Category: Secularism

On secularism in government policy, where secularism is not understood to be (necessarily) hostile to religion.

Does atheism entail anti-discrimination?

No_discrimination_signI recently discovered Betteridge’s Law, which is a rather cool adage that states “any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no“. And that’s the point of view many of you might have with regard to the headline I chose for this blog post. You might say, atheism is simply a lack of belief in god(s) – it entails no other propositions.

If we mean the strict logical sense of entail, i.e. that atheism necessarily leads to anti-sexism, anti-racism and so forth, you’re right. But you’re perhaps also evading a more important point, which is that if you’re an atheist who isn’t opposed to sexism, racism and so forth, the fact that you happen to be an atheist does little or nothing to combat the possibility that the viewpoints are at least in tension with each other, or even in direct opposition.

Two ideas don’t need to form a contradiction to be in opposition. And to my mind, atheism will (and, should) typically entail anti-sexism, anti-racism and so forth. And this is because prejudice of these forms is not only an manifestation of irrationality, but also more specifically a form of irrationality that is typically buttressed by moral codes that rank certain values or characteristics above others on largely arbitrary grounds.

Whether it be wearing a certain funny hat, belonging to a certain tribe, uttering certain sacred words, eating a particular food and not another – all of these are tokens that would normally be arbitrary, but are granted significance via a system of belief. They aren’t justified by evidence and reason, but rather become justified by the positive feedback loop of religious practice.

Without those forms of thinking, any idea that people with a certain level of melanin in their skin are superior or inferior to others, or that people with penises are better/worse than people without them, would struggle to get off the ground. We’d be far more inclined to say “that makes no sense – we’ve no reason to treat x worse than y”, because we’d have fewer psychological frameworks in place allowing for arbitrary discrimination.

So, while atheism might not necessarily lead to being anti-discrimination (of arbitrary sorts), I do think it’s not only compatible with anti-discrimination, but more than that – it’s more likely to lead to it than not. And for clarity, and to avoid needless argument, I am not making the claim that religion always, or necessarily, does lead to these forms of discrimination. I’m making the far more limited claim that it’s one way in which some people prop up their prejudices.

FSI conference 2013

fsi-glass-squareI heard today that the secular humanist NPO that I’m chair of (the Free Society Institute, or FSI) has been awarded a substantial grant by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and HIVOS to host a conference later this year (or perhaps early 2014). So I’m in the early stages of planning. The event will most likely be in Johannesburg, simply because I can guarantee more substantial media coverage there, and because it’s easier to get to (I’ll be trying to persuade an international speaker or two to make the trip).

While I’m probably familiar with 90% of South Africans who are interested in these issues, and who might be interested in participating, please feel free to make suggestions for local speakers on this form. I can’t give any details about dates and venue yet, but want to make sure that anyone I don’t already know about gets ample time to bubble to the surface.

Also note that the proposal that got me the grant involves a conference on a Saturday, and a workshop on scientific reasoning and skepticism on the Sunday (ideally for schoolkids). So, you can put names forward for either component (or both).

All the fish (including oysters)

Wellfleet-Oyster-PlateThis is too funny to not share. Earlier today, one of our local journalists called me to ask if I could come into the studio and offer some comment on a draft policy for the allocation of fishing rights in the oyster industry, because he’d had sight of the policy (pdf), and it contained this hilarious bit in the section detailing the policy’s objectives:

(c) Co-manage oyster fishery with other spheres of government and the fishing industry in a manner that recognizes government priorities, strategic objectives of the spheres of government, the interests of fishing industry and most importantly in a manner that would please, praise and glorify that one who provided and gave man the power to rule over the fish (including oysters)

All the fish, including oysters? You mean molluscs are fish too? Those scale and fin-less ocean-dwellers that Leviticus 11:10-12 tells us are an abomination? South African molluscs will no doubt be relieved to hear that they’ve been upgraded – perhaps oysters from your part of the world will be equally blessed in the near future. And instead of managing the industry to do things like make a profit, feed people, or keep the “fish” population sustainable, it’s all about pleasuring Jesus?

There is of course a serious side to this, as I commented for the television insert (I’ll hopefully post that later) – each little bit of religious intrusion into the laws of a secular country is by itself of little consequence (usually). But taken together, they indicate a lack of commitment to keeping our laws secular. And, if nonsense like this can seem reasonable to someone drafting a policy – and if it somehow slips past the eyes of others who examine that policy – we can accidentally find ourselves in a situation in which the law stops being secular, and where we’ve got to waste much time and energy cleaning this sort of idiocy out of it.

