Conference on the Religious-Right, Secularism and Civil Rights
11-12 October 2014
The Tower Hotel, St Katharine’s Way, London E1W 1LD, UK
BACKGROUND
The global rise of the religious-Right, including but not limited to Islamic
State (or ISIS), and their efforts to gain political power and control the
state apparatus and public institutions has meant that organised religions’
role vis-a-vis the state as well as secularism and the complete separation of
religion from the state have become critical political and civil rights
matters.
At this unprecedented conference, prominent women and men on the frontlines
of opposing the religious-Right and defending secularism, including those of
faith and none, will come together to discuss the religious-Right, its attacks
on civil rights and freedoms, and the role of secularism for 21st century
humanity.
Speakers from countries or the Diaspora as diverse as Algeria, Bangladesh,
Canada, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan,
Palestine, Poland, Senegal, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, UK, USA and
Yemen will reflect on the struggle for secularism in both regional and thematic
ways and will discuss the specific forms that attacks on secularism – and on
secularists themselves – take in various parts of the world. They will also
discuss how these attacks are linked to the rise of the religious-Right in
Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East and its confluence in countries
of emigration such as Europe and North America.
The conference aims to highlight the voices of the many persecuted and
exiled, address the challenges faced by activists, elaborate on the links
between equality, democratic politics and secularism, promote secular and
rights-based alternatives to the religious-Right, establish priorities for
regional and international collective action and influence policy and practice
locally, nationally, and internationally.
The conference will result in the establishment of an international front of
secularists against the religious-Right.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
(Subject to Change)
The Conference will be in English.
Saturday 11 October 2014
8:00-9:30am Registration
Arrival Tea/Coffee
9:30-9:40 Welcome and
Housekeeping with MCs Amal Farah, Mahal Kamal and Nahla Mahmoud
9:40-9:50 Maryam Namazie:
Opening Address
Maryam Namazie will give an overview of the conference aims, the political
necessity for such a conference during the rise of the religious-Right and the
need for secularism as a minimum precondition.
9:50-10:05 Marieme Helie Lucas: Attacks
on Secularism
Marieme Helie Lucas will look at the shifting meaning of ‘secularism’; the
political consequences of this shift and how it enhances and legitimises both
the rise of fundamentalist theocratic ideologies and the fragmentation of
people into ‘communities’ with unequal rights.
10:05-10:10 Ouachdek: 20 Ans Barakat
10:10-10:30 Film
10:30-12:00 Secularism Panel
This panel will discuss the definition of secularism and whether secularism
is a minimum precondition for a democratic society.
Chair: Peter Tatchell
Panellists: Caroline Fourest (“Secularism against Fanaticism”), Faisal
Saeed Al-Muttar (“The Need for a Global Secular Humanist Movement, My Journey
from Baghdad to Washington D.C.”), Hamid Taqvaee (“Rise and Fall of
Secularism”), Pragna Patel and Sue Cox (“The Isolation and
Alienation Caused by Clergy and Why Secularism is Important”)
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-13:30 Nadia El Fani, “Neither Allah nor Master”
13:30-15:00 Religion in Law and Politics Panel
This panel will look at religion’s role in the law and politics and discuss
whether organised religions must be kept out the state.
Chair: Terry Sanderson
Panellists: Fariborz Pooya (“Production and Reproduction of the Myth of
the Moderate Religion”), Fatou Sow (“Religion and Politics in
Sub-Saharan Secular States”), Gita Sahgal (“New World Orders: Promoting
Customary and Religious Law”), Randa Kassis (“Political situation in
Syria”), and Taj Hargey
15:00-15:30 AC Grayling, Secularism and Education
15:30-16:00 Break
16:00-17:30 Multi-faithism, Multiculturalism and
citizenship Panel
The panel will look at problems related to the erroneous conflation of
people, religions and the religious-Right and whether multiculturalism and
multi-faithism undermines notions of citizenship.
