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.

Islamic radicalism has been defined in a variety of ways: as a synonym for extremism, militancy, terrorism or the ideologies of Wahhabism, Salafism,  Deobandism, Qutubi

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.

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:

With the recent discovery of new evidence that the Vatican ordered Catholic bishops not to cooperate with the civil authorities in Ireland and the United States,  IHEU representative Keith Porteous Wood called upon the Human Rights Council to take action against the Holy See. In a powerfully-delivered speech on Tuesday, 15 March 2011, Keith also attacked the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child for its failure to insist that the Holy See deliver its report on children, now 13 years overdue.

At a debate on the motion, "This House has no faith in organized religion", IHEU Vice President Jack Jeffery supported freedom of religion or belief and highlighted negative effects of the activities of organized religions.

Keith Porteous Wood gave the following address on behalf of IHEU and the National Secular Society to the 'Religion And Politics In The New Europe' forum at the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday 27th November, 2007.

Europeans who have no religion are increasing in number but are becoming increasingly disadvantaged in the political process.

The majority of the EU population are either non-religious or do not actively practise any religion and they are being betrayed by increasingly strident religious influence on moral matters in EU institutions.

Sonja Eggerickx, President of IHEU, attended and spoke at the World Conference on Dialogue among Religions and Civilizations "The Contribution of religion and culture to peace, mutual respect and cohabitation" held on October 26-28,2007 at Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia.