During these hard days of fear, insomnia, and pain, in hiding from authorities as well as fanatics, I have spent many nights expecting to be beaten, killed or caught. I know the real impact of my actions. They are afraid, dear friends; their dogmas and norms are so weak that they cannot stand to be questioned and challenged.
Today, I met two supposed “human rights” activists who advised me to get a medical certificate citing that my mental facilities were too diminished to realize the “impact” of my statements, and to apologize in a video or in a mosque to people who were “offended” or “hurt” by my statements, and to delete all traces of my “crimes” on the internet, by disabling Facebook, and deleting all the videos I have made… They say it is the only way I can have a normal life, with a few clicks everything will be as before, even better than it was as I can be assured that at least I tried to change things. At least, they say, I fought to free people from the enslavement of religion and dogmas, of dictatorship… But I cannot do so.
I don’t feel sorry for anything I have said or for the actions I have taken part in, including the 20th February MASAYMINCH Movement, and the establishment of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco – the first atheist organization in a country with Islam as the state religion.
Dear friends, we have a long way to go to break down those Middle Aged myths and ways of thinking, those oppressive and repressive rites in the name of religion or culture, those violations of human rights in the name of cultural relativism… We have to fight for this long awaited world, where people will live equally regardless of their gender, religious beliefs, or sexual orientations, where we will live in harmony with our environment, a world where wars and un-civilisation will only exist in history books.
It is easy for me to criticise the utterly insane and completely barbaric Islamic ideas that inflict so much misery, intolerance, violence, fear and death from the safety of where I sit. Imad is one truly brace soul who faces clear and very real threats to both his life and his liberty, and yet in the face of all this he maintains a very brave stance.
Now that is indeed true courage.
Links
- Waleed Al-Husseini’s I’m Proud to be Atheist Facebook page, has more about Imad Day.
- You can see some of the actions taken for International Imad Day here
- Here is a list of nearly 400 groups and individuals defending International Imad Day here.