In December 2021 the UK government announced plans for a Bill to end conversion therapy. The plans were withdrawn in early 2022, following controversy about the implications for treatment of children with gender dysphoria, but with a promise of later reintroduction. The UK, however, is only one of many countries seeking to legislate on this issue. Several have already done so, and others have laws in hand. 

‘Conversion therapy’ is an umbrella expression for attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The term covers a wide spectrum of activities, from ‘medical’ treatment to religious rituals like exorcism. (Some would argue it also includes forced marriage – the complete dismissal of homosexual orientation as a factor in selfhood or personhood.)  Of course, ‘conversion therapy’ is a misnomer. ‘Therapy’ implies that the condition being treated – same sex attraction or different gender expression – is a pathology requiring medical or some other intervention. It harks back to a time when same sex attraction was seen as a perversion or mental illness, which could be cured or ‘converted’ by treatment. I use it only as a convenient shorthand.  

In the past, and in some parts of the world even today, ‘conversion therapies’ have included shockingly barbaric practices such as castration, lobotomy, and aversion treatment that aims to modify behaviour by, for example, subjecting a person who is experiencing same-sex arousal to repeated electric shock or the smell of faeces. However, many versions of conversion therapy do not involve physical intervention, but rather psychological pressures in the form of group prayer or ‘pastoral’ counselling by a church minister.

Here I want to focus on measures to tackle conversion therapy in religious settings. Conversion therapy as a supposedly medical practice endorsed by health professionals continues in some countries: China, Iran and Indonesia are among the worst offenders. But in much of the civilised world this form of conversion therapy has been denounced by professional associations and regulators. 

In the UK in 2012, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy condemned ‘any psychological treatment such as “reparative” or “conversion” therapy which is based on the assumption that homosexuality is a medical disorder or based on the premise that the client/patient should change his or her sexuality’. Similar language has been adopted by other professional bodies such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Psychological Society. 

This is not to say that these prohibitions are watertight. Some rogue therapists are working hand in glove with extreme religious groups and a lot more needs to be done to regulate them. But in the UK, as across much of the civilised world, professional bodies and regulators have taken a clear stand against conversion therapy.  There remains an ongoing debate amongst medical and therapeutic professionals as to how any prohibition of ‘conversion therapy’ might affect the treatment of children with gender dysphoria, but this is a subject for another day. However, while conversion therapy as performed by health professionals has declined in Western countries, following the depathologisation of same-sex attraction, faith organisations have become the most active practitioners of it. For this reason, legislation in the UK and other western countries needs to focus particularly on religious contexts.    

Religious attempts to change sexual orientation or gender identity come in many forms. Some involve physical assault. Victims from around the world have described exorcisms to ‘cure’ homosexuality which involved being stripped naked and flogged repeatedly during ‘deliverance sessions’ until the victim passes out, overwhelmed by pain and exhaustion. A form of exorcism used in some mosques (‘djinn expulsion’) includes physical restraint and high volume reading of the Koran through screaming in the ears of the victim; the exorcist supposedly speaks to the bad spirit or ‘djinn’ about its exact location in the body and forces it to exit the body, often by applying physical pressure to the body part where the ‘djinn’ allegedly resides. In Malaysia an Islamic doctor published a five-step ‘treatment’ for homosexuality to rid a victim of ‘demons’ supposedly responsible for same sex attraction. This included spraying the victim’s eyes with chewed black pepper, after reciting verses from the Koran. In Nigeria a lesbian survivor of ‘conversion therapy’ described having oil poured into her vagina. In the UK, a client of mine who attended an evangelical church within the Church of England, and who was highly vulnerable at the time, alleges that he was instructed to have sex with a female cleric in order to ‘cure’ his same sex attraction. Other vile practices of this kind also occur in the UK, where fundamentalist religious groups are growing, even if they often go unreported. 

Other religious practices – some using church ‘counsellors’ or ‘therapists’ with bogus professional qualifications – may not involve actual physical assault, but a high degree of group pressure and psychological coercion, including relentless targeting and verbal denunciation of a victim’s sexual orientation. Some practices involve prayer – organised or informal – or private ‘pastoral’ conversations with a church minister, in which the victim is encouraged to feel shame about his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.  

All these practices have the potential to cause serious harm. Legislating against them may not always, however, be straightforward. Practices which involve physical violence or sexual assault are easier to address legally. Such practices may already be illegal under current criminal law, but in any event, legislating to prohibit them, or to make them an aggravating feature of existing criminal offences, does not involve any novel legal principle. With some exceptions, such as boxing and ritual circumcision, the law in England and Wales has tended to take the view that a victim cannot ‘consent’ to the deliberate infliction of actual bodily harm. This approach can be seen in the legislation on female genital mutilation: FGM is illegal in this country even if committed on an apparently ‘consenting’ adult. Thus legislating to outlaw conversion therapy where it involves the infliction of physical harm is merely bringing the law into line with existing criminal law in other areas. 

The more difficult dilemma is whether the law should intervene in religious practices where no physical assault or touching is involved, and where the person whose sexuality or gender identity is being targeted is a consenting adult. Prayer is speech; some would say, therefore, that it should not be prohibited at all, and certainly not if the object of the prayer freely consents to it. To legislate in this area, some would argue, is to involve the law in policing private conversations: a dangerous slippery slope. 

The most comprehensive measure against conversion therapy anywhere in the world, enacted in the Australian state of Victoria, has been criticised on precisely these grounds. The Victorian law bans conversion therapy in the form of ‘religious practice, including but not limited to, a prayer-based practice, a deliverance practice or an exorcism’. Given the limitations imposed on religious ritual and speech, evangelical groups in Australia have complained volubly about secular overreach and incursions into religious freedom.

On the other hand, campaigners against conversion therapy have argued that without such an all-embracing ban, much psychologically harmful conversion therapy will simply continue. When the UK government’s legislative proposals were announced in December 2021, they explicitly excluded private prayer and casual conversations, and provided that, except where physical assault is involved, a practice would not be illegal where the person receiving it was a fully capacitous adult giving informed consent. Some campaigners against conversion therapy criticised these proposals as inadequate. Jayne Ozanne has argued for an outright, unqualified ban: ‘Anything short of a full ban will allow this degrading and inhumane practice to continue,’ she said in an interview with Open Democracy. ‘The very lives and well-being of LGBT people are at stake.’ Campaigners have argued persuasively that informal conversion therapy in the guise of prayer or pastoral conversations can be as pernicious as other forms, and that the concept of ‘informed consent’ is meaningless in many fundamentalist religious contexts where the social pressures to conform are often overwhelming.

How should legislators deal with these conflicting arguments? As a secularist and supporter of free speech I oppose religious interference with free speech, for example through blasphemy laws. To be consistent, I should also want to protect religious freedom of speech. But conversion therapy is known to cause appalling lifelong harm and, as I have previously argued in the Freethinker, an important principle when it comes to debates about religious freedom is that religion should not be exempt from laws, or legal principles, of general applicability. The law already criminalises coercive control in domestic contexts, so to that extent, it can and does become involved in policing some private speech, but only in circumstances where serious psychological harm is caused, and the victim is not truly consenting.

Thus, if we want to approach conversion therapy in a way which allows for legal consistency between religious and non-religious harms – an important governing principle for any legislation – we might legitimately criminalise certain forms of seriously harmful and coercive private religious activity or speech. The question of how far conversion therapy should be prohibited, therefore, is closely bound up with the issue of consent. 

Plainly, children or adults lacking legal capacity cannot ‘consent’ in any meaningful sense to conversion therapy, and legislation should make that crystal clear. As to whether a law should allow for adult consent to religious conversion therapy, most jurisdictions which have legislated have stopped short of unqualified bans which permit no ‘adult consent’ exception, but many have included provisions which aim to ‘keep a close eye’ on consent. In 2016, Malta became the first country in Europe to ban conversion therapy. The ban covered minors under 16, people suffering from a mental disorder and people deemed ‘vulnerable’ by a court, taking into account their personal circumstances. In other words, whilst in principle a person might have the capacity to consent, consent is nullified where the person is a child or a vulnerable adult. The UK government’s proposals set out in December 2021 adopted a similar approach: in principle it could still be possible to consent, but the law would be astute to prohibit coercion, and children and vulnerable adults could not consent at all.     

The concerns voiced by campaigners about a consent ‘loophole’ are entirely understandable. In practice, consent in fundamentalist religious settings is very often vitiated by the power dynamics of those settings, where the personal cost of challenging clerical authority and community pressure is too high for most people to bear. This is a very powerful point. 

In legal terms, however, the proposition that, even in the absence of coercion, a capacitous adult could never freely or genuinely consent to non-physical conversion therapy is probably unsustainable. Of course, somebody in thrall to a fundamentalist religious belief and who rejects rationality, science and evidence might be said to be philosophically ‘unfree’. Legally, however, capacitous adults not subject to coercion can, in principle at least, choose to believe that their own sexual orientation is wrong, and that they need help to change it. And an attempt to legislate that right away would almost certainly invite a challenge under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act (the freedom of religion and belief article). The critical question in any individual case is whether, given the pressure and coercion that we know operate in fundamentalist religious communities, consent is truly genuine. That is an issue which can only be determined on the facts of the individual case – but the crucial thing is to ensure that the true facts are fully known and understood, so that the coercion which operates in so many cases is properly exposed. 

The better legislative approach, therefore, is not to assert that consent can never be freely given, but to focus on ensuring that the issue of consent is properly addressed in every case. This would involve defining ‘coercion’ from a legal perspective and, by extension, defining ‘consent’. But crucially, it would also involve enforcement: making the law effective is as much a practical as a legislative challenge. It is one thing to talk about the coercion and pressure that often occur in closed religious communities. But what are we actually going to do to call it out when it happens and to help those on the receiving end? Unless we create mechanisms by which those who experience coercion can complain and be supported, then legislation alone may be ineffective. As was observed in IICSA, many religious settings are less regulated than donkey sanctuaries, and mechanisms to complain about abuses in them are sorely lacking. Assuming that minors are treated as incapable of giving consent, this is a particular issue for vulnerable young adults, whose vulnerability may not be particularly well understood and recognised by the outside world. 

In this respect the Victorian legislation is particularly progressive: it creates a ‘civil response scheme’ within the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission which has responsibility not only for promoting awareness of the dangers of conversion therapy but for investigating individual violations. As the Commission says, ‘the Act empowers us to consider and respond to reports of change or suppression practices from any person, as well as launch investigations and enforce outcomes where there is evidence of serious or systemic change or suppression practices.’ The UK government’s proposals on banning conversion therapy talked vaguely about ‘ensuring that statutory services recognise the problem and act’, but offered little practical detail about how that might be achieved, especially given that statutory services such as police and local authorities are already underfunded and overwhelmed. 

Unless we address the question of enforcement, any ban on conversion therapy may bring insufficient benefit to its victims. Legislation against conversion therapy in religious settings is fully justified. But in terms of helping victims it can only be a starting point, not the end of the matter. 

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The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to abolish reproductive freedom. A leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization would overturn the two precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which recognised the right to an abortion in the US Constitution. 

Underlying the opinion is a case about a Mississippi law that banned all abortions after 15 weeks’ gestational age. The finer points of the law are irrelevant – it was passed as a direct challenge to Roe and Casey.

The leak itself is unprecedented, but trivial next to the court’s reversing of five decades of law to abolish a crucial right. Every other time the Supreme Court has overturned major precedent, it has done so to expand human rights – to end racial segregation, for instance. But now, the conservative bloc on the court is set to drag America back half a century. Even if the leaked draft is diluted for the final opinion, it will send shockwaves through America’s understanding of its Constitution.

Reproductive freedom is religious freedom

Abortion bans are an attack on religious freedom. They attempt to impose one religious viewpoint on all of us. Religious freedom demands the right to an abortion so people can make their own decisions according to their own principles. The First Amendment to our Constitution prohibits the government from imposing one set of religious beliefs, or religion at all, on others, but that is undeniably what these bans do. 

‘How is your interest,’ Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked the lawyer for the state of Mississippi, ‘anything but a religious view? … when you say [abortion] is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, that’s a religious view, isn’t it?’

The attorney struggled to answer Sotomayor’s question, because she is correct. Legislation and legal briefs and opinions are scrubbed of religious language – Alito’s leaked opinion begins and ends with the camouflage, saying abortion presents a ‘moral issue’ and ‘moral question’ – but the lightest scratch rips through that thin veneer. Our organisation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, explained the underlying religious impetus to the Supreme Court in our friend-of-the-court brief, using the legislators’ own words.

The sponsor of the Mississippi law in this very case justified the measure in part by declaring that ‘children are a gift from God.’ When the law was challenged in court, she asked her followers to ‘pray that these judges know that at three months of life these babies feel pain and deserve the life that God has given them.’ When Alabama’s Governor signed a similar anti-choice bill into law, she declared that the law ‘stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.’ The sponsor of a near-total ban on abortions in Arkansas justified the measure in the state Senate by arguing that ‘there’s six things God hates, and one of those is people who shed innocent blood.’ When Oklahoma enacted its ban, the president pro tempore of the state Senate enthused, ‘all life is precious and a gift from God,’ while other legislators said things like, ‘God values life and so do I,’ and ‘we thank the Lord for the team of people that worked together to help make this happen, and the multitudes who have prayed for years about this. We also thank the Lord for answered prayer. To God be the glory!’

Justice Alito’s draft opinion employs similar beliefs, always masked, to justify the destruction of Roe and reproductive freedom. Throughout his draft opinion Alito suggests that abortion is a special case because it ends a life. He tries to argue that ‘abortion is fundamentally different’ from freedoms such as ‘intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage.’ Why? ‘Because it destroys what [Roe and Casey] called “fetal life” and what the law now before us describes as an “unborn human being.”‘ In other words, like the legislators, Alito premised his opinion on a religious belief. 

Wielding that religious belief to abolish reproductive freedom is unpopular: around two-thirds of Americans support keeping Roe v. Wade in place and that number is growing. Imposing religion through the law is also unpopular: only 13 percent of Americans think the government should ‘advocate Christian values’. And while there is some disagreement on abortion, it was not, for most of American history, a deeply divisive religious issue. 

Anti-abortion then

Roe v. Wade was not controversial at the time it was decided. As Rachel Laser explained in her speech before the Supreme Court when this case was first argued: ‘When Roe v. Wade first came down, even the Southern Baptist Convention celebrated the decision as one that advanced religious freedom.’ In 1973, the Baptist Press concluded a story on the decision with this: ‘Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.’

So what happened? How did a religious denomination go from ‘religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced’, to passing resolutions for ‘abolishing abortion immediately, without exception or compromise’ and likening reproductive freedom to a ‘holocaust’, as the SBC has done?

Abortion was chosen as a political wedge issue by a group of white, conservative Christian men in 1979 as the issue that could divide the electorate and secure political power. Andrew Seidel retells the story in his new book, American Crusade: How the Supreme Court is Weaponizing Religious Freedom.

Paul Weyrich, a Catholic who founded the Heritage Foundation with money from the Coors brewing empire, along with Jerry Falwell, a Southern Baptist mega-preacher and founder of Liberty University, and others, deliberately sought to unite segregationists, racists, conservative politicians, white politicians, southern politicians, and conservative Christians in a political mission. Bringing together their mailing lists, media streams, and access, they forged a new alliance in the fires of racism with the aim of maintaining segregation. Later, they would choose abortion as their wedge issue, not for its moral dimension, but for its power to motivate and unite followers under a religious banner that could not be questioned. The Religious Right and the ‘Moral Majority’, Weyrich’s term that Falwell latched on to, were born.

Why did these men meet in the first place? Not because of abortion, but because of segregation. When the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, segregationists responded by opening private religious schools that remained racially segregated. Growth of those schools exploded and undermined desegregation efforts to the point that the government began questioning the tax-exempt status of these ‘segregation academies’. The government correctly observed that segregation is not charitable work and therefore not eligible for the tax exemption extended to charitable organisations. So the men gathered that day were not just fighting for segregation, but for segregation free of consequences, including taxes. They were battling a demographic wave and the steady march of equality, and chose abortion as the tool to retain and reclaim conservative white Christian privilege because it was more palatable than racism.

Anti-abortion now

When the dominant demographic feels its status threatened, it turns to ever more extreme measures to retain that status. This is known in academic circles as ‘Dominant Group Status Threat’. And the American dominant caste has been on the wane lately. According to PRRI, ‘as recently as 1996, almost two-thirds of Americans (65%) identified as white and Christian’ but by 2017, that number ‘was down to 43%’. Some experts predict that whites will no longer be the majority around 2045. We have had our first black president, and a woman of colour is now vice president. And over the last 50 years women and LGBTQ people have asserted their equality. 

Then, as now, members of this formerly dominant group are raging against the dying of their privilege. Reeling from the first black president, marriage equality, the #MeToo movement, and changing demographics, their desperation has grown and they have turned to ever more anti-democratic and authoritarian ‘saviours’: Trump and white Christian nationalism. We saw this desperation boil over on the insurrection of January 6, 2021, in which Christian nationalism played a major role. 

It is no coincidence that the rise of Christian nationalism over the last few decades coincided with the attacks on abortion rights. Abortion was a wedge, one that turned personal issues in shades of grey into articles of faith that were not just black or white, but life or death. The more religion was mixed with politics to increase that political wedge, the more Americans began to identify with Christian nationalism. 

Nowadays, anti-abortion views and white Christian nationalism substantially overlap. Sociologists Sam Perry and Phil Gorski recently explained this connection in their op-ed about the racist who murdered ten people at a grocery store in Buffalo NY: ‘The majority of those [White Americans] with the strongest antiabortion views also want to impose their vision of a Christian nation on other Americans.’ Or, as they wrote elsewhere in that piece, ‘for a segment of Christians, the battle over abortion is just one front in a wider war to make America Christian again — by any means necessary. They are not pro-life so much as pro-control.’ The flip side of that need for control is a fear of loss: loss of status, loss of privilege. That breeds the racism inherent in white Christian nationalism. For instance, Perry and Gorski point out that the murderer’s manifesto regurgitated a racial replacement theory: ‘Combined with a menacing “invasion” of non-White immigrants, low White fertility rates, he warns, “will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement” of Whites.’

White Christian nationalism will not be satisfied with abolishing reproductive freedom, precisely because its ultimate aim is not to protect the sanctity of life, but rather to establish by law a special favoured class and turn everyone else into lesser citizens. 

Alito’s draft opinion reads like a hit list for other critical rights. The opinion itself also amounts to a method of execution for those other rights. Christian nationalists will use the opinion as written to restrict and abolish personal liberties, including racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and contraception. Even if Alito’s final opinion is amended, the draft opinion lays out the conservative justices’ thinking on those other rights, and religious extremists will use it to justify new laws and litigate cases. They will give Alito another chance to make his draft a reality.

The question is not whether they will do this, but how far they will go. Overturning Roe is a major milestone on Christian nationalists’ decades-long crusade to impose their will on every American. But that crusade has shown itself ready to take lives and topple our democracy in the pursuit of power. In this sense, the end of Roe is also just the beginning. 

America needs a national recommitment to the separation of church and state

Reproductive freedom is religious freedom. This draft opinion flouts the separation between religion and government demanded in the US Constitution. That separation prevents religious extremists from realising their Christian nationalist dream and has been a major roadblock for opponents of reproductive rights.

America promises everyone the freedom to believe as they want, but our laws cannot allow anyone to use their religious beliefs to harm others. That is why Americans United for Separation of Church and State brings together people of all religions and none to fight in the courts, legislatures, and the public square for freedom without favour and equality without exception.

Justice Sotomayor asked another question during oral argument that has stayed with us, a question about the court itself: ‘Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?’

It is a question that Americans need to confront, because this court is dragging our country closer to the white Christian nation some religious extremists so desperately desire. But we at Americans United for Separation of Church and State will fight not only to defend the wall of separation, but to rebuild it. And we will never give up. 

In lieu of payment for this article and as requested by the authors, the Freethinker has made a donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

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In 2017, after hearing years of evidence about the covering up of abuse in the Catholic church, the Commission proposed that priests should be legally required to report knowledge of child abuse to the statutory authorities. In particular, the Commission recommended that this reporting obligation should cover information obtained by a priest in the course of sacramental confession.

In the Catholic Church, the seal of the confessional places an absolute duty on priests not to disclose anything they hear from a penitent during the formal sacrament of penance. In church law, a priest who breaks that seal will automatically be excommunicated. So the mandatory reporting recommended by the Commission, and now being implemented in Australia, overrides what the Catholic Church regards as the inviolable seal of the confessional.  

This is necessary, the Commission concluded, because of the ways in which the confessional has been used to protect and facilitate the abuse of children. This is something evidenced not only in the Commission’s hearings but in other studies; see for example The Dark Box: A Secret History of the Confession by the Catholic writer John Cornwell. 

In the Archbishop’s view, however, this proposal amounted to an improper ‘attempt to renegotiate the church/state relationship’. Catholic priests, he maintained, would go to prison rather than comply with the law. When the Irish parliament legislated for mandatory reporting in 2012, with no confessional exemption, the Irish Catholic Church responded in a similar vein, advising priests to break the law.   

The controversy over the seal of the confessional in clerical sex abuse cases has become something of a flashpoint for competing views of the relationship between church and state, and of the extent to which the state is entitled to limit the freedom of religion to protect children from abuse.

Controversies about religious freedom have doubtless existed as long as religion itself. But the abuse scandals which have overwhelmed many religious groups raise the question of religious freedom in a new way. Churches have shown themselves to be poor at protecting children, often concealing scandals and prioritising the protection of their own reputations. Given that churches seem to be incapable of self-policing, how far should the state intervene in religious settings to protect children who may be at risk? How is any intervention to be balanced against the right to religious freedom? 

The fact that this is a relatively new controversy is not surprising. Child abuse has been happening in religious organisations for much longer than those organisations have admitted. But the exposure of abuse is much more recent. For instance, the worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has only really been publicly visible since the 1980s. And the notion that children have rights to be protected against abuse is relatively recent too: the first child protection laws started to reach the statute book in the UK only in the late nineteenth century, and most date from the 1960s onwards. Certainly, the world’s monotheistic religions came into being hundreds if not thousands of years before anyone gave much thought to the rights of children.

In the debate about child protection versus religious freedom, the controversy over the seal of the confessional is just one source of friction; there are likely to be others. This became apparent in 2020, during hearings at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales (IICSA), which examined child protection in religious settings.

It was clear from those hearings that when it comes to safeguarding, children are at risk in many religious settings, but that these settings are also amongst the least regulated by the state. As one lawyer in IICSA observed, religious settings are ‘less regulated than donkey sanctuaries.’ State intervention to protect children might involve mandatory reporting, so that any instance of suspected abuse would be passed to the statutory authorities for investigation. It might also involve greater state oversight of religious bodies: inspection and regulation to ensure that child safeguarding rules are adhered to.

However, in order to regulate a setting, with the aim of protecting children within it, a regulatory body like Ofsted or a local authority has to know that such a setting exists. In practice, this could probably only be done through a registration requirement – with the law stipulating that any religious activity involving children must be registered with a regulatory body.

For the Evangelical Alliance, which represents thousands of evangelical Christian churches across the UK, such a registration system could be ‘deeply problematic’ because it could become a ‘de facto requirement to register with the state to practice one’s faith’ and therefore raise ‘human rights concerns’. So for some religious groups, even the idea that the state has a right to know who is engaging in organised worship, let alone take any action based on that knowledge, could be an intrusion too far. 

How should tensions between child safeguarding and religious freedom be negotiated?  Most countries have some type of legal framework which seeks to protect religious freedom but also recognises that it cannot be absolute, and can be limited to protect others. An overarching document in international law is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a multilateral treaty which came into force in 1976. Currently ratified by 173 states, it commits parties to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including freedom of religion.

Article 18 of the ICCPR stipulates that ‘Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching. No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.’ 

The ICCPR, however, goes on to set out the circumstances in which religious freedom may be restricted: ‘Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.’ Identical language appears in article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which also forms part of UK domestic law via the Human Rights Act. 

In the ICCPR formulation, therefore, religious freedom is not an absolute right: it can be abridged in specified circumstances and where ‘necessary’. It is indisputable that protecting public safety, order, health and morals will include protecting children from abuse. The issue then is whether any particular measure is ‘necessary’ in order to do so. In some circumstances this might involve asking whether children can be sufficiently protected without the measure, or whether another measure, less restrictive of religious freedom, could be used to secure the same end.

On the issue of the seal of the confessional, the Australian Royal Commission conducted its own balancing exercise. It concluded that ‘the importance of protecting children from child sexual abuse means that there should be no exemption from the failure to report offence for clergy in relation to information disclosed in or in connection with a religious confession.’ The Australian public, through their elected representatives, have endorsed that conclusion. This is unsurprising: the scale of the Catholic abuse scandal in Australia, with the Commission identifying over 4000 perpetrators, justifies a comprehensive, unconditional reporting requirement with no religious ‘get-out’ clause. 

