Supporting Ireland's Apostates, Without Reservation or Apology
“Organized religion always has been and remains the greatest enemy of women’s rights.” Annie Laurie Gaylor The situation of Muslim women is a dire one. Throughout the Islamic world, and increasingly among Muslim communities in the West, women are subjected to countless forms of physical and mental abuse. These include compulsory veiling and forced confinement, […]
Read More“It is obvious to any honest observer that Hamas is not interested in protecting our families, expanding economic opportunity, or otherwise improving life for Palestinians. Their leadership – safely ensconced in luxury accommodations in Qatar – only wants to encourage violence between Muslims and Jews… If the international community really wants to help Palestinians like me, they […]
Read More“One of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot, is while they’re denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied. While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party. It’s upside-down world.“ Salman […]
Read More“Neither the Qur’an’s eloquence nor its moral and legal precepts are miraculous. The Qur’an is miraculous because it enabled Muhammad, single-handedly and despite poverty and illiteracy, to overcome his people’s resistance and found a lasting religion; because it moved wild men to obedience and imposed its bringer’s will on them.” Ali Dashti “If the Qur’an […]
Read More“It is fitting for a nation long in tradition and with a strong sense of honour to find the courage to denounce its own errors. But it should not forget all the reasons it could still have for self-esteem. In any case, it is dangerous to ask it to confess that it alone was guilty […]
Read More“It is well-known that an automaton once existed, which was so constructed that it could counter any move of a chess-player with a counter-move, and thereby assure itself of victory in the match. A puppet in Turkish attire, water-pipe in mouth, sat before the chessboard, which rested on a broad table. Through a system of […]
Read More“While many individual Muslims choose to live their personal lives only by the (now abrogated) peaceable verses of the Qur’an, it is vain to deny the pro-war and pro-terrorism doctrines within their religion.” Patrick Sookhdeo In the hadith literature, Muhammad exhorts his followers to marry women who are prolific, such that Muslims may outnumber people […]
Read More“The privilege I certainly enjoy as a white male consists in part in my not being aware of my ethnicity and my gender, and it is a sobering and revelatory experience to occasionally be made aware of these blind-spots. But, rather than seeking a world in which everyone achieves freedom from identitarian classification, the Vampires’ […]
Read More“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” Susan B. Anthony Among Muslims, it is an article of faith that the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad from Allah, the Almighty. Muhammad was but a messenger; he did not […]
Read More“Deism, historically, produces atheism. First you make God a landlord, then he becomes an absentee landlord, then he becomes simply absent.” N.T. Wright The genomes of living organisms are prone to random variations, or mutations. If a mutation happens to confer a survival advantage (e.g. thicker fur) or reproductive advantage (e.g. greater plumage) upon an […]
Read More“Muhammad initially devised the concept of jihad, ‘exertion in the path of Allah’, as he called his god, as a means to entice his local followers to raid Meccan caravans, instantaneously transforming a common tribal practice into a supreme religious duty and the primary vehicle for the spread of Islam throughout the ages. He developed […]
Read More“The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable – namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.” Charles Darwin Morality is concerned with […]
Read More“O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them.” Qur’an 5.51 Dr. Leslie Shaw is the founder and president of the Forum on Islamic Radicalism and […]
Read More“The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.” H.L. Mencken It is no exaggeration to say that Orientalism, written by Palestinian nationalist Edward Said, is a major source of the rabid anti-Westernism which so defines the Muslim world and the […]
Read More“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire The hadith literature is believed by Muslims to comprise the traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, faithfully transmitted by successive generations of narrators. It is revered as a major source of legal and spiritual guidance in Islam, second […]
Read More“Do they not consider the Qur’an (with care)? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.” Qur’an 4.82 Muslims are forever claiming that the Qur’an is a “scientific miracle”, i.e. that 1,400 years ago, the Prophet Muhammad accurately predicted much of what we only know to be true […]
Read More“In Saudi Arabia, among other countries, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith. The Qur’an is not a rights-respecting document.” Ibn Warraq Saudi Arabia bases its legal system on the code of ethics laid down by Muhammad in the Qur’an and the hadith literature. As […]
Read More“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell There are many markers of a society’s intellectual development. Chief among these is the value that a society places upon freedom of speech. A society that allows me to express an opinion, and […]
Read More“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” Qur’an 9:29 Critics […]
Read More“The notion of purity – especially when it’s coerced or projected onto a young girl – relegates her worth to a reductive and dangerous dichotomy. She’s either pure or she’s not, and if she’s not? She’s a slut. Raising righteous daughters is no doubt generated as an act of care, but its trappings betray its […]
Read More“We owe to one another all the wit and good humour we can command; and nothing so clears our mental vistas as sympathetic and intelligent conversation.” Agnes Repplier In September 2017, two of our members took part in an interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen of Canadian Atheist. These exchanges, covering a wide range of issues […]
Read More“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” Winston Churchill Religion is a very ancient phenomenon. Among psychologists and social scientists, there is a consensus that it once served a useful purpose among our ancestors, e.g. in terms of social cohesion. Today, however, it can be well-argued that religion […]
Read More“The Civil Service is a bit like a rusty weathercock. It moves with opinion then it stays where it is until another wind moves it in a different direction.” Tony Benn In early August 2017, Dublin City Council agreed to erect a banner on its Civic Offices in support of the Dublin City Interfaith Forum, […]
Read More“Wherever bibliolatry has prevailed, bigotry and cruelty have accompanied it. It lies at the root of the deep-seated, sometimes disguised, but never absent, antagonism of all the varieties of ecclesiasticism to the freedom of thought and to the spirit of scientific investigation. For those who look upon ignorance as one of the chief sources of […]
Read MoreAllah’s Messenger said: “I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror.” Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 56, Hadith 186 Nearly two months have passed since the Manchester Arena attacks. On that night, the lives of twenty-two innocent people were taken by a jihadist suicide bomber. […]
Read More“Love for all, hatred for none.” Mirza Nasir Ahmad Since the end of the nineteenth century, Ahmadiyya Muslims have endured the most brutal persecution by their Sunni and Shi’a counterparts. In Pakistan, since General Zia ul-Haq’s Ordinance XX in 1984, Ahmadiyyas have been forbidden from calling themselves Muslims, their religion Islam, or their temples mosques. […]
Read More“When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” BENJAMIN FRANKLIN One […]
Read More“The bombers of Manhattan represent fascism with an Islamic face, and there’s no point in any euphemism about it. What they abominate about ‘the west’, to put it in a phrase, is not what western liberals don’t like and can’t defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: […]
Read More“This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.” Robert G. Ingersoll In Islam, the penalty for apostasy is death. Thus, in the Muslim world, it is commonly held that those who leave or criticise Islam must be killed. In recent years, with […]
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Alliance of Former Muslims 