‘That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me’ wrote C. S. Lewis of his conversion to Christianity in Surprised By Joy. ‘In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.’ Like most new Christians, Lewis converted because he had become convinced of the truth of the Scriptures and felt a connection with the God of the Bible. He went on to become the most famous Christian apologist of the twentieth century, always arguing in support of a literal, real and personal God.

In the twenty-first century, the God of the Christian Bible has found new defenders. Unlike Lewis, they do not argue that he is real. Rather, they argue that he is necessary. More specifically, that he provides our civilisation with its ethical foundations, and without him, we face nihilism. New Atheism ‘inherits a vague rational humanism that it has to pretend is natural, or common-sense,’ wrote Theo Hobson in Spectator. ‘It’s an important task of Christian apologetics to point this out, to insist that the moral assumptions of our culture have Christian roots.’

‘Atheism can’t equip us for civilisational war’ was Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s position in her article on her conversion to Christianity, published in November 2023 in UnHerd. Referring favourably to Tom Holland’s Dominion, she wrote that ‘all sorts of apparently secular freedoms — of the market, of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.’ Ali does not mention accepting Christianity’s metaphysical claims in the article.

Perhaps no public figure has become more associated with this argument than Jordan Peterson. Peterson does not appear to believe in a literal supernatural being, but believes that the secular ethics of the modern west are based in Judeo-Christian values and it would be better if we acted as though the Christian God did exist. ‘What else do you have?’ he demanded of sceptical young men in his 2022 message to Christian churches. And, to those who might respond by saying that they do not believe in the doctrines of the Church, ‘who cares what you believe?’

This argument is made by conservatives and directed at a specific audience: non-religious people sceptical of modern progressivism. Christianity, they argue, provides a bulwark against geopolitical threats like Islamic fundamentalism and China, and against the extremes of ‘woke’ culture. I have not heard left-wing Christians argue that only Christian ethics provides a basis for demanding that the rich give away their wealth and care for the poor, although such an argument would be similar.

There are a few problems with this claim. Proving that Christianity is influential would not prove that its supernatural claims are true, and visa-versa. For this reason, atheists of different political opinions do not find the argument satisfactory. Secular humanist Matt Dillahunty had a lengthy debate with Peterson which left him, as he later told Douglas Murray, ‘confused and more than a little irritated.’

‘I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible,’ Dillahunty said, explaining that things were true or not based on whether they comported with reality. The usefulness of God is irrelevant to his existence.

It is also unsatisfactory to the conventionally religious, for similar reasons. ‘Contra Peterson, the story of Scripture was not written in philosophical abstracted metaphor, but in real time, space and blood,’ wrote Dani Trewek for Gospel Coalition, a gospel advocacy group based in Australia, in 2022. ‘It is not ultimately concerned with the earthly “optimisation” of created man, but the eternal glorification of the Son of Man.’ Again, God’s usefulness is irrelevant to his existence.

Even if the argument were sound, it is not clear what we would do about it. Christianity might, as Ed West put it in Spectator, ‘meme itself back into existence’ if we all go through the motions, but it is hard to see people being persuaded into accepting the supernatural for political reasons.

I want, though, to focus on a particular problem with the argument: that it overstates the continuity of Judeo-Christian ethics. According to Genesis, God created man in his image – yet the morality of the Bible is not humanist. The Ten Commandments condemn disbelief and sabbath-breaking before murder; Leviticus and Deuteronomy are filled with condemnations of ritual offences, but permit slavery and treat women as property.

Let us look at one specific case. Writing on heresy in Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas accepts that heretics should be put to death. He favourably quotes Saint Jerome verbatim on the way heretics should be treated: ‘cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die.’ Aquinas’ position is consistent with Scripture. The God of the Bible collectively punishes societies for tolerating sin, floods the earth, rains down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, and allows the Babylonians to march the Israelites into captivity when they fail to self-police their morality. Aquinas’ position was uncontroversial in the medieval and early modern church.

Today, however, this position is repugnant to us, including among the devoutly religious. Morally, killing someone for their religious beliefs strikes us as murder. And practically, if we had kept the death penalty for heresy, we could never have achieved what we have in philosophy, science, literature and art. A society that burns heretics is doomed to stagnation. The idea of killing an individual to protect the morals of society as a whole is fundamentally incompatible with liberalism.  

In many ways, traditional Judeo-Christian ethics are as different from modern secular ethics as Sharia law is. This is not to condemn them for being unusually bad: most pre-modern ethical codes are based in similar principles. But it does ignore the massive break with the past represented by the Enlightenment, which saw the concomitant rise of liberalism and the creation of the modern concept of human rights. In practice, the advocates of the ‘necessary’ Christian God are dining at an ethical buffet, picking and choosing from the Scriptures and the writings of theologians according to taste.  

Ultimately, there is a false dichotomy between faith, or at least the appearance of faith, and nihilism. We can – and should – consider ideas on their own merits. Those for whom faith is real and personal will believe. But those who are not persuaded by metaphysical arguments will not be persuaded by political ones, and nor should they be. Voltaire was alleged to have quipped that he did not believe in God but hoped his servant did so she did not steal his silver; the modern argument for the ‘necessity’ of Christianity, when it is boiled down, looks similar. By comparison, I actually prefer C. S. Lewis’ straightforward and direct approach.

Anyone who appreciates the benefits of living in a modern Western country can look to the tested and proven principles of the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, constitutional government and human rights. If someone wants to believe in the Christian God and in the values of the Bible, that is fine – but it is not necessary.

See also: What has Christianity to do with Western values? by Nick Cohen

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On 26 September 2023, the X handle of Pakistan’s Aurat March tweeted: ‘It’s important to keep in mind that menstruation is a biological process & biology is different from gender (which is socially constructed). Not all those who have a uterus are women & not all women have a uterus. Reducing a woman down to a uterus is misogynistic.’

Aurat March, or ‘Women’s March’, is an umbrella group led by feminist activists, which organises demonstrations across Pakistan’s major cities on International Women’s Day, and engages in other forms of rights activism across the rest of the year. Aurat March’s tweet sparked the customary backlash against the group in Pakistan, but also led to more constructive critiques from certain quarters, including a BBC Urdu article. The article cited concerns raised by certain women over Aurat March’s tweet on the grounds that it erased the biological reality of women, while also quoting the Aurat March organiser’s defence of their message.

Aurat March’s message echoed the claims of gender identity ideology, which are at present the subject of bitter disagreement in the West. The ideology claims that a person’s gender, unlike the biological sex they are born with, is down to that person’s own feelings and hence entirely subjective and a matter of self-identification: as Aurat March’s tweet puts it, that gender is ‘socially constructed’.

While evidence of gender dysphoria, and individuals identifying outside the male and female binary, can be found across human history, consolidated transgenderism emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. Western gender identity ideology differs from clinically diagnosable variance, or the earmarking of a third gender used to categorise individuals who do not fit the binary across the world. Instead, it seeks to synonymise those born in a particular sex with those identifying as such from the opposite sex, while paradoxically allotting them separate ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ labels respectively. Perhaps its most contentious assertion remains that ‘trans women are women’, which is the essence of the above-cited tweet by Aurat March and of narratives upheld by many women’s rights organisations in the region, such as Feminism In India.

It should be self-explanatory why ‘trans men are men’ never became the transgender rallying cry: quite simply, biological men are less likely to be concerned about invasion of their spaces. As the philosopher Alex Byrne put it in an interview for the Freethinker, ‘Generally speaking, men could not give a fig about whether trans men are included in men-only sporting contests or use men’s changing rooms or are in the male prison estate.’

On the flipside, regardless of where one stands on the gender debate, modern-day transgenderism quite evidently clashes with hard-earned sex-based rights that women activists have toiled for over the past century. In the West, concerns over female physical and reproductive integrity, and the desire to retain women-only spaces, have transformed bathrooms, prisons, and sports competitions into gender ideology battlegrounds. But while the simmering debate over the clash between transgenderism and sex-based rights is founded over a largely egalitarian bedrock in the West, the thoughtless imitation of gender identity ideology has much more perilous repercussions in the Indian subcontinent, with its predominantly patriarchal culture.

Attitudes to women and the opportunities available to them differ between the South Asian states. However, as a regional bloc, these states are among the lowest ranked on global gender indices. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2023, six of the seven SAARC states, namely India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, ranked lower than 100 in the 146-country rankings; India did so despite staking a credible claim to being a global power. Across South Asia, institutionalised gender disparity, upheld by state-backed radical religionism, as well as skewed cultural norms, and ethnic, racial, or casteist divides, has made it more critical than ever for local feminists to take up a united front against the patriarchal forces which are still very much alive. However, the influx of gender identity ideology has polarised subcontinental feminism to a point where, in a bitter irony, violent misogynists have a clearer understanding of who or what a woman is than organisations dedicated to safeguarding women.

I spoke with over 100 feminist activists across the Indian subcontinent to discuss the influence of gender identity ideology on South Asian women’s rights movements. The investigations have unveiled ominous patterns. Most activists in leadership positions tended to be proponents of gender identity ideology: this reflects the almost unanimous espousal of this ideology across major feminist organisations in the region. For instance, veteran Indian women’s rights activist Urvashi Butalia, co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house, insists ‘trans women are essential to Indian feminism’.

Many gender critical feminists whom I spoke to preferred to remain anonymous, fearing backlash within their organisations and movements. What was also evident was the urban-rural divide in the endorsement of narratives, with many from smaller towns critiquing the predominantly Western-educated feminist leaders for enforcing ‘foreign ideas’ that were detached from the ground realities of these countries.

In fact, it is simply not possible to initiate an egalitarian debate on gender identity in traditional rural communities like those scattered across southern Asia. In these communities, there is institutionalised gender inequality. Their religionist laws render women insignificant or unequal in familial matters, or half as worthy as men in legal matters. Indeed, the entire course of your life may be predetermined if you are born female. In such communities, women are second-class citizens. Given this codification of gender disparity, the idea of campaigning for the right of men to identify and be legally treated as women would simply be met with incredulity.

On the other hand, in the current legal landscape, there are good reasons why women might want to identify as men: so as to receive better treatment. Many gender critical feminists I spoke to insist that this is happening already. The Indian film maker Vaishnavi Sundar covered the topic in a 2021 documentary on the effect of gender identity on women and girls, especially in developing countries, entitled Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood Like a House on Fire. Some feminists I spoke to in Bangladesh also said that women are being encouraged by sexist Islamic inheritance laws to identify as men, given the sharia provisions tilted in men’s favour. Of course, there are then complications when trans people want to detransition – but that is another story.

This does not mean that an idea or ideology should be rejected in south Asian countries simply because it has its origins in the West. Doing so would simply pander to the hypernationalist or religionist rhetoric that labels all foreign ideologies that differ from a local community’s values as a conspiracy that aims to destroy their religious or cultural beliefs.

This consideration has led to a dilemma for gender critical feminists in South Asia, who want to challenge the sweeping enforcement of Western gender identity ideology, while at the same time being determined not to ally themselves with religionist bigots who advocate violence against marginalised communities at home. Making dissent even more complicated is the fact that even those South Asian feminists who have criticised the gender ideology pervading left-leaning Western media have used a religious or cultural relativist rationale to justify their position. For instance, they have deployed oxymoronic terms like ‘Islamic feminism’ to advocate for movements more palatable to the masses. Yet the idea that a religion that is explicitly misogynistic by modern standards could be inherently feminist is ludicrous.

Put simply, gender equality is widely considered an unpalatable foreign idea in South Asia. When faced with two unpalatable foreign ideas that conflict with each other – gender equality and gender identity ideology – feminists, in their efforts to resist hyperconservative backlash, are truly between a rock and a hard place.