6000 also has something to say (as he so often does).

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!

Originally published in the Daily Maverick

evolutionisatheoryIt’s important for all of us – whether religious or not – to defend the secular viewpoint in public institutions, law and policy. For one, because secularism means that you will never be forced to attend or participate in the ceremonies or practices of religions other than your own.

Defenders of religious expression sometimes forget the fact that often, it’s only contingently the case that you’re defending the expression of a religion you happen to belong to, and that this coincidence can’t be guaranteed. If your neighbourhood school were over time to evolve into one of a different faith, you might suddenly wish for the school to be stubbornly secular.

A second reason to defend secularity, at least in my view, is because a secular environment is well suited to fostering free and rational choice and taking responsibility for our choices, as I argued in this column defending the rights of children to wear religious headgear at public schools. It’s clearer to see the relationship between our beliefs and our actions if we aren’t forced – not matter how implicitly – to perform certain actions.

Secular does not need to mean (in fact, ideally would not mean) hostility towards religious expression. It would mean neutrality, while allowing for the free expression of religious belief so long as that expression accorded with the Constitution and any other relevant law.

South Africa has a mostly superb framework ensuring secularism in our public schools. I’ve written about aspects of this before, but a recent email correspondence with a friend regarding the school her son attends offers an opportunity to highlight what I have reason to believe is a fairly common occurrence – namely, public schools ignoring the explicitly secular (but tolerant) National Policy on Religion in Education.

The case in point is Glenstantia Primary, who approved a new policy on religion in September 2012 (citing the Constitution, the National Policy on Religion and Education and other documents as references). Despite name-checking the National Policy, the “Governing Body of this school decided that Glenstantia Primary shall be a Christian based school” – which can’t avoid but create an impression of bias rather than neutrality towards not only religion, but more importantly, a specific religion.

Pierre de Vos has previously argued that statements like “this school has a Christian character” might well be contraventions of Section 15 of the Constitution, as well as the Schools Act, both of which allow for religious expression, but only on an “equitable basis”. As de Vos points out, our Constitutional Court has shied away from ruffling any feathers in judgements on this issue, partly because some wiggle-room is afforded them through the limitations clause.

However, if a group of parents were to ask the Department of Basic Education to account for their numerous failures to enforce the Policy, I’d expect a similar outcome to the one achieved by Vashti McCollum in 1948, when the US Supreme Court agreed that calling religious observances “voluntary” could cover up a multitude of sins.

As the majority opinion in that case states, “both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere”. At Glenstantia, calling the school “Christian” already makes someone who believes in something else, or nothing, feels like an outsider. But the violations of the policy don’t stop there.

Clause 3.3 insists that the Bible is read at all “assemblies and school gatherings”, and then 3.4 insists that all pupils have to attend these events where hymns are sung and prayers said. You need not participate – but then you need a letter from your parents excusing you.

There are two clear problems in this: first that there’s nothing “equitable” about how religions are treated here, and second, a non-religious child in a religious family is either forced to lie (through participating in a charade) or forced into a very difficult confession of non-faith to a potentially hostile family.

In this sort of situation, who would blame the scholar for not simply taking the easy route, succumbing to peer, school and family pressure through pretending to be religious? For institutions like schools that are meant to teach the ability to think, be independent and so forth, this doesn’t seem a good start. Neither is it a good start in a life of Christian virtue, if you’re attracted to the faith via a subtle form of bullying.

The school has an obligation to support the National Policy, rather than make pupils and parents jump through hoops to ensure that they are not discriminated against. Clause 3.5 says that “other persuasions will be respected”, but when “every school day begins with a prayer and/or a reading of a portion of the Bible” (3.6), it’s difficult to take that pledge of respect seriously.

There is more, but the point is by now clear – one can speak of tolerance and equitable treatment of religions (and the non-religious), but get away with nothing more than paying lip-service to that equitable treatment. This is not only the grouching of an atheist, but a concern that should be shared by every Muslim, or Jewish, or whatever, parent that has a child at a school like Glenstantia.

The point of secular provisions such as the National Policy is that they protect us all from undue influence to toe a particular line, allowing for free expression of whatever beliefs you have, regardless of how fashionable, popular, or government-endorsed they are. We’re all free to believe what we like, and to engage in whatever religious practices we like – or not to, as the case may be.

Either way, it doesn’t have to be anyone else’s business other than yours. If you want to start and end your day with a prayer, go ahead. But why should doing so be forced on other people’s children, or made everyone (anyone) else’s business?

Why a secular society?

A secular student organisation (re)launched at my university (Cape Town) on Monday this week. Calling themselves the UCT Student FSI, they have partnered with the non-profit that I started here in South Africa, the Free Society Institute. I was invited to give the launch address, an invitation that I was very happy to accept. The quality – especially of the first video – is rather poor, but for those of you who’d like to watch/listen, two videos can be found below (the talk, and the question-and-answer session that followed it). If you’d like to view the slides, you can do so here.

Magical intentions and the principle of charity

Originally published on SkepticInk, and mostly of interest to people who follow the skeptic/atheist debates closely.

10042479-funny-robot-stay-with-headphonesOne of the things I’m struggling with this year is the transformation of a course I teach into an online version. Not a MOOC – a full, for credit course at the University of Cape Town, offered to around 1000 students this semester. In the first 3 weeks, I teach critical thinking, including some work on cognitive biases. The struggle is in getting students to see that things aren’t always easily divisible, because a particular example might share attributes of both the availability heuristic and representativeness, for example. Or, we might be dealing with a post hoc argument that also includes a smattering of something else.

Instead, we need to see things in context, I say to them, and try to justify our answers by reference to what is the most plausible interpretation. Also, we can justifiably be concerned with the politics of a situation, and be looking for a way to resolve an interpretive dilemma rather than being most concerned with defending our own point of view. One of the reasons I typically don’t get involved in what people here at the SkepticInk Network are calling “the drama” is because too much writing on it seems motivated by a desire to be right, rather than a desire to fix the problem. As I wrote a few months back,

when a debate gets heated, we should try to remember that no matter what’s come before, we’re constantly at a new decision-point, where we – and only we – are responsible for what we say in response to something we find provocative. Sure, someone else has committed a wrong, and we can be inflamed by that. But essentially juvenile questions of “who started it”, while diverting, seldom help illuminate the question of how it can be ended.

The détente involving Dr. Harriet Hall and Amy Roth (facilitated by Steven Novella, as described here)  has given rise to the most recent deluge of posts on “the drama”, here and elsewhere. Many of these contributions are making the point that the principle of charity is an important element of productive debate. This is true, but it’s also true that it’s possible to squander the goodwill you’d normally be entitled to, thanks to a track record of causing some form of (unjustified) offense. Some offense is merited, and some is not – and I’m not going to make any pronouncements on that here. The point of the quote above is that we can – at least in principle – separate the matter of whether the offense is justified from how best to respond to it given the desire for a certain outcome.

My presumption is that the outcome we desire is to be able to debate issues of substance from within a common framework of skepticism, atheism and humanism. If we can’t talk about how best to improve the world from within that framework, we’re using the wrong framework. And, if you think that some other value trumps those three and their cognate ideas, then whether you’re right or wrong is less relevant than the fact that you’re addressing a different – even if overlapping – constituency.

So, within that framework, perhaps we can sometimes be reminded that the real world is messy, especially the emotive, political world that we’ve constructed for ourselves within the skeptical community. Intentions are certainly not magical, but they’re certainly not irrelevant either – and deciding how to respond to claims regarding what people intended might require subtle and sensitive judgement. For this reason, I’d have to disagree with Justin Vacula’s post on intentions. Not necessarily because he’s wrong on the facts regarding how we should interpret others – I think I mostly agree with him there – but because his post strikes me as another example of what you could call a tone-deaf response.

It’s wrong to impute negative intentions – that’s where the principle of charity comes in. And while an insistence on people setting aside any pre-existing perceptions regarding your motives might be logically coherent, it’s not sufficient in this world of real insults and (at least psychological) harms. Once again, whether you think the harms as severe as some claim, or whether you think particular examples overblown or not, is only part of the point – and perhaps sometimes a small part. A larger part of the point might be that you’re talking to people who believe they have been harmed – and might even have been harmed – and adopting the blameless view-from-nowhere demeanour is a signal that you aren’t willing to acknowledge that.

Instead, it’s perhaps a signal that you’re willing to talk, but only on your terms, and only once the opposition grows up (or somesuch). A similar sort of tone-deafness is present in Richard Carrier’s post on the Hall/Roth correspondence, where he asserts that Harriet Hall is now “redeemed”. It’s the smugness, and the entitlement (my concern with his atheism+ post, also), that gets to me. As if Carrier is the arbiter on this, as if it’s now axiomatic that Hall needed redemption in the first place.

