- The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1997
Principles of secular humanism.
- American Fascists
The Christian Right and the War on America
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2006
Hedges examines the Christian Right's origins, its driving motivation and its dark ideological underpinnings, with interviews and coverage of events such as pro-life rallies and weeklong classes on conversion techniques. Hedges argues that the movement resembles the young fascist movements in Italiy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, movements that often masked the full extent of their drive for totalitarianism and were willing to make concessions until they achieved unrivaled power. He challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society.
- An anti-clerical policy of Socialism
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1903
According to Luxemburg, "the incessant guerrilla warfare waged for the last ten years against the priests is for French middle-class Republicans one of the best ways of turning away the attention of the working-class from social questions, and of weakening the class struggle."
- Beyond the Veil
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
The question of the Muslim veil seems never to leave the headlines for long. The latest controversies have erupted in Britain after a defendant in a criminal trial demanded the right to wear a niqab in court and a college attempted to proscribe it.
- Bigotry in the Guise of Secularism
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2015
The murder at Charlie Hebdo and the Paris kosher supermarket have unleashed a wave of attacks on French Muslim communities, their culture and religion.The analysis by Carmen Teeple Hopkins helps explain the background of the present dangers and tragedies.
- Broadcast Licenses for Religious Groups
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1999
Religious freedom does not imply the right of any group to use the public airwaves to promulgate their own religious views while excluding all conflicting points of view.
- Chasing a Mirage
The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2008
According to Tarek Fatah, "Morality is doing what is right, regardless what we are told; Religious dogma is doing what we are told, no matter what is right." Fatah argues that since Islam's advent, there have been two parallel strains of the religion that are in clash. The first "state of Islam" is a person's moral compass; the way Islam governs an individual's personal life. By contrast, the yearning for "an Islamic state" has been bloody and fruitless.
- Connexions Annual Resource and Reading List
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1994
A short and selective list of resources on issues addressed in the Connexions Annual, such as environment, education, peace, interntional development, women's issues, urban issues, housing, human rights, civil liberties, social change.
- Connexions Library: Race, Racism, Ethnicity, Multiculturalism Focus
Resource Type: Website
Published: 2009
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on race, racism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, identity.
- The Future Belongs to the Blasphemers
A message from ex-Muslims to mark International Blasphemy Day
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2017
Some people believe that disagreeing with deeply held beliefs is hate. It is not. I want to remind you that many of the most powerful ideas, ideas that changed our world were once heretical. I want to remind you that many of the most radical thinkers and reformists in past eras were blasphemers against the established order of their day.
- In Defence of Democracy
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2012
On Jacques Berlinerblau's book How to Be Secular.
- The lessons we have learned
Palestine & Iraq: Any Signs of Hope?
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2002
A speech on "the peace movement: lessons learned and the way forward." Henry Lowi argues that "There is no sign of hope, for the old prejudices and the old concepts, and there is no hope for the colonialists, and the supremacists, and the ethnic nationalists. There is hope for those who proclaim clearly, and organize diligently, for coexistence between Arabs and Jews under a democratic constitution that upholds human rights."
- Malik, Kenan
Resource Type: Website
Website and blog of Kenan Malik, featuring articles on race, identity, multiculturalism, diversity, and censorship.
- The Many Roots of Christian Europe
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2014
This is a transcript of a I talk I gave yesterday at the LSE Literary Festival. My thanks to Arthur Bradley who also took part and responded to many of the themes I raised here and to Danielle Sands of the Forum for European Philosophy for organising the discussion.
- Married to Another Man
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2007
Karmi argues that Israel has never been able to solve the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. She maintains that the problem is unsoluble and that the only solution is a single secular state in which Jews and Palestinians are equal.
- The Marxists and the Jewish Question
The History of a Debate 1843 - 1943
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1994
Covers the difficult history of European Marxists' efforts to comprehend what "The Jewish Question" was about. The assumption that Jewish life and religion were a historical anachronism, something that would naturally disappear with the end of their specific economic function in the development of capitalism, also implied that the medieval legacy of Jew-hatred would vanish as well.The possibility of a new and even more virulent, racialist revival of Jew-hatred -- anti-Semitism -- was overlooked by thinkers and parties who envisioned an inevitable evolution toward socialism.
- Merry Christmas from an Atheist
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2006
I probably represent one of Archbishop John Sentanu's worst nightmares - I am not just an 'aggressive secularist' but a militant atheist to boot. But I have a Christmas tree in the house, I've sent out my Christmas cards, bought my Christmas presents and I will cook goose on Christmas Day. And I will probably listen to Bach's Christmas Oratorio or to Mahalia Jackson's wonderful gospel singing while I am doing so. Yet I don't have a religious bone in my body.
- Muslim Canadian Congress
Resource Type: Website
A grassroots organization that provides a voice to Muslims who are not represented by existing organizations; organizations that are either sectarian or ethnocentric, largely authoritarian, and influenced by a fear of modernity and an aversion to joy.
- The OIC does not speak for Muslims
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2008
Tarek Fatah says that "To suggest that any criticism of Islamism, the political ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian Ayatollahs, is anti-Islamic is a bogus and fraudulent position. I would contend that my religion Islam demands that I stand up to these bullies and take away from their right to put padlocks on poetry and chastity belts on independent thinking."
- On the Second Coming of Religion
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2012
The question we should ask is not just: ‘What is it about religion that makes people believe or behave in certain ways?’ It is also: ‘What is it about contemporary societies that draws many people, both religious and non-religious, towards nihilistic, narcissistic, anti-modern forms of belief?’