My investigations have further exposed the role played by the plight of South Asia’s hijra or khawaja sara community in the acceptance of the prevalent transgender ideology in progressive circles. The hijra have been institutionalised as the ‘third gender’.

In South Asia, the ‘third gender’ has historically denoted intersex individuals and eunuchs, and has therefore been grounded in biological reality. However, both historically and today, many biological men and some women have also identified as the third gender, which also overlapped with homosexuality. In short, the ‘third gender’ has been used as a broader umbrella term to incorporate all identities that did not align with the heterosexual male or female. Critically, however, it has never clashed with sex-based rights or gender critical feminism, since it has not attempted to impinge on the categories of male and female gender. In contrast, Western transgender ideology negates this idea of a third gender, insisting on self-identification even for the determination of who a man or woman is. Yet having a third category actually helps to address many of the conflicts within genders and movements, not least because the hijra or khawaja sara community do not stake a claim to women’s spaces.

Surprisingly, numerous local feminists interviewed for the piece were unaware of western transgender ideology; instead, they equated the term ‘transgender’ with the indigenous hijra or khawaja sara. This tendency to identify the foreign concept with the local one also explains the passage of transgender rights legislations in some South Asian countries, even though homosexuality is still criminalised or violently punished in those countries, and many crimes of conscience are still punishable by death. In Pakistan, for instance, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 was passed as a codification of the fundamental rights of the hijra community as a third gender. However, its phrasing, which endorses the right for anyone to identify as a man or woman, regardless of their biological identity, led to it being struck down by the Federal Shariat Court as ‘un-Islamic’ on the grounds that it ‘promotes homosexuality’, which is criminalised in Pakistan.   

For many South Asian liberals, to question transgender ideology would simply be to endorse the brutalities and discrimination that LGBT people of all kinds continue to face in South Asia, ranging from taboos surrounding their existence to gruesome murders. In the light of the physical threats faced by the local transgender or khawaja sara community, even gender critical feminists have been forced to reconsider their critique of transgenderism.

In this turbulent context, it is easy to view Western transgender ideology as simply another cause that is trampled on by local prejudice, along with homophobia and misogyny. However, in reality, doing so can muddy the waters still further.  

Many activists, especially those outside South Asian urban centres, insist that the ideological polarisation imported from the Western culture wars needs to be countered by movements that are clear and cognisant of the differences that shape communities in the Indian subcontinent, and which channel their activism accordingly.

‘The gender debate has indeed polarised not only the West but [societies] all over the world. The conflation of the hijra community with the transgender identity [is a] complex issue. It is crucial for organisations to recognise and address the unique challenges faced by the hijra community [and] emphasise the importance of nuanced understanding,’ says Dr SN Sharma, the CEO of the Rajasthan Samgrah Kalyan Sansthan, a human rights organisation based in Ajmer, India, which is dedicated to supporting the marginalised.

In a 2017 BBC documentary, Inside Transgender Pakistan, members of the khawaja sara community expressed their condemnation of western transgenderism as a threat to their right to identify as the third gender. Today, that hard-won identity is being labelled ‘problematic’ in progressive circles in South Asia itself, from Nepal to Bangladesh. Prominent hijra activists in the Indian subcontinent now are echoing western transgender narratives. One explanation for this, which is perhaps pragmatic rather than idealistic, is the growing support for transgender rights as a whole among non-governmental organisations, which often rely on Western funds for their sustenance. The funding and its concomitant influence from the West are a critical factor for such organisations in the region, especially those geared towards fighting for human rights. This necessary influence inevitably aligns the activism compass of feminist movements to the West as well.

This alignment with human rights values in the Western tradition largely results in important work being done on the rights front. Yet at the same time, it inadvertently puts the urban Western-educated elite at the helm of local progressive movements. Many working class feminists and senior women’s rights figures whom I spoke to underlined the fact that, in the past, rights activism was often voluntarily undertaken by women in parallel with full-time jobs or family lives. Today, however, rights activism has become an entire profession and a livelihood for many individuals. This situation reaffirms the stranglehold of the elite over human rights in India, Pakistan and elsewhere. These urban, Western-educated leaders face little challenge from less Westernised subordinates, often from smaller towns, who are unwilling to challenge narratives dictated from the top, out of fear that it might jeopardise their own position – and employment.

‘Not only narratives, they also promote fellow feminists from their urban inner elite circle,’ journalist and activist Tehreem Azeem, who has worked for numerous rights organisations, told me. ‘They are Western-educated and follow woke ideas and this reflects in their narratives, especially on social media. We often don’t know who is making organisational decisions, you are not allowed to enter that circle.’

This takeover of the Westernised elite results in indigenous rights movements even echoes Western language, often quite literally. One prominent example is that many feminist organisations across the subcontinent ask participants at events and trainings to list their preferred pronouns in the English language. This, many feminists from smaller towns insist, is a regular practice even in rural areas where English is not as commonly understood.

‘In many workshops and conferences they would ask participants to introduce themselves and then share their pronouns, which I always felt was extremely bizarre, given the context of our setting,’ says Azeem. ‘Even if you are importing something from the West, you can try to bring it in the local context.’

More than the categorisation of preferred pronouns, the fact that this exercise is done almost exclusively in the English language is perhaps the biggest giveaway in identifying the disconnect between the values of the human rights elite and the masses. The most commonly spoken languages across the Indian subcontinent, including over a hundred regional languages and Hindi and Urdu (the most widely understood), are intrinsically gendered and devoid of gender neutral pronouns and phrases once conjugated with the subject. Those displaying English language pronouns, especially those who are not transgender themselves, seem less invested in founding ungendered language at home than they are in finding commonality and acceptance within elite Western circles.

Many feminist workers told me that the leaderships of their rights organisations feel a need to align themselves with foreign narratives, because a large proportion of the funds for such groups comes from Western countries. Some workers said that it is pressure from Western donors that compels local organisations to align their narratives accordingly. Others argued that even though the foreign funders never explicitly dictate the ideology of local groups, there remains competition among organisations within the same country to win Western grants: this pushes a need to find connectivity and validation among them, not least by speaking their language and swallowing their values whole. Furthermore, the South Asian political left is virtually camped in Western institutes: they are educated in the West, have lived there, and spend a considerable amount of time in Western leftist circles.

This inevitably results in an inflow of West-centred arguments. Ironically, many of the postcolonial narratives are churned out by universities based in former colonising countries such as the UK, and readopted by the university-educated elite in their former colonies. 

People in South Asia who condemn feminist organisations from the outside, such as influential  figures like Jagadish Vasudev or Zakir Naik, predominantly come from a position of opposing women’s rights movements as a whole, preferring to enforce patriarchal norms. A different type of challenge to feminist organisations is posed by dissenters within their own ranks.

In India and Pakistan, as in the UK and the US, gender critical feminists who advocate sex-based rights are targeted – and with the same weapons. ‘Terf’, or ‘trans-exclusionary radical feminist’, is now a slur being deployed to silence gender critical voices in South Asia.

These types of allegations were, for instance, also made against one of the Indian subcontinent’s most prominent feminist activists, Kamla Bhasin. Bahsin, an activist, author and social scientist who passed away in 2021, had decades of women’s rights work under her belt, the last 20 years of which saw her found Sangat, a network of South Asian feminists.

I spoke to thirteen members of Sangat about the allegations that Bhasin faced months before she passed away. Bhasin was accused by various feminist groups, including Feminism In India, of being a ‘transphobe’, because she was critical of the gender identity narrative and endorsed a biological definition of ‘woman’. For these members of Sangat, the treatment of Bhasin was a reminder that even half a century of women’s rights advocacy was not enough for one of its leading activists to be given the space to dissent against gender identity ideology. Most of the Sangat graduates whom I spoke to believed that while disagreements with some of Bhasin’s views have always existed among the network, the unified public backlash against her over her gender critical views came as a shock. This backlash further silenced many feminists into acquiescence over the general direction of the movement.

Even so, many South Asian feminist voices still decide to go public with their dissenting views on gender identity ideology, often at personal cost. Among these is Thulasi Muttulingam, the founder of Humans of Northern Sri Lanka. ‘The wider networks of feminists – it’s a small country and we know each other [and] have networked together on various issues – have cancelled me,’ she says. The backlash, she stresses, came three years ago when she first began questioning the animosity against JK Rowling over her gender critical views. Muttulingam, a member of women’s rights organisation Vallamai, says her women’s day speech was boycotted this year, because she chose the theme of transgenderism and sex-based rights. ‘It was the Social Scientists Study circle and their monthly meetings are usually well attended,’ she said. The poor attendance ‘told me how much the liberals were scared off by the topic. Then a network of diaspora and Tamil feminists held a Zoom meeting to misrepresent what I said and denounced me as a bigot [and] transphobe.’

Natasha Noreen, the founder of Feminism Pakistan, saw a similar backlash when she shared gender critical views on her Facebook page which endorsed Rowling’s position on womanhood and insisted that biological men cannot become women simply by identifying as such.

‘The cancellation campaign began. Activists from Islamabad and Lahore started bashing me,’ she said. ‘I was invited to an online session, where I was told it was going to be a neutral talk, while four other participants and the host all were on one side just humiliating me.’ Noreen, like others critical of transgenderism and its denial of sex-based spaces for women, has been removed from social, professional, and activist groups.  ‘Fellow [women’s rights] activists have stopped talking to me. Pakistani feminists were my tribe, my people.’

Vaishnavi Sundar, meanwhile, was not just cancelled in India but also in the US, where the scheduled New York screening of her documentary on workplace harassment, ‘But What Was She Wearing’ was stopped owing to her views on pre-operative trans women. ‘Why are you cancelling an Indian woman [in America] for something she tweeted on her private Twitter? I just wanted to preserve women-only spaces,’ she told me. Since then Sundar has been blocked out of many feminist initiatives and groups and has had to focus on working independently. ‘People just stopped responding, stopped talking, stopped doing a lot of things that they used to before,’ she said. ‘I used to be one of those go-to people on things concerning women. Because I’ve researched on this for so long. It’s as if I made this observation on the trans ideology and suddenly my expertise and my films don’t matter anymore, because I have committed the cardinal sin of saying trans women are not women.’

It is important to underline here that many of these South Asian feminist voices cancelled as ‘transphobes’ have been long advocates of gay rights and the rights of the traditional hijra community in South Asia. Much of the critique of modern transgenderism made by such gender critical feminists aims to distinguish biological sex, and to use that scientific reality to reaffirm the importance of women-only spaces. It is certainly not intended to support the persecution of individuals.  

Wherever one stands on the divide between Western transgender activists and gender critical feminists, there are two irrefutable and vital facts that need to be taken into consideration. First, that there is a clash between advocates of gender identity ideology on the one hand, and, on the other, advocates not just of sex-based, but also of gay rights, and those defining their sex or sexuality based on the human anatomy. The second fact, especially critical to the Indian subcontinent, is that modern transgender ideology is very novel to the region, where individuals not considered male or female have historically been assigned to a third, broader gender.

Faced with these realities, the silencing of gender critical feminists, especially among the urban women’s rights groups, is bound to be detrimental not just to women’s rights, but to the well-being of all groups that these organisations are claiming to protect.

This point cannot be stressed enough. The proponents of gender neutral language on issues that overwhelmingly concern the female sex insist that all historically considered ‘women’s issues’ are no longer in fact women’s issues. If their approach is adopted without question, then for all practical purposes there is no exclusive women’s rights movement, and in turn no feminism.

