One Law For All: 25 November 2018 London Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism

Source: mass emailing

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: m.namazie@onelawforall.org.uk <m.namazie@onelawforall.org.uk>
Date: Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 11:59 AM
Subject: 25 November 2018 London Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism

Sunday 25 November 2018

Conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism

9:30am registration for 1030am start

Central London

Join notable secularists and veteran women's rights campaigners for a conference on Sharia, Segregation and Secularism at a spectacular venue in central London on Sunday 25 November 2018.

The conference will raise key issues surrounding religious arbitration, the veil and gender segregation at schools and universities, including as part of the religious-Right's assault on women's rights. It will also highlight the voices of people on the frontlines of resistance, the gains made by secularists both in the UK and internationally, and the importance of secularism as a minimum precondition for equality. Challenges that secularists continue to face and priorities for continued collective action will also be addressed.

The conference will mark the tenth anniversary of the One Law for All Campaign for equality irrespective of background, beliefs and religions.

Confirmed Speakers (Biographies):< /p>

Afsana Lachaux

Ahlam Akram

Amina Lone

Beatrix Campbell

Diana Nammi

Elham Manea

Eve Sacks

Fariborz Pooya

Gina Khan

Gita Sahgal

Houzan Mahmoud

Inna Shevchenko

Marieme Helie Lucas

Maryam Namazie

Nadia El Fani

Nasreen Rehman

Peter Tatchell

Pragna Patel

Rahila Gupta

Rumana Hashem

Sadia Hameed

Victoria Gugenheim

Yasmin Rehman

Tickets can be purchased here.  Conference venue will be given to ticket holders closer to the date of the event. Please note that tickets cannot be bought at the door and must be purchased prior to the event.

More information on the conference is available on its website.

Conference sponsors include: Bread and Roses TV; Center for Inquiry; Centre for Secular Space; Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain; Culture Project; Equal Rights Now; Fitnah; National Secular Society; One Law for All; Southall Black Sisters; and Secularism is a Women's Issue.

For more information, please contact Maryam Namazie, onelawforall@gmail.com.

Bread and Roses TV - 20 May 2015 - in Persian and English

openDemocracy: Pragna Patel: ‘Shariafication by stealth’ in the UK - Secularism is a Women's Issue