- Overcoming Zionism
Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2007
Kovel argues that the inner contradictions of Zionism have led Israel to a 'state-sponsored racism' fully as incorrigible as that of apartheid South Africa and deserving of the same resolution. Only a path toward a single-state secular democracy can provide the justice essential to healing the wounds of the Middle East. Kovel draws on his detailed knowledge of the Middle East to show that Zionism and democracy are essentially incompatible. Ultimately, Kovel argues, a two-state solution is essentially hopeless as it concedes too much to the regressive forces of nationalism, in which lie the roots of continued conflict.
- Radical Digressions 2
Resource Type: Website
Published: 2000
- Rahul Pandita's New India: A Hindutva India On the Ashes Of Democratic Secular India
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2017
Shamsul Islam responds to the rise of the Hindutva in India and challenges their anti-Muslim propaganda.
- Religion - Secularism: Ulli Diemer - Selected snippets & quotes from Radical Digressions
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
- The Right to Offend
Resource Type: Article
Published: 1991
Humans do have a right to offend other humans, especially in presenting dissent from the views with which many people seem to be very content. This includes those views called religious.
- The rise of humanism and secularism in Iran
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2005
The backlash and opposition in Iran is at its essence strongly humanist, secularist and modern. You can see it clearly in the rational, popular, and spontaneous acts and the
establishment of hundreds of organisations outside government structures and restrictions that are non-religious and purely for the defence of the human being via reliance on human will.
- The St. Petersburg Declaration
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2007
We are secular Muslims, and secular persons of Muslim societies. We are believers, doubters, and unbelievers, brought together by a great struggle, not between the West and Islam, but between the free and the unfree.
- Secularism
Connexipedia Article
Resource Type: Article
The concept that government or other entities should exist separately from religion and/or religious beliefs.
- Secularist Center for Inquiry Delivers Statement to UN Opposing "Defamation of Religions" Resolution
Sources News Release
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2009
The Center for Inquiry (CFI), a secularist think tank and NGO has delivered a statement strongly opposing the proposed "Combating the Defamation of Religions" resolution backed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
- Secularists and free thinkers - Maryam Namazie on the freedom to choose
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2020
A veteran campaigner for human, especially women's rights, Maryam Namazie speaks with the eloquence and quiet confidence that comes with years of sustained activism on issues ranging from Islamophobia, to blasphemy, misogyny and sex apartheid.
- Sharia 'Courts': Why Regulation is Not the Answer
Resource Type: Article
'Sharia' and other religious systems of arbitration are back in the news once again. There appears to be growing recognition of the profoundly discriminatory nature of religious arbitration systems which relegate Muslim and other minority women to second rate systems of justice. But is regulation the answer?
- The Sharia debate in the UK: who will listen to our voices?
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
Over 300 abused women have signed a statement opposing Sharia courts and religious bodies, warning of the growing threat to their rights and to their collective struggles for security and independence.
- The Social Passion
Religion and Social Reform in Canada 1914-28
Resource Type: Book
Published: 1973
An account of the movement within Canadian protestantism which sought to revive the neglected social dimensions of Christianity and to involve the church in social action.
- The Socialist Register 1989
Volume 25: Revolution Today. Aspirations and Realities
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1989
- Tactics of desperation: Using false accusations of 'anti-semitism' as a weapon to silence criticism of Israel's behaviour
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2009
The Israeli state and its defenders are increasingly attempting to silence critics because they are losing the battle for public opinion.
- UK: Walking a tightrope: Between the pro-Islamist Left and the far-Right
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
Opposing Sharia and Islamism in the west is like walking on a tight rope most of the time -- thwarting attacks from the Left, refuting cultural relativism, preventing alliances with the far-Right, explaining the issues ignored by government and the media, mobilising support for secularism and citizenship whilst opposing racism and xenophobia, and making linkages with the many fighting Islamism on the ground in countries across the world.
- Why is Inclusive Mosque so Afraid of Secularism?
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
Secularism is merely a framework that separates religion from the state to ensure that religion cannot influence the state and public policy and impose itself on private lives. After all, not everyone in a given society is a believer and even if they are, they don’t usually want the state to tell them how to believe. Only a secular framework can ensure the equal rights of all citizens before the law and not different rights for different categories of communalised groups. It is only a secular framework that can ensure one law for all via changeable laws made by people versus unchangeable ‘divine’ laws imposed by clerics. It is a secular framework which can allow for multi-ethnic, multi-religious and plural societies and is a minimum precondition for the rights of women and minorities. It is a secular framework that can ensure freedom of conscience, including freedom of and from religion.
- Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here
Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism
Resource Type: Book
Published: 2013
Karima Bennoune interviews 300 people from 30 countries to report on a largely invisible group of people: Muslim opponents of fundamentalism. They remain largely invisible, lost amid the heated coverage of Islamist terror attacks on one side and abuses perpetrated against suspected terrorists on the other. A veteran of twenty years of human rights research and activism, Karima Bennoune draws on extensive fieldwork and interviews to illuminate the inspiring stories of those who represent one of the best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide.
- Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, by Karima Bennoune (Book Review)
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2013
Karima Bennoune, a US-based law scholar raised in Algeria, has written an account of the stories of numerous people whose lives have been scarred by Islamic fundamentalism and who decided, using a variety of means, to put up a fight.
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