What exclusive women’s issue would Feminism In India be concerned with, if feminism is redefined to concern every type of person except the cisgendered heterosexual male? Why would ‘Aurat March’ continue to use the ‘Aurat’ prefix and not call itself Insaan, or ‘Human’, march? This type of attitude from Western transgender activists and ‘allies’ has made it all too easy for patriarchal, conservative and misogynistic detractors of feminism, especially in South Asia, to insist that there is no such thing as exclusively women’s rights. Feminist groups in the Indian subcontinent are practically making the same argument as their conservative opponents – ostensibly in the name of progress.  

Local movements that had begun to put forth the notion that a woman should not be limited by her anatomy are now upholding the idea that a woman is not defined by any particular anatomy at all. Similarly, where the purpose of challenging gender was to oppose gender roles and stereotypes, now those who purport to challenge gender stereotypes either use those very stereotypes as evidence of transgenderism, or try to eradicate or deny the idea of gender altogether.

Tasaffy Hossain, the founder of the Bangladesh-based organisation Bonhishikha, which uses the tagline ‘unlearn gender’, argues that much of the conversation in South Asia on transgender rights is still based on the realities of the West, and that it is critical to uphold the concerns of all groups and all identities in the region. ‘There is the issue of what feels safe for whom, what is triggering for whom, which is a deeper conversation. Cis women would have a different concept of what is safety to them. Trans women would have a different idea of what is safe to them. Even within the queer spaces we have seen, it’s not always safe just because everyone is queer,’ she told me.

Hossain echoes pretty much every South Asian women and gender rights organisation, those advocating gender identity ideology and its critics, when she says that ‘not enough conversation has been had’ over these concerns. However, many of those leading feminist organisations in the Indian subcontinent, who lament the lack of such conversations, have done little to allow an equal opportunity to share opposing ideas within feminist circles, and have in fact predetermined the conclusion of discussions that are yet to be openly had.

The failure to acknowledge the distinguishing characteristics of different identities, and in turn the exclusivity of their concerns, is creating rifts within minority movements that have only just begun to reverberate at the grassroots level. This is only emboldening the misogynistic forces within South Asia, such as religionist groups and ultra-conservative politicians, who are successfully exploiting the gaping hole between insufficiently dissected gender ideas and the depressingly patriarchal, religious-supremacist realities on the ground.

To counter the regressive forces that are targeting marginalised communities in the Indian subcontinent, it is important that South Asian rights movements embrace the dissenters within their communities, and appreciate the distinctions that they want to make. This is the only way that they will be able to address their different concerns, which are grounded in the unique realities of individuals, subgroups and the region as a whole. Similarly, it is time for Western advocates of gender identity ideology to acknowledge the negative impact which their ideology is having on the rights of violently marginalised people across the world, such as the women and hijra in the Indian subcontinent. For the problem with absolutist ideologies is that they are theoretical and totalitarian – and as such, they always risk becoming inhumane.  

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2023 has been an eventful year for free thought, humanism and secularism. Below, Emma Park and Daniel James Sharp look back on some of the major issues that have been debated in the Freethinker this year.

I. Free speech, religion and the culture wars

Free thought and intellectual progress are not possible without a shared culture of free speech, open debate and a willingness to engage with different points of view. One of the Freethinker’s concerns this year has been with attempts to repress free speech, especially in the UK and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, and in the context of the ‘culture wars’.

In Ireland, a new bill on hate offences threatens to undermine free speech, not just about religion but on a variety of the most sensitive topics – in other words, topics on which open debate is crucial. In Wakefield, England, in February, a non-Muslim woman, presumably under pressure, donned a veil and made a humiliating public apology in the local mosque, because her autistic son had brought a copy of the Quran into school and it was accidentally scuffed. And Puffin has made attempts to censor Roald Dahl in the name of ‘sensitivity’.

Free speech at universities also remains under pressure, as illustrated by the case of Professor Steven Greer, who was hounded by Bristol University Islamic Society in a smear campaign that was supported by academic colleagues who should have known better. Daniel reviewed Greer’s book about his experiences.

Across the pond, Professor Alex Byrne’s contract for a book critical of gender identity ideology was cancelled by Oxford University Press, but has since been published by Polity. From a different perspective, former vice chancellor Julius Weinberg argued that ‘freedom of speech is not as simple as my right to express my ideas’.

To supporters of democracy in Hong Kong, the culture wars are all but an irrelevance. The suffocating control of the Chinese Communist Party, said Kevin Yam, forced campaigners across the political spectrum to work together.

II. Science, philosophy, and humanism

As well as exploring the issues of the day, the Freethinker has also explored some of their deeper philosophical and historical contexts.

We interviewed the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett about the relationship between philosophy and science, meaning and consciousness in a godless, Darwinian universe, and New Atheism. With historian Charles Freeman, we discussed the richness and variety of the ancient Greek mind and how the coming of Christian orthodoxy put an end to that tradition. And we caught up with the humanist and author Sarah Bakewell to explore different traditions of humanism.

Meanwhile, Matt Johnson and Daniel Sharp both contributed articles about one of the most famous freethinkers of recent years, the late Christopher Hitchens.

III. Islam and free thought

With the rise of Islam in Britain and across the West, it has become urgent to consider how far the religion can be compatible with Western values and approaches. To explore this question, we interviewed Taj Hargey, possibly Britain’s only liberal imam. Other contributors have explored the need to rekindle irreverence for Islam in Muslim thought around the world, why the hijab is not a good symbol for women, and whether it is possible to distinguish between religious and political Islam.

IV. Secularism

Secularism is the principle that religion and state should be separated, and that religion should have no undue influence on public life. In the UK, thanks to a combination of political apathy and entrenched privilege, we still have an established church and unelected clergy in Parliament. Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer, spoke to the Freethinker about why he introduced a bill to disestablish the Church of England.

With a general election on the cards for 2024, Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society discussed where the political parties stand on faith schools. Two recent events in which the NSS participated revealed some of the challenges involved in secularisation. Daniel also argued in an article for Only Sky that the Church of England’s record on gay marriage is another reason to hasten disestablishment.

Other contributors to the Freethinker have looked at secularism, its history and future, in Québec, Turkey and Wales, and the strengths and weaknesses of French-style laïcité.

Did you know that, while the advancement of any religion, as well as of humanism, is considered a charitable aim under English law, the advancement of free thought, atheism or secularism is not? See Emma’s piece for New Humanist.

V. Israel and Palestine

One of the year’s biggest events—the Hamas attack against Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war—has produced a wide range of often emotional and heated responses. In contrast to all this sound and fury, the Freethinker has published a series of articles dealing with the conflict from different and often disagreeing, but rationally and charitably argued perspectives.

Kunwar Khuldune Shahid wrote about the ‘leftist postcolonial apologia’ for Hamas and argued that the Israel-Palestine conflict is, at root, a religious one, while in Emma’s interview with Taj Hargey, the imam was staunch in his support of the ‘occupied and oppressed’ Palestinians. Hina Husain wrote about her Pakistani upbringing and being inculcated with Islam-based anti-Semitism. Finally, Ralph Leonard responded to all these articles, arguing that the conflict is, in fact, inspired more by competing nationalisms than religious impulses.

VI. Republicanism

Free thought and secularism have been closely intertwined with republicanism in British history. The Freethinker has reinforced this link since its beginnings in 1881.

This year, we have continued in the same spirit of religious and political anti-authoritarianism, publishing a review by Daniel of the republican activist Graham Smith’s anti-monarchy book. Later in the year, Daniel interviewed Graham Smith in person at Conway Hall. Meanwhile, Emma delved into the archives to discover the connection between the Freethinker and Republic, of which Smith is the CEO.

See also Daniel’s article on the republican Thomas Paine’s influence on Christopher Hitchens and Tony Howe’s discussion of an even earlier famous British republican, John Milton.

VII. Free thought history

In June, we were saddened to hear of the death of Jim Herrick (1944-2023), former editor of the Freethinker. Bob Forder, NSS historian, wrote an obituary commemorating Jim’s lifelong dedication to free thought, humanism and secularism.

The composer Frances Lynch wrote a guest post about her rediscovery of Eliza Flower, a radical nineteenth-century composer associated with Conway Hall, who was neglected by the historical record because she was female.

We have also been reflecting on the history of the Freethinker and of the various non-religious movements in the UK. Former editor Nigel Sinnott kindly agreed to let us republish an article he wrote for the magazine in 1970 in which he discussed the complicated historical relationship between humanists and secularists. Historian Charlie Lynch introduced the recent book he co-wrote with two other academics charting the history of organised humanism in Britain, which Emma has also reviewed for New Humanist. And Bob Forder argued that free thought and secularism are inseparable.

VIII. The future of free thought

Artificial intelligence has made great strides in 2023. (We even used Dall-E, a generative AI model, to illustrate this post.) Given the exponential pace of development, it is clear that the implications need to be monitored very carefully. For instance, there are concerns that ChatGPT may be biased in favour of certain interpretations of Islam. And artificial general intelligence (AGI) may be just around the corner, making ethical oversight all the more urgent.

Emma and Daniel spoke about the nature of free thought and the challenges facing it today and in the future on the Humanism Now podcast, on Freethought Hour and to the Reading Humanists. Emma also spoke to the Central London Humanists about Pastafarianism, arguably the world’s fastest growing religion, and a topic about which there is much to say.

This year also saw the publication of two intriguing books about the impact of digital technology on free thought, one by Simon McCarthy-Jones, and another by Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan. Emma interviewed Laura Dodsworth for the Freethinker and reviewed both books for the Literary Review. We will be looking further at the implications of digital technology for free thought in 2024.

Finally, a request for your support…

The Freethinker is an independent, non-profit journal and completely open-access. We are funded by donations and legacies given by generations of readers back to the 19th century – and not by big corporations or billionaires. To keep us going in the future, we depend on the generosity of readers today. If you believe in the importance of fostering a culture of free thought, open enquiry and irreverence, please consider making a donation via this link.

And don’t forget to sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter, to keep abreast of the latest developments in free thought in the UK and around the world.

Postscript: a merry Christmas of sorts from Christopher Hitchens…

The post Year in review: 2023 appeared first on The Freethinker.

Quebec holds a cultural distinction in the framework of the Canadian Federation that should be better understood and appreciated. The Quebecois know what it means to take pride, collectively, in what they have fought for. Yet too often and by too many, Quebec is harshly and wrongly called racist for its pride in preserving its secularist, pluralist culture. This culture is the very same one that endless numbers of new Canadians—immigrants and refugees—freely choose to adopt by coming to Quebec to create new lives for themselves.

Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québéçois, made this point during a press conference before he met with Amira Elghawaby, the federally-appointed anti-Islamophobia adviser, earlier this year. Elghawaby had written in 2019 that ‘the majority of Quebecers appear to be swayed not by the rule of law, but by anti-Muslim sentiment.’ This was in response to public support for Bill 21, a Quebec law placing limits on the wearing of religious clothing by several types of public sector workers. Blanchet’s response to her was: ‘Someone who says Quebec is racist needs to know more about Quebec.’ I agree with him on this point. Unless you study Quebec’s history, you will have little understanding of the sociocultural and sociopolitical transformations that the province underwent after 1960, during the period of la Révolution Tranquille (‘the Quiet Revolution’).

Before the Quiet Revolution swept across the province, Quebec was a largely rural and conservative society dominated and maintained by the Catholic Church, which promoted traditional social hierarchies. During the first half of the 19th century, the Catholic Church wielded significant power in the cultural, religious and political spheres, especially in higher education. In fact, the province set up a Ministry of Public Instruction in 1868 but abolished it in 1875 due to pressure from the Church. Catholic religious leaders combined nationalism with anti-secular Ultramontane ideas to further their interests and increase their authority.

