Category: Islam and Women’s Rights

The Humanist Stance on Choice and Pleasure One of my most memorable experiences as an editor of FREE INQUIRY was strolling along the canals of Amsterdam with senior editors Vern and Bonnie Bullough during the 1992 World Humanist Congress. The two of them walked hand-in-hand throughout the famed Red Light District, reminiscing about the various …

Islam is deeply anti-woman. Islam is the fundamental cause of the repression of Muslim women and remains the major obstacle to the evolution of their position.1 Islam has always considered women as creatures inferior in every way: physically, intellectually, and morally. This negative vision is divinely sanctioned in the Koran, corroborated by the hadiths, and …

One of the world’s oldest religions is also one of the world’s most adaptable—even to a secularist society The question of whether Islam can be secularized has been on the agenda of modern Arab and Muslim thought and history since Bonaparte’s occupation of Egypt in 1798. Arabs have been attempting to settle the issue since at …

Hunted, isolated from her family and friends, forced to leave the country of her birth, Taslima Nasrin has lived under these circumstances since 1994, when the government of Bangla desh ordered her arrest. Her crime was the publication of Lajja! (Shame!), a book in which she protested against Muslim attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh after …

The Center for Inquiry Institute launches a three-year academic program A program of intensive education in humanism, skepticism, and rationalism has been successfully launched by the Center for Inquiry Institute, a nonprofit educational institution co-sponsored by the Council for Secular Humanism. In addition to increasing public awareness of the need for critical thinking across the spectrum …

Examining whether unjustified beliefs are really the best medicine Shannon Nixon was a 16-year-old Pennsylvanian with highly treatable diabetes. Shannon, however, had parents who believed that faith alone could cure her. Shannon died in June 1996, and her parents, Dennis and Lorie Nixon, were convicted on April 22, 1997, of involuntary manslaughter. In 1991, Shannon’s …

As long as there have been dictatorial military regimes in Nigeria, writer Wole Soyinka has spoken out against them. Championing democracy over the last 30 years earned him a two-decade prison sentence. The current regime, under General Sani Abacha, has given Soyinka a death sentence that has forced him to flee his homeland. He now …