Category: Notes
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Abortion and Bodily Autonomy: Restriction, Repression, and Feminist Fightback
This is the amended text of a speech given by me at the International Conference on Science for Choice, held in Split, Croatia, on 27 September 2025. I spoke in place of Ibtissame Betty Lachgar, who has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison in Morocco for wearing, in London, a t-shirt stating…
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For Mahsa Jina Amini and Woman, Life, Freedom: Summoning an Age of Humanity in an Age of Hate
This is the slightly amended text of a speech given on 14 September 2025 at a commemorative event for Mahsa Jina Amini in London organised by Jiyan Women’s Assembly. It was first published in The Freethinker on 16 September 2025. We live in what feels like the worst of times, an Age of Hate that conspires against…
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La liberté d’expression prend vie là où le délit commence : pour la défense d’Ibtissame Betty Lachgar
Maryam Namazie L’article a été publié en anglais dans The Freethinker. La liberté d’expression prend vie là où commence le délit. Offenser c’est mettre en question les certitudes, dépouiller le sacré de ses privilèges, et de se moquer de la peur et des menaces. Une société qui bannit l’offense bannit la pensée elle-même. Le Maroc…
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Freedom of expression lives where offence begins: In defence of Ibtissame Betty Lachgar
By Maryam Namazie Published 3 September in The Freethinker IN FRENCH: La liberté d’expression prend vie là où le délit commence : pour la défense d’Ibtissame Betty Lachgar Freedom of expression lives where offence begins. To offend is to question certainty, to strip the sacred of its privilege, and to laugh in the face of…
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It is time to recognise sex apartheid as a crime against humanity
It is time to recognize sex apartheid as a crime against humanity, The Freethinker, 21 March 2025 The 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women is taking place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 11 to 22 March 2025. The main focus is an appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and…
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No Hijab Day, 1 February: Confronting Misogyny
Read full piece in The Freethinker. As a challenge to World Hijab Day on 1 February, No Hijab Day aims to confront the dominant narrative that packages the hijab as aAs a challenge to World Hijab Day on 1 February, No Hijab Day aims to confront the dominant narrative that packages the hijab as a symbol of women’s ‘empowerment’…
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Thank you Charlie Hebdo
The right to blasphemy, a cornerstone of free expression and democratic societies, is a universal human right and demand. It is not limited to or dependant on one’s ‘identity’ or lottery of birth. In fact, it matters most to those living under totalitarian and theocratic states. In many countries under the hold of theocrats, like…
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Feminism and religion are incompatible
Read full piece in The Freethinker: Feminism and religion are incompatible, 19 November 2024 This is an edited version of Maryam Namazie’s contribution to a Cambridge Union debate: ‘This House Believes Feminism is Incompatible with Religion’, held on 14 November 2024. Others speaking in Proposition: Phyllis Zagano, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Pollyanna Greene Wright. Those…
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Confronting identity politics, a breeding ground for division and dehumanisation
This is an edited version of Maryam Namazie’s keynote address made at the National Secular Society conference on 19 October 2024. I know identity politics well. Criticise Islam and Islamism, you are deemed an ‘Islamophobe’ by Islamists and their apologists on the pro-Islamist Left. Defend Muslims, refugees, and migrants and you are deemed to be…
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Being a woman is in and of itself and act of blasphemy
Blasphemy – and of course apostasy, heresy, enmity against god – are portrayed negatively and always from the perspective of the religious. The religious view is the default view. Blasphemy is therefore, seen to be at best offensive and hurtful. At worst it is seen to be a danger to national security, morality, stability of…
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Aisan Eslami: Not Your Fucking Honour
A video is circulating of Aisan Eslami, an ‘Influencer’ who lives in the USA with millions of followers, promoting the ‘honour’-killing of an Iranian women Simin Pourmehr on social media for her saying that one could go on holiday with the money it costs to go out for one night in Dubai. It’s a masterclass…
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Azar Majedi and Homa Arjomand’s Islamist Propaganda and Morality
By Maryam Namazie Azar Majedi and Homa Arjomand’s recent criticisms of feminists, secularists and ex-Muslims under the guise of defending the Palestinian people are worrying given their use of Islamist and pro-Islamist Left propaganda. Their statement ‘Genocide in Gaza: Where does the Women’s Rights Movement stand?’ rightly condemns genocide but has not one word condemning…