Conservative Catholic domination of Quebec reached its apogee in la Grande Noirceur (‘the Great Darkness’), the period during which Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis’ Union Nationale party held power (from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1959). Duplessis viewed Quebec as a Catholic province and ran it with an iron fist, as if it were his own private Catholic corporation. He championed values aligned with the Church and allowed Catholic leaders to directly participate in education, health services, and social assistance, thus affirming the idea of a Quebec that was distinctively and exclusively Catholic. The Duplessis era was the culmination of centuries of Catholic domination of the social and cultural framework of the province.

By the 1960s, the people of Quebec were no longer willing to remain subservient to the clergy and its political backers. ‘Things have to change,’ was one of the slogans of Quebec’s Liberal Party, led by Jean Lesage, during the 1960 election campaign. The victory of Lesage in that year was the beginning of a period of nearly 20 years of dramatic modernisation. New, progressive approaches were adopted in the social and political realms.

Notably, the Liberal government set up a Ministry of Education which created a state-controlled education system and gave women the same rights to higher education as men. It also effectively secularised Quebec by decoupling Church and state and limiting religious influence in public institutions. Since the 1960s, Quebec’s identity has been rooted in the ideal of secular governance; it is seen by Quebecois as a place where all people are represented fairly, rather than one governed by ecclesiastical power in which the clergy dominates the people.   

This brings us back to Bill 21 and Quebecois secularism today. Should accommodations for religious minorities be granted? If so, how should they be implemented and what are the limitations on such accommodations?

There are justified criticisms of Bill 21 but there is also much misunderstanding about it. These misunderstandings often stem from two different traditions and interpretations of secularism. In the English-speaking world, secularism focuses on individual freedom of religion whereas in the French-speaking world, laïcité focuses on the collective freedom from religion. This is because the English-speaking and French-speaking worlds have had different historical experiences with religion. In general, the French sought freedom from the dominance of the Catholic Church and the English fought for the individual’s freedom to worship according to their conscience.

Bill 21 is in the spirit of the secularism of the French Republic, which has also been accused of racism because of its enforcement of laïcité for religious minorities. Such accusations are misplaced, however. Bill 21 makes no distinction, for example, between the types of religious symbols worn or displayed. All religions are removed from the public sphere, and this is seen as an equaliser for the benefit of all Quebecois citizens.

‘Est Québécois qui veut l’être’ (‘Whoever wants to be a Quebecer is one’), said René Lévesque during his victory speech after the 1976 Quebec election. The ethical importance of that statement is that the social criteria for being Quebecois are not centred on ethnicity or allegiance to any religion but instead are founded in the upholding, understanding and embracing of the immemorial values of Quebec society. These values are the values of the Enlightenment, as well as liberalism and democracy.

Opponents of Bill 21 see it as a ‘racist’ ban on religious symbols. They see it as an assault on religious minorities in Quebec and argue that it misapplies the principle of religious neutrality as understood in Canadian law. This Canadian principle, which is an interpretation by the Supreme Court of Canada, holds that governments must remain neutral on questions of religion by neither favouring nor disfavouring any particular belief. This implies that although the Canadian government cannot be explicitly religious, it also cannot be explicitly anti-religious: the state must treat religious groups equally.

The problem created by treating religious groups equally is that it opens the door to limitless demands from all religious groups, including illiberal ones. These groups would have criticism of religion designated as hate speech. They would have illiberal and bigoted practices—such as the imposition of Sharia family courts—be not just tolerated but approved of. Treating religious groups equally is mistaken because it falsely assumes that they consist of a homogenous community that can be represented by one or a few loud (usually conservative and male) voices. It thus disregards the repressive treatment that minorities within these minorities often face and it sets up bigoted, misogynistic interpretations of religious doctrine as the one true version that must be respected and accommodated.

Bill 21 does not misapply religious neutrality. It understands and applies it through a French lens. This differs from the English lens that interprets religious neutrality on the federal level. This is perhaps why Anglophone Quebecois were more upset with the bill than their Francophone fellows—indeed, English-language school boards were exempted from the law by Canada’s Supreme Court. It is important to recall that the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Constitution, which was invoked by Quebec’s National Assembly in passing Bill 21, was intended precisely so that unreasonable court decisions could be rejected by Parliament and provincial legislatures. In 1981, Justice Minister Jean Chrétien stated clearly that the clause would allow legislatures to quickly ‘correct absurd situations’ resulting from court decisions. ‘We needed to have the supremacy of the legislature over the courts,’ Peter Lougheed, then the Alberta premier, who suggested the clause in the final negotiations on the Constitution in the early 1980s, explained. ‘We did not [want] to be in a position where public policy was being dictated or determined by non-elected people.’

The question, then, is this: What kind, or rather kinds, of religious beliefs will be accommodated, permitted and tolerated? Quebec more than perhaps the rest of Canada at present has an excellent chance of strengthening its vigorously pluralistic society. But for this to happen, religious groups need to be compelled to abandon certain presumptions that are incompatible with Quebec’s open liberal democratic society—and should certainly not be allowed to undermine Quebecois secularism.

‘A nation is judged by how it treats its minorities,’ Lévesque once said. Must we now shy away from treating religious minorities with the same maturity as we would any other religious group? Why should we not have the same expectations of minority groups as with any others? Should they not be expected to assimilate and to be open to justified criticism of their practices and beliefs? Is it not insulting to give special protections to their feelings of offence?

The domestication of religion is one of the unremitting responsibilities, as well as one of the hallmarks, of civilisation. Those who, inspired by nebulous notions of diversity, equity and inclusion, would cast aside liberal and Enlightenment values, must understand that they would be throwing away the very things that make liberal democracy a system worth having in the first place. Quebec’s Bill 21 is an assertion of liberalism in the spirit of the Quiet Revolution, not a negation of it, and the values of laïcité are among the most precious—and hard-won—that Quebec has.

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Further reading:

The Catholic Church in Canada

The Pope’s Apology, by Ray Argyle

Varieties of secularism

How laïcité can save secularism, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The post Quebec’s French-style secularism: history and enduring value appeared first on The Freethinker.

~ Emma Park, Editor

In the month since Hamas attacked Israel, there have been dozens of pro-Palestine protests across the world. Where I live in Canada, a high profile rally in the city of Mississauga went viral when one of the attendees gave this interview where she claims, among other things, that Hamas would never behead babies because ‘they are a Muslim group’ and doing so would be ‘against Islam’. She says Hamas is a resistance, not a terrorist group, and everything they have done in Israel is justified. Many people who watched this clip were horrified to hear the atrocities against Israelis being so casually dismissed, and it did not help that the woman in the interview was sporting large, golden earrings made to look like machine guns while donning the hijab. So much for a ‘religion of peace’.

When I watched this interview, I was neither shocked nor surprised, but instead was reminded of my upbringing in Pakistan and what we were taught about Jews and Israel. Now, I am not an Islamic scholar, nor will I claim to know what the Quran really says about Jewish people and their history. All I know is that hatred of Jews is a very normal, accepted and even encouraged aspect of modern Islamic life and teachings. What we are seeing at these pro-Palestine rallies, I suspect, is more sinister than just fighting for the human rights of Palestinians, as so much of the mainstream media would like us to believe.

Here is a fact: on the top of every page of a Pakistani passport is the phrase, ‘This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.’ Until 2021, Bangladesh’s passport also bore this text, prohibiting citizens from traveling to Israel. The Malaysian passport still has it. In total, over a dozen Muslim-majority countries do not admit those with an Israeli passport, six of which also do not admit people who have evidence of travel to Israel.

In contrast, according to Wikipedia, there are (or at least were before the present conflict) very few states, and none of the major Muslim ones, whose citizens are automatically refused entry to Israel – although citizens from most Muslim countries require confirmation from the Israeli Foreign Ministry before a visa can be issued, and it may be refused.

It is easy to assume that countries like Pakistan and Malaysia do not recognise the state of Israel because, like the hive-mind Borg from Star Trek, the Muslim ummah stands in solidarity with Palestinians and their liberation. But there is another reason why Muslim states are so opposed to the idea of Israel for Jews. Since as long as I can remember, I was taught, by my parents, teachers and faith leaders, that Jewish people were damned by God and, as punishment, they would never have their own homeland. This is what I suspect, though I cannot prove it, is driving at least some of the anti-Semitism we are seeing in Islamic communities: the idea that if Israel is made a permanent, Jewish state, then the word of God is being disobeyed, and Muslims have taken it upon themselves to make sure Jewish people are punished just as Allah intended by denying them a right to have their own country. As one Twitter user, Kaz Nejatian, put it: ‘I grew up in Iran. Every day, I was forced to chant “death to Israel”. Generations of children have been brainwashed to believe Jews are evil.’

I think back on my childhood and adolescence in Lahore, Pakistan and can clearly see how anti-Jewish sentiment was propagated through society. In history class, we never learned about the Holocaust. World War II was abstracted into a far-away conflict involving the Axis and Allies, the signing of treaties, and that was about it. Who Hitler was and what he did to millions of European Jews was never mentioned, nor was the fact that anti-Semitism was one of the driving forces behind the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. Teaching this part of history might have had the unintended consequence of casting Jewish people in a more sympathetic light, and that could not be allowed. How else could they teach children in their Islamic Studies class that during the time of Muhammad, Jews were conniving villains who cast black magic spells on our Holy Prophet? Between world history and Islamic Studies, the word of the Quran always won out.

A few weeks ago, I was doing some research for a piece I am writing on Pakistani movies and came across a paper on black magic in Pakistani television shows. It was published in 2021 in a scientific journal for archaeology and paleontology and was written by professors working at universities in Pakistan. Its thesis was that portraying black magic on TV might lead people to think it was okay to engage in the practice. The authors were against this because they claimed that Islam prohibits the practice of black magic, so filmmakers and artists should refrain from showing it in their work. The paper then goes on to say (sic), ‘It is surprising for some folks [to] recognize about the black magic has such intense power that it had also affected our beloved Prophet Hazrat Muhammad(PBUH). The bewitching incident of Hazrat Muhammad(PBUH) is narrated as a Jew requested the famous sorcerer named Labaid bin Asim to cast spell on Hazrat Muhammad (PBUH) and offered three gold coins as a reward.’

In other words, in 2023, research papers coming out of Pakistani institutions are still casually dropping anti-Semitic tales taken from religious texts as ‘proof’ of the dangers of black magic. Even science is not sacred.

I do not have the expertise to judge whether or not the Palestinian people have legitimate grievances against the Israeli state. I do find it curious, though, that in other places around the world where Muslims are suffering, our global ummah has little to say. The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the Uyghurs in China, and most recently the Afghans seeking asylum in Pakistan who are forcefully being deported back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, have not generated even a fraction of the outrage that the Palestinian cause inspires in the hearts and souls of Muslims. Thousands of people protested in the streets of Pakistan against airstrikes in Gaza after 7 October. But few are willing to fight for Afghan Muslims, including children, and their human right to seek safety in Pakistan.

It is strange that Muslim children in Gaza apparently generate more support than thousands of Afghan children born in Pakistan, who now have to go to a country they know nothing about, facing an uncertain future, including potential death due to widespread famine in Afghanistan. Not to mention the Yemeni civil war, currently in its ninth year, where more than 100,000 children have died from starvation alone. Maybe because this is a conflict between ‘brother’ Muslim nations, and therefore does not require the same amount of care and attention. The more important thing, it seems, is to make sure Jews never have a country to call their own.

An inferiority complex may also play a role in anti-Jewish sentiment. As the American economist Thomas Sowell once put it: ‘[Jews] are people who have succeeded an awful lot in the midst of other people who have not…as long as you succeed, you’re going to be hated.’

