Bloggers in Bangladesh Are Being Attacked, Imprisoned or Executed

For a country founded after an 8-month war, which led to the death about 3 million people, one would expect that the Bangladeshi people would learn from their mistakes. That is, they would eventually change their stance on internal disputes. However, the reality is different. Political and religious violence in the country continued to the […] Read more

An Interview with Dr. Stephen Law

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did you become an activist and a philosopher? I have always been very interested in philosophical questions – such as: How can I know other people have minds? Why is there something rather than nothing? What makes things morally right or wrong? However, I was unaware that there was actually a […] Read more

Interview – Professor Jim Al-Khalili, on Science and Humanism

Professor Jameel Sadik “Jim” Al-Khalili OBE is a British