Some countries also have their own legal provisions relevant to adjudicating these issues. The First Amendmenthttps://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/ to the United States Constitution begins with the words: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ The second part of that sentence, known as the ‘Free Exercise Clause’, seeks to keep government out of worship and the internal operations of religious institutions. On the face of it, the wording of the Free Exercise Clause appears to prohibit Congress from passing any law which could interfere with the free exercise of religion, even if such a law were necessary to protect children. 

But again, inevitably, free exercise must be a qualified right. In 1879, the US Supreme Court had to decide whether the Free Exercise Clause permitted Mormons to engage in the practice of polygamy, which had become unlawful in the US in 1862. The Court held, unanimously, that the Clause did not prevent Congress from prohibiting polygamy. The Chief Justice explained in his judgement that the Free Exercise Clause deprived Congress ‘of all legislative power over mere opinion’ but left the legislature free to prohibit activities which were ‘in violation of social duties or subversive of good order’. Although laws ‘cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinion, they may with practices’. To permit polygamy, the Chief Justice concluded, would be to ‘make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.’ So whilst religious belief could never be regulated, religious conduct could be. 

In fact, that interpretation of the Free Exercise clause – belief protected, but conduct not – was not entirely sustainable. The clause self evidently protects the ‘exercise’ of religion, not just the right to hold a belief. Religious freedom would be hollow if people were allowed to proclaim their belief, but prohibited from the physical activities associated with it, such as worshipping in a church, wearing religious garb, eating a restricted diet, or wearing a turban. 

In a 1990 case, the US Supreme Court decided that whilst the Free Exercise Clause protects both religious beliefs and the physical practices flowing from them, it does not allow a person to use a religious belief as a reason not to obey ‘a neutral law of general applicability’ – a law being ‘neutral’ when it is not motivated by an animus towards religion. Religious beliefs, in this formula, cannot excuse people from complying with laws of general applicability which, for example, forbid polygamy, prohibit child labour, compel payment of taxes and the like. Courts will strive to avoid interfering in the internal operations of religious institutions with respect to doctrine and worship but ‘free exercise’ cannot be used to evade duly enacted laws, especially where religious activity can harm others. 

With the growth of Christian nationalism in the USA, even this essentially reasonable formula has proved to be controversial with both American legislators and the more conservative Supreme Court of recent decades, which has tilted back to a more accommodationist approach to religious interests. But the basic proposition, that religion cannot be an excuse to evade laws designed to protect the public at large, is a useful conceptual starting point for analysing the balance between religious freedom and the protection of children from abuse. Applied to the confessional controversy, for example, it might suggest that the Catholic church should not enjoy exemptions from mandatory reporting laws which have not been permitted to secular organisations.   

The general issue of religious freedom and its limitations has been much picked over by the courts in many countries. Despite this, the specific conflict between religious freedom and protecting children from abuse is a relatively under-litigated area, probably because recognition of the possible conflict is so recent. The issue may come before the courts more often as governments respond to the welter of evidence about the abuse of children in religious settings.

From the IICSA hearings it is apparent that some religious groups are making a sustained effort to improve safeguarding, and recognise that the state has an important role to play inoversight and improving standards. But many other such groups, particularly the more fundamentalist ones, are unwilling to engage seriously in this debate at all.

In a free society, it is right to protect the freedom to worship, and it is right to be cautious about interfering with it. But given the overwhelming evidence that some religious settings have caused serious harm to children, it is also legitimate for the state to take measures to protect children in those settings. Refusal to countenance registration of religious bodies would deprive the state of any ability to perform a regulatory function. Yet many other organisations are registered and regulated for child safeguarding purposes: to demand exemption is to demand a privilege accorded to few other parts of civil society. To reject meaningful reform in this area is not a sensible or sustainable response. 

Archbishop Coleridge’s claim that governments are now seeking to intervene in religious life in new ways may be true – but misses the point. It is true simply because it is only in recent years that the full extent of clerical sex abuse has become visible. Interventions like mandatory reporting are warranted because children in many religious settings have been exposed to appalling abuse. The state has a duty to protect children. A hysterical rejection of action taken to do so using the pretext of religious freedom is surely unjustified and self-serving.

As I argued before IICSA in the hearings in 2020, ‘there are few rights and freedoms more important than the right of children to be free from sexual abuse.’ Rather than calling on their own priests to break the law – a law designed to provide the protection to children that the Catholic Church has itself been unable to provide – the Catholic hierarchy might do better to engage in a more considered discussion about how the right outcomes can be achieved. 

In any free society the balance between religious freedom and other priorities is quite rightly a subject for vigorous debate, but when the Catholic Church and other religious groups demand privileged treatment and exemption from ‘laws of general applicability’, governments should not hesitate to put children first. 

The post Child protection and religious freedom appeared first on The Freethinker.

Maryam’s uncompromising stance, such as in her topless protests, and her refusal to censor her views, have caused controversy in some quarters. For instance, in 2020, she spoke at Warwick University for a TedX event. Her title was ‘Creativity in Protesting Religious Fundamentalism’. TedX waited a year before publishing a video of her talk, but refused to publish her slides and accompanied the video with a trigger warning.

I met Maryam in the office of the CEMB, King’s Cross, on 23rd February 2022. She spoke to me about the CEMB and its work, the experience of not ‘belonging’ in the UK, and why the radical Left seems to have allied itself with the Islamist movement. Other topics included the Iranian tradition of political protest, the relationship between religious freedom and freedom of speech, and more. Below are extracts from our interview, edited for clarity and concision, with occasional glosses inserted in square brackets.
~ Emma Park

Let’s start with the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. How large an operation is it?
It started quite small in the sense that very few people were willing to call themselves ex-Muslims or to come out publicly and do that. The idea behind the organisation was that having people come out publicly normalises it and breaks the taboo, and makes it accessible to all. When there’s all this discrimination and pressure and intimidation, coming out publicly is a way of resisting the status quo and trying to change things.
When we started it [in 2007], people were saying that we were being absurd, there are no ex-Muslims around, and we were trying to get attention. It was hard initially. For example, at our first conference at Conway Hall, there were very few ex-Muslims there, and those that were there were hiding on the balcony, up where they couldn’t be photographed or filmed. People were like, “You’re talking about ex-Muslims – where are they?” Now, fifteen years on, things have changed incredibly in favour of this visibility and presence, and there are many ex-Muslims.
So I would say, yes, we are a small, a relatively new movement. We are not as established as other freethought, atheist, humanist, secularist movements in Europe and Britain, partly because a lot of us are refugees, new migrants, and we don’t have access to the same resources. CEMB is largely a volunteer-run organisation. All our funding comes from individual donors primarily, but people have been hit hard by Covid, so it’s really gone down, to the point where we are not sure we’ll be able to carry on next year. But somehow people are helping every time we’re about to close down. Our costs are quite minimal. It’s the rent, the website, publicity, stipend, and volunteer support and assistance. I’m the only paid person, on £10,000 a year.