To explain away this conundrum—how can Jews be so successful if they’re damned by God?—many Muslim children are taught that only ‘true’ Muslims will be guaranteed a place in heaven on the day of judgement, and anyone who does not believe in Allah and his Prophet is going to go to hell if the good-versus-bad scale does not tip in their favour. Not Muslims though: they have a one-way ticket straight to the land of milk and honey, if they are the ‘right’ kind of Muslim. What sect that is, no one knows, and the only way to make sure you do not end up in hell with the Jews and Hindus is to devote your life to Islam and make sure you are among the lucky ones to have cracked the code. People of the book—Jews and Christians—can at least hope to make it to heaven if they are good, but bona fide heathens like Hindus and Sikhs have no chance of joining us chosen ones in the Great Beyond.

All this is to say that anti-Semitism, and discrimination against non-Muslims in general, thrives in large segments of the Muslim world across the globe. Its roots can only be understood if we are honest about how religion is being used to brainwash entire nations to get on the anti-Semitic bandwagon. The conflict in Israel and Palestine has no hope of finding a solution if Muslims around the world do not start doing some soul-searching about what exactly it is about the state of Israel that whips them into such a frenzy. Yet seeing the growing number of pro-Palestine protests, I do not see such self-reflection happening any time soon.

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Other perspectives on Islam and the Israel-Palestine conflict:

Britain’s liberal imam: Interview with Taj Hargey

Bloodshed in Gaza: Islamists, leftist ideologues, and the prospects of a two-state solution, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

The post An Islamic (mis)education about Israel appeared first on The Freethinker.

As the Israeli bombardment of Hamas hideouts in Gaza continues, killing thousands of Palestinians, protests against Israel have erupted worldwide. The demonstrations in the Muslim world have been typically volatile, with Israeli flags and effigies burnt, and genocidal chants against Israel and Jews redoubled. Meanwhile, the hundreds of thousands protesting in support of Palestine in major Western cities have not focused their energies on ensuring respite for Palestinians, and addressing the plight of the Gazans, who are currently facing a gruesome existential crisis.

Any sort of resolution to the conflict, in my view, would only be achievable via reconciliatory movements, such as rallying for a two-state solution and demanding the release of Israeli hostages, in the same breath as calling for a ceasefire or condemning the Judaeophobia on display across the rallies. Instead, the pro-Palestine protesters appear more invested in demanding the erasure of Israel by freeing Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’.

Many gullible Western liberals have demanded that solely a Palestinian state exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Strangely, they do not appear to see anything anti-Israeli, nay anti-Semitic, in this demand. Of course, these protesters vociferously accuse Israel of erasing Palestine, without blinking an eye at their own position on the elimination of the Jewish state.

More critically, as thousands are being killed in Gaza, it takes a special ideological fixation, and indifference to human suffering, to peddle self-serving inflammatory narratives, fuelled by the blood of the Palestinians whom one claims to be defending. It should not require lengthy reflection to realise that championing Israel’s destruction, especially without any practical means to carry it out, is not exactly the best way to convince that state not to inflict harm on others. But it is precisely this symbiosis between Palestinian suffering and calls for Israel’s destruction that has helped sustain both the Islamist and leftist dogma on the conflict. Instead of adducing the death of Palestinians as an argument for destroying Israel, the cause of peace and safety for both sides would be better served by building bridges.

Nowhere was this clearer than in the reactions to the 7 October massacre orchestrated by Hamas, in which over 1,000 Israelis were murdered, the highest number of Jews killed in an attack since the Holocaust. Islamists have loudly glorified Hamas’s Judaeophobic jihad – fuelled by animosity against the Jews on the basis of religion – and claimed it is consistent with Islamic scriptures. At the same time, the ideological left’s exuberant celebration of the mass murder of civilians is almost exclusively reserved for Israeli citizens and not any other country’s citizens.

Those hostile to Israel often refuse to differentiate between Israelis and Jews in general. Yet even the most raucous anti-Western voices on the left would take a courteous pause before linking attacks on Jews in the US, the UK or France to ‘colonialism’. In contrast, when gruesome massacres of Israelis were being carried out, the left’s instinctive reaction was to celebrate, as they have continued to do while hostages remain in captivity with Hamas. Even Western parliaments, such as the one in Scotland, refused to fly the Israeli flag, while the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) did not even mention Israel in its moment of silence for the ‘loss of innocent lives’.

Of course, the left’s celebratory or at least exculpatory attitude towards the killings in Israel would hardly be adopted towards the numerous states empirically more guilty of crimes similar to those attributed to Israel, from Turkey to China. Even from a Muslim-centric lens, many times more people have been killed in wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen since the turn of the century than during the entire history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Similarly, the suffering of Afghans, Iraqis or Syrians at the hands of external forces is not generally used as an apologia for the Taliban or ISIS – at least not to the same degree as with Hamas.

Those deeming Israel an ‘artificial state’ might want to look at the arbitrary nature in which the vast majority of the postcolonial states came into being, without consideration for locals’ consensual aspirations. For instance, 80 percent of the borders in Africa were simply based on longitudes and latitudes. The Muslims of many Indian states had little in common with what is now Pakistan, the doppelganger of Israel whose creation they rallied for in the 1940s, with significantly more displacement and human suffering. Indeed, the creation of Pakistan involved the largest mass migration in human history. While Jews have always lived in the Israel-Palestine area, Muslims from Uttar Pradesh or Bengal in India had as much connection to the Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in Pakistan as someone in Poland would have with Portugal.

Today, too, it is Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern origin who constitute the largest percentage of Israeli Jews, owing to the mass expulsion of Jews from Muslim-majority states. This fact is consistently ignored by Israel’s opponents in those countries. The attribution of war crimes singularly to Israel is determined by the rulebook put forth by the same global establishment that created Israeli and Palestinian states in the region. Paradoxically, the Jewish-majority country has been required by its critics to treat territories captured in war in a manner unlike that in which any other victorious power ever has done in history. 

Despite all this, one can still attempt to make sense of the ideological left’s fixation with Israel, given the historical military and economic support provided to the state by the Western powers, under the leadership of the US. This fixation has been further augmented in the present crisis by the majority of Western governments’ backing for Israel and the predominant media support for their narrative on the conflict.

The rise of Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government in Israel, which has exploited its own religionist rationale to bulldoze Palestinian rights, has also encouraged those on the left to condemn the stance of Western powers and criticise their role in the conflict. This condemnation is undoubtedly crucial to keeping a check on Israeli far-right manoeuvres, and to the possibility of an eventual compromise. Not only have growing Jewish settlements on the West Bank shrunk Palestinian control over the territories, but the current Israeli regime’s open support for the settlers is encouraging violence against Palestinians who have nothing to do with Hamas or anti-Israel jihad.

It is also essential, for anyone who recognises the clear role of religion in the conflict, to delegitimise any canonical justifications of exclusively Judaic claims to the land in the Old Testament, just as it is to highlight the Judaeophobia in the Quran and Hadith. Yet to condemn the settlements on the West Bank, and the Israeli government’s policies, requires by the same token the acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy as a state. A sweeping assertion of Israeli illegality is not only counterproductive, but also inconsistent with the international law usually cited to delegitimise Israeli action in the West Bank.     

However, the most ominous hypocrisy, and one that is especially damaging to any quest for Palestinian freedom, stems from the Muslim left. For one thing, they deceitfully refuse to acknowledge the Arab and Muslim imperialism at the heart of the conflict; for another, they refuse to acknowledge the Judaeophobia rooted in Islamic scripture as the driving force behind the Muslim world’s murderous obsession with Israel. The genocidal rhetoric against the Jews with which Islamic scriptures are brim-full, and which is often echoed at Palestine protest rallies even in the West, is the predominant motivation behind Muslim animosity towards Israel. In Hamas, this animosity finds its most bloodthirsty expression. The leftist postcolonial apologia of their actions provides the cover of victimhood that sustains Islamist violence.

Even so, what makes support for Hamas by self-identified ‘pro-Palestine’ sections truly bizarre is that the jihadist group is not just indirectly responsible for Gaza’s plight, nor is it merely using civilian inhabitants of Gaza as human shields. Rather, Hamas has actively killed Palestinians to maintain its stranglehold over the population. From gunning down supporters and members of political rivals Fatah to brutally massacring dissenters in Gaza, the group has thrived on Palestinian dead bodies.

Furthermore, like many other jihadist groups in the Muslim world, the rise of Hamas was facilitated by Western powers and indeed Israel itself at the tail end of the Cold War, in order to counter groups with Soviet sympathies. Thereafter, through funding from the oil-rich Arab world, Hamas leaders have enriched their bank balances, and many, like the current chairman Ismail Haniyeh, are orchestrating Israeli and Palestinian bloodshed from the comfort of Qatar. Hamas, together with its fellow jihadist outfit, Islamic Jihad, has been duly supported by Iran, where the leaders of both groups met this June to plot the ‘most efficient way to end the more than 75 years of occupation’ along with the Shia jihadist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. The plan that ensued, punctuated by the gory events of 7 October, was designed to derail the ongoing normalisation of ties between Israel and the Arab world. As recently as September, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman had underlined that official diplomatic ties were ‘closer’ than ever. Tragically, the present conflict has dealt a blow to these diplomatic efforts.

In addition to the glorification of jihad against Israelis, what also binds Hamas and its leftist apologists is their condemnation of the diplomatic recognition of Israel on the part of Arab and Muslim states, a move initiated by the Abraham Accords in 2020. For over eight decades, since the 1937 Peel Commission report suggested the creation of a Jewish homeland, the violent Arab rejection of it has superseded any endeavour to form a Palestinian one. Even until the Six-Day War in 1967, the West Bank and Gaza were under Jordanian and Egyptian control; the idea that a Palestinian homeland might be created in those territories, even one that was temporary and conditional to future expansionary ambitions, was never promoted.

At the heart of the ongoing conflict in the region is the fact that different religious groups are claiming exclusive control over much of the same territory. These opposing claims are irreconcilable. However, one way to resolve the dilemma might be to allow Muslims and Jews to share collective control over certain parts of the land, most notably in Jerusalem, while holding other parts exclusively. I suspect that this will indeed be the means of resolution in the long term – though not until more blood has needlessly been spilt.

The collective Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel has long been the sure move that would ultimately ensure Palestinian freedom. Unfortunately, it is the puritanical proponents of ‘free Palestine’, whether the jihadists or their apologists, who have rallied, politically or militarily, to practically deny any bid for that freedom by denying Israel’s right to exist. Even among the more reconciliation-minded of these ideologues, it is the rise of the Israeli right and its repudiation of the two-state solution that they view as the deal-breaker, and not the fact the Jewish state has been surrounded in the region by those propagating their own genocidal version of a single, Arab state.

In this way, the Islamist and leftist dream of Israel’s extermination, which symbolises the salvation of their respective ideologies, has long treated Palestinian lives as fodder – no matter if treaties signed by Egypt and Jordan with Israel underlined the potential of peace deals in the region. Today, both Jordan and Egypt are likelier to welcome Israelis than Palestinians, with King Abdullah II refusing to take refugees and Egypt having sealed its border with Gaza since 2007. The lack of even a whisper of condemnation of Egypt or Jordan in rallies for Palestine makes it easy to understand how such rallies can be interpreted as being targeted specifically at Israel, and at Israel alone.

