We mourn the death of Bangladeshi Humanist, freethinker, intellectual, iconoclast and fierce critic of Islam, Professor Humayun Azad, 57, who was found dead in his University residence in Munich, Germany on 11 August 2004.

Long the target of criticism from the Islamists for his views on religion, Prof. Azad came to the world's attention when he was grievously wounded in an attack by fundamentalists in Dhaka in February 2004. The attack followed the publication of Amar Abishwas (My Unbelief), and his recently published novel Pak Sar Jamin Sad Bad (The Blessed Sacred Land) that depicted the atrocities of Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh. After four days in a coma and several weeks in hospital Prof Azad was able to return home, but was left with a permanently disfigured face, painful jaw movement, and difficulty in speaking.

Then in July his son was kidnapped by fundamentalists but managed to escape. In reaction, Prof. Azad wrote a moving letter to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh and other political leaders calling on them to restore freedom in Bangladesh and pleading for protection to himself and his family.

Prof Azad had been described as the most important writer in Bangladesh. He was the author of 70 books. A poet, novelist, critic, linguist, political analyst, and essayist, he even wrote for children. He described himself as a feminist, and his definitive work on women, Nari (Women) was banned in 1975. He went to the High Court, and won the case in 2001.

Prof Azad had moved to Munich just a few days before his death to begin a nine-month fellowship with PEN international. He was in touch with IHEU representatives and IHEU was about to launch a campaign to ensure protection for him and his family.

IHEU has called for a full police investigation into the circumstances of his death.

Those responsible for the physical attack on Prof. Azad, and his mental torture must not go unpunished. We urge the Prime Minister of Bangladesh to do what is necessary to prevent that country sliding further into lawlessness.

On Sunday, August 15, a 16-year-old girl was hanged in public in the town of Neka, northern Iran. Ateqeh Sahaleh, who was unmarried, had been accused of having had sexual relations with a man. The sentence was issued by the head of Neka’s Justice Department and subsequently upheld by the mullahs’ Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of Judiciary Chief Mahmoud Shahroudi.

The teenage victim had no lawyer at her trial despite efforts by her family to find one, and she defended herself. Ateqeh told the judge, Haji Rezaii, that he "should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims".

Judge Rezaii personally pursued Ateqeh’s death sentence, far beyond all normal practice and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court. After her execution Rezai said that he had her executed "for her sharp tongue".

Plans to criminalize adultery in Turkey have been shelved following strong representations from the European Union enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen. The proposed new law had formed part of a major reform of Turkish civil and criminal law in preparation for that country’s application for membership of the European Union.

The Somali-born Dutch Liberal MP, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, hit the headlines again in September with a ten-minute TV film juxtaposing pictures of abused women with verses from the Koran justifying violence. The program, watched by almost one million of the Netherlands 15 million population was well received although one Muslim spokesman said – unsurprisingly – that the film would "do great damage to integration".

Mrs Hirsi Ali, who has been living in hiding since 2002 under police protection, has said that her goal is, quite simply, the reformation of Islam.

Samira Bellil, author of Dans l’enfer des Tournantes (In Gang-Rape Hell), and a leader of Ni Putes, Ni Soumises, an association for the defence of ghetto women, died in Paris of stomach cancer on September 4th.

Born in Algiers in 1972, and brought up in the slums of Paris with an inadequate father and no brother to protect her, she fell easy victim to seduction by the ghetto gang leader at the age of 13. She became a fille à cave (anybody’s) and was gang raped several times. Help from her family was out of the question. "I knew that my father would kill me if he knew". With hostility from her community and total lack of understanding from society at large, her rehabilitation was long and hard but she did, finally, pull herself out of her self-loathing and write about her experiences in her book, published in 2002. She was in favour of the controversial headscarf ban and criticised the exclusively male Muslim organisations that "are forever telling women how to behave", describing them as being closer to fundamentalism than moderate Islam.

The headscarf ban went into force when French children returned to School in September and created far fewer protests that anticipated.

A review being carried out by former Ontario Justice Minister Marion Boyd into the Ontario Arbitration Act following proposals by an Islamic group to set up Sharia courts has received submissions from across the spectrum of Canadian opinion. Strongly supportive of the Islamic initiative has been B’nai Brith, the Jewish social organisation who argue in favour of the Islamic courts – presumably because any change in the law restricting the operation of the proposed Sharia courts could have a knock-on effect on the Jewish family tribunals already in operation. Strongly against the proposed Sharia courts, however, was a submission from the Muslim Canadian Congress.

The MCC claims that establishing a substandard multi-tiered judicial process in matters of family law is racist and unconstitutional, and that giving an official stamp of approval to Shariah-based tribunals will further ghettoize the Muslim community.

The MCC demanded that Marion Boyd refer the matter of Shariah-based Arbitration to the Ontario Court of Appeal. Such a reference should ask the Court to determine whether the Arbitration Act confers jurisdiction, outside the Family Law legislation in disputes of property, children, inheritance and estates in the family context. And, if it does, whether it is constitutional.

The MCC rejected the suggestion to change the word Shariah and refer to it as "Muslim family Law." Tarek Fatah, founding member of the MCC, and one of the presenters said, "Changing the name is deceitful and another way of introducing Shariah by stealth." He claimed that by placing the Muslim community out of sight the government was playing into the hands of the extremist political agenda of the extremist proponents of "Muslim Law"; an uncodified system, much of which is antithetical to Islam and the Canadian Constitution – and was playing equally into the hands of those intolerant and racist segments of Canadian society who want nothing better than to exclude Muslims from the mainstream.

The full text of the MCC submission can be seen on the IHEU website.

Mrs Boyd is due to report back to the Ontario government by the end of this year.

Iftikhar Ahmad of the London School of Islamics, an Educational trust, has proposed a novel solution to the high rate of teenage pregnancies in the UK.

"In Afghanistan 99.9% of teenagers are virgin" he claims. "The reason is that all teenager girls leave homes wearing Afghani Burkhas ... If the teenager girls start0 wearing Afghani Burkhas or Jilbab, I am sure that they are not going to lose their virginity before marriage."

Leaving aside the wildly improbable claim about virginity in a country where rapes by the Taliban and other armed gangs are commonplace, Ahmad is presumably unaware that the country with the lowest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe is the Netherlands, a country generally considered to be among the most permissive on earth. Unlike the UK, however, where sex education is restricted and teachers are not permitted to discuss contraception with pupils, the Netherlands has a completely open approach to teenage sex education. The result is not only the lowest teen pregnancy rate, but the lowest abortion rate and the lowest rate of sexually transmitted disease in Europe.

Married or not, a 14 year old girl is still a teenager. Marriage to a stranger at an early age does not protect girls from promiscuity, it robs them of their childhood and condemns them to a life of servitude.

It is a matter of concern that Mr Ahmad’s mindboggling stupidity is being sent out in the name of a UK educational trust that campaigns for more Islamic schools in the UK.