Author: Maryam Namazie

Today, the following manifesto will be published in Charlie Hebdo, a French leftwing newspaper that had published the Mohammad caricatures. It has been signed by myself and 11 others, namely Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Chahla Chafiq, Caroline Fourest, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Irshad Manji, Mehdi Mozaffari, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie, Antoine Sfeir, Philippe Val and Ibn Warraq. It…

In an interview with Algerian El Khabar newspaper in Arabic, George Galloway, the Respect MP, says the Mohammad caricatures are worse than the murder of innocent civilians on 11 September in New York and July 7 in London! Silly me; I always thought slaughtering civilians was somehow worse than offending them… I guess it takes…

Elham Afroutan who was arrested on 29 January 2006 with six colleagues for the republication of an anonymous satirical piece in a local Iranian publication called Tammadon-e Hormozgan is reportedly in a coma or has died in the custody of the Islamic regime of Iran. She and the others were arrested for a piece entitled…

In this day and age it is supposedley no longer the individual but religion that is guaranteed rights, equality, tolerance, respect…And most often at the expense of individuals. The concept of rights, equality, respect and tolerance were concepts raised vis-à-vis the individual not beliefs. But today, it seems mainly applicable to the latter. We are…

Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has been jailed for seven years in the UK after being found guilty of inciting murder and race hate. In a television interview, his son said something to the effect of: Abu Hamza is just a normal Islamic sheikh. My sentiments exactly!

It’s interesting how free speech, the right to criticise and ridicule god, prophet or religion, the separation of religion from the state and secularism as well as the non-right to threaten to kill, suicide bomb and massacre people are not applicable to Islamists and Islam! I must admit, those of us who have fled the…

I’ve set up a petition on petitiononline in defence of free speech and secularism. The text reads as follows: We, the undersigned, unequivocally condemn the threats of death and bombings by Islamists to limit, censor and silence any critique of Islam. Criticism of religion – any religion – including caricaturing religious figures, however offensive, are…

An email I received says my blog and the reprinting of the caricatures of Mohammad are insulting and offensive. Of course they can be offensive to those who feel their strongly held beliefs or their representatives are being ridiculed. But so what? Whilst we may all sometimes be offended by some things, it is religion…

The repeated calls for an unreserved apology for publishing ‘offensive’ and ‘insulting’ caricatures of Mohammad reminds me of the apologies that should be made to me and many like me. I’d like the offended Islamists – from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Islamic Jihad to the Saudi government… – to apologise; not for their…

3 January 2006 At 11:00 pm on Sunday 25 December the Islamic Republic’s security forces and Special Guards attacked the Faizabad residential district in Sanandaj, in the Kurdistan region of Iran, demolishing 150 houses. Old and young, without even being allowed to take their belongings with them, were dragged out of their homes into the…