Both these posts have this in common – they ask you to accept a version of things that’s self-serving. In Vacula’s post, we’re encouraged (albeit subtly) to regard people who use phrases like “intent is not magic” as folk who over-react to criticism. The fact that Vacula doesn’t mention who they are is part of the subtlety here, in that we all know who they are, but it’s now more difficult to call him on it. In Carrier’s post, a version of history is written wherein Harriet Hall was known to be a transgressor of certain norms or rules, but has now been redeemed – and so, a little more authority to be the judge, or arbiter, is assumed.

It’s obviously problematic if we’re all having to constantly second guess what we write or say, because we know it’s going to serve as fodder for the confirmation bias others have with respect to our views. So, ideally, I’d love it if we were all able to operate in the domain of pure logic, clarifying intentions and meaning without making assumptions about the other. But that’s not the world we live in. But while we’re figuring this stuff out, let’s be wary of the tendency to assume that “they” are the ones getting things wrong, and that the truth is always a simple matter.

Inconsistency and intolerance

As you no doubt know, in April 2011 France introduced legislation barring women from wearing the niqab. There’s some immediate irony in that, in the sense of telling women what they aren’t allowed to wear, in an ostensible effort to liberate them.

I’m conflicted about that particular ban, because as much as the niqab seems such a powerful symbol of subjugation, it’s impossible to rule out the possibility that some women wear it out of genuine choice, rather than because it’s the only choice they have, or the obvious choice thanks to years of programming. And if these women exist, a ban certainly violates their freedom, even if you might disagree with the ways in which that freedom is used.

As much as I – and all of us, I imagine – want to find ways in which we can maximise the freedom of others, it challenges preconceptions about the oppressive nature of the niqab to see headlines talking about French Muslim women effectively being “under house arrest” as a result of this bans. It also doesn’t seem to be winning any public relations points – not only is this sort of thing fuel to extremists, it’s also fuel to those who want to cast secularism as intolerance.

But the niqab is an extreme example, because of the way it seems to eliminate the person wearing it. You, as a Muslim women, are represented entirely by the item of faith, with only your eyes visible to the external world. You could be anyone, at least to those of us on the outside, who might not be able to pick up the subtler clues of identity that no doubt exist.

So I can at least have the conversation around whether this should be permitted or banned, because it is at least plausible that something so extreme can’t be a matter of free choice. But when it comes to other, less extreme statements of faith like the fez, kuffiya or hijab, it seems immediately false to me that we should prohibit Muslims from wearing them.

These thoughts are prompted by a South African example from a couple of weeks ago, where two children were sent home from high school for wearing a hijab and a fez, and told that they could not come back wearing their respective headgear. They were allowed back a week later, but only after intervention from the provincial school board. Meanwhile, talk radio had a field day, with one person making the absurd suggestion that religious clothing is good, because then we’d know who all the atheists are (they wear black, you see).

And then, there were some callers and letter-writers who we can be quite confident in thinking would be happy for children to wear a crucifix to school, because it’s Islam that’s the problem, not religion. One even spoke of the Muslim “infiltration and indoctrination”!

A confounder in this case is of course that the children in question are 13 and 16. As Dawkins often points out, it’s an error to referr to Muslim children, Christian children, or [insert any other religion] children. Until a child is old enough to choose for itself, it is the parents who are religious rather than the children. Indeed, this particular case is notable for the fact that it’s the mother who is quoted as saying “I can’t allow them to take it off because it is against our Islamic beliefs.”

She’s then quoted as saying “It is very sad. It is very disturbing” – and while she clearly means the actions of the school, those words could easily apply to some cases of children who are given no option but to believe what their parents do – and thus also easily apply to her previous quoted sentence.

As I wrote in a recent column on this case,

a 13 and a 16 year-old could also be Muslim by choice, even if we think the choice flawed. Unfortunately, we often only get to know how much volition is possible when people try to change their minds (through observing how their families and community react), but it’s certainly possible that these two children are contented in this particular faith, and proud of being identified as members of it.

We can’t guarantee that these sorts of choices are made freely. But we can help to create a climate that encourages free and rational choice, and also taking responsibility for choices. Forbidding the hijab while permitting the cross encourages inconsistency and bigotry. Permitting them both – as well as any other outward signs of religious affiliation – can be done alongside restrictions that encourage civic virtues such as understanding and compassion.