Source: http://www.siawi.org/article8484.html
 

Pragna Patel: 'Shariafication by stealth' in the UK 

Friday 17 October 2014

Source: Open Democracy - 17 October 2014
Access to justice is being denied in the UK in the shadow of neoliberalism and religious fundamentalism. Pragna Patel argues that minority women are being denied the right to participate in the wider political community as citizens rather than subjects.
In the last five years or so in the UK, SBS has increasingly been preoccupied with one key question above all else: how to access justice on behalf of the most vulnerable. Of course, access to justice has always been a central concern, given that we have long recognised the law as a key site of feminist resistance. We have used the law in a variety of ways to ensure that the most marginalised and vulnerable can exercise their right to equality, justice and fairness in civil and criminal proceedings. Examples include our casework and campaigns on Kiranjit Aluwalia and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007. This has involved laying bare in the law class, race and gender norms that reproduce inequality and legitimate exclusionary and discriminatory outcomes for minority women. The struggle to hold the law to account in this sense remains unfinished business, even though together with others, we have made some significant gains along the way.
However, the struggle to access justice has now reached crisis point. The ever widening shadow of neo-liberalism and the continuing rise of fundamentalist religious identity politics have left us struggling on two interlinked fronts. First, we are compelled to challenge the state for removing legal aid from a huge range of civil and criminal matters which impact not only on individual rights but also on our demands for institutional accountability in the face of abuses of power that seem to be growing rather than diminishing. The government's 'reforms' on legal aid are strongly located in a fiscal context that reiterate some of the key overarching aims of the present government: localism, alternative dispute resolution strategies, deficit reduction and deregulation. Taken together these measures are destroying one of the great pillars of the welfare state. They have forced SBS into leading or supporting legal and political challenges against various legal aid cuts.
This development is directly linked to the challenges that we face on the second front: increasing privatisation of justice and state adoption of a 'faith based' approach to address minority issues. This has meant amongst other things, challenging religious fundamentalists and 'moderates' alike who are using the vacuum created to influence and shape law and social policy by reference to a regressive religious identity that they have come to define.
In the last few years, the UK has seen a rise in the demand for the accommodation of religious legal codes in the very fabric of the legal system; demands which parts of the state have been only too happy to accommodate. These demands in part emanate especially, but not only from, some powerful Muslim spokespersons and institutions and can be directly linked to the growth of political Islam and more generally to the rise of fundamentalism in all religions.
Muslim fundamentalists have mounted what can be described as a two pronged pincer like manoeuvre based ostensibly on the demand for religious tolerance, but which is in reality a bid for power in which the control of female sexuality is central. On the one hand they seek to ensure that personal religious codes are normalised within the legal system, and on the other they seek to formalise a parallel legal system through the establishment of alternative religious forums for dispute resolution in family matters. This process - a sort of 'shariafication by stealth' of the legal apparatus – involves making state law and policy 'Sharia' compliant. If successful, we have no doubt that it will lead other religions to demand the same level of accommodation.
At the heart of the debate on religion and the law, is the tension between the rights and fundamental freedoms of the individual on the one hand, and on the other the rights of minorities to religious freedom and educational and cultural rights. But it is often women and sexual and other minorities who are caught in the clash that ensues. As secular black feminists what we have to contend with today echoes previous struggles that challenged multiculturalism and its left leaning variant, anti-racism. Whereas previously we challenged the anti-racist movement and official multiculturalism for abstracting notions of culture, and for failing to deal with gender power relations, we now find ourselves challenging official multifaithism (which has formalised communal identities) and parts of the anti-racist and feminist movement for abstracting notions of religion.
Towards the end of 2012, against the growing practice of gender segregation at public events in universities, Universities UK (UUK), the governing body of British universities, issued guidance which permitted gender segregation of women in university spaces in order to accommodate the religious beliefs of external speakers. The guidance presented in the form of a case study purported to provide advice in contexts in which the right to manifest religion clashes with gender equality.
Far from addressing the question of sex discrimination, the guidance merely legitimised gender apartheid. It took a campaign and threats of legal action by us before the UUK agreed to withdraw the guidance. We argued that the UUK's guidance violated the equality and non-discrimination principles enshrined in the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act and other equalities and human rights legislation, themselves the product of long and hard campaigning by feminists, racial minorities and other marginalised groups in society. The withdrawal of the UUK guidance was followed by a formal investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission which found the guidelines to be unlawful despite cries of 'Islamaphobia' - not only by Islamists and conservatives - but also some parts of the left and those who regard themselves as anti-racists and feminists. Many, including Laurie Penny dismissed the matter as 'a fuss about nothing' and reduced our protests to 'mere hyperbole' or Isamaphobia and 'an attack on yet another Muslim practice'.
Learning nothing from the debacle, the Law Society, a body representing the interests of the legal profession, followed the UUK lead by issuing guidance to lawyers on how to prepare 'Sharia' compliant wills. it would appear that the guidance was drafted with reference to fundamentalists who defend the most abhorrent practices including death by stoning. The guidance endorsed so called Sharia succession rules which stipulates that 'as a general rule, a male heir will inherit twice the amount that a female heir will receive, illegitimate children are not heirs'.
Clearly, the guidance accepts without question the inherent discrimination that exists in Islam (as indeed in other religions) against women and children born outside marriage. Of course the Law Society has not asked itself how it can possibly know what is and isn't 'Sharia' law: Muslim religious codes throughout the world are varied and vigorously contested when not targeted for repeal and reform. The real problem is that the Law Society sees no wrong in wading into such doctrinal territory. Indeed, the guidance is part of a wider programme of training courses developed by the Law Society to encourage 'Sharia' compliance in relation to the question of family, children, property and financial settlements in minority communities.
All of this gives succour to Islamist demands in the UK for religious and secular laws to operate in parallel universes, with the former applying to minorities and the latter to the white majority. What we see operating is an inverse form of racism: far from promoting a rights compliant culture, the Law Society, like the UUK is helping to arrest the development of a secular human rights culture from taking root in minority communities.
Our struggle for the right to access a secular human rights framework is made that much more difficult in a context where the government has also consistently invoked the need to uphold 'British values' (presumably meaning respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law) even though in the same breath, it also threatens to repeal the Human Rights Act, every time a court seeks to assert the universal application of human rights in cases of state abuse of power.
The other area of concern in respect of the growing alignment of religion and the law is state support for non-state religious arbitration systems.
By removing legal aid, the state forces minority women to resort to formal and informal religious authority and forums such as Sharia councils and tribunals that appear to be on the increase. On the face of it, formalised religious forums of arbitration such as the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal present themselves as professional bodies that seek to adhere to formal legal rules of engagement and to non discriminatory principles. But what they are in fact, seeking to do is to exclude the application of what is considered to be 'western' secular law in family matters and to establish instead a parallel legal system based on divine law which by its very nature is immune from scrutiny.
Support for parallel legal systems come not only from male religious leaderships and the state, but also alarmingly from within feminism itself. For instance, in feminist discussions on intersectional frameworks for understanding violence against women it has become fashionable to talk of the intersection of religion and gender, and to refer to the need to develop a feminist response that is sensitive to the growth of religious values, especially post 9/11 and the rise of anti-Muslim racism. This has amounted to support for the accommodation of religious legal codes. Yet few if any acknowledge the fact that wherever parallel legal systems operate they generally suppress dissent, and seek to remove women from public spaces metaphorically speaking and to impede their fundamental freedoms in the private sphere.
Even fewer acknowledge that there are substantial movements, often led by women and human rights activists, for the repeal of state sanctioned religious orders on the grounds that they are not compatible with universal human rights principles. Instead, notions of 'autonomy' and 'female agency' - the cornerstone of feminist analysis - are invoked to shore up a regressive multi-faith framework.
A recent study of women who have used religious based forums suggests that, in contexts where the stranglehold of religion leaves little room to manoeuvre, far from 'voluntarily' accessing religious authority, women exercise a highly constrained agency. Not a single woman interviewed chose to utilise religious forums to obtain protection orders or resolve disputes over property or children. On these substantive matters, they placed unequivocal trust in the secular legal system, however imperfect, which they felt offered them the best hope of obtaining equality and justice. The only issue on which roughly half sought religious intervention was on the question of divorce, but even then many obtained a civil divorce and sought a religious divorce out of social compulsion: they feared that a civil divorce would not be recognised in the community and they needed to legitimate their exit out of a marriage. They sought to avoid the stigma and isolation attached to divorce or to exercise sexual autonomy albeit within a marriage.
Advocates for parallel legal systems argue that having recourse to religious forums does not mean that minority women are seeking to opt out of the wider political community, only that they are seeking the right to be governed by their own norms. But this misses the point that women are not choosing to opt out at all - they are being opted out by the religious right and by the state; they are denied access to the tools they need to withstand pressures to conform to custom or to invoke a broader set of citizenship and human rights. And in the process, they are denied the right to participate in the wider political community as citizens rather than subjects.
What we see at work here is clearly an attempt to impede the development of secular, progressive, political resistance by de-legitimising and locating our struggles for access to justice, outside of so called community, anti-racist and feminist concerns. These struggles are now taking place on many fronts as both religious right forces and the state mount an assault on secular human rights values in pursuit of power without accountability.
This article is an extended version of a presentation given by the author at the Secularism 2014 Conference held in London last weekend

Southall Black Sisters: Manifesto for Secularism – Against the Religious Right

Source:  http://www.southallblacksisters.org.uk/manifesto-secularism-religious-right/

Manifesto for Secularism – Against the Religious Right

SBS | Tuesday, October 14th, 2014 | No Comments »

SBS attended and spoke at this historical conference on secularism and the religious right which took place on the weekend of 11/12 October. We wholeheartedly endorsed a statement of support and solidarity for the Kurdish people fighting ISIS:
“Delegates expressed strong support for the Kurdish people’s democratic, secular struggle against the clerical fascism of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, with many urging international aid to help the Kurds defend Kobane,” said Mr Tatchell, who attended and spoke at the conference and conveyed a message of support to the Kurdish solidarity rally in London on 11 October.
SBS is also a signatory to the following manifesto for secularism.

The Manifesto for Secularism:

Our era is marked by the rise of the religious-Right – not because of a “religious revival” but rather due to the rise of far-Right political movements and states using religion for political supremacy. This rise is a direct consequence of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism and the social policies of communalism and cultural relativism. Universalism, secularism and citizenship rights have been abandoned and segregation of societies and “communities” based on ethnicity, religion and culture have become the norm.
The Islamic State (formerly ISIS), the Saudi regime, Hindutva (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in India, the Christian-Right in the US and Europe, Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka, Haredim in Israel, AQMI and MUJAO in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria are examples of this.
For many decades now, people in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and the Diaspora have been the first victims but also on the frontlines of resistance against the religious-Right (whether religious states, organisations and movements) and in defence of secularism and universal rights, often at great risk to their lives.
We call on people everywhere to stand with us to establish an international front against the religious-Right and for secularism. We demand:

1. Complete separation of religion from the state. Secularism is a fundamental right.
2. Separation of religion from public policy, including the educational system, health care and scientific research.
3. Abolition of religious laws in the family, civil and criminal codes. An end to discrimination against and persecution of LGBT, religious minorities, women, freethinkers, ex-Muslims and others.
4. Freedom of religion and atheism and freedom to criticise religions. Belief as a private affair.
5. Equality between women and men and citizenship rights for all.

Signatories
1. Aliyah Saleem, Secular education campaigner
2. Amel Grami, Professor, Tunisian University of Manouba
3. Bahram Soroush, Social and political analyst
4. Ben Baz Aziz, Presenter at Arab Atheist broadcasting
5. A. C. Grayling, Philosopher
6. Caroline Fourest, French writer and editor
7. Chris Moos, LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
8. Chulani Kodikara, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Sri Lanka
9. Elham Manea, Yemeni writer and human rights activist
10. Faizun Zackariya, Citizens for Justice, Sri Lanka
11. Fariborz Pooya, Host of Bread and Roses TV
12. Fatou Sow, International Director of Women Living Under Muslim Laws
13. Gita Sahgal, Director of Centre for Secular Space
14. Hamid Taqvaee, Secretary, Central Committee of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran
15. Horia Mosadiq, Human rights and women’s rights activist from Afghanistan
16. Imad Iddine Habib, Founder of Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco
17. Inna Shevchenko, Leader of FEMEN
18. Julie Bindel, Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize and Justice for Women
19. Kate Smurthwaite, Comedian and activist
20. Kiran Opal, Writer, LGBTQ & human rights campaigner, Co-founder Ex-Muslims of
North America
21. Lila Ghobady, Iranian writer-journalist and documentary filmmaker
22. Magdulien Abaida, Libyan activist and President of Hakki (My Right) Organisation for
Women Rights
23. Marieme Helie Lucas, Algerian activist, founder of Secularism is a Woman’s Issue
24. Maryam Namazie, Iranian spokesperson for One Law for All, Council of Ex-Muslims of
Britain and Fitnah
25. Nadia El Fani, Tunisian filmmaker
26. Nahla Mahmoud, Spokesperson of Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
27. Nina Sankari, Vice-President of the Atheist Coalition, Poland
28. Nira Yuval-Davis, a founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism and the
International Research Network on Women in Militarized Conflict Zones
29. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistani Nuclear Physicist and Social Activist
30. Peter Tatchell, Director of Peter Tatchell Foundation
31. Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters
32. Ramin Forghani, Founder of Ex-Muslims of Scotland
33. Rumy Hassan, Senior Lecturer at University of Sussex and author
34. Sameena Zehra, comedian and blues singer
35. Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International
36. Soad Baba Aissa, Founder of the Association for Mixing, Equality and Secularism
37. Sue Cox, Founder of Survivors Voice Europe
38. Sultana Kamal, Lawyer, human rights activist and Executive Director of Ain o Salish
Kendra in Bangladesh
39. Taslima Nasrin, Bangladeshi writer and activist
40. Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society
41. Yasmin Rehman, Women’s rights activist
Image copyright: www.secularconference.com

Tags: Civil Rights, Religious Right, Secularism
Posted in SBS

Secularism is a Women's Issue - 13 January 2014

Source: mass emailing

Secularism is a Women's Issue

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• AQMI rompt son silence au Mali
• Tunisie : Non à l'Article 38 et à l'Amendement N°70 de la Constitution tunisienne en gestation !
• Being Nubian in Egypt, and in the constitution
• Maroc : PETITION - Changeons la loi inique ! Amina Filali, 16 ans — violée, battue puis obligée d'épouser son violeur — s'est suicidée
• Morocco: Forced to marry her rapist — days until the vote. PETITION TO CHANGE THE LAW
• Morocco: Amina Al Filali symbol of violence injustice
• Syria: Extremists Restricting Women's Rights - Harsh Rules on Dress, Work, School
• Egypt: Ayat Hamada - A Student Arrested from Inside Her Campus
• Egypt: Left activists Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Mona Seif receive suspended jail sentence

AQMI rompt son silence au Mali Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:52 AM PST Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique (AQMI) demande à la jeunesse nord-africaine de lutter contre les partisans de la laïcité dans leurs pays et de mener le jihad au Mali. "Le front du Maghreb islamique a aujourd'hui besoin du soutien des fils de la Tunisie, du Maroc, de la Libye et de la Mauritanie, pour faire échouer les attaques des croisés français, défaire leurs agents dans la région, et pour mettre en place le projet islamique et le jihad" - fundamentalism / shrinking secular space / North Africa, Muslim Fundamentalism, Secularism, War

