By MARYAM NAMAZIE - BLOG
Added: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:11:44 UTC

One of the highlights of the Dublin conference was the speech by Maryam Namazie. Maryam has occasionally, in the past, been a little too strident for me (and I am supposed to know whereof I speak). But in Dublin she was pitch-perfect. She was moving – very very moving – deeply-informed, obviously completely sincere, and she well deserved the only standing ovation of the whole conference. She is a brave and heroic woman. Her speech, below, is preceded by some remarks of her own.

Richard

I had a brilliant time this weekend, first debating Islamist Lauren Booth (who works at the Islamic Republic of Iran's Press TV - yuck!) at howthelightgetsin philosophy and music festival at the Hay and then the World Atheist Conference in Dublin, Ireland. A brilliant conference. Wish I had been there from the start but glad I did go even if only for the last day.

I got to see Richard Dawkins again and meet the brilliant PZ Myers too, which was a highlight for me and make tons of new friends and allies.

I am off now to stuff envelopes with volunteers of One Law for All. We are finishing up a mailing to MPs and Peers on a 28 June meeting we are organising to help highlight the need to ban Sharia law...

Anyway, here is my speech. I didn't obviously use all of it as I had mentioned faith schools and the veil and burka at the morning's panel discussion on building secular alliances. I am sure it still needs an edit but am posting since people have been asking me for it.

The Islamic Inquisition Maryam Namazie Keynote address at the World Atheist Conference June 4-6 2011

In this day and age, Islam matters because of Islamism. Islam per se is fundamentally no worse than any other religion.

The tenets, dogma, and principles of all religions are equal.

I don't believe in good or bad religions; in my opinion all religion is bad for you.

Religion should come with a health warning like cigarettes: ‘religion kills.’

But even so, today - as we speak - there is a distinction to be made between religions in general and Islam in particular, but for no other reasons than that it is the ideology behind a far-Right regressive political movement that has state power in many places with Sharia law being the most implemented legal code in the world.

Islam matters to us today because we are living through an Islamic inquisition and not because it is becoming more ‘popular’ as its proponents like to argue. They call it the fastest growing religion. I’d personally like a count of how many people are leaving it, or would like to leave if they could without being killed.

Islam’s appeal has not grown amongst the general public; in fact it’s the opposite. Its record in political power speaks volumes for itself: stonings, honour killings, amputation of limbs, child ‘marriages’, sexual apartheid, decapitations, public hangings, bombs in discotheques and on buses, the slaughter of entire generations in the Middle East and North Africa...

Read on

TAGGED: ISLAM