I mean two things: first, that allowing the hijab, but insisting that it be in the colours of the school uniform, reminds the scholar that a plurality of values are competing, and that none should be assumed to have priority until the relevant debate has been held. And second, allowing religious headgear avoids sending a signal of prejudice, which will hopefully result in an increased chance for people like me to argue against the choice to ever want to wear the headgear or the crucifix.

The system of thought – or sometimes lack of thought, to be more honest about some forms of religious indoctrination – that forces some women to cover themselves near-completely does merit opposition, as does a tradition that won’t allow women to be priests, or to have abortions, or whatever the case might be.

But expressions of those ideologies are not equally thoughtless, and treating them all as if they are – or not allowing them at all – runs the risk of acting no differently to that which you’re protesting. If you don’t think children should wear a hijab or a fez, persuade them and their parents that they shouldn’t. As David Mitchell puts it, “It bears restating that it’s not bigoted to disagree vociferously with people’s choices, as long as you’re even more vociferous in defending their right to make them”.

A final thought takes me back to inconsistency, though – can such neat distinctions be made between the niqab and the hijab? If I’m happy to allow the latter, am I inconsistent to think the former permissible? And if this inconsistency needs resolution, should it be through banning both or permitting both?

On the too-large pile of unread books, which probably looks similar to your too-large pile, my SkepticInk colleague Russell Blackford’s Freedom of Religion and the Secular State awaits. Perhaps it will contain a clue or two.

Labelling Jews with a “mark of shame”?

Dr Ivor Blumenthal - one Jew one jobWhile on campus for what I hope will prove to be the last meeting of 2012, a clear-out of the mailbox revealed a holiday-themed, ambiguously Christmassy card from the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies. The card reminded me of earlier this year, when I appeared on a panel with Khaya Dlanga and Brenda Stern at the Board of Deputies CENSOR/TIVITY conference. During the session I participated in, I was rather pleased to observe what appeared to be a fairly consistent and principled commitment to both free speech as well as the benefits of being sensitive to the emotional harms speech acts can cause.

Even though various contentious matters were under discussion (there’s a podcast at the link above, if you want to listen) – Zapiro’s cartoons, the Labia not screening Roadmap to Apartheid – most of the audience, as well as the executive members I chatted with, seemed to realise that demonising your opposition and their point of view would usually have to entail being fairly liberal with the truth. But also, and unsurprisingly, many people spoke of their deep and continuing hurt at being stereotyped or the subject of religious or other slurs. Zapiro’s cartoons were held out as an example of caricatures against Jewish folk, especially in Israel, that served no purpose but to harm.

Sadly, this sensitivity to offence turns out to be mono-directional. When a member of the Jewish community calls for Jews who are anti-Israel to wear a “mark of shame” – and expresses regret that stoning them is not possibile – the Board of Deputies declined comment. Here’s an extract from the blog post in question, written by Ivor Blumenthal:

We have to “out” them, their families, their children, their businesses and their friends. We have to make it as politically incorrect to be associated with them as they, with their BDS mates are making it for the majority of the Jewish Community in South Africa. We need to name them. We need to shame them. We need to make sure that their ability to make a living dries up. We need to label them and their families with the “mark of shame”. They are traitors and must be painted on as such. There is no space or place for half measures here. This is not something that can be negotiated. It is absolute casting into the wilderness which is required so that the next “humanitarian” will think four times before taking the same steps to attack the Jewish people, our values and our beliefs.

The question however is whether we have the courage as a community to do this?

You might think these words were written a number of decades ago, if it were not for the reference to the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement. But no – these are the words Ivor Blumenthal, a Jewish man himself, published on his blog yesterday, in reference to Jewish folk who are anti-Israel. For more on Blumenthal and his history of controversy, read this post by Nathan Geffen and Mary-Anne Gontsana. In a response typified by complete tone-deafness to history, the Cape Town Jewish Board of Deputies said:

Dr Ivan Blumenthal expresses a personal opinion in his blog titled “You cannot fight it darling – a Jew is a Zionist. By birth, not by choice.” The Cape SA Jewish Board of Deputies feels no need to comment on the opinions of an individual within the Jewish Community who is not speaking on behalf of any Jewish communal organisation.