Where would you put yourself on the political spectrum?
I’m a communist – so basically as far left as it goes. But not a communist that supports the Soviet Union or China or all of these so-called communist groups out there. I’m on the left spectrum of pro-refugees, pro-open borders, pro freedom of expression. And also anti-racist and against bigotry against Muslims, or placing collective blame on all Muslims because of the religious right amongst them.

In your view, is bigotry against Muslims a form of racism, or is it analogous to racism?
I think it’s a form of racism. Of course there are all different races of Muslims. We all hear, whenever there is any criticism of ‘bigotry against Muslims’, they all say, well, Muslims are not a race, therefore we can’t be bigoted against Muslims, because there are also white Muslims, and so on. That’s the argument you often hear. But the reality is that it is seen as a brown religion, a black religion, a minority religion, and one that’s alien to Western societies.

What are the CEMB’s biggest achievements over the last fifteen years?
I think the greatest achievement has been to highlight the fact that there are non-believers in the so-called Muslim community. I think that’s an important thing to do, because very often, the Left that supports Islam and sees Islamism as a revolutionary or anti-imperialist force, also sees Muslims as homogenous, and therefore, if you criticise Islam, you’re seen to be attacking an entire community of people. And for the far Right, anyone who is a Muslim is bringing in a foreign ideology into the country, and they’re destroying Western civilisation and that sort of thing. So both Left and Right look at the Muslim community or Muslim society, so-called, as homogenous.

So they’re just generalising?
Yes, but what happens when you generalise about something is that you recognise those in power as its authentic representatives. Given the fact that we are living in a period of the rise of the [Islamist] religious Right, it’s they who are seen to be representatives and authentic Muslims, and therefore women who don’t wear the veil are viewed as westernised, or self-hating, and the veil is viewed as the authentic dress of those who come from a Muslim background. What the Left does is that it maintains the demands of the religious Right on the population. So the Left says you shouldn’t blaspheme, because it hurts sentiments, even if it’s people from Muslim backgrounds doing it.
So I think that achievement is something that’s quite valuable, and over the long run I think we will recognise it as such: the fact that we have shown that Muslim communities and societies are not homogenous. I think this is key in humanising people and in making them see that any given community or society is not reactionary, or progressive, all at the same time. There are differences of politics and opinions. People can see that in Britain, they can’t see it when it comes to the Muslim community.

How far have the radical Left got into bed with the Islamist religious Right?
This is something that I’ve had to deal with a lot: progressive student unions barring me from speaking, and saying I’m inflammatory and inciting hatred against Muslims. I think it comes from a good place, in general, because it’s the attitude that you want to not tolerate racism where you see it. I think that’s a good thing. But conflating criticism of the Islamic Right with an attack on Muslims in general is very problematic.
And not everything comes from a good place. There is also political self-interest for some of these groups: they are anti-imperialist, and they see Islamism as an anti-imperialist force, and therefore they side with it versus US or UK imperialism.

Is Islamism anti-imperialist?
It is an imperialist force in and of itself. It has eradicated cultures and art, music, dress – it’s destroyed so much in all of the countries that it has gained access to and power over. The Left that supports it doesn’t see that it’s a counter-revolutionary force. It has eradicated Left and working-class movements in those societies.

How did the Iranian revolution of 1979 affect you?
I was born in 1966. When the Islamic regime was established in 1980 after the revolution, we left the country. We didn’t all leave together, because we couldn’t. My mum brought me to India to go to school, because they shut the schools down in Iran, and then my dad told her not to come back, so we stayed, and then my dad joined us later. We came to the UK in 1982, but we weren’t allowed to stay here, so we went to the US in 1983. I came back to the UK in 2000. My family is still in the US.

What made you move to the UK?
To be closer to Iran and my political party, which used to be the Worker-Communist Party. I left it a few years ago. Basically, I just got fed up.

Are you affiliated to any political party now?
No.

What was it like growing up in Iran before the revolution?
The Shah’s regime was a dictatorship, and the revolution was against this. There was a period when there was a lot of freedom, before the Islamic regime took complete power, which it did by massacring lots of people. I went to a mixed school, I wasn’t veiled, my family’s quite secular. Religion wasn’t really an issue for me. We didn’t fast during Ramadan. Some people in our family did, some didn’t. My grandmother sometimes wore the veil, sometimes didn’t. The first time I came across in-your-face religion was when the Islamic regime took over.

Did you grow up as a believing Muslim?
I was born a Muslim, the way people are out of no choice of their own, because of where you’re born. My father had a very strict Muslim upbringing. He still doesn’t eat pork, drink or gamble, and my grandfather was a cleric. My last name, Namazie, means ‘prayer’. But my father never required us to pray, to wear the veil, so I never felt that I was less because I was a girl. It’s also my family’s background. My mum is from Nepal. She was Christian, and she converted to Islam to marry my dad. All of my aunts and uncles from Iran, they’ve married Indians, Iranians, different types of people, so we’ve got quite a mixed family. Some prayed, some didn’t. I think it was like that in quite a lot of countries in the Middle East at that time. It was much more relaxed, and now it’s much more forced. Before, you could eat in front of someone who was fasting. Now, out of respect, you’re not supposed to. What happens with the religious Right is that it changes the demarcation line, makes it stricter and more difficult for people to pick and choose as they want.

Would you be able to go back to Iran now?
No. I’ve had threats from the Iranian government, and also – it’s a long story. There is the possibility of being kidnapped. [Compare the alleged plot against the Iranian-born journalist Masih Alinejad.]

In terms of your identity, how do you see yourself?
I always believe that you are from where you live and that home is where you work and struggle. But the older I get, the more I miss Iran. It’s very strange, I can’t explain it – it’s very nostalgic and emotional.

How did you become an ex-Muslim?
I became an atheist many years ago, I don’t remember exactly when. It was gradual, for sure. By university I was an atheist. I never called myself ex-Muslim, I don’t even like the term. It’s just an idea that came up about being able to promote the idea that there is freethought and freethinkers amongst Muslims.

