Jihad by Word is a semi-regular series from Jalal Tagreeb in which he relates how, through being exposed to the flaws in Islamic apologetics during debates with nonbelievers, he left Islam a… Read More

by Polyp (paul fitzgerald). Donate Newsletter Contact Related reading Donald Trump, political violence, and the future of America, by Daniel James Sharp Donald Trump is a… Read More

Stephen Evans highlights the myriad threats to secular liberalism and sets out what’s needed to preserve it ahead of the National Secular Society’s upcoming conference on protect… Read More

rioters on january 6 2021. image: Tyler Merbler. CC BY 2.0. More than three years have elapsed since former President Donald Trump nearly got former Vice President Mike Pence killed, if n… Read More

The First Council of Constantinople in AD 381, wall painting at the church of Stavropoleos, Bucharest, Romania. photo: Kostisl. public domain. The transformation of the Roman Empire from… Read More

As a past and present adherent of two major religions—initially, I was a Christian missionary and now I am a Buddhist priest—I have long pondered the meaning and significance of… Read More

Chinese sage Wang Chong expresses his attitude vis-à-vis established beliefs. image by Nicholas E. Meyer. A previous article of mine mentioned a number of pitfalls into which many… Read More

To mark Ashura, a day of celebration or mourning depending on whether you are a Sunni or a Shia Muslim, here is the third Jihad by Word instalment. Jihad by Word is a semi-regular series fro… Read More

image: Evan Vucci. details and non-free use rationale per wikimedia commons. Donald Trump was nearly killed a couple of days ago, and the consequences of this failed assassination attempt… Read More

tanja nijmeijer, 2016. image: Manuel Paz. CC BY 3.0. Tanja Nijmeijer fought at a young age with the FARC, the ‘Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’, a Marxist-Leninist guer… Read More

A week on from the election of a new government, Megan Manson of the National Secular Society (NSS) reflects on what a Labour government might mean for secularism in the UK and the worrying… Read More

Photograph taken in 2014 during an event organized by the pro-democracy group All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU) featuring Venerable Wirathu, a Buddhist monk leader (front, robe… Read More

‘PigeonHoles’, by Polyp (paul fitzgerald). Donate Newsletter Contact The post Image of the week: ‘Pigeonholes’ by Polyp (Paul Fitzgerald) appeared firs… Read More

Books From Bob’s Library is a semi-regular series in which freethought book collector and National Secular Society historian Bob Forder delves into his extensive collection and shares… Read More

To celebrate the beginning of the Islamic new year, here is the second Jihad by Word instalment. Jihad by Word is a semi-regular series from Jalal Tagreeb in which he relates how, through be… Read More

a page of the 17th-century manuscript of the mewar ramayana portraying the slaying of ravana by rama. I was born to an Indian Bengali Hindu family. My childhood was drenched in the rich e… Read More

Books sometimes have a way of turning up at opportune times. In mid-2022 a collection of essays on the themes of blasphemy and violence in Europe, Demystifying the Sacred: Blasphemy and… Read More

david tennant. image: DavidDjJohnson. CC BY 3.0. As someone infamous once said (me, need you ask?), ‘The truth is not mediated by the identity of the speaker’. If it were, one… Read More

Review of Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life* by Jason Roberts, Riverrun, 2024. ‘God Himself guided him’, it was said of the famous Swedish taxo… Read More

the aqsa mosque in rabwah is pakistan’s largest ahmadi place of worship. In Pakistan, the formation of a truly democratic government is increasingly hindered by the limited partici… Read More

Dozens of women from Afghanistan’s Hazara community held a protest following a suicide bombing that took place in an educational centre and killed more than 20 young women. 1 October… Read More

DeepAI’s AI image generator’s response to the prompt ‘AI taking over the world’. Deep within the series of notebooks that make up his Foundations of a Critique of… Read More

Charles Bradlaugh being arrested by the police for trying to take his seat in parliament as an atheist, and subsequently rejoicing at the passage of his Oaths Bill in 1888. Colour lithograph… Read More

george galloway, described below as one of the ‘shameless politicians [who] are openly embracing Muslim identitarianism’, speaking in 2007. image: David Hunt. It is becoming m… Read More

The UK that goes to the polls on 4 July will be the most religiously diverse in election history. Less than half the population of England and Wales describe themselves as ‘Christi… Read More

To celebrate the beginning of Hajj (the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca), here is the first in a semi-regular series from Jalal Tagreeb in which he relates how he moved away from Islam to… Read More

Toomaj salehi. image: Hosseinronaghi. CC BY-SA 4.0. Although elaborate hate speech laws can make it extremely difficult, we have the right to freedom of expression in Britain. Generally s… Read More

Books From Bob’s Library is a semi-regular series in which freethought book collector and National Secular Society historian Bob Forder delves into his extensive collection and shares… Read More

Hieronymous Francken II ‘s early 17th-century painting ‘The last judgement’ Eschatology, from the Christian perspective, is a systematic study of the end of time or… Read More

moraine lake, alberta. Canada: ‘the true north strong and free’? Image: Chensiyuan. CC BY-SA 4.0. I was initially pleased to see Tony Akkermans’ reply to my article on w… Read More

Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian materialist and one of the Six Heretics. read more here. With Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party facing a setback in the polls, now is a good… Read More

narendra modi in september 2021. During the campaign for the polls which have seen him suffer major setbacks in his bid to be elected for a third successive term today, Indian Prime Minis… Read More

a ‘highbrow caveman’ according to deepai.org’s artificial intelligence image generator. It should have been a great weekend. I was staying with my friend Cal at her cott… Read More

a godly snooze: If the philosopher Berkeley’s God ever decided to catch forty winks, the consequences for existence itself would be dire. illustration by nicholas e. meyer. From ear… Read More

Six years ago, I embarked on a journey that marked the end of my age of ignorance and blindness. This transformation did not occur overnight, nor did it take a matter of days, weeks, or even… Read More

Women displaying placards during Aurat March 2019. image credit: Nawab Afridi. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. The placard on the le… Read More

‘what could be more Stoic than calmly navigating the chaos of New York City, one sarcastic quip at a time?’ photo by alan light. cc BY 2.0. In the realm of intellectual d… Read More

screenshot from video posted on masih alinejad’s twitter/x feed featuring Iranians celebrating the death of ebrahim raisi, former president of Iran. Read more here. Masih Alinejad… Read More

screenshot from video posted on masih alinejad’s twitter/x feed featuring Iranians celebrating the death of ebrahim raisi, former president of Iran. Read more here. Masih Alinejad… Read More

‘comprehensive sex education’. image: Caroladominici. CC BY-SA 4.0 international. Young people are fed up with the often prudish, vague, and incomplete information about sex a… Read More

Fiolent, Crimea, Black Sea. Cape Fiolent is home to St. George Orthodox Monastery. image credit: © Vyacheslav Argenberg. image under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International… Read More

The concept of the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ is widely considered to be a liberal one. It is, indeed, liberals who have argued for the free exchange of ideas as a positive good. How… Read More

Students of Amir Kabir university protest against Hijab and the Islamic Republic, September 2022. Image: Darafsh. CC BY-SA 4.0. In January, the BBC reported that the Islamic Students Ass… Read More

‘The naked emperor’, stencil graffiti by Edward von Lõngus. Kitsas (Narrow) street in Tartu, Estonia. That work went up before the Estonian parliamentary election in 2015… Read More

Introducing Books From Bob’s Library, a semi-regular series in which freethought book collector and National Secular Society historian Bob Forder delves into his extensive collection a… Read More

‘a failed politician whose historical legacy will be the unprecedented shortness of her premiership.’ image: Simon dawson/no 10 downing street. source: Information Rights Unit… Read More

former archbishop of canterbury george carey, who changed his mind on assisted dying after witnessing terrible suffering. image: Larry Gossett (St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral –… Read More

The sleep of reason produces monsters: read more. Francisco Goya’s c. 1799 etching is usually regarded as an expression of Enlightenment principles. The imagination, untempered by r… Read More

the us bill of rights as proposed in 1789. in this version, what would become the first amendment (which separates church and state) is listed as ‘article the third’. A judge… Read More

geert wilders in 2014. In the Netherlands, House of Representatives elections were held on 22 November 2023. This turned out to be a great victory for Geert Wilders’ party (Party fo… Read More