Tunisie : Non à l'Article 38 et à l'Amendement N°70 de la Constitution tunisienne en gestation ! Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:50 AM PST Laisser l'Article 38 (qui vient d'être adopté) dans notre future Constitution tel quel, c'est le risque fort probable de la fin de la mixité dans nos écoles, lycées, facultés,…, c'est le risque fort probable du hijab obligatoire pour toutes, c'est le risque fort probable de dire adieu à l'enseignement des beaux-arts (sculpture, peinture, gravure, musique, danse,…), de la philosophie, des langues étrangères … - impact on women / resistance / North Africa, Law, Muslim Fundamentalism, resistance

Being Nubian in Egypt, and in the constitution Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:47 AM PST And then came the 25 January revolution, which had a huge impact on my life. It was the official start of my Nubian activism. I met the members of the Nubian Democratic Youth Union. And through them I discovered the Nubian political community. I have to say that some of my assumptions about the conservatism and patriarchy that are imbedded in Nubian political circles — and possibly in all of Egypt's political groups — were right. - impact on women / resistance / Middle East, citizenship, discrimination

Maroc : PETITION - Changeons la loi inique ! Amina Filali, 16 ans — violée, battue puis obligée d'épouser son violeur — s'est suicidée Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:47 AM PST Amina Filali, 16 ans — violée, battue puis obligée d'épouser son violeur — s'est suicidée à cause du code pénal marocain qui blanchit un violeur s'il épouse sa victime mineure. Après des années de combat pour modifier cette loi, le vote décisif pourrait intervenir dans les tous prochains jours ! En ce moment même, la couverture médiatique est nulle et il n'y a pas de pression sur les parlementaires pour les inciter à aller dans la bonne direction. Mais quand nous atteindrons 1 million de signatures, nous placerons des encarts dans les journaux que lisent les députés et soutiendrons les mobilisations des militants Marocains. - impact on women / resistance / North Africa, Forced Marriages, Law, womens rights

Morocco: Forced to marry her rapist — days until the vote. PETITION TO CHANGE THE LAW Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:46 AM PST "Prime Minister Benkirane and Members of Parliament: Since 2006, the government has been promising to pass a law to stop violence against women, but has failed to do so. As concerned global citizens, we call on you to stand with women by immediately reforming Article 475 which lets rapists escape punishment by marrying their child victims and to pass comprehensive legislation addressing violence against women. Right now, there is almost no news coverage and no pressure on legislators to do the right thing. When our call is 1 million strong, we'll place ads in the newspapers that MPs read and stand with Moroccan activists outside of Parliament". - impact on women / resistance / North Africa, Forced Marriages, Law, womens rights

Morocco: Amina Al Filali symbol of violence injustice Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:44 AM PST The heartbreaking story of Amina El Filali captures the fear facing women and girls who are raped and obligated to get married with their rapist because of one particularly outdated lawful tradition. - impact on women / resistance / North Africa, Sexuality, Law, Violence against women

Syria: Extremists Restricting Women's Rights - Harsh Rules on Dress, Work, School Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:44 AM PST Certain extremist armed opposition groups are imposing strict and discriminatory rules on women and girls that have no basis in Syrian law, such as dress code, moving freely in public, working, and attending school. "Extremist groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra are undermining the freedoms that Syria's women and girls enjoyed, which were a longtime strength of Syrian society." "As we have seen in situations in Somalia, Mali, and elsewhere, these kinds of restrictions often mark the beginning of a complete breakdown of women's and girls' rights." - fundamentalism / shrinking secular space / Muslim Fundamentalism, Middle East, womens rights

Egypt: Ayat Hamada - A Student Arrested from Inside Her Campus Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:44 AM PST There were clashes ongoing nearby and the security forces invaded the campus... - fundamentalism / shrinking secular space / Freedom of Expression / Censorship, Middle East

Egypt: Left activists Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Mona Seif receive suspended jail sentence Posted: 13 Jan 2014 08:43 AM PST New crackdown on the "pro-democracy" camp: non-islamist affiliated, secular, calls for liberties and freedom, i.e. 'being free of Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and all religious affiliated activists'. This verdict was followed by another one on Mona Seif from the group of "No to military trial for civilians". The current regime is putting major restrictions of freedom on protest and freedom of press. - fundamentalism / shrinking secular space / Freedom of Expression / Censorship, Court ruling, Middle East, Government / Institutions of State

 

York Centre for International and Security Studies: Securitizing Secularism through Sexuality

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Securitizing Secularism through Sexuality

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Securitizing Secularism through Sexuality: an examination of the Turkish Military's conflict with political Islam…