The victory of George W Bush in the US presidential election is a victory for religious fundamentalism in both America and the Islamic world. The American people were deceived over the war in Iraq but have now endorsed it, sending a clear message that the "War of Civilisations" will continue. The election has also shown that most Americans care nothing – no doubt because their media tell them nothing – about how the United States is seen by the rest of the world.

The past four years have shown an America disdainful of the rule of international law, partisan in its dealings in the Middle East and profoundly self-centred on global issues from trade to global warming. The greatest achievement of the Bush administration has been to reduce Iraq to chaos; its legacy, the creation of another terror-ridden Islamic state rushing headlong towards oppressive, misogynistic Iranian-style theocracy.

The immense task of re-establishing America’s credibility both in the Islamic world and among its erstwhile friends in the West is on hold for at least another four years. But with American politics now firmly under the control of the Christian Right can we hope for change even in 2008?

Worldwide, the confidence of the Islamists has never been higher, and liberal democrats in the west are in disarray.

The received wisdom of multi-culturalism lies in ruins as the ever-more vociferous demands of un-elected "Islamic Councils" – for women to be veiled, for the state to fund more Islamic schools, for women in need of medical treatment to be seen only by women doctors, for boys and girls to be segregated in school, and for the establishment of Islamic tribunals to impose Islamic law in civil cases – have killed our fondly-held illusions that accommodation with the Islamists over social policy would ever be possible.

But opposition to conservative Islam does exist and, not surprisingly, women are in the forefront. The Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, RAWA, whose founder Meena was murdered in 1997, has widespread support in the west – although women’s rights were still below the horizon in the recent presidential election in Afghanistan. Women’s defence organisations have appeared in Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran, although many of them are run by exiles in the west (and only time will tell whether they can achieve any lasting result). But Human Rights organisations focussing strongly on the women’s rights do now exist in Pakistan and elsewhere, many with women lawyers prominent among the leadership.

In Europe, women’s opposition to the Islamists has typically taken more popular – even populist – forms. In Norway we have seen the delightful spectacle of the comedienne Shabana Rehman bravely holding up the excesses of the mullahs to ridicule, while in the Netherlands, the Somali-born member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, now living permanently in hiding, provoked the anger of conservative Muslims with a halfhour TV program on the oppression of women that showed verses of the Koran superimposed on naked flesh. Sadly, on November 2nd, her film maker, Theo van Gogh was gunned down in Amsterdam.

In Canada, another young Muslim woman, Irshad Manji, who last year published her best-seller The Trouble with Islam, has continued her assault on Islamism, attracting the ire of conservative Muslims not only for daring, as a woman, to speak out, but by publicly proclaiming her lesbianism.

But women’s rights cannot be won without the support of the men. And we are at last seeing the emergence of secular Muslim organisations in which men are playing a prominent part. In India, the respected Islamic scholar Ali Asghar Engineer of the Centre Centre for the Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai, argues strongly for both secularism and women’s rights through his bi-weekly e-newsletter Secular Perspective.

In Canada, the Muslim Canadian Congress, which is promoting a secular agenda for Canadian Muslims, has argued strongly against the introduction of Sharia courts in the Province of Ontario. (See p 15) .

In France on October 29th, a colloquium called Islam contre Islam attracted more than a dozen speakers and an audience of over 300, demanding that the voices of the silent majority of moderate, secular Muslims now be heard.

The internet is proving to be a wonderful outlet for Muslim dissidents. More and more websites are appearing arguing for secularism in the Islamic world. On p 19 we are republishing the Secular Muslim Manifesto – which could have been written by a Humanist (but was not). And the website of ISIS, the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, www.secularislam.org, hosted by the Council for Secular Humanism, has become an important forum for debate among Muslims.

Events in Iraq and the result of the US presidential election have demonstrated yet again the malign influence of religion on politics. From every continent we hear stories of organised religion pushing for ever more concessions for their authoritarian, sectarian policies.

In Russia, Romania and other countries in Eastern Europe, the Orthodox Church is steadily consolidating its influence over government, erecting legal barriers to other creeds, and wringing ever greater financial concessions from the state. And readers of International Humanist News will need no reminding of the creeping Vaticanisation of the European Union.

In India the BJP and its saffron allies may have lost the general election and the state elections in Maharashtra, but their hate-filled message continues unabated.

In Australia in October the "Liberal" party of John Howard were re-elected with massive support from the Christian right.

What will it take to reawaken Humanism from its contented slumber? For Humanism to have any influence in the world, humanists must get involved in politics.

Religion is politics. Humanism can no longer stand aloof from the fray.