Even so, despite the hysterical ideologies at the heart of the long-running Israeli-Arab conflict, and the existence of countless volumes underlining the complexities of the conflict, the solution is still set to be as arbitrarily imposed as the problem was. While the Hamas-initiated war might postpone the Saudi-led acceptance of Israel, the deal will happen soon. As has long been maintained by Mohamed bin Salman, this deal is likely to lead to the creation of an autonomous Palestine as well, especially since Riyadh wants to maintain its leadership over the Muslim world.

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, what they will eventually get is likely to be a fraction of what they could have attained decades ago through reconciliation, while a wish for such reconciliation is scarcely detectable in the rallying cries of those claiming to be the well-wishers of Palestine. Reconciliation and a two-state solution are also likely to come in the aftermath of a torpedoed Gaza and an enormous loss of Palestinian lives. Meanwhile, those on the ideological left, along with the Islamists, persist in their hate-mongering rhetoric, unwilling to acknowledge how their disdain of compromise is contributing to the bloodshed of Palestinians and Israelis alike.  

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On August 15, India’s 76th Independence Day, Aditi* and Shrey*, a married Hindu couple, visited Ishrat Kazmi, a retired school principal, at her home in New Delhi. 

It was not an ordinary visit. They were among the 50,000 people who participated in a campaign to unite people of different religions, castes and ethnicities across the country that day.

Religious minority communities, especially the Muslim community, currently find themselves in a dire situation.  

According to the Indian government, the Muslim population in India for 2023 is estimated to be 197.5 million, around 14.2 per cent of the total population.

In the last census in 2011, Hindus constituted the majority in 28 of India’s 35 states and union territories, including populous states such as Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal. However, Muslims dominated the tropical archipelago of Lakshadweep, off the southwest coast, as well as Jammu and Kashmir in northern India, on the border with Pakistan.

Since Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained power in 2014, hate crimes and discrimination against marginalised groups have surged. Rabid mobs have lynched Muslim men based on mere suspicions of consuming or transporting beef (the cow is considered sacred in Hinduism). The nation’s history is being rewritten to align with hardliner and radical Hindutva agendas. Members of minority communities have been forced to chant slogans aligned with the Hindutva ideology, and riots have been incited by BJP politicians.

The list of hate crimes is extensive and ongoing. Recently, during a discussion in the Indian parliament, a BJP lawmaker directed Islamophobic abuse at his Muslim colleague with impunity. According to Hindutva Watch, a US-based research group that monitors hate speech directed at Muslims and other minority groups in India, there were 255 documented instances of gatherings promoting hate speech against Muslims during the first half of 2023. A significant majority, 80 percent, of the ‘hate speech gatherings targeting Muslims’ occurred in BJP-ruled states (which have their own governments) and union territories (areas directly under the control of the central Indian government).

With the rise of Islamophobia in India, Muslims have been targeted repeatedly and are the marginalised population. The persecution the Muslim community faces outweighs any instances of Muslims inciting violence.

In response to this assault on India’s secular social fabric, civil society organisations led by Anhad, an NGO that operates in the sphere of social justice and human rights, have initiated a nationwide campaign called #MereGharAakeToDekho (‘Visit My Home, Be My Guest’) to counter the escalating anti-Muslim sentiments.

This campaign encourages people to visit homes and spend time with individuals from marginalised and minority communities. 

From her experience working with minority communities in riot-hit areas, social activist and Anhad founder Shabnam Hashmi has learned that countering hatred and dispelling preconceived notions can most effectively be achieved when people build close personal connections and come together in public spaces.

‘If the same lies are repeated again and again, people start believing them. To counter this, we believed that the best approach was physically entering each other’s spaces,’ she adds. ‘When communities don’t interact, it becomes easier for hatred to spread.’

And she is right.

Initially, Aditi was not comfortable with the idea of the visit and discussed it with her husband. Her apprehension was not about meeting that particular family but visiting a Muslim-majority neighbourhood in Delhi.

‘At first, I asked my husband, “Why should we go? I don’t spread hate, and I support harmony between communities. So, what’s the purpose of our visit?’ says Aditi.

She soon found the answer. During the visit, ‘I realised that “they are just like us.” Conversations with them felt as easy as talking to friends, and it opened our hearts. The more we segregate ourselves, the more power we give to the fear created in society.’

For Kazmi, it was a simple matter. She immediately agreed when an NGO approached her to host a couple from the majority Hindu community. ‘I grew up in a secular environment and never faced any discrimination because of my religion [Islam],’ she says.

Aditi reluctantly participated in the campaign without informing any family members. Now, though, she desires to share her experience with everyone.

Given the religious tensions currently brewing in the country, Kazmi feels that communities must interact more with each other to get to know each other better.

Similarly, in Shaheen Bagh, another Muslim-majority neighborhood in Delhi, another Muslim family hosted Shalu Raizada on August 15.

Starting in December 2019, Shaheen Bagh was the centre of a four-month non-violent sit-in protest led primarily by Muslim women. This protest was a response to the Indian government’s implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), National Register of Citizens (NRC), and National Population Register (NPR). 

Detractors of these laws claim that they violate the rights to equality, life, and personal liberty, all safeguarded under the Indian Constitution. Furthermore, these laws are perceived as being specifically designed to exclude Muslims. 

The Citizenship (Amendment) Act grants citizenship based on religion to six non-Muslim groups (Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians) from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who arrived in India before 31 December 2014. It does not mention Muslims.

The CAA is unconstitutional as it violates India’s secular values and may disenfranchise its Muslim population. The government’s planned National Register of Citizens process poses even more significant risks in conjunction with the CAA. No clear guidelines and arbitrary implementation threaten to divide India’s diverse society, robbing people of citizenship and rights.

Right-wing and hardliner Hindutva politicians used this opportunity to portray Indian Muslims as traitors. Shaheen Bagh, despite being in Delhi, has started to be called “mini-Pakistan” – a term used by right-wing Hindus of any Muslim-majority areas in India.

Raizada was not sure how the home visit would play out following these events, so she asked two friends to accompany her.

When she arrived at the home of the Muslim family she was visiting, Raizada and her friends found that Shaheen Bagh celebrated India’s Independence Day with as much enthusiasm as any other community. ‘I found no semblance of the stereotypes ingrained in our minds about certain groups. I realised how trivial our thoughts are,’ she says.

Raizada noticed that the hosts had their share of insecurities as well.

From their host, Daaniya Afreen, they learned that Afreen’s children, who study in a posh English-medium school, have faced discrimination from other students because of their Muslim identity.

‘They have been compelled to chant “Jai Shree Ram” [‘Hail, Lord Ram’, a Hindu chant] on several occasions,’ says Afreen. However, she adds that the school administration was very cooperative and immediately addressed the issue.

Both parties agree that there is an acute lack of interaction between their communities in this volatile atmosphere in the country.

‘The situation is further exacerbated by unverified WhatsApp messages demonising the Muslim community and spreading religious hatred,’ says Raizada.

‘Yet as we sat down and conversed, it became evident that reality diverges significantly from societal portrayals today. We can understand each other better through interactions in each other’s spaces—neighbourhoods and homes. Our viewpoints may differ, but fundamentally, we are all human,’ she adds.

Raizada says that although various communities have coexisted in India for centuries, the current climate makes it imperative that people actively strive to deepen their understanding of one another.

To get this campaign started, NGOs and civil society organisations across 28 states leveraged their resources to form state-level working and community coordinating committees. These organisations held meetings in the areas and communities where they worked to initiate the campaign. Moreover, the organisers reached out to people from every stratum of society and region.

Farida Khan, who attended the meetings, recalls that some community-based organisations had backed out, stating that this campaign might affect their relationship with the community they were working with.

Khan, who lives on the outskirts of Delhi, is an activist and teacher. She teaches girls who have dropped out of school for various reasons from Hindu and Muslim communities in local working-class neighbourhoods. She first approached her students’ families, presented them with the idea of opening their homes to people from different communities, and gauged their interest in participating in the campaign.

It was not easy to cut through the hostile and, particularly at present, anti-Muslim sentiments that have been rising in the country. ‘They asked me why they should allow strangers into their home. Some were scared to participate, fearing boycott from their relatives,’ she says.

To navigate these difficulties, Khan mobilised community volunteers to go from home to home and talk to families from different religious communities. They kept up this exercise for more than 20 days. The communities, she says, were greatly influenced by the harmful content shared over social media. ‘It took us some time to convince the families. Sometimes, the women wouldn’t entertain us without their husbands. Moreover, the communities were greatly influenced by viral content received over social media.’

Finally, she was able to convince 40 Muslim families and 25 Hindu families to open up their homes to people from other religious communities.

The campaign is very clear about who they want to reach out to. It does not want to engage with individuals from any religious community who actively promote hatred. The focus is on reaching out to the fence-sitters. If this outreach continues, Hashmi says, it will naturally have a ripple effect. 

‘It is about creating spaces where we encourage people who don’t usually socialise to come and visit each other,’ says Anita Cheria, who took an active lead in spreading the campaign in the southern state of Karnataka.

According to Cheria, the campaign’s strength is in the simplicity with which it counters this toxicity, placing faith in the human spirit and humanity. 

‘While it may not appear to be a ground-breaking initiative, this straightforward action can instil fundamental values such as friendship and relationship-building through gradual and incremental steps. It may seem small, but it can lead to meaningful and significant engagement,’ she says.

‘For some reason or another, we visit certain types of people but not others. This “othering” is intrinsic to each person and, to a large extent, has initiated this campaign.’

Cheria also emphasises that vulnerable individuals should not be singled out to showcase their credibility or open their homes: ‘It should be a mutual exchange, with visits occurring reciprocally, and not turning into an activity that, directly or indirectly, compels people to prove their goodness or credibility in any way.’

The visits are ongoing. The organisers boosted the campaign in time for 2 October, a national holiday celebrated as the anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, the ‘Father of the Nation’. 

According to Hashmi, on 2 October, thousands of people participated across various states, making the campaign a huge success.

From 11-17 October, the campaign was conducted in remote villages near Kupwara district in Kashmir’s Lolab Valley. Twenty-five people from different Indian states stayed with local families, making it the first of its kind event in Kashmir.

All guests and hosts gathered for a picnic in Chandigam village and dinner in Chogal village. Singing and dancing continued late into the night, breaking many taboos imposed by conservative society in these parts.

‘The common narrative about Kashmir focuses only on terror and unsafe areas. By placing people in villages within a border district considered among the most dangerous, we aimed to challenge this belief,’ says Hashmi. She adds that people from different religions stayed with local families, visiting about ten other families and local schools, in order to learn that the real situation differs significantly from the way it is portrayed in the media.

‘Girls from various villages gathered at the host’s house. The singing and dancing continued well past midnight,’ says Hashmi.

Additionally, 20 participants will travel to Kupwara, a restive region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. During their stay, spanning four nights, they will reside in local village homes and have the chance to build connections with their hosts. 

Kashmir is the only (mainland) Indian state with a Muslim-majority population and is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan. The region has grappled with cross-border militancy for decades, and people from Kashmir are often met with suspicion from the rest of India.

The campaign is set to run until January 2024, in the hope that open dialogue can forge enduring friendships, serving as a strong defence against ongoing political efforts to divide people.

* Some names in this article have been changed to protect those mentioned.

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The recent burning of the Quran in the Swedish city of Malmo by an Iraqi refugee, Salwan Momika, has caused outrage in many Muslim countries. Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and others have issued statements condemning the action and have asked Sweden to reconsider its laws protecting freedom of expression. There have been public protests in several cities in these countries, demanding the severance of diplomatic ties with Sweden.

