I’m a Pakistani by birth, a Canadian by choice and Islam is my spiritual journey. I use the term spiritual intentionally, because it’s important to clarify right at the beginning that faith is not politics, and politics is not faith.

Thank you Roy for inviting me to make a presentation at this seminar, and thank you friends for coming.

Freedom of religion and belief is something we fight for. The UK, where I come from, takes this right particularly seriously, and perhaps that is why it has become one of the most religiously diverse countries on earth. It is also among the least religious.

On 14 March 2012 at the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, in conjunction with the UK-based National Secular Society (NSS) and India-based news portal New Age Islam, IHEU hosted a panel discussion on Religion, Law, Democracy and Human Rights. The four panellists examined the extent to which the promotion of religious law is undermining democracy, civil law and human rights around the world.

In a joint statement with the Center for Inquiry today (14 March 2012) IHEU representative Raheel Raza, herself a Muslim human rights activist,  spoke of the need for the Islamic states to do more to promote religious tolerance at home if they are really concerned about hostility towards Muslims in the West.

In a speech today (14 March 2012) at the plenary of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, IHEU representative Leo Igwe criticised governments for aiding and abetting belief in witchcraft, leading to the torture and killing of innocent women and children in Africa and around the world.

IHEU president Sonja Eggerickx was among a distinguished roster of speakers at the 70th Annual Conference of the  American Humanist Association. The conference, from April 7 through 10, 2011, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was attended by more than 450 people. Sonja gave the following brief summary of the IHEU and its activities:

In October 2010, the UN Human Rights Council working group on the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action held a two-week workshop which discussed, inter alia, “structural discrimination”. The report of that workshop was presented to the plenary of the Human Rights Council on 22 March 2011. Strangely, the report contained no mention of what is unquestionably the most widespread, pernicious and deeply-rooted example of structural discrimination on Earth: I refer of course to the caste system.

When IHEU were prevented on a technicality from delivering a speech on blasphemy and violence in the name of religion at the 16th session of the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, Center for Inquiry kindly agreed to collaborate and deliver a statement jointly crafted by the two organizations. Unfortunately, Georgina Hutchinson, CFI main representative in Geneva was unable to deliver the speech when the session ended early on Friday 11 March, and the speech was actually delivered by Jack Jeffery of IHEU at 9:15 this morning. Here is the speech in full.