardian Reports … Demonstrations have continued over fatal attacks on secular writers and … Read more

The Public Flogging of Raif Badawi is set to resume – #FreeRaif

Ensaf Haidar, the wife of the unjustly imprisoned Raif Badawi, has issued a statement in which she reports that his flogging is set to resume … I was informed by an informed source, that the Saudi authorities have given the green light to the resumption of Raif Badawi’s flogging. The informed source also said that the … Read more

Dialogue with an Ahmadi Muslim who wants to work with Atheists

On Facebook the claim above pops up from Kashif, a Muslim who is a member of the Ahmadiyya sect and so generally takes a non-violent stance. The above posting has rather a lot of problems, specifically the rather obvious – nobody actually declares all 1.6 billion Muslims to be violent terrorist thugs. This form of argument is what … Read more

Censorship of @MaryamNamazie at the @Guardian

Maryam Namazie, like many of us, was quite frankly appalled with David Shariatmadari’s apologetics for Islamism that was recently published on 2nd Oct in the UKs Guardian, so she contacted them and demanded a right of reply. She was very much the target of his article, was named within it, and so it was wholly appropriate that … Read more