But offering any response at all (ie. acknowledging the existence of the case) without expressing judgement is already a comment of sorts, because the response entails the Board of Deputies declining a clear opportunity to say something even as benign as “obviously, we don’t share his views, but he has the right to hold and express them”. The Board of Deputies might well think Blumenthal’s position correct, even if they would not go as far in expressing it (through a “mark of shame”, for example) – but through not condemning his excesses, they align themselves with the sort (regardless of degree) of intolerance and prejudice I was led to believe they were vehemently opposed to.

Blumenthal also says:

Centuries ago we would have stoned people like this to death. Death is today not an option because, it just so happens that in South Africa we have some of the most stringent Human Rights legislation, ironically developed and forced through Parliament by – Jews, most of them who are the turncoat, ant-semetic (sic), self-hating, treacherous Jews.

While this (for me) stops short of a call to violence, it’s still reprehensible – and whether or not it counts as hate speech under South African law, it’s nevertheless worth denouncing, loudly and wherever possible. Including by the Cape Jewish Board of Deputies, who you’d think would be more sensitive to the potential that words hold to cause harm.

IHEU report on social media and discrimination against the non-religious

The IHEU is today releasing a report on discrimination against non-religious people, with examples drawn from all over the world. It makes for interesting reading, because in addition to all the cases that get widespread media attention, the problem of discrimination against the non-religious is perhaps a larger one than many people realise. The report offers many examples of such discrimination, sometimes in the expected places, but also in jurisdictions where you’d hope for freedom from persecution on grounds of non-belief.

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Blasphemy prosecutions rise with social media

New report highlights persecution of atheists

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) has produced the first report focusing on how countries around the world discriminate against non-religious people. Freedom of Thought 2012: A Global Report on Discrimination Against Humanists, Atheists and the Non-religious (pdf) has been published to mark Human Rights Day, Monday 10 December.

Freedom of Thought 2012 covers laws affecting freedom of conscience in 60 countries and lists numerous individual cases where atheists have been prosecuted for their beliefs in 2012. It reports on laws that deny atheists’ right to exist, curtail their freedom of belief and expression, revoke their right to citizenship, restrict their right to marry, obstruct their access to public education, prohibit them from holding public office, prevent them from working for the state, criminalize their criticism of religion, and execute them for leaving the religion of their parents.

The report highlights a sharp increase in arrests for “blasphemy” on social media this year. The previous three years saw just three such cases, but in 2012 more than a dozen people in ten countries have been prosecuted for “blasphemy” on Facebook or Twitter, including:

  • In Indonesia, Alexander Aan was jailed for two-and-a-half years for Facebook posts on atheism.
  • In Tunisia, two young atheists, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji, were sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for Facebook postings that were judged blasphemous.
  • In Turkey, pianist and atheist Fazil Say faces jail for “blasphemous” tweets.
  • In Greece, Phillipos Loizos created a Facebook page that poked fun at Greeks’ belief in miracles and is now charged with insulting religion.
  • In Egypt, 17-year-old Gamal Abdou Massoud was sentenced to three years in jail, and Bishoy Kamel was imprisoned for six years, both for posting “blasphemous” cartoons on Facebook.
  • The founder of Egypt’s Facebook Atheists, Alber Saber, faces jail time (he will be sentenced on 12 December).

“When 21st century technology collides with medieval blasphemy laws, it seems to be atheists who are getting hurt, as more of them go to prison for sharing their personal beliefs via social media,” said Matt Cherry, the report’s editor. “Across the world the reactionary impulse to punish new ideas, or in some cases the merest expression of disbelief, recurs again and again. We even have a case in Tunisia of a journalist arrested for daring to criticize a proposed blasphemy law!”

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief, Professor Heiner Bielefeldt, welcomed the research. In a foreword to the report Bielefeldt notes that there is often “little awareness” that international human rights treaties mean freedom of conscience applies equally to “atheists, humanists and freethinkers and their convictions, practices and organizations. I am therefore delighted that for the first time the Humanist community has produced a global report on discrimination against atheists. I hope it will be given careful consideration by everyone concerned with freedom of religion or belief.”

Notes

An advance copy of the Freedom of Thought 2012 report is available from:

http://www.iheu.org/files/IHEU Freedom of Thought 2012.pdf

The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the world umbrella group bringing together more than 100 Humanist, atheist, rationalist, secularist, and freethought organizations from 40 countries.

For more information contact:

Bob Churchill, +44 207 636 4797, comms@iheu.org

Or Matt Cherry, +1 518 632 1040, Matt@IHEU.org