Momika burnt a copy of the Quran on 3^rd September this year, as a protest against Islam. According to the Swedish newspaper, The Local, Momika claimed that his protest was against the Muslim religion, not Muslims, and that the Quran should be banned globally for causing a ‘negative impact’. In contrast, the Saudi Arabia-based Arab News implied that Momika’s act was a cynical attempt to secure his refugee status. In response to his protest, some Muslims in Sweden also attacked local police.

Media outlets in Muslim-majority countries have covered this incident, and others like it, extensively, despite their limited domestic relevance. The media in these countries frame these incidents as a wilful assault on Islam, and portray the doers as malicious. Certainly, the outrage is understandable, given the deep Muslim reverence for the Quran. On the other hand, the strongly negative spin given to these burnings could put the lives of the protesters in danger, and also cause a difficult situation for religious minorities living in the Muslim-majority countries where the articles are published.

Sweden’s Quran burning is just one of several similar acts that have occurred recently across Europe. Far-right groups in Sweden and Denmark have also burnt copies of the Quran during rallies and protests. These incidents provoke intense outrage when covered by the Muslim media. For example, when a far-right activist burnt a copy of Quran in Sweden in 2020, the media outlets in Pakistan and Iran responded with inflammatory language of their own. Whatever the ideological motivations of the different protesters in different cases, the outrage of the Muslim media has been more or less the same.

Take the Pakistani media’s coverage of the recent Quran burning in Sweden as an example. Some local media outlets in Pakistan used the word ‘Maloon’ (‘accursed’) of Momika in headlines and news content. They described his act of burning the Quran as ‘na paak’ (‘impure’) and used the words ‘be hurmati’ (‘disrespectful’) to describe what had happened to the holy book of Islam. This inflammatory language probably has its roots in Pakistan’s stringent blasphemy laws, which consider even mentioning blasphemous words or acts to be blasphemous. However, such biased reporting fosters further intolerance in the country, especially toward religious minorities, who already face grave dangers from false blasphemy allegations. Influential figures in parts of Punjab and Sindh already exploit blasphemy charges as a weapon against minorities.

For instance, Asia Bibi, a Christian woman in Pakistan, was accused of blasphemy in June 2009 after an argument with a group of Muslim women. A year later, she became the first woman sentenced to death under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. In 2020, despite the Supreme Court overturning her conviction, she was forced to flee to Canada in fear for her life. Bibi now lives there in exile with her husband and two children, while three of her children remain in Pakistan.

Bibi’s plight highlights the grave dangers faced by religious minorities under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. The sensationalised coverage of blasphemy cases by the Pakistani media further fans the flames of intolerance, as it has failed to cover these issues responsibly. The disproportionate coverage given to Quran burnings in Europe stands in stark contrast to the lack of attention by the Pakistani media towards domestic issues, such as the Christian community of Faisalabad, who lost their homes in a mob attack on 16 August this year. In that incident, a mob of hundreds attacked Faisalabad over a false blasphemy accusation against two Christian men. The mob burnt churches, looted homes and damaged the properties of people who had paid for them with their life savings.

The Pakistani media rarely highlight the human impact and the stories behind blasphemy accusations and persecuted minorities. Most of their coverage is dominated by the trials and outrage of the Muslim majority over perceived insults to Islam. They give little attention to the perspectives of freethinkers, progressives, atheists and agnostics – even if they tacitly admit their existence through accusations of the harm that such freethinkers allegedly inflict on society and Islam. The media also overlook the plight of Ahmadiyya community, who are living in constant fear in Pakistan. In this context, their extensive coverage of Momika’s Quran-burning in Sweden makes no sense. The Pakistani media’s attitude to this topic shows clearly that their agenda is to stir up intolerance and hatred at home.

Yet this is not only the case in Pakistan. The media in other Muslim countries follow the same trend. The Iranian media are an example. I tried to search news about Momika in Tehran’s Times of Iran. I found that the incident was being reported in a disturbing way. The paper reported that the Iranian government had asked Sweden to deal with Momika and other culprits or extradite them to Islamic states. In another news item, it described Momika as a member of Israel’s spy agency, and alleged that he was on a mission to deflect attention from Israeli crimes in the West Bank.

In contrast to the Tehran Times, the reporting of these incidents by Bangladesh’s Daily Star was quite balanced. It described the incident and the outrage of Muslim world about it without accusing Momika himself of anything. Its coverage of the incidents lacked vivid details about protests or retaliation. This more measured agenda-setting subtly discourages intolerant sentiments from dominating public discourse in Bangladesh. This is probably because of the more secular political environment of the country and the less stringent blasphemy laws, which together allow media organisations in Bangladesh to adopt a balanced approach in their journalism.

In Nigeria, the country with the biggest Muslim population in Africa, the media followed the line taken by the Tehran Times in their coverage of Momika. The country’s leading English newspaper, Vanguard, used words like ‘provocative’, ‘blasphemous’, ‘abominable’ and ‘heinous’ to describe his action.

This type of inflammatory rhetoric and narrative framing reinforces perceived grievances and breeds intolerance among the mass audience of these media outlets. It fuels a sense of collective outrage and offence by portraying incidents like this as intentional affronts to all Muslims, rather than as isolated acts with a specific political agenda, such as protesting against Islam (rather than aiming to attack Muslims). In contrast, the more responsible reporting from outlets like Bangladesh’s Daily Star resists overblown narratives that could incite a backlash.

These examples suggest that the media in Muslim countries face systemic disincentives that hinder responsible reporting on issues that could be considered blasphemous by local laws and society. These countries have zero tolerance for questioning religious dogma. Their journalists often internalise the biases of wider society. There also exist commercial pressures to cater to audience outrage and increase viewership by sensationalising events like the recent Quran burnings.

Despite these constraints, however, building a culture of ethical journalism remains critical. While overnight change is unrealistic, attitudes can gradually be shifted through training journalists in objective reporting, diversifying newsrooms, and cultivating connections with progressive civil society groups.

There is an urgent need for the media in Muslim countries to develop a code of conduct on reporting incidents deemed blasphemous under their laws. They need to make guidelines to ensure balanced, ethical coverage of those incidents, otherwise their hyped-up reporting will endanger lives both at home and abroad. The media have a moral responsibility to address internal biases and overblown narratives when covering such incidents. They must develop a mechanism for internal reflection on such biases, and must clarify and enforce standards to promote ethics in their coverage of these issues. Only then can they cover religious offence responsibly without compromising human rights and bringing any danger to any community locally or internationally.

Every person has the right to protest, but it should be capable of being practised within safe limits. Desecrating the Quran is a dangerous act that some people carry out to express frustration and anger towards Islam, despite the offence that it causes to Muslims. The media’s sensationalised reporting of such incidents often intensifies this danger for protesters. The media also deliberately ignores the perspective of the protester and the challenges they face afterwards.

As a result of the enormous hostility to acts of protest against Islam, whipped up by the media in Muslim-majority countries, even liberals who would theoretically support the protesters’ right to burn the Quran prefer to stay silent, so as to avoid putting their own lives in danger. Thus a culture of fear is created in which all possibility of reasonable discussion and criticism is suppressed.   

No doubt, the road to unbiased coverage upholding human rights in Muslim world will be long. But it must begin with media houses themselves taking an introspective look at how their rhetoric could prove harmful in a long run.

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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan triumphed in a closely contested election in May, ensuring another five years in power and extending his two-decade-long reign over Turkey. As he edged out his opponent, Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, 52 per cent to 48 per cent, in the first ever presidential runoff in the country’s history, Erdoğan reaffirmed his control over a Turkey that is more divided than ever.

There are many reasons why the opposition missed out on arguably its best opportunity to oust Erdoğan in recent years, including the regime’s use of the state machinery to influence election results. However, a major cause behind Kılıçdaroğlu’s defeat was his abandonment of the Turkish secularism that was rooted in the founding principles of the republic.

Turkey, and the CHP, were both founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, based on the ideology he propounded, which has since become known as Kemalism. The latter is best illustrated in his thirty-six-hour-long speech, Nutuk, delivered to the party’s second congress in 1927. Kemalism is often summarised using six bullet points, and depicted as six arrows on the CHP’s flag. One of these is laicism. 

Atatürk took up the task of creating a Turkish republic from the remnants of a long-decaying Ottoman Empire, where Islamic dogma had reigned supreme and was, indeed, a critical contributor to the realm’s downfall – despite the way that Ottoman sultans intermittently toyed with a skewed enforcement of religious pluralism as a means of exercising arbitrary rule over a multiethnic and multireligious realm. Their privileging of Muslim elite over non-Muslim populations, or Sunni over Shia majority regions, eventually created separate, non-Muslim nation states in Eastern Europe and sectarian fault lines within Islam across the Middle East.

Therefore, where secularisation would have been a practical remedy to the religionist quagmire in Turkey, the sheer extent of the Islamist inertia necessitated a state more assertive in its separation from religion. Hence laiklik, the Turkish brand of laicism that echoes French laïcité, was as much an existential requirement for Turkey to loosen its Islamist stranglehold, as it was a reflection of Atatürk’s own modernist worldview.

Yet when the CHP presented a bill endorsing the hijab in public institutions in October last year, Kılıçdaroğlu effectively surrendered his party’s secularist legacy. Turkey’s ban on religious and anti-religious manifestations in state institutions, the bedrock of laicism, had already been lifted a decade ago. Hence this provision of exclusive protection for sexist Islamic headgear was nothing but a comprehensive capitulation to Islamisation, and was clearly intended to win votes.

The CHP’s endorsement of the hijab was also an extension of the frequently regurgitated misinterpretation of laicism as an exclusively ‘anti-Islam’ phenomenon, which has been especially echoed in criticisms of France. The CHP appear to have conveniently forgetten that laiklik was, like French laïcité, equally applicable to all religious displays, such as the Christian cross. The CHP’s prioritisation of the protection of Islamic symbols, while the Turkish government has been busy demolishing, or converting, churches, including Hagia Sophia, represents a categorical abandonment of Atatürk’s vision.

It is not the departure from an individual’s guidelines, no matter how critical their position in any people’s history, that makes the renunciation of ideals damaging for a nation. In fact, the idolisation of Atatürk, which included a sweeping ban on criticising him, has helped foster the Islamist opposition in a country where laiklik has long been collectively treated as one man’s decree and not as the empirically provable foundation of Turkish progress. Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have managed to successfully channel the religionist backlash, merging Islamist parties under one big umbrella that has now ruled over Turkey for over 20 years.

Many have deemed Kılıçdaroğlu’s legislative endorsement of the hijab a political necessity, since he was leading a wide coalition which included many parties that wanted to demonstrate their support for the Islamic garb. Supporting the hijab could be said to be especially necessary on a political level, given how hotly debated the issue has been in recent years. And yet Kılıçdaroğlu has admirably defended LGBT rights in Turkey, albeit without overtly supporting them, thereby categorically contradicting the beliefs of the same Islamist stakeholders. The CHP’s support for the hijab, including within the party’s own ranks, stems not from realpolitik, nor from an exhaustive endorsement of Islamic injunctions, but simply from its succumbing to the Islamisation of Turkish nationalism. The AKP have long used Islamic headgear as the unofficial flag of this movement.

As the Erdoğan regime has rekindled Turkey’s Ottoman past, using modesty codes as a way of Islamising society, and suppressing non-Muslim emblems as a way of Islamising politics, it has also used a newly found neo-Ottoman soft power to Islamise its diplomacy. Where global Muslims were traditionally drawn to glamorous Turkish soaps depicting lifestyles often violently punishable in their countries, in recent years they have been infatuated by shows narrating fictionalised renditions of Ottoman conquests. After undertaking the Islamisation of Turkey, Erdoğan aspired to position himself as the leader of the Muslim world, boosted by reminders of the Ottoman caliphate and its power over Islam’s holiest sites in the Arabian Peninsula for four centuries.

