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Secularism and the Struggle for Free Speech
In our second feature for Secularism Month, Stephen Evans, CEO of the National Secular Society, argues for the vital importance of free speech in a liberal democracy, and considers the place of this...
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What I believe: Interview with Andrew Copson
Continuing with this month’s theme of humanism, the following is an interview with Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK and President of Humanists International. I met Copson in his office...
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The price of criticising Islam in northern Nigeria: imprisonment or death
June is Blasphemy Month at the Freethinker. This article contains a detailed account of the trial of Mubarak Bala, the President of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, for blasphemy in Kano State in...
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Blasphemy Month at the Freethinker
Image by E. Park, with icon by David Vignoni June is Blasphemy Month at the Freethinker. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines blasphemy as ‘profane talk of something supposed to be sacred;...
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‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’: interview with Richard Dawkins
I met Professor Richard Dawkins at his home in Oxford. An interview with him, even at the age of 81, felt very much like a tutorial with a charismatic and formidable don of the old school. He talked...
View ArticleClerihews on the PM’s passing
The Freethinker presents three clerihews to mark the resignation of Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party, and agreement to quit as Prime Minister by the autumn. Invented by Edmund...
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Scientist’s Discovery Leads to Ground-breaking App
© the Freethinker, based on images by Chanilim714 and 10 Downing St. For thousands of years, people have dimly suspected that exposure to the natural world might be good for them. But now Freddy...
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The Satanic Verses; free speech in the Freethinker
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, cover page of illegal Iranian edition, undated, in a translation by ‘Roshanak Irani’ (pseudonym). Image credit: Olaf Simons, via Wikimedia Commons Tantum religio...
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Silence of the teachers
First pages of the Quran copied in naskh script by Şeyh Hamdullah for Sultan Bayezid II in Istanbul in 1503-1504, with illumination by Hasan ibn ‘Abdallah. Public domain: wikimedia commons. ‘I’m...
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Is all publicity good publicity? How the first editor of the Freethinker...
G.W. Foote, portrait in the SEcular Chronicle, 1878 In an early Freethinker editorial, George W. Foote commented that ‘The public now-a-days is in a great hurry, you must attract its attention before...
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Britain’s blasphemy heritage
The Freethinker’s themes of ‘history’ and ‘civil liberties’ this September and October provide an opportunity to reflect upon the crime which has regularly tripped up atheists, agnostics, freethinkers...
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Civil Liberties Month at the Freethinker
Thoughtcrime, by POlyp. October is Civil Liberties Month at the Freethinker. October is Civil Liberties Month at the Freethinker. In a spirit of open, critical enquiry and resistance to dogmatism,...
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Hong Kong Exodus, 2021-22
Protest March in Hong Kong against the extradition Bill that would have enabled Hongkongers to be extradited to mainland China for trial, 16 June 2019. Photo provided by the author Let’s leave this...
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The ‘Women’s Revolution’: from two activists in Iran
Woman standing on a burning rubbish bin, waving her veil. Tehran, 1 October 2022. When news first broke out about Mahsa Amini’s murder by the so-called ‘morality police’, the intelligence and security...
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The falsehood at the heart of the trans movement
Inclusive Diverse Pride Flag. Source: Wikimedia Commons The new politics of marginalised identities, now marching across the West, frequently clashes with classical liberal values like freedom of...
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‘A godless neo-religion’ – interview with Helen Joyce on the trans debate
I met Helen Joyce at the British Library one overcast afternoon in September. She had just come from the court hearing of Mermaids v the Charity Commission for England and Wales and LGB Alliance,...
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Race: the most difficult subject of all?
At the age of 26, Inaya Folarin Iman is already an established public figure, known as an advocate for open discussion on that most contentious of issues: race. Born in London as a second-generation...
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‘The defence of liberty is a state of mind’– interview with Jonathan...
I met Jonathan Sumption on a wet and windy November afternoon at his house in Blackheath, on the edge of Greenwich Park. We sat in the quiet of a small reception room, a fire glowing in the grate, the...
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2022: A year in controversies
Rush-die, by Polyp Freethought, open enquiry and free speech – or ‘free discourse’, as it has elegantly been called – are often concerned with the critical and dispassionate examination of...
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‘Words are the only victors’ – Salman Rushdie’s ‘Victory City’, reviewed
Cover of Salman Rushdie’s Victory City. Published by Jonathan Cape, 9 February 2023. Image copyright Jonathan Cape. How, it might be asked, can Salman Rushdie’s new novel about a semi-divine sorceress...
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