Category: Notes
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When I left Iran
The below is the unedited piece for #Iamamigrant campaign. I left Iran in 1980 with my mother to go to India to continue my education after my school closed down. My mother was meant to settle me in and return but stayed when things got worse. After a few months, my father and 3 year…
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A Clash of the Uncivilised: Trump, Muslim Profiling and the Far-Right’s Assault
First published in The Freethinker Donald Trump’s suspension of new refugee admissions for 120 days and the barring of nationals from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia for 90 days (likely to be extended) is fundamentally about a far-Right restructuring of US society under the guise of “stopping terrorism” and defending “western…
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Transcript of Sam Harris-Maryam Namazie Podcast on Immigration and Muslim Profiling
“Muslim” profiling has now been imposed by Donald Trump via an Executive Order with its brutal consequences unfolding before our very eyes. See my piece “Clash of the Uncivilised” on Trump’s politics. Revisiting the main reasons one must oppose Muslim profiling as I had previously discussed in Sam Harris’ Waking Up podcast is a matter…
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Sharia courts pose a growing threat to women’s rights
The below is my piece published in The Freethinker on 15 December 2016. This week over 300 women who have faced abuse issued a warning of the growing threat to their rights by Sharia courts and parallel legal systems. Also this week, One Law for All submitted devastating new evidence to the Home Affairs Select…
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Devastating New Evidence on Sharia Courts
Supplementary written evidence submitted by One Law for All RE: New Submission by Maryam Namazie to Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry into Sharia Councils I am writing to raise serious concerns over the Home Affairs Select Committee hearing on 1 November 2016 at which I gave oral testimony and to provide further and new evidence…
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Confronting Islamism with Secularism
Monograph · Evening Discussion with Richard Dawkins at European Parliament organised by Euromind Maryam Namazie A future Europe must be secular. By secularism I mean the complete separation of religion from the state (and not the British version of equal tolerance for religions, which breeds communalism). Whilst freedom of religion or belief is an important…
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Discrimination and violence lie at the heart of Sharia courts
The below was published in The Freethinker. I gave oral evidence at the Home Affairs Select Committee evidence session on Sharia Councils on November 1 on why Sharia courts in Britain are an Islamist project to control women, are discriminatory and should be dismantled. (This was preceded by a written statement.) When questioned by MP…
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In Defence of Laicite: Our Lives Depend on It
I am truly honoured to have been awarded the International Secularism (Laicite) Prize from the Comité Laïcité République in Paris on 2 November. The wonderful Malek Boutih won the National Prix and Étienne-Émile Baulieu the Scientific Prize for 2016. Here is my acceptance speech in English. Video and text below. The French translation, thanks to…
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Extended Interview with Maryam Namazie
Here is my extended interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen for Conatus News published on 9 October 2016 How did you get involved in activism? I became an activist as a result of my own life experiences after an Islamic regime took power in Iran. We fled the country. One of the first ways in which…
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Hamza Sodagar and everything you need to know about Islamists.
The surfacing of a video by Hamza Sodagar (a US hate preacher trained by the Islamic regime of Iran) on killing gay men will tell you everything you need to know about Islamists. You must have seen the video by now: “If there’s homosexual men, the punishment is one of five things. One, the easiest…
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The Disappeared: The veil and the erasure of the female body
This was published in The Freethinker today. When I was 12 years old, soon after the Islamists took power in Iran, their thugs came to my school to keep boys and girls separate in the playground. Even at 12, we girls were seen to be the source of chaos and fitnah in society. This Islamist…
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We need to stop conflating ‘Muslims’ with Islamists
Here is my piece for this month’s The Freethinker: It’s insidious how the Islamist narrative has become mainstream everywhere – in the media, in social policies, in discussions around minority communities and human rights, in ‘progressive’ politics … it’s also very much part and parcel of how some freethinkers view ‘Muslims’ – homogenised masses whose…