How many people would you estimate are ex-Muslims around the world?
We don’t really know the scale of it, but I do think that every family has an ex-Muslim. I think it’s much stronger where Islam is in power. You don’t see it as much because of the lack of freedom to express yourself. But if people said in the UK what they say in Iran about Islam, it would be considered very Islamophobic. One of the trending hashtags in Iran is #IShitOnIslam. Imagine having that here – it would be considered so inappropriate. That rage… You can see even from the response of government officials. The Egyptian government set up a partnership with the Ministry of Youth and Sports to combat atheism. Saudi Arabia considers atheism a form of terrorism. When Deeyah Khan did her documentary about us [Exposure: Islam’s Non-Believers, 2016], there were texts being sent to Muslims in Britain, warning them not to let their children see the film. Atheism is a real threat to these states.

How connected are the different Islamist movements in different countries around the world, including the UK?
They have their rivalries. There are some who are more supportive of Assad and the Islamic regime, or pro-Saudi, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. There are divisions, in the same way that you have far Right groups in the West that have differences of opinion and divisions. But they are one movement, because despite the differences, they fundamentally want very much the same thing.

What do they want?
They are nostalgic for some golden age of Islam. They want a Caliphate and sharia law, they want the ideal Islamic state as was the case when Mohammed was alive. What that means to them is the idea that doubt and freethought cannot be allowed. Women need to know their place in society. In Britain, they will say, we’re not for the execution of apostates, but they are for it in an ideal Islamic state. There’s a lot of doublespeak and propaganda to dupe people into thinking that they’re the nice version in Britain.

How strong is the Islamist movement in Britain today?
Britain is one of its strongholds. In a country where they’re not in state power, Britain is one of those countries where they are well-established. If we look at Islamists who have got access to positions of power in the UK, and if you look at the whole idea of sharia law, how we have so many sharia courts in this country, and despite various Parliamentary groups looking into this issue, there has never been a decision made on it. The government is always justifying it as people’s choice of religion, whereas it’s something very different and very sinister – it’s part of the political wing of the Islamist movement.

Roughly how many sharia courts are there in the UK at present?
There’s no set number, because they’re not registered. Not that I think they should be registered – it would be like registering FGM clinics. In some reports there have been up to a hundred. A lot of them are ad hoc, in mosques. It’s not like a registered court, where you would know the exact number. Sharia courts were only established in this country in the mid-80s. It goes back to our argument that it’s part of the religious Right movement. There were Muslims before in this country, none of them needed to go to sharia courts, they did not have to go.

Not being a Muslim in terms of your religious beliefs, how do you see your Iranian side?
For me, it’s the protest and the resistance. That makes me proudest to be Iranian. I think it’s a continuation of the original Iranian revolution, that was never allowed to achieve its goals. Look at the French revolution. It happened so long ago, but we still feel the effects of it today, when we talk about laïcité, or secularism in the proper sense, not in the wishy-washy British sense. So I think the revolution and its politicisation of society in Iran, to the extent that a majority of people were born under an Islamic regime, and are fighting it tooth and nail. I see that as a really proud history, and one that I am a part of.

Do you have any favourite Iranian authors?
I’m going to sound like a party hack, I’m not in the Worker Communist Party any more, but – the leader of that, Mansoor Hekmat, I became a communist because of him. I find his writing so human, and seeing the world in such a fundamental way. But there are also many great poets in Iran. There’s Ahmad Shamlou, who was very critical of the state, or a woman poet, Forough Farrokhzad, who was such a taboo-breaker.

Is there a long history in Iran of criticising the state?
Yes, definitely. And also a history of freethought. There is Sadegh Hedayat, he’s a well-known writer who is an atheist, very critical of religion. Also there’s a very funny character, it’s called Molla Nasreddin, which is famous in Iran, but also in Azerbaijan and other countries, and it’s a bumbling clergyman – all the cartoons are making fun of religion and religious rule. For example, he’s following a group of donkeys and they’re going to Mecca, that sort of anti-clericalism, like in Charlie Hebdo.

Talking of Charlie Hebdo and laïcité, you mentioned that British secularism seems ‘wishy-washy’ by comparison to the French version. Would you be in favour of a more French approach over here?
I think that’s the only approach. Not to say that I am completely supportive of the French government, I don’t think it is completely promoting laïcité, I think there’s a lot of politics as well involved. But the idea of the state being incompetent, where it has no position on religion, it’s separate completely, is hugely important. It’s not enough to be neutral.

The idea that the state should not have any influence on politics?
Any influence, but also on the educational system, in public policy. Faith schools, for example, are not good for children.

Why should religion not have any influence on education or public policy?
Faith and education seem to be antithetical to each other. Education should promote freethought, doubt, questioning. Faith is the opposite of that. Is it the role of an educational system, to teach people to be submissive, or to learn about dogma? I think not. Also religion shouldn’t have a place, for example, in a court of law or when making public policy. Why should there be faith-based health services? We all bleed the same. It’s just a way of helping to bring the religious right more into the public space, whereas it shouldn’t really have any space. That’s different from being neutral. A state should be playing an active role in combating religion. Yes, you have the right to your religion, but that’s very different from having a right to a religious school, or a right to faith-based services. Those are separate things.

So, in your view, religious freedom should have certain limits?
Yes, because religion is a private matter. That’s where there’s a problem, that for some reason, it’s as if religious freedom means you can shove your religion down everybody’s throat. You may have the freedom to believe in what you want, but when it comes to the public space, it’s not about a personal right any more, it’s about a right that imposes on society. If we recognise it as a private belief, it becomes a lot easier to manage it.

Talking about Charlie Hebdo: how important are laughter and satire in promoting free speech?
Charlie Hebdo is really important not just for French society but for all of us. I spoke at the third anniversary of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. I was the only English speaker there, because you know how it’s been over here in supporting them: if there have been any media reports on the attacks, they don’t show the cartoons, they don’t show any of the images – that’s the whole point, isn’t it? They [Charlie Hebdo] have been left alone to a large extent, because it is that same idea that criticising Islam is detrimental to Muslims. The argument I made was that what Charlie Hebdo does is important for freethinkers from Muslim backgrounds, because it’s opening the space up for us as well. It means a lot to Islam’s non-believers, as well as its benefits for free speech in European countries.

What is the best way in Britain of countering Islamist fundamentalism, while at the same time not promoting anti-Muslim bigotry?
Islamism is part of UK foreign and domestic policy. How can you have relations with the Saudi government, or with the Pakistani or Iranian government, and then address Islamism in your own country? It’s impossible, because in order to justify your relationship with those countries, you’ve justified Islamism, so it makes it easier for it to grow roots here as well.
At the same time, the idea that we foreigners are never British citizens… The jihadi bride, Shamima Begum – the fact that her citizenship can be taken away says a lot about how this government views the ‘other’ and minorities. Even if you are born here, because your parents happen to be from Bangladesh you’re never part of this country. This idea is that you belong to the Muslim umma [the worldwide Muslim community] – the Muslim community, a Muslim country, you’re never really British. It gives people the feeling that they don’t belong, and also, the government itself is saying ‘You don’t belong’ with this policy.

Since being in the UK, have you experienced racism yourself?
Yes. The first time I experienced it was when we left India in 1982. We went to Bournemouth, because my dad knew someone there. We were walking down the street, and some lady was saying something, and my mum was waving to her, she thought she was just saying hello, and she was like, “You fucking foreigners, get out of this country!” So that was the first time. Since 2000, it’s, you know, the looks you get if you’re talking in another language – on the train, for example. It’s constantly being told, if you disagree with anything the UK government says, “Why don’t you just go home?” You never belong.
Since I’ve got a son now, my idea was always, “You’re British, you were born here, you’re not Iranian.” This was always my propaganda to him. Then he’s grown up, and he’s faced so much racism at school [in London]. I feel very sorry for him, because it affects him quite a lot. I guess you then feel like, who are you? You don’t belong anywhere. I can see why people feel so disillusioned, that they’re not part of British society.

Have you had women in stricter Muslim communities telling you of some of the problems they have had, or what it’s like being in that very repressive sort of environment in the UK?
In the work I do with One Law for All, we have been talking to lots of women, gathering testimonies. We did quite a bit of that for the Parliamentary Committee that was going to be looking into sharia courts, that never did. [See Parliamentary discussion in May 2019.] It was before lockdown. We gathered testimonies, and I provided evidence to the Committee, and we did written submissions. In those situations, there are women who talk about the awful things that have happened to them in the sharia courts. People say, “The sharia courts are not stoning anyone to death, they’re not amputating them, they’re just dealing with marriage and divorce and child custody.” But those are pillars of women’s oppression in the family. So it trivialises what happens to women.

Is it difficult for these women to integrate with other British people, non-Muslims, or into wider society?
It is difficult, partly because some of the problems include the fact that men may have only married women in a nikah (an Islamic marriage), and so when there’s violence or divorce, the women don’t have any rights, because it was never a proper marriage – they were led to believe that it was. Plus if you’re looking at relationships where there’s coercion and violence, women are also kept very isolated. They may not even be able to speak the language, or have many friends outside, who the husband has given them permission to have relationships with. We’re talking about some of the most vulnerable people in society. They’re not protected and they’ve been left at the mercy of these sort of kangaroo courts.

What’s the attitude of the Left?
I think they think it’s people’s right to religion. But again, the counter-argument is, religion is a private matter.

We’ve talked of the way that racism and criticism of religion may be associated in some people’s minds. Is one of the problems with the approach of the Left that they’re so worried about racism that they are not able to tackle these issues of abuse within Muslim communities?
It’s not all the Left. Practically everyone I work with is on the Left. A lot of ex-Muslim groups are also Left-leaning, though there are other groups too – and a lot of the women’s groups I work with are Left-leaning. A lot of the protest movements that we’re seeing in Iran or Afghanistan, they are Left-leaning as well. There is a very vibrant Left that is opposed to both fundamentalism and racism.
But there is that section of the Left that hides behind the idea of racism and bigotry, as a way of saying, we’re so concerned about racism, we’re going to support sharia courts and so on. But they’re not very concerned with the racism that ex-Muslims face, for example. If freethinkers are killed, suddenly they’re not so vocal about human rights. They see Islamism as a revolutionary and anti-imperialist force. It’s an uncomfortable ally, but one that they want.

Where does the CEMB fit in with other freethought movements in the UK?
With the National Secular Society we have very good relations. They are also seen to be a bit more upfront with this criticism of religion. Most of our relationships in the UK are with minority and women’s groups, such as Southall Black Sisters, or Centre for Secular Space, or Iranian and Kurdish women’s rights organisations. I can’t think of any freethought groups we work with. I think we are seen to be a bit much, in the sense of going too far. But I think you need to go too far, especially with what they’re doing [in Islamism] – for goodness’ sake, they’re decapitating people.

Topless protests: why?
Topless protest is the most difficult thing I have ever done. The first time I did it, I didn’t get my period for six months, that’s how stressed I felt. I still feel really embarrassed when my parents come and see pictures of it. The reason I did it is because Aliaa Magda Elmahdy in Egypt did it in 2012. She was under a lot of attacks and pressure, and I said, “Let’s do something in support of her, let’s do a topless calendar.” And of course, suggesting it, I had to do it myself. The idea is that a woman’s body is considered to be the source of chaos and fitna [‘Islam. Unrest or rebellion, esp. against a rightful ruler,’ S.O.E.D.], that’s why we have to be veiled. Therefore owning your body and using it as a tool for protest and liberation is really a great way of challenging this view that a woman’s body is obscene and shouldn’t be seen and heard.

Final question: what limits should be set to free speech in the law?
I don’t think there should be any limits. Hate speech is really subjective. A lot of what I say is considered hate speech. Even saying that the Holocaust didn’t happen, let people say that ridiculous, absurd thing, and let others be able to challenge it. The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech. You have to have the freedom to be able to listen to various views and to be able to challenge them. We’re living in an age where speech is considered akin to causing physical harm. We need to push for a period where you could say anything, you could have very challenging conversations with one another, and manage to still be friends, families, and move on with your life without getting your head chopped off.
Of course there’s a difference between hate speech and inciting violence. That’s where we should be drawing the line. But otherwise, I think we should let people talk. And it would be good for people to learn to listen as well. You don’t have to agree with everything you hear – that’s fine. This whole thing of safe spaces, of things being so harmful that you can’t say it anywhere, is problematic for society. It feeds into this idea that that’s why they have to cut your head off, because you’ve upset them so much. I’m upset by a lot of things I hear, but nobody would say I have a right to go and attack someone physically.

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The post ‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’ – interview with Maryam Namazie appeared first on The Freethinker.