Flaco in central park, new york. image: Rhododendrites. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Animal lovers the world ove… Read More

‘The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) building in Gaza City, which was destroyed in the so-called “Operation Cast Lead” in December 2008/January 2009, in September 20… Read More

Jordan Peterson, ‘the Richard dawkins of new theism’, making an address to delegates at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, 2023. Vladimir Putin is one of the last defen… Read More

Editorial introduction Below is reproduced, with permission from the Estate of Christopher Hitchens (to whom I express my gratitude), the final chapter of Hitchens’s classic freethi… Read More

terry Sanderson, 1946-2022. photo by tom pilston, 2010. read more about terry here. On 6 April, a celebration of Terry Sanderson’s life was held at his newly erected grave in Brookw… Read More

Former National Secular Society (NSS) President Terry Sanderson, a giant of the secularist and gay rights movements, among others, died in June 2022. Below, Keith Porteous Wood, Terry’… Read More

image credit: elena ternovaja. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. ‘What you have made will long endure.’ This is how Salman Ru… Read More

Michael Meyer has produced this splendidly researched and written account of the 1877 trial of Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant for republishing the American doctor Charles Knowlton&rs… Read More

Note: this is a very slightly revised version of a piece originally written for my personal Substack and published on 7 February of this year. Fiolent, Crimea, Black Sea. Cape Fiolent is… Read More

The ‘Four Horsemen of the non-apocalypse’. Image credit: direktor, based on works by david shankbone, ensceptico, mathias schindler, and unknown. image used under the Creative… Read More

Editorial note: this is a lightly edited republication of the speech given by Leo Igwe at the American Atheists National Convention in Philadelphia on 30 March 2024. leo igwe giving his… Read More

Image credit: Amy Hasbrouck. I am in a minority. As an atheist who supports the aims of the National Secular Society and Humanists UK in almost every other area, including abortion, I fin… Read More

It looks like there’s trouble brewing north of the wall. A giant ginger beast that has lain dormant for the past three years has awoken, possibly the illegitimate love child of Ed Shee… Read More

Credit: ben morse Introduction Frank Turner is an English singer and songwriter whose music I have loved for years. His songs are wild and varied, sometimes sad and sometimes happy but… Read More

image credit: Karl Withakay. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Every couple of years, whenever he declares that he is a ‘cultu… Read More

In March 2021, fearing for his life and his family, a religious studies teacher at Batley Grammar School fled his job and home. A campaign of threats and intimidation was underway, inst… Read More

‘Friends are ready for Iftar in Ramadan @ Margalla Hills – Islamabad‘. © AQAS Clicks | Waqas Photography. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alik… Read More

khadija khan at the council of ex-muslims of britain ramadan protest outside the Pakistani embassy in London. image: khadija khan. While Ramadan is a sacred month for Muslims, let us not… Read More

Cover of Freethinking, by Simon McCarthy-Jones. Image: Oneworld PublicationsIntroduction Simon McCarthy-Jones is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Trinity Institute of Neuroscience… Read More

Emile Chartier (1868-1951), known as Alain. Image: philosophe-alain.fr‘Thought is free, or it isn’t thought.’  This fine remark comes from Emile Chartier (1868-1951… Read More

Images: from a ‘History of witches and Wizards’ (1760) via wikimedia commons; screen grab from the police Scotland video via Youtube.Since their earliest origins, Christian cultu… Read More

Susie Alegre with her book. Image: E. ParkIntroduction In the last few years, researchers in several disciplines have become increasingly interested in the topic of free thought, its stat… Read More

Faith Watch is an idiosyncratically compiled monthly round-up of the errors, disasters and absurdities following in the wake of religions around the world, by our assistant editor, Daniel Ja… Read More

Part of a Mural in Beijing depicting ‘The great united family of peoples’, or China’s recognised ethnic groups. Image: Vmenkov (August 2008) via Wikimedia Commons.‘Cr… Read More

The following article is adapted from a talk given to the Leicester Secular Society on 3 March 2024. Women’s march 2018, Seneca Falls, USA. Image: Marc Nozell via Wikimedia Commons… Read More