Chair: Rumy Hassan
Panellists: Aliyah Saleem (“My Experience at an Islamic Boarding
School in Britain”), Chris Moos (“The Fox, The Hen House, and The One
who Let Him in: The Religious Far-Right and its Enablers in Higher Education”),
Elham Manea (“Islamic Law in the West: The Essentialists”), Kenan
Malik (“Meaning of Religious Freedom”), and Marieme Helie Lucas
(“Communities, Conflicting Rights and Hierarchy of Rights in Non-Secular
States”)
17:30-18:00 Pervez Hoodbhoy, “Has the Islamic State
ever been a historical reality?”
18:30-19:30 Cocktails
Regional Sessions
19:30-23:00 Dinner with entertainment
MCs Maha Kamal, Nahla Mahmoud and Ramin Forghani
Speaker: Taslima Nasrin, “Women’s Rights”
Stories of Refusal and Resistance with Amina Sboui, Ben Baz Aziz, Imad
Iddine Habib and Waleed Al Husseini
LCP Dance Theatre
Singer Shelley Segal and more…
Sunday 12 October 2014
8:00-9:00am Registration
Tea/Coffee
9:00-9:30 Karima Bennoune
9:30-11:00 Women, Religion and
Religious-Right Panel
This panel will look at the role of religion and the religious-Right in
societies and its impact on women and girls.
Chair: Julie Bindel
Panellists: Horia Mosadiq (“Religious Fundamentalism and its Impact on
Women and Girls in Afghanistan”), Inna Shevchenko (“Religion and Women’s
Rights”), Magdulien Abaida (“Women in Islam”), Nira Yuval-Davis
(“The Role of Religion in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and its Effects on
the Position of Women”) and Siba Shakib
11:00-11:30 Lila Ghobady, “Female Iranian Artists: A
Portrait of Anti-Regime Women in Exile”
11:30-12:00 Amel Grami: “Female Bodies in Tunisia Post
Revolution”
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-13:10 Comedian Kate Smurthwaite
13:10-14:40 Blasphemy, Apostasy and Citizenship Panel
This panel will address the issue of blasphemy and apostasy laws and its
impact on citizenship.
Chair: Salil Tripathi
Panellists: Kiran Opal, Nahla Mahmoud, Nina Sankari (“25
Years in the Shadow of the Church”), Pragna Patel, and Sanal
Edamaruku (“Blasphemy Laws and the Contemporary Victims”)
14:40-14:50 Music
14:50-15:20 BREAK
15:20-16:50 Religious-Right Panel
This panel will focus attention on the religious-Right, the far-Right
political movements that are using religion for right-wing restructuring of
societies.
Chair: Yasmin Rehman
Panellists: Bahram Soroush (“Confronting the Islamic State”), Gita
Sahgal (“Remembering Genocide, Striving for Secular Space”), Houzan
Mahmoud (“Political Islam an old Problem with New Challenges”), Kacem
Ghazali and Tarek Fatah (“Islamism and its Roots in the Quest
for an Islamic State”)
16:50-17:10 Secularism Manifesto
17:10-17:30 Closing with Marieme Helie Lucas and Maryam
Namazie
What Next?
For full details of the conference, including on registration and obtaining
tickets, visit the event’s dedicated website or contact Conference Organising
Committee: Amal Farah, Atoosa Khatiri, Eileen McFadden, Marieme Helie Lucas and
Maryam Namazie at maryamnamazie@gmail.com. Please also join the event’s Facebook page and follow the conference on Twitter or
Tweet #SecularConf.
The conference is endorsed by Atheist Alliance International; Bread and
Roses TV; Children First Now; Center for Inquiry; Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain;
Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran; Fitnah
– Movement for Women’s Liberation; International Committee against Stoning;
International Committee against Execution; International Federation of Iranian
Refugees; Iran Solidarity; National Secular Society; One Law for All;
Secularism is a Women’s Issue; The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and
Science UK; and Women Living Under Muslim Laws amongst others.
Richard Dawkins will be attending the conference.
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF SPEAKERS AND ACTS
- AC Grayling is a Philosopher, Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, Honorary Associate of the
National Secular Society and author and commentator.
- Amal Farah is Spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of
Britain and One Law for All. She is Somali-born and was raised in a
conservative and literalist Muslim household.
- Amel Grami is Professor at the Tunisian University of Manouba;
she was on the frontlines of Manouba’s successful struggle to defy a
Salafist siege last year and is a leading expert on Religion and Women’s
Studies.
