Category: Notes
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Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoon was not Islamophobic
My opening remarks at Oxford Union debate with Tariq Ramadan on 29 February 2016 Criticism of religion – however offensive – is not racism against believers. Islamophobia is in fact used to conflate blasphemy with bigotry in order to impose Islamist norms on the wider society. Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of Mohammad are no more “bigotry”…
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Confronting Islamism with Secularism, Free Expression and Citizenship Rights
The below is my speech prepared for European Parliament meeting on 23 February 2016. Today, I would like to focus on the importance of defending secularism, universalism, free expression, and citizenship rights in confronting Islamism. To begin with, let me clarify the distinctions between Islam (an idea), Muslims (people) and Islamism (the religious-Right). The three…
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Free Speech: It’s not free unless it’s free for everyone
The below is Maryam Namazie’s opening remarks at Spiked Conference: The New Intolerance on Campus on “No Platform: should hate speech be free speech?” Freedom of speech in British universities is under heavier assault than ever before in large part due to the proclaimed desire by the National Union of Students (NUS) to maintain student…
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MARYAM NAMAZIE: Why I had to face down the bullies trying to silence my supposedly ‘offensive’ stance on Islam
Original published in Daily Mail on 9 January 2016 This week marked the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris. The atrocity was a brutal attack not just on human life but also on the principle of free speech, one of the pillars of human civilisation. In the aftermath of the killings, people…
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Goldsmiths Student Union request and more
I have received the following email from the Chief Executive of Goldsmiths Students’ Union today (one of three since yesterday) asking to remove the video of my talk for the Atheists Society on Monday 30 November on Apostasy, Blasphemy and Free Expression in the age of ISIS. You can see my reply refusing to do so below.…
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Video: Goldsmith University Islamist thugs fail to disrupt speech on blasphemy and apostasy
SEE VIDEO BELOW Maryam Namazie spoke on “apostasy, blasphemy and free expression in the age of ISIS” on 30 November 2015 at Goldsmiths University at the invitation of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASH). Goldsmiths Islamic Society (ISOC) called for the talk’s cancellation saying Maryam’s presence is “a violation to [their] safe space,” and…
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Goldsmiths ISOC fails to intimidate and silence dissenters
I spoke on 30 November 2015 at Goldsmiths University at the invitation of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASH). The night before my talk, the ASH president received an email from the president of Goldsmiths Islamic Society (ISOC) saying the following: As an Islamic society, we feel extremely uncomfortable by the fact that you…
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Ayatollah BBC and #ExMuslimBecause
I was interviewed by Anne-Marie Tomchak for thirty minutes for BBC Trending on 26 November. Despite my also having referred 4 ex-Muslims, including those who maintained anonymity whilst Tweeting for #ExMuslimBecause due to fears for their safety, the programme spoke to Mobeen Azhar and Rashid Dar, two men who identified themselves as Muslims, about my…
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The answer is a global human resistance to Islamism
FRENCH: Attaques sur Paris : la réponse doit être une résistance humaine globale à l’islamisme We mourn our dead in Paris today and stand in solidarity with the people of France – no ifs or buts. And whilst we mourn the dead, let us not forget the many other civilians who whilst going about their daily lives…
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Apostasy, Blasphemy and Free Expression in the Age of ISIS
Below is my speech “Apostasy, Blasphemy and Free Expression in the Age of ISIS,” which I gave at Warwick University on 28 October 2015. I had been initially barred by the Student Union but the talk went ahead after protests. I gave a similar speech a week earlier at Trinity College Dublin, after my talk…
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Shoot to Kill Orders, Police Dogs and Fortresses
I received this from a refugee rights activist working in Belgrade who got in touch to say that all groups of Afghan refugees who had come in contact with Iranian border guards were met with serious violence, including being shot at and beaten. Here Yasmin Ali describes some of the heart wrenching stories: “These people…the…