This is why Erdoğan has been the first to claim a ‘Muslim genocide’ in France over satirical caricatures of Muhammad. By doing so, he seems to be hoping to undermine laicism in France, as he already has in Turkey. Similarly, he has threatened to cut ties with Muslim or Arab states maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel, even though Turkey has recognised the latter since 1949. A similar paradox can also be seen in the way that Erdoğan is still pursuing Turkey’s stalled application for EU membership, while simultaneously aligning the country more closely with the Islamic states that he is wooing. And yet it is precisely Turkey’s alignment with the Islamic states that might have actually cost the country its best opportunity to consolidate its position as leader of the Muslim world.

The lessons from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire were not limited to the Atatürk-led Turkey, but also extended to other parts of the empire, as well as the broader Muslim world, as states in these regions gained their freedom after World War II. In the Arab world, a secular nationalism emerged, albeit under the control of dictatorial rulers, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Some were swayed by the western powers that colonised the area: French laïcité, for instance, influenced Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon. By the 1970s, which saw the rise of the socialist and Arab nationalist Baath party in Syria and Iraq, Arab secularism had become synonymous with absolutist regimes. The monarchy in Iran, led by the Pahlavi dynasty, and the republic of Afghanistan briefly proclaimed by Daoud Khan, also demonstrated the way in which secularism was adopted by autocracies in the wider Muslim world. From Algeria to Afghanistan, military regimes became protectors of secularisation because they wanted to quell populist Islamist parties and groups. In Turkey, too, the army was the defender of secularism.

When the region imploded into the Saudi-Iran proxy wars in the 1980s and the jihadist radicalisation that followed, in Turkey, the army stepped in, taking charge of the country following the 1980 coup d’état. Turkey’s membership of NATO helped protect it from the jihadist spillover, because NATO gave it support to resist jihadist infiltration and to fight against the Islamic state, while military rule prevented the Islamisation of the country. Unfortunately, just because secularism was implemented by the army, this only reinforced laiklik as a coerced ideology and further emboldened its Islamist opponents with their long-festering grievances.

Despite this, as jihadism wreaked havoc with the Muslim world at the turn of the millennium, it was Turkey that remained the bastion of Muslim secularism. Its proximity to the West, and its aspirations to join the EU, ensured that freedoms and human rights were provided with much better safeguards, in addition to the long tradition of uncompromising separation between mosque and state. As a result, Turkey remained the constantly cited inspiration for Muslim states that wanted to undo Islamist radicalisation. This became even more evident after 9/11, as jihadism spread around the world, leading to counter-efforts to defuse militant Islamism and reform Islam. Turkey was in the pole position to lead the much needed secularisation of the Muslim world; this would have been bolstered by the country’s transformation into a truly liberal and secular democracy. However, it was at this point that Turkey, under Erdoğan and the AKP, opted instead for Islamisation.  

As a result, the baton for Muslim modernisation has once again been taken up by a few totalitarian Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia. These kingdoms are largely responsible for the global explosion of radical Islam, the economic interests of which now align with selective progressivism centered on the support of these Arab monarchies. The failure to undertake a populist secularisation movement within the Muslim world, compounded by the failure of the Arab Spring, means that Islam, and its deployment at state, regional, or global levels, currently remains under the control of autocrats. And the ideological surrender of the CHP underlines the point that Turkey, formerly a model of secularism in the Muslim world, has conclusively capitulated to Islamisation.

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In northwest Nigeria last year, Deborah Yakubu, a college sophomore, was stoned and beaten to death and her body was publicly burned, after she ‘blasphemed’ against Islam in a WhatsApp group. Usman Buda, a 30-year-old butcher, was stoned to death by a mob in June 2023, after he was accused of blasphemy in the same region. Mubarak Bala, President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria (HAN), was arrested over three years ago in the north-central city of Kaduna after he posted ‘sacrilegious’ statements on Facebook. He remains in jail today, in the Counter-Terrorism Unit of Abuja Prison; their main foe in inter-jail soccer matches, he tells me amusedly, is the Armed Robbery Unit.

Atheists in Nigeria are in constant danger of losing their jobs, families, freedom, human rights, and their very lives. Belief disagreements in this nation of around 220 million (and growing) frequently explode into violence: over 6,000 Christians were hacked to death in a recent 15-month span, and the bloody trend seems to be escalating. 

Security is needed. What’s the solution?

Humanist Mutual Aid Network (HuMAN), a not-for-profit organisation based in the US, has responded to this emergency by launching three ‘Safe Houses’ in Nigeria to provide sanctuary to non-believers. Abuja Safe House, Maiduguri Safe House, and Minna Safe House are secular oases for groups of 5-7 individuals, but the structure and goals of each heretic home vary widely.

Abuja Safe House (also known as ‘KaZoHa’) is now the irreligious residence of five women, one of whom is Amina Ahmed, Mubarak Bala’s wife. The couple are pictured in the photo at the beginning of this article, which was taken in late 2019 when the sanctuary was launched, just a few months before the arrest of Bala, who was its director. There is also a three-year-old boy at the Abuja Safe House: Sodangi, Mubarak and Amina’s son. Amina and the rest of the freethinking quintet survive financially with proceeds from their Fruit Juice Bar, funded by HuMAN. They also manage an online community centre for Mubarak Bala’s international support, and they guarantee shelter to atheists and LGBTQ people who are fleeing or hiding from persecution. 

Abuja Safe House residents are state-protected because Abuja, the nation’s capital, strives to be secular and tolerant. The godless group is also out of the closet, and comfortably active on social media. Any drawbacks? Yes. They do not own the property: it is leased annually, the fee paid by Humanists International (HI), which also provides legal aid to Mubarak Bala. 

Bala maintains near-daily contact with Abuja Safe House. He envisions its future goals as: ‘1) financial independence, 2) acquisition of a permanent non-rental residence, 3) expansion to accommodate more humanists at risk, 4) establishment of Abuja Humanist Primary & Secondary Schools for kids – like Tai Solarin’s Mayflower School.’

Maiduguri Safe House is a completely different establishment because it is situated in the Boko Haram-infested northeastern state of Borno, where publicly declaring oneself as an ex-Muslim would be suicidal. The six residents here are all young men, living together in happy liberation from suffocating Islamic rituals and the narrow eyes of suspicious neighbours. 

On their HuMAN webpage they have their faces blurred, they are all anonymous and the safe house itself is hidden behind a tall brick wall to guarantee safety from neighbours suspicious of their lack of conformity with Islamic ritual. On the plus side, the Maiduguri atheists own their property, purchased partly with funds generated from their World Peace Internet Café (funded by HuMAN), an ice cream factory (also HuMAN-funded), and a still-in-progress campaign to pay for the roof. 

Maiduguri Safe House is one hundred per cent male, high-security, closeted, and financially stable. This is in sharp contrast to the female, out-of-the-closet, state-protected, but economically tenuous abode of Abuja Safe House. According to ‘SMK’, a resident here, the top goals of this safe house are offering refuge to humanists who are physically threatened because they have abandoned religion; providing safety to ‘Almajiri’ (children abandoned by their parents at Islamic centres); creating strong unity between local humanists by living together; and teaching one another vocational skills which they can use to become economically self-reliant. 

Minna Safe House, in Niger State, is a third option that expresses HuMAN’s most idealistic vision. The seven housemates here include men, women and children with various stories: they may be LGBTQ people, ex-Muslims or ex-Christians, well-educated or illiterate, but they are all bound together by their renunciation of blind faith. As in Abuja, the Minna Safe House residents are out-and-proud atheists, with their smiling faces posted on HuMAN’s website, and their namesakes and occupations listed. As in Maiduguri, the Minna residents enjoy home ownership: the four-bedroom unit was inherited by HuMAN’s Africa Director, Saliu Olumide Saheed. Like Abuja and Maiduguri, the Minna Safe House gains income from its HuMAN-funded businesses: a grocery store (co-funded by Atheism United) and a barber shop. 

The ambitions of Minna Safe House exceed those of the other two sanctuaries, though, because it aims to also be a beloved community centre. Future plans include a community garden, with produce shared with needy locals in weekly community meals. Additionally, its Humanist Preparatory School is generating enthusiastic local support; the school will emphasise English learning, because that skill is highly desirable for Nigerian employees. Minna Safe House is also setting up a Humanist Clinic, organised by a housemate who is a trained healthcare worker, to provide first aid assistance and medicine to the local community. The clinic also plans to serve nearby refugee camps and rural villages; last year it delivered interventions for malaria, cholera, polio, hepatitis, HIV, scabies and dental care. 

Saliu Olumide, who serves as the Minna Safe House director, strives to operate the sanctuary on the basis of humanist and mutual aid values. ‘We are creating an egalitarian community,’ he says, ‘where everyone works to contribute to the common good of one another. What we have, we will use together and the excess will be stored for rainy days. No one will be left out, we will attempt to even out the system of greed that’s made life difficult for the oppressed and rural in Nigeria. It is our ultimate goal to succeed until we are role models for anyone who wants to create an active, successful community.’

Maiduguri Safe House also conducts multiple humanitarian projects, focused primarily on the Almajiri. Last winter, with HuMAN funding, the Maiduguri crew built a wood-and-aluminum-siding structure that protected 120 Almajiri from the seasonal wet and cold, and it supplied them with wool blankets, mosquito nets, and free computer classes. With the help of HuMAN funding, they have also been able to feed widows, provide medical assistance to refugees, help widows start sustainability projects, and operate an internet café and an ice cream factory.

The Humanist Mutual Aid Network (previously known as the Humanist Global Charity, and before that, as the Brighter Brains Institute) is not solely dedicated to providing safe houses in Nigeria. It also supports its mutual aid partners in Chad, Zambia, Uganda, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Philippines and the USA (Appalachia). Many of these efforts are collaborations with other groups like Atheist Republic, Burmese Atheists and the Humanist Alliance Philippines, International.

Is Nigeria doomed to always be dangerous to freethinkers? Safety varies geographically – the Muslim north is more dangerous than the Christian south – but ostracism exists everywhere. Atheists are often disowned and disinherited by their families, and barred from schools and employment. Safe Houses (on the HuMAN model) can simultaneously deliver freedom of belief, freedom of sexual preference, and freedom from poverty, prejudice and violence. Moreover, if they deliver humanitarian services to their neighbours, atheists will be regarded as, so to speak, ‘good without god.’

Perhaps Safe Houses can be set up throughout Nigeria, running from north to south, to serve as an ‘underground railroad’ for non-believers? Mubarak Bala would like to see many more established – perhaps one in every Nigerian state.

Bala hopes he will be released from prison soon. Whenever that happens, his initial plan ‘is to unite all the secular groups in Nigeria, such as Lagos Humanist Assembly, Atheist Society of Nigeria, Hausa Atheists, Northern Nigerian Humanist Association, Tarok Thinkers, Proud Atheists. I hope to bring them all under one banner, under HAN or ASN or Nigeria Secular Movement.’

After that, his long-term goal is ‘to lead Nigeria politically, but I have to adjust to the new reality, that I am too lone a voice, too vulnerable to dare the standards. I need to be diplomatic now for our community to be safe. I hope this new strategy works. Of course, my eventual aim is to be in a position to end religion permanently, without being killed in the process.’

Further Freethinker articles on Nigeria:

The price of criticising Islam in northern Nigeria: imprisonment or death 

Secularism in Nigeria: can it succeed?

Mubarak Bala: update on a ‘blasphemer’ in Nigeria

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The post Protecting atheists in Nigeria: the role of ‘safe houses’ appeared first on The Freethinker.