Maryam Namazie is a multi-award winning Iranian-born campaigner and writer living in the UK. She is currently the Spokesperson of One Law for All and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain.
During decades of activism work, Maryam has organised actions and protests in solidarity with the women’s revolution in Iran including 1 October mass protest in Trafalgar Square, #Hair4Freedom, protest dance against executions, and a topless action in Cologne. She has initiated the Woman, Life, Freedom Charter and a Woman, Life, Freedom singing and drumming group with others. She has been interviewed extensively on the situation in Iran and on other rights issues, produced and hosted a weekly TV programme broadcast in Iran in Persian and English called Bread and Roses. She has also executive produced Women Leaving Islam and published The Woman’s Quran. With Ex-Muslims International, she has organised Apostasy Day and Atheist Day. She is also the instigator and organiser of Celebrating Dissent, the largest gatherings of ex-Muslims in history, including in 2017 in London, 2019 in Amsterdam at De Balie, in Cologne 2022, for which she was interviewed by Charlie Hebdo, and CDOslo2024.
She has led topless protests at Pride London in defence of LGBT rights; taken part in a nude protest in defence of women’s rights in the Middle East and North Africa. She has initiated an International Day to Defend Amina and the Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar 2012-2013, founded Iran Solidarity, and helped launch the Manifesto for a Free and Secular Middle East and North Africa.
In 2006, Maryam signed a statement of 12 writers against Islamic totalitarianism with Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin and others. She has also fought against stoning laws and defended refugee rights, amongst others.
The Islamic regime of Iran’s media outlets has called Namazie ‘immoral, a harlot and corrupt’ and did an ‘exposé’ on her entitled Meet this anti-religion woman. In 2019, the Islamic regime’s intelligence service did a TV programme, where Namazie was featured as “anti-God”. Namazie has faced many attempts at censorship, including by Warwick University Student Union and Goldsmith Islamic Society. Her talk on ‘Creativity in Challenging Islamic Fundamentalism‘ was censored by TedX and labelled ‘distressing and objectionable.’
Some of her talks, interviews and debates include The Origins Podcast and Lawrence Krauss, a Celebrating Dissent interview, the De Balie Freedom Lecture entitled ‘Secularism is my Right; Freedom is my Culture,’ her speech entitled ‘Tojours Charlie‘ at Charlie Hebdo’s 3rd anniversary commemorative event in Paris, a debate with Tariq Ramadan at the Oxford Union on ‘Islam in Europe,’ acceptance speech for receiving the 2016 Secularism Laicite Prize from the Comité Laïcité République in Paris called ‘Our Lives Depend on Secularism,’ a speech ‘Out, Loud and Proud‘ at the Reason Rally and a speech entitled ‘The Islamic Inquisition’ at World Atheist Convention and Protest the Pope rally.
Maryam and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain have been featured in a 2016 film called Islam’s Non-Believers. She was also a character in DV8 Physical Theatre’s Can We Talk About This?, which deals with freedom of speech, censorship and Islam. In his 2020 book “Leaving the Allah Delusion Behind: Atheism and Freethought in Islam,” Ibn Warraq documents atheism in Islam and the rising ex-Muslim movement. In it he writes, “If it were not for Maryam Namazie’s tireless efforts, I doubt if the ex-Muslim atheist movement as a whole would have had the success it is experiencing now.” She is referred to as the ‘godmother of ex-Muslims.‘
Maryam’s first novel Bird of Dawn has been longlisted at Jericho Writers Friday Night Live competition (2023). She has been awarded the IBKA Sapio award (2022), was joint winner of the 2019 Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize; awarded the 2017 Henry H. Zumach Freedom From Religious Fundamentalism award; 2016 International Secularism (Laicite) Prize from the Comité Laïcité République and was honoured by the National Secular Society for her campaigning work defending free speech at universities (2016) despite attempts at barring her by Student Unions or Islamic Society efforts to intimidate and cancel her talks. She was awarded Atheist of the Year by Kazimierz Lyszczynski (2014); Journalist of the Year at the Dods Women in Public Life Awards (2013); selected one of the top 45 women of the year by Elle magazine Quebec (2007); one of 2006’s most intriguing people by DNA, awarded the National Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year Award (2005); selected ‘Iranian of the Year’ by Iranian.com readers (1997 and 1998); International Rescue Committee medal recipient (1988); and received the Julia B. Friedman Humanitarian Award (1987).
She is on the International Advisory Board of the Raif Badawi Foundation for Freedom and Euromind; a Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, National Secular Society Honorary Associate; Honorary Associate of Rationalist International and Emeritus Member of the Secular Humanist League of Brazil.
She has spoken and written numerous articles on women’s rights issues, free expression, Islamism, and secularism. She has co-authored Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights (One Law for All, June 2010), Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right (One Law for All, August 2011), and The Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam (CEMB, August 2017). She also has an essay entitled ‘When the Hezbollah came to my School’ in 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, October 2009) and is featured in A Better Life: A Hundred Atheists Speak out on Joy and Meaning in a World Without God (2013) amongst others.
