ABOUT HUMANISTS UK
At Humanists UK, we want a tolerant world where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We work to support lasting change for a better society, championing ideas for the one life we have. Our work helps people be happier and more fulfilled, and by bringing non-religious people together we help them develop their own views and an understanding of the world around them. Founded in 1896, we are trusted to promote humanism by over 85,000 members and supporters and over 100 members of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. Through our ceremonies, pastoral support, education services, and campaigning work, we advance free thinking and freedom of choice so everyone can live in a fair and equal society.
We work closely with Humanists International, founded in 1952 as the global representative body of the humanist movement, with over 170 member organisations in over 70 countries, and of which our Chief Executive is also the current President. We are also a member of the European Humanist Federation (EHF). We have good relations with the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for International Development (DfID), including being part of the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief’s regular roundtables. We are an active member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB) and are accredited at the UN Human Rights Council – the only national humanist group to hold such accreditation – and make interventions there every session. We contribute annually to Humanists International’s Freedom of Thought Report,1 which we are submitting alongside this response; and co-founded the End Blasphemy Laws campaign,2 which has successfully prompted eight countries to repeal their blasphemy laws since it was founded in 2015.
IN THIS SUBMISSION
In what follows we outline the persecution the non-religious face around the globe, then turn to the inquiry’s specific questions. The bulk of our comments relate to the questions about FoRB as that is where our expertise lies. Throughout we make specific recommendations for change, but in summary, we believe the FCO should do more to oppose the persecution of the non-religious; must take further steps to ensure that its language and agenda is inclusive of the non-religious; and should be able to demonstrate it is raising such issues in its meetings with other governments.
1 The Freedom of Thought Report, Humanists International,
PERSECUTION OF THE NON-RELIGIOUS GLOBALLY
‘In my observations, humanists, when they are attacked, are attacked far more viciously and brutally than in other cases.’
That is the view of Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, when speaking on the persecution of the non-religious around the globe. We agree, and urge the committee to take time to understand the persecution we face.
In addition, we observe that the situation in many places in the world is even worse that one of persecution. The long history of complete suppression of non-religious people means that in many places it is simply not possible to be openly and legally non-religious in the first place.
How many non-religious people are there?
The number of non-religious people in the world is consistently underestimated and there is simply no reliable data outside of a few European states. The reasons are numerous but mostly it is because admitting to humanist or other non-religious beliefs is either dangerous or socially unacceptable. As former Guardian Middle East correspondent Brian Whitaker has reported, ‘It’s impossible to know how many atheists there are in the region, not least because they often feel a need to keep quiet about their disbelief.’3 This is evident from looking at the numbers. For example, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has been anonymously downloaded some 13 million times in Arabic,4 but the Arab world, according to Pew figures, has only 1.9 million non-religious people.5
(Two academics, Dr Azim Sharriff and Dr Will Gervais, are in fact currently researching this very issue. Their research is forthcoming, but they have said that:
‘Preliminary data from two nationally representative American samples indicate rates of religious disbelief may be understated — potentially substantially so. Though most recent national self-report estimate the rate of non-belief to be around 11%, using the unmatched count technique — a well-validated method to circumvent response biases — Gervais & Najle (2017) find a much larger number: roughly 26%…
[W]e expect that the degree of over-reporting will differ significantly in other countries, and covary systematically with other measures of social pressures reinforcing religious
3 Brian Whitaker, ‘Arabs and atheism: the politics of disbelief’, al-bab.com, 25 February 2019,
self-presentation. Since there are different social pressures, and indeed legal requirements, throughout the world, we predict that existing self-reports of theistic beliefs will be most exaggerated in highly religious areas, such as Muslim-majority countries where apostasy remains a capital crime.’6)
So there is significant under-reporting of the number of the non-religious – that is how severe the persecution is. Those willing to even say they are non-religious make up a much smaller minority across countries with serious FoRB violations than are Christians. In some countries – like Pakistan, Egypt, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Afghanistan – the population willing to declare they are non-religious is essentially non-existent, and in many others it is very small indeed.
There are, as far as we are aware, no members of the Humanist Society Pakistan who are based in Pakistan and are open about their beliefs. As one of their members has told us,
‘There are many vigilante extremists eavesdropping and sniffing on social media for easy targets. Any sort of denial [of Islam] is considered and labeled as heresy in Pakistan. Once someone is accused of being rationalist, agnostic, or atheist in Pakistan, they can be easily murdered by an angry mob or undercover vigilante.
‘Our apprehensions about repression by forces of obscurantism and Islamist terror are not just bombastic rhetoric. The violence and torture meted out to secular and humanist victims is not unsubstantiated.’
Viciousness of persecution
This is not an exaggeration. In 2017, Pakistani University student Mashal Khan was murdered by fellow students merely for referring to himself as a humanist on Facebook. He was shot in the head and then beaten to death by a large group of students (some 31 were eventually found culpable with 26 more also tried). Police stood by and watched the attack, saying there were too many people attacking Mashal for them to intervene.7
Some 13 countries have the death penalty for blasphemy or apostasy; a number more have seen people murdered for the same. 40 have prison sentences for blasphemy or apostasy, and 18 more have some other criminal restrictions, meaning 71 have some kind of criminalisation. More generally, some 30 countries are classified by the Freedom of Thought report as guilty of grave violations against the non-religious, with 56 more guilty of severe discrimination, and 100 more of systemic discrimination. Only 10 are deemed to be mostly satisfactory or free and equal.8
6 Dr Azim Shariff, ‘Accurately measuring belief in God around the world’, Understanding Unbelief,
Some examples of the serious persecution non-religious people have faced include:9
● In Pakistan, in addition to the Mashal Khan case discussed above, in 2017, Taimoor Raza was sentenced to death after being accused of having made a blasphemous remark in a post on Facebook. Also that year, several humanist bloggers were forcibly disappeared by state security services. Upon release they reported to have been tortured. In 2013, Junaid Hafeez, was arrested and jailed on blasphemy charges, and his lawyer Rashid Rehman was shot dead by vigilantes the following year. No-one has been arrested for this. Further, Gulalai Ismail, the founder of Aware Girls and board member of Humanists International, has faced repeated accusations of blasphemy. For unrelated reasons – to do with her Pashtun rights activism – she has recently been in hiding facing arrest. ● In Bangladesh, there is no death sentence for blasphemy or apostasy. But in 2013, Islamists drew up a ‘hit list’ of 84 humanist bloggers, and began working through it, wantonly murdering people, often hacking them to death with machetes in the streets. Since then this has led to the deaths of Ahmed Rajib Haider, Shafiul Islam, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Avijit Roy, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Neel, and Shazahan Bachchu, amongst others, with more surviving attacks. The Islamists quickly either killed everyone on the list, forced them to seek asylum, or forced them into hiding. The Islamists then became less discriminate in their targets, moving on to murdering others, for example the bloggers’ publishers, LGBT rights activists, and people like Nazimuddin Samad who had simply wrote ‘I have no religion’ on Facebook. For their part, the authorities have frequently jailed non-religious people for ‘contempt of religion’ or ‘offensive remarks about Islam’ – including Asif Mohiuddin, who was jailed after having survived an Islamist attack. ● In Saudi Arabia, most notoriously Raif Badawi is currently serving a 10 year jail term and receiving 1,000 lashes for ‘insulting Islam’. His lawyer has also been jailed. In 2015, Ashraf Fayadh was sentenced to beheading for apostasy, although this was later commuted to jail time and 800 lashes. In 2017, Ahmad Al Shamri was sentenced to death for ‘atheism and blasphemy’. The state criminalises atheism as well as blasphemy and apostasy – equating it with terrorism. ● In Iran, in 2017 Sina Dehghan was sentenced to death for insulting Islam in private messages on an instant messaging app. In 2014, Soheil Arabi and Ruhollah Tavana were both sentenced to death for insulting Muhammad, in the former's case on Facebook. Others have faced lengthy jail terms and report being tortured. ● In Iraq, Ahmad Sherwan was imprisoned after telling his father he no longer believed in God. He was placed in solitary confinement and tortured by electric shock. This is to say nothing of the problems presented by ISIS. Samira Salih al-Nuaimi, for instance, was publicly executed for apostasy. ● In Afghanistan, in 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada was beaten to death in Kabul after being falsely accused of burning a copy of the Qur’an. Others have been jailed for blasphemy and apostasy, such as Sayeed Mahdawi, Ali Reza Payam, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, and Ghaws Zalmai. ● In Egypt, many people have been arrested for alleged blasphemy and apostasy, particularly online, for instance Sherif Gaber Abdelazim Bakr, Karim al-Banna, and Ayman Yusef Mansur.
9 In general for sources on this see the Freedom of Thought Report 2018 or End Blasphemy Laws campaign website.
Alber Saber was jailed after a mob formed outside his house and demanded his arrest for ‘insulting religion’. Ahmad and Sally Harqan were attacked in their home for his atheist activism, prompting them to flee to the police station, where they were assaulted by police and imprisoned. There have also recently been proposals in Parliament to criminalise atheism, alongside the existing law on blasphemy and apostasy. ● In Mauritania, in 2014 Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkheitir was sentenced to death for apostasy, after allegedly insulting Muhammad. He remained on death row until 2019 before being ultimately released. In the meantime there were several riots demanding his execution.
Further cases abound, like Nigeria, where Mubarak Bala was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric unit for renouncing Islam; Indonesia, where Alexander Aan was arrested after being attacked by a mob of Muslim militants because of statements he made on Facebook which criticized Islam and said he had left Islam and become an atheist; and Malaysia, where in 2017 a photograph of an atheist gathering prompted a Minister in the Prime Minister’s department to declare ‘The [Federal Constitution] does not mention atheists. It goes against the Constitution and human rights… I suggest that we hunt them down vehemently’. The fact that such issues aren’t more widespread reflects how little freedom of thought there is – as can be seen, even minor infractions can lead to the most severe ramifications. It is, as we said, impossible to be openly non-religious.
Even in parts of Europe, non-religious people have faced jail for blasphemy and apostasy – in recent years there have been arrests or prosecutions, in some cases resulting in jail time, at least in Russia, Poland, Greece, Malta, Germany, Italy and Spain.
GENERAL QUESTIONS
Turning to the Committee’s questions:
1. What changes have there been in the last year to the FCO's human rights priorities and programmes, and to its annual report on Human Rights and Democracy?
In the past few years, there has been an increased FCO focus on the human right to freedom of thought and freedom of religion or belief which was very welcome.
In the last year, however, there has been an increased focus on persecution of Christians. We are concerned about this. First, we are concerned that it has led to less of a focus on other religions and beliefs. Second, we are also concerned about how this partiality of focus is perceived globally. The preferential treatment the UK is giving to Christians serves to justify discriminatory treatments in favour of one religion in other countries. It also duplicates efforts from countries which already focus on Christians in their work, most notably the United States.
As Ahmed Shaheed and fellow preeminent international human rights academics Nazila Ghanea and Sir Malcolm Evans wrote in a joint letter to The Telegraph in February:
‘…couching this review even more broadly, and in the context of persecution against those of all religions and beliefs (including those of no religion), will greatly enhance its effectiveness internationally.
‘Seeking to protect some from persecution necessarily requires seeking to protect all from persecution. Upholding full enjoyment of freedom of religion or belief (which includes the freedom of worship) would enhance its enjoyment by all, whether believer, non-believer or ambivalent.’10
We believe that the change in policy is political rather than evidence-led and that the consensus of all human rights experts on FORB is that this is the case.
Recommendation: The FCO should reinstate its focus on freedom of religion or belief in the round (as opposed to just Christian persecution) in its policy and, just as crucially, its rhetoric.
2. What impact is the new Human Rights Ambassador expected to have?
We are pleased that an ambassador has been appointed, and the increased focus on human rights that this move signals. We have met with her only once so far and, of course, it is early days for her in her post, but we have been encouraged by her inclusive attitude to the broad nature of FoRB and her intended strategy of engagement in general.
QUESTIONS ON FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF
3. How effective is the FCO’s support for FORB, and is this sufficiently prioritised within its human rights work?
Overall: The Government has sent strong signals that it is prioritising FoRB as an area of work, through Lord Ahmad’s appointment as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy, through his own clear interest in this area. We are pleased to be included as a partner in much of this work, including in Lord Ahmad’s roundtables.
In our view, the FCO’s core FoRB staff have been strengthened in recent months and have become more effective at outreach and stakeholder engagement. One challenge we find is to secure easier access to individual country desk officers to discuss FoRB issues. We have for some time been having meetings with them, with the FoRB team proving effective at connecting us with them. Sometimes these meetings are easy to arrange but other times they are difficult. We understand that in resource terms desk officers are increasingly hard-pressed, not least as a result of the impact of deployment of staff to Brexit planning.
10 Letter to the Telegraph, 10 February 2019,
With all of that said, our main concern is that we are not seeing evidence of the protection of humanists and other non-religious people raised by the FCO in ministerial meetings or visits and we are not convinced that there is recognition of the scale and scope of the persecution humanists face (as set out above). We appreciate that there will be some gap between what we know (or could be privy to) and what the FCO is doing, but the gap is too large – so much so that we are concerned that it could be the case that while there are warm words to colleagues in Westminster, it is not translating to enough action abroad. We are concerned that the current focus on the persecution of Christians might further deprioritise the persecution of the non-religious. We discuss the case of Gulalai Ismail as an example in our response to questions 7-8 below.
Recommendation: FCO should provide concrete evidence to the Committee of raising the persecution of the non-religious abroad, including in meetings with ministers.
Expert advisory panel: We regret the ending of the expert advisory panel on freedom of religion or belief that existed under the Cameron administrations, which our chief executive was a member of. In our view it was more focused on expertise than the typical attendees of Lord Ahmad’s current roundtables, which often sacrifice that in favour of more religious leaders. Further, while the expert panel had consistent membership, the current roundtables have somewhat ad hoc attendance, with different people invited to each meeting depending upon the subject. This can mean that much of the meetings are taken up with introductions and people making their positions clear, rather than focusing on detail of issues as the advisory panel once di, and it makes it harder for collaboration to build over time.
Recommendation: The lack of consistent attendees for the FoRB roundtables deprives the FCO of a consistent mechanism for garnering expertise. A fixed expert advisory panel should be reconvened.
Language: We are also particularly concerned that the FCO and DfID are inconsistent in the language it uses around FoRB. Sometimes it refers more narrowly to ‘religious freedom’, Lord Ahmad’s roundtables are sometimes referred to his ‘faith roundtables’, and DfID recently chose to fund a programme called the ‘Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development’. As we shall come onto in question 4, it can also be seen in some of the recommendations of the Christian persecution review. This really matters because omitting to mention the ‘belief’ part of the equality strand or human right means that the non-religious are often forgotten about, and for some foreign stakeholders, this is deliberate. The current United States administration, for instance, has an agenda that is, by and large, not about ‘freedom of religion or belief’ but about ‘religious freedom’,11 almost exclusively for Christians, and sometimes to the expense of others, e.g. women, LGBT
11 As can be seen in the name of the recent ‘Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom’, for instance.
people, or other minorities. The UK has been a keen supporter of the US’s initiative.12 It is essential that the UK’s agenda isn’t distorted in this same way.
We would like to see the expression ‘FoRB’ become as reflexive as ‘LGBT’, and just as ‘LGBT’ is not seen as divisible, neither should FoRB.
Recommendation: The UK Government should ensure that it always uses language inclusive of the non-religious in everything it does.
4. How satisfactory was the recent independent review into the persecution of Christians overseas, in its scope and its execution; what has the FCO done to follow up on its conclusions and recommendations; and what are its implications for the FCO's work on FORB?
In general: We were concerned by the decision to focus on one religious group in such a review, because of the message it sends to other countries around the world – potentially serving to justify their own discriminatory treatment in favour of one religion. Further, it duplicates efforts from countries which already focus on Christians in their work, most notably the United States.
We think the clearest thing the FCO can do to correct this is to commission a similar review into the persecution of the non-religious. No country has focused on the non-religious in this way, and none of the other major world democracies have as significant a non-religious population as the UK’s. The British Social Attitudes Survey records that 52% of British adults belong to no religion.
17 humanists who have been victims of serious persecution in 11 different countries recently wrote to the Government to ask for such a review. Their letter is appended to this response as an annex. Ensaf Haidar, the wife of Raif Badawi, also spoke out in support of such a review.13
Recommendation: The UK Government should commission an independent review into persecution of the non-religious, akin to the one commissioned into Christians.
In terms of how the report was put together, we were not directly invited to feed into the inquiry, with such invites seemingly going only to NGOs that weren’t aligned to a non-Christian religion or belief. We fed in indirectly via the APPG on FoRB and other third parties.
On the report’s specific recommendations: Several of the recommendations are ones that we welcome – that have the potential to bolster FoRB across the board. This includes recommendations 1, 2, 4-10, 15-19, and 22.
12 e.g. ‘Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom: Lord (Tariq) Ahmad's speech’, GOV.UK, 19 July 2019,
Some of the others use religiously exclusive language in the way we express concern about in our response to question 3. This includes recommendations:
● 11, in discussing ‘religious literacy’ training – indeed the FCO already has training on this and it does not include training on the non-religious, which we have to provide separately; ● 12, in discussing engagement with ‘religious leaders’ but not with humanists or the non-religious; ● 13, in discussing ‘Advocacy for religious protection’, promoting high quality education for ‘religious minorities’, and in involving ’religious majorities and minorities’ in such approaches; ● 20, in talking about the FCO at the UN Security Council working for the protection of ‘Christians and other faith minorities’; ● 21, in talking of cross-departmental work ‘to recognise religious affiliation as a key vulnerability marker for members of religious minorities’.
In all cases, there is no obvious reason for why this is. This kind of exclusive language is dangerous as it too easily leads to exclusive approaches being taken.
Some of the others focus on Christianity specifically when we cannot see why this is the case. This includes recommendation 14, about ‘Ensur[ing] FCO human rights reporting includes Christian persecution, where this is relevant’, is a fine recommendation, except that it should also be true for the non-religious.
Recommendation: FCO should implement the report’s recommendations in a reformed and inclusive way. This includes changing the above recommendations.
5. What has been the impact of the Prime Minister's Special Representative on FORB?
As discussed in our response to question 3, we welcome the appointment of Lord Ahmad and commend the warm approach he takes towards our work on FoRB. We are pleased to be invited to his roundtables and are delighted that last year he spoke at an event of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. However, as discussed, we need to see more concrete action from the FCO on standing up for the non-religious in its meetings with other countries, and this includes Lord Ahmad’s. We also would have liked to see more from him and his office when we approached them about Gulalai Ismail – as we will come onto in our response to questions 7-8.
6. What role does the FCO play in shaping work by DfID, the Home Office, and other departments around FORB?
In our experience, the intersection between DfID and the FCO is patchy. For some regions of the world there are joint DfID and FCO teams working together (and co-located) which results in a more holistic approach to bilateral relationships including on FoRB. Where there are separate teams the coordination/integration can be varied.
We are concerned by DfID’s decision (seemingly taken in consultation with the FCO) to fund the ‘Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development’, a joint programme of the Institute of Development Studies, Al-Khoei Foundation, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Minority Rights Group, and World Organization for Al-Azhar Graduates (WOAG), which is affiliated to an Egyptian state university. The name is not inclusive of the non-religious and we are concerned as to whether all of the groups initially involved are fully supportive of freedom of belief for the non-religious. We also have similar concerns around language being consistently inclusive of the non-religious, much as we have with the FCO.
We have not seen much interaction with respect to the FCO and the Home Office. More collaboration would certainly make sense, for example the FCO sharing intel about the levels of persecution people face to the Home Office so as to shape the latter’s country policy and information notes. Perhaps this happens already and we’re just not particularly aware of it.
QUESTIONS ON HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS
7. Is support for human rights defenders sufficiently prioritised within the FCO's human rights work? 8. How effective has the FCO been at protecting civil society space and human rights defenders? To what extent are civil society groups based in the UK and abroad able to engage with the FCO on relevant policies and programmes?
We are concerned by the level of support we have seen when we have asked the FCO to raise the case of Gulalai Ismail. Gulalai is an internationally acclaimed human rights defender and the most prominent humanist in Pakistan, but has recently been in hiding facing arrest on charges of sedition. We have heard that she is on a ‘kill list’ whereby her life is at serious threat, if found by Pakistani authorities.
We repeatedly raised her plight with the FCO and asked them to do more but received little back by way of response. Some parliamentary questions to Lord Ahmad about what his department is doing have received responses, but even these did not commit to any concrete action:
‘We regularly raise at a senior level our concerns about the human rights situation with the Government of Pakistan, including on the freedom of expression. I discussed human rights in Pakistan with the Minister for Human Rights, Dr Shireen Mazari, in September 2018 [prior to Gulalai coming under threat]. The British Government continues to urge Pakistan to honour in full its human rights obligations.’14
Recommendation: FCO should provide concrete evidence of action it took in support of Gulalai Ismail.
14 See e.g. ‘Pakistan: Human Rights:Written question - HL10995’, Parliament.uk, answered 6 November 2018,
For more details, information and evidence, contact Humanists UK:
Richy Thompson Director of Public Affairs and Policy 0781 5589 636 020 7324 3072 [email protected] humanists.uk
ANNEX: LETTER FROM GLOBAL VICTIMS CALLING FOR UK GOVERNMENT REVIEW INTO NON-RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION (JULY 2019)
Dear Dominic Raab,
We are non-religious activists and campaigners who have been victims of blasphemy and apostasy laws around the world, or of vigilante violence inspired by prejudice against humanists. We are aware that the UK has recently concluded a review of persecution of Christians around the globe, and believe that a similar review should now be conducted into persecution of the non-religious.
Many countries, when supporting freedom of religion or belief, already focus their efforts on opposing the persecution of Christians specifically. But none have given any detailed attention to the non-religious. The UK is one of the least religious countries on the planet. The British Social Attitudes Survey suggests that a majority of British adults belong to no religion. It is one of the best placed to champion opposition to the persecution that the non-religious face.
What is more, the non-religious need such a champion. In many countries around the world it is simply impossible to be openly non-religious. 13 have the death penalty for blasphemy and apostasy, with many more criminalising it, and widespread social prejudice exists across much of the globe. Many humanists have been murdered with impunity, in some cases for merely identifying as such. In the words of Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, ‘In my observations, humanists, when they are attacked, are attacked far more viciously and brutally than in other cases’.
If the UK doesn’t provide such high-level support to people like us, who will?
Rana Ahmad, Saudi Arabia (now based in Germany) Bonya Ahmed, Bangladesh (now based in the US) Choity Ahmed, Chief Editor, Nari News, Bangladesh (now based in Sweden) Waleed Al-Husseini, Palestine (now based in France) Mubarak Bala, President, Nigeria Humanist Association Ahmedur Rashid Chowdhury, Editor and publisher, Shuddhashar, Bangladesh (now based in Norway) Fauzia Ilyas, Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan (now based in the Netherlands) Siti Kasim, Malaysia Philippos Louizos, Greece Asif Mohiuddin, Bangladesh (now based in Germany) Taslima Nasrin, Bangladesh (now based in India) Alber Saber, Egypt (now based abroad) Mohamed Salih, Sudan (now based in Uganda) Prithu Sanyal, Editor, Nari News, Bangladesh (now based in Germany) Rana Amjad Sattar, Humanist Society Pakistan (now based in New Zealand) Amed Sherwan, Iraq (now Germany)
Malaysian Atheists and Secular Humanists (MASH)