A chapel used for discipleship training, Jos, northern Nigeria. photo: S. Audu (2024).There are many ‘harams’ – things that are ‘religiously forbidden’ –… Read More

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (left) and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. al-burhan image credit: president.az. Hemedti image credit: government.ru. Both images used under the Creative… Read More

Credit: Mohammed Jones (2013).The post Image of the week: Jesus and Mo on clerical fascism appeared first on The Freethinker Read More

Louise AntonyIntroduction At the Freethinker, one of our aims has always been to foster a culture of free speech and open debate. It was from this perspective that, as editor in 2022, I f… Read More

Adam Wakeling, ‘Why the Enlightenment matters‘, Australian Scholarly Publishing, May 2023.In Why the Enlightenment Matters, Adam Wakeling sets himself the ambitious task of defin… Read More

Tehreem Azeem, with and without the Hijab and Abaya. Photos: Tehreem Azeem.It is hard to tell the story of my transformation from a practising Muslim to a freethinker. It did not happen in a… Read More

Pro-Palestine protest in Boston, 16 May 2021. Photo: Amir Hanna, via Unsplash.Following the barbaric terrorist attack of 7 October 2023 on innocent Israeli civilians, large numbers of young… Read More

Integration, BY POLYP (PAUL FITZGERALD). For the Freethinker‘s coverage of the Michaela Community School story, see Khadija Khan’s essay on religious exceptionalism and assis… Read More

Michael Laccohee Bush, Thomas Paine and the Polity of the Blood. With an Appendix on the Bones. Mot Juste, 2023.But I will dance to Tom Paine’s bones Dance to Tom Paine’s bone… Read More

Adults and children together on a Pro-Palestine march, London, 11 November 2023. Photo: Julian Stallabrass via Wikimedia Commons. The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the U… Read More

‘Wha wants me’, a caricature of Thomas Paine by Isaac Cruikshank (1792). Find out more here. 9 February marks the birthday of the great revolutionary and freethinker Thomas Pa… Read More

Faith Watch is a monthly round-up of the errors, disasters and absurdities following in the wake of religions around the world, by our assistant editor, Daniel James Sharp. Fanatics in… Read More

François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire (1694–1778). Copy of a lost original By Maurice Quentin De la Tour, 1736. Image: Musée Antoine-Lécuyer, via Wikimedia Comm… Read More

women in a National Campaign on the prevention of violence against women, India Gate, New Delhi, 2 October 2009. Image: Ministry of Women and Child Development, India, via Wikimedia Commons… Read More

Filippino Lippi’s 15th-century fresco ‘Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics’. Are western values inherently christian? Read more here. Image: public domain, from… Read More

Vladimir Putin in Patriot Park with members of the Russian Orthodox Church and the armed forces, September 2018. Image: www.kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons. Amid all the horror, the Russian… Read More

image credit: Sgerbic. Image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence. Introduction Lawrence Krauss is a Canadian-American physicist and writer… Read More

‘Two journalists discuss freedom of speech’, Image generated by Dall-E from a prompt by E. Park, December 2023.2023 has been an eventful year for free thought, humanism and secul… Read More

Daniel Dennett in 2012. image credit: Dmitry rozhkov. image used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Introduction  Daniel C. Dennett… Read More

Yasser arafat, chairman of the palestine Liberation Organization 1969-2004 and president of the palestinian national authority 1994-2004, pictured in 1996. Photo credit:  Gideon Markow… Read More

graham smith photographed during this interview in the conway hall foyer café. Image: Freethinker (2023). Introduction On 25 November, 2023, at the historic Conway Hall in Londo… Read More

Paul Scriven in Parliament just after our interview, 5 December 2023. Image: FreethinkerIntroduction On the afternoon of Wednesday 6th December 2023, Paul Scriven, a Liberal Democrat peer… Read More

statue of jean lesage, father of ‘the quiet revolution’ and Quebecois secularism, in front of quebec’s parliament building. image credit: Bouchecl. Image used under  … Read More

Rory Stewart, Spotted At a café in central london. Image: Freethinker (2023)It is rare for a political memoir to be anything but a blandly written exercise in self-congratulation, and… Read More

This article is the third in our series of reflections from different perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict, one of the most complex, contentious and emotive conflicts of recent time… Read More