Previously, Namazie was a Central Committee member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran until she resigned in January 2017; the elected Executive Director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees, a refugee-run organisation with 60 branches in 15 countries worldwide for 8 years; founded the Committee for Humanitarian Assistance to Iranian Refugees; was the Human Rights Advocates Training Programme Coordinator at Columbia University’s Centre for the Study of Human Rights in New York and the NYC Refugee Coordinator/ US National Steering Committee Member of Amnesty International. She was Co-founder and President of the US-based Refugee Women’s Network and ran a refugee women’s leadership training programme at a community-based organisation in Brooklyn, NY.
In 1991, she was beaten by NYPD when protesting the Gulf War Parade in NYC and faced trumped-up charges of obstructing government administration, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, felony riot – punishable by up to 13 years in prison. When footage was finally found showing police attacked Namazie and others know as the “War Parade 18,” charges were dropped.
She was Co-founder of Human Rights Without Frontiers when she lived in Sudan during 1988-90. When her activities were revealed after the establishment of Islamic law in 1989 following a coup, she was threatened by Sudanese security and forced to leave the country.
She was born in May 1966 in Tehran, Iran to Hushang and Mary Namazie. She is living in London with her spouse and son since 2000.
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Below is the introduction to her work during the IBKA Sapio award ceremony in September 2022:
- IBKA, the International League of Non-Religious and Atheists, awarded CEMB Spokesperson Maryam Namazie the Sapio Prize for outstanding merits in advocating freethought, separation of state and church, and rational thinking in Cologne, Germany on 10 September 2022.
Maryam Namazie shared her award with Mina Ahadi and Arzu Toker who started the first Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany and other organisations in Ex-Muslims International. She dedicated the award to Islam’s Non Believers.
Rene Hartmann, IBKA Spokesperson opened the award ceremony
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain aims to give a voice to people who have turned away from Islam.
It campaigns for equal rights and against privilege or discrimination in the name of religion, for the right to criticise religion and against interference in private affairs in the name of religion.
With the award of the ‘Sapio’ prize, the IBKA would like to honour Maryam Namazie’s extraordinary personal commitment to secularism, self-determination and the separation of state and religion. This commitment is associated with a not inconsiderable risk.
IBKA awards its Sapio Prize to individuals or organisations that have made outstanding contributions to freedom of belief, self-determination and tolerance.
The freedom to choose one’s religion is a self-evident part of the fundamental right to freedom of religion and belief.
People of Muslim origin are a minority in Europe and as such are subject to discrimination. However, it is a mistake to believe that discrimination can be reduced or compensated for by privileging religious structures. Patriarchal and paternalistic structures linked to organised religion must be named and problematised. Otherwise, individual self-determination will fall by the wayside. This by no means only concerns Islam. However, Islam plays a significant role among the minority religions in Europe.
If people with a migration background are under pressure to adapt to the religious norms of their environment, this is no less reprehensible than if they experience pressure from the majority society to adapt to the culture of the destination country beyond what is expected. Raising this issue is not very popular in some circles and can even lead to accusations of racism. We see an pernicious alliance at work here between conservative religionists and people who see themselves as progressive, but who are in fact pursuing an anti-enlightenment agenda.
In contrast, IBKA sees it as its task to stand up for individual self-determination and the values of the Enlightenment. Also and especially where collective rights are played off against individual rights in the name of anti-racism and identity politics.
According to its statutes, IBKA stands up for the assertion of individual self-determination against outdated traditions as well as religious and ideological norms. We stand by this and by the values of the Enlightenment without any ifs and buts.
It is therefore a great pleasure for me that the IBKA is able to award this prize to Maryam Namazie.
Arzu Toker, the Turkish writer and activist introduced Maryam Namazie:
Maryam Namazie
Born: In this world
Activist: In this world
Current location at 51° 30′ north latitude and 0° 8′ west longitude, this point is currently called London
To give a count of all of Maryam’s activities would take very long. The summary is an about three-pages-long list of awards and recognition. I think that atheists are responsible people who surely informed themselves about why Maryam is given this award.
Definitely not in order to be mentioned on a three-page list of award givers. As board member I can say in IBKA’s name: With this award, IBKA honours Maryam, who stands for independent thinking and responsible living and acting. She does not accept the oppression, the degradation of women. Not in the name of some God or people in power.
Maryam left her country of birth with her family in 1980 as a 14-year-old after misanthropic Islamists took over power in Iran one year prior. I don’t know what kind of woman she would have become if she hadn’t emigrated but the Maryam Namazie I am talking about right here is a brave and courageous woman.
In looking at her life closely, it seems obvious to me that Maryam has experienced the suffering and pain that many people from Iran have known in their early years. I can see this because many of her activities were and still are related to Iran. Helping people in Iran and from Iran was the beginning. But she didn’t remain there. She widened her horizon and saw the whole picture, she became involved in helping people in and from other countries as well. This, among other things, is what characterizes her.
Emigration has many faces. It can steal the mind, it can lead people to backwardness or it can also open new gates, new dimensions of thinking and understanding. Maryam chose the latter option. Maryam conquered new dimensions of thinking through emigration.
She is an example of a woman who doesn’t whine about living between two cultures, or moves into defence mode of religion or tradition but develops these cultures further.
Maryam lived and lives in different countries, cultures, and engages herself to a life equal and in freedom. Unfortunately, there are examples like Ferda Ataman, the federal government’s so-called Antidiscrimination-Representative, who apparently did not succeed in doing the same thing. Maryam publicly criticised her, in spite of not living in this country. Because national borders can’t be applied to thoughts or freedom. There is even an old German song from 1780: Die Gedanken sind frei! Thoughts are free! Why should we restrict them in 2022? The lessons learned from emigration have led Maryam to founding the initiative ‘One Law For All’. This attitude needs a personality that keeps her eyes, ears and heart open everywhere in the world and – above all – accepts people the way they are.
Does Maryam have no borders/boundaries? Yes, she does. It lies where other people’s freedom is being constricted. Maryam says: “I’ve always said that criticizing Islam and its political movement is not racism in any way shape or form. You cannot be racist against a belief or idea, no matter how much that criticism cause offence.”
Maryam fights against the stoning of women, against the veiling, against all measures of Islamic regimes to subjugate women.
Because of her activities, the Islamic regime of Iran’s media outlets has called Namazie ‘immoral, a harlot and corrupt’ and did an ‘exposé’ on her entitled ‘Meet this anti-religion woman’. In 2019, the Islamic regime’s intelligence service did a TV programme, where Namazie was featured as ‘anti-God’. The reaction of the Iranian rulers is vulgar, concerning at the same time, their primitive ways show that Mullahs mistake their head for their penis. Because of this the vulgar manner.
But maybe they also deserve some thanks because this way the people in Iran learn: There is a woman in the West, she has not forgotten about us, she takes on the Mullahs. She is fighting for our human rights. This, exactly this, Ladies and Gentlemen, is why Maryam Namazie receives the SAPIO award from IBKA.
Maryam, it is my pleasure to be the one giving this speech, because I appreciate you but there is another thing I would like to mention, to question. I know I am alone with this view but still:
There is no political Islam. Islam is political because it claims a right to power. Quran is not a book of prayer but Quran comprises the Islamic law.
But today the evening belongs to Maryam Namazie. It is my honour to invite you to the stage and present the Sapio award.
Below is the introduction of Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, of Maryam Namazie during the Secularist of the Year award ceremony in October 2005:
Maryam Namazie was born in Tehran, but she left Iran with her family in 1980 after the establishment of the Islamic Republic. She then lived in India, the UK and then settled in the US where she began her university studies at the age of 17.
After graduating, Maryam went to the Sudan in to work with Ethiopian refugees. Half way through her stay, an Islamic government took power. She was threatened by the government for establishing a clandestine human rights organisation and had to be evacuated by her employer for her own safety.
Back in the United States, Maryam worked for various refugee and human rights organisations. She established the Committee for Humanitarian Assistance to Iranian Refugees in 1991. In 1994, she went to Turkey and produced a video documentary on the situation of Iranian refugees there.
Soon after her return to the US, she was elected executive director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees, an international organisation with 60 branches in nearly 20 countries. As director of the refugee-run organisation, she campaigned on behalf of thousands of Iranian asylum seekers and refugees having intervened successfully on many cases preventing. Some successes include preventing the deportation of over 1000 from Holland including having spoken at a parliamentary meeting on the issue; to a successful campaign against the Turkish government to extend the period in which asylum seekers can apply for asylum.
Maryam Namazie has also worked on numerous campaigns, including against stoning, executions, sexual apartheid, and women’s rights violations particularly in Islamic societies. Some successes include the campaign against the Sharia court in Canada. She was a speaker at its first public meeting in Toronto and continued supporting and highlighting the issue and mobilising support.
Other campaigns she has worked on include preventing stonings and executions in Islamist societies, opposing the veiling of children, opposing Sharia or religious laws, defending the banning of religious symbols from schools and public institutions, opposing the incitement to religious hatred bill in the UK and calling for secularism and the de-religionisation of society not only in Iran but in Britain and elsewhere.
Maryam is an inveterate commentator and broadcaster on rights, cultural relativism, secularism, religion, political Islam and many other related topics.
The present revival of Islam has heightened interest in Maryam’s work, and at last her writings are gaining a mainstream audience. She has spoken at numerous conferences and written extensively on women’s rights issues, particularly violence against women.
More recently, Maryam has been hosting a weekly programme on International TV. This is broadcast via satellite to the Middle East and Europe and can be seen on the Internet. TV International focuses on issues pertaining to the Middle East from a progressive, left-wing perspective. The programme promotes secularism amongst other values and has developed a considerable following amongst people in Iran and the Middle East as well as in Europe and the west.
The issues raised in the programme provoke much correspondence, and she has been roundly criticised by Islamists, the Islamic Republic of Iran and even of Ken Livingstone after his invitation to this country of Yusuf Al Qaradawi.
So she must be doing something right.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are sure you will agree with us that Maryam Namazie is a worthy and noble winner of this first Irwin Prize.