- Amina Sboui is a Tunisian activist threatened and imprisoned after
posting topless photos of herself on Facebook carrying the slogan: “My
Body is not the Source of Anyone’s Honour”.
- Bahram Soroush is a social and political analyst and commentator and
a co-host of Bread and Roses TV Programme.
- Ben Baz Aziz is a Presenter at Arab Atheist broadcasting and a
blogger focusing on LGBT and atheist rights in the Middle East who was
imprisoned in Kuwait for blasphemy.
- Caroline Fourest is a French writer, editor of the magazine ProChoix,
and author of Frère Tariq, a critical look at the works of Tariq Ramadan
and books on topics such as the conservative right, the pro-life movement
and the fundamentalist trends in the Abrahamic religions.
- Chris Moos is a secular student activist who has led a successful
campaign for the right to wear ‘Jesus and Mo’ t-shirts after being
harassed and threatened with removal at his university. He was a nominee
for the NSS’ Secularist of the Year 2014 award.
- Elham Manea is a Yemeni associate professor specialized in the
Middle East, a writer, and a human rights activist. Her concept of
humanistic Islam was first published in a series of articles in Arabic.
- Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar is an Iraqi born writer and a social activist living
in the United States. He is the founder of the Global Secular Humanist
Movement and Secular Post.
- Fariborz Pooya is the founder of the Iranian Secular Society, was one
of the founding members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and is a
co-host of Bread and Roses TV.
- Fatou Sow is a Senegalese Sociologist, and a member of a number
of African and international associations as well as the International
Director of Women Living Under Muslim Laws.
- Gita Sahgal is an Indian-born writer, journalist, film-maker and
rights activist, Director of Centre for Secular Space who was suspended by
Amnesty International as head of its Gender Unit in 2010 for criticising
the organisation’s relations with an Islamist group.
- Hamid Taqvaee is Leader of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran’s
Central Committee and a leading Marxist opposition figure to the Islamic
regime of Iran.
- Houzan Mahmoud is a Kurdish women’s rights campaigner and the Spokesperson
of the Organisations of Women’s Freedom in Iraq. She has written and
campaigned extensively on women’s rights issues.
- Horia Mosadiq has been Director of the Afghanistan Human Rights
Research and Advocacy Consortium and an advisor to the Afghanistan
Independent Human Rights Commission, as well as a journalist in
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
- Imad Iddine Habib is a Moroccan atheist threatened for his atheism,
founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco, the first public atheist
organisation in a country with Islam as the state religion.
- Inna Shevchenko is leader of FEMEN topless activists who was kidnapped
and threatened by the Belarus KGB in 2011 for her activism. She was
granted political asylum in France.
- Julie Bindel is an English writer, feminist and co-founder of the
group Justice for Women. She was listed in the Independent’s “Pink List”
as one of the top 101 most influential gay and lesbian people in the UK.
- Kacem El Ghazzali is a Moroccan secularist writer, blogger, activist and
atheist. He was the head of the Moroccan Center for Human Rights’ Youth
Chapter and is a member of the Executive Board of the Moroccan Bloggers
Association.
- Karima Bennoune is a law professor at the University of California
Davis School of Law, and author of “Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold
Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism”.
- Kate Smurthwaite is a stand-up comedian and political activist. She has
appeared on more than 500 TV and radio shows including This Morning, The
Big Questions, Woman’s Hour and The Moral Maze.
- Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, a presenter of
BBC Radio 4′s Analysis and a panellist on The Moral Maze. His book
From Fatwa to Jihad was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.
- Kiran Opal is a Pakistani-born human rights activist, writer, and
editor living in Canada. She is co-founder of Ex-Muslims of North America
and Editor of ExMuslimBlogs.
- Layla Saleem spent 6 years in an Islamic school in Britain and now
campaigns for secular education.
- LCP is a multimedia and multiethnic dance company which
emphasises human rights issues mainly human trafficking.
- Lila Ghobady is an Iranian writer-journalist and documentary
filmmaker. Her first independent release, Forbidden Sun Dance, was banned
by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Maha Kamal is an ex-Muslim who was disowned by her parents for
leaving Islam, President of the Colorado Prison Law Project, and
Commissioner at the Colorado Supreme Court Chief Justice’s Commission on
Inclusiveness.
- Magdulien Abaida is a Libyan Activist and president of Hakki (My Right)
Organization for Women Rights. She was kidnapped by Islamists in Benghazi
in August 2012 and fled after her release three days later.
- Marieme Helie Lucas is an Algerian sociologist, founder and former
International Coordinator of the Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She is
also the founder of Secularism Is A Women’s Issue.
- Maryam Namazie is Spokesperson for Fitnah, One Law for All and
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain; editor of Fitnah’s Unveiled; and
producer and co-host of Bread and Roses.
- Nadia El Fani is a Tunisian filmmaker who risks arrest and up to
five years in prison if she returns to Tunisia after Islamists filed a
complaint against her film “Neither Allah nor Master”.
- Nahla Mahmoud is an environmentalist and human right activist
originally from Sudan. She leads the Sudanese Humanists Group and is
Spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
- Nina Sankari is President of the European Feminist Initiative in
Poland, and Vice-President of the Polish Rationalist Association.
- Pervez Hoodbhoy is a Pakistani nuclear physicist and recipient of a
number of awards. He is also a prominent environmentalist and social
activist.
- Peter Tatchell has been campaigning for rights and global justice
since 1967. New Statesman readers voted him sixth on their list of “Heroes
of our time”. He was Campaigner of the Year in The Observer Ethical
Awards.
- Pragna Patel is a founding member of the Southall Black Sisters and
Women Against Fundamentalism. She was listed in The Guardian’s Top 100
women: activists and campaigners.
- Ramin Forghani is founder of the Ex-Muslims of Scotland and Vice-Chair
of the Scottish Secular Society.
- Randa Kassis is President and founder of the Movement for a
Pluralistic Society. She was a member of the Syrian National Council until
she was excluded for her warnings against Muslim fundamentalists in 2012.
- Rumy Hassan is Senior Lecturer at University of Sussex and author
of “Dangerous Liaisons: The Clash between Islamism and Zionism” and
“Multiculturalism: Some Inconvenient Truths”.
- Salil Tripathi is an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor
at Mint and at Caravan in India. He was board member of English PEN from
2009 to 2013, and co-chaired PEN’s Writers-at-Risk Committee.
- Sanal Edamaruku is an author and founder-president of Rationalist
International and the Indian Rationalist Association. In 2012, he was
charged with hurting religious sentiments for his role in examining a claimed
miracle at a local Catholic Church.
- Shelley Segal is a Melbourne based singer-songwriter involved in
secular activism. ‘An Atheist Album’ is a passionate response to dogmatic
belief, inequality, religious oppression and the idea that only the devout
can be grateful and good.
- Siba Shakib is an Iranian/German film-maker, writer and political
activist. She was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. Her international
best-seller Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep has been translated
into 27 languages and won a P.E.N. prize.
- Sue Cox is the co-founder of Survivors Voice Europe, an
international organisation that has at its heart the support and
empowerment of catholic clergy abuse survivors of which she is one.
- Taj Hargey is South African Muslim scholar. He was an
anti-apartheid activist in South Africa and founder of the Muslim
Education Centre of Oxford and the Imam of the Summertown Islamic
congregation.
- Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani born Canadian writer, broadcaster and a
secular activist. He is the author of “Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic
Illusion of an Islamic State” and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress.
- Taslima Nasrin is a Bangladeshi-born award-winning writer, physician,
and activist, known for her powerful writings on women oppression and
unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple
fatwas calling for her death.
- Terry Sanderson is a writer and journalist and current President of
the National Secular Society, which campaigns for the separation of church
and state.
- Waleed Husseini is a Palestinian blogger arrested in 2010 by the
Palestinian Authority for blaspheming against Islam on Facebook and in his
blog. He founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France in 2013.
- Yasmin Rehman has worked for more than two decades on violence
against women and girls. She was Director of Partnerships and Diversity
with the Metropolitan Police Service, and Deputy Association of Chief
Police Officer lead for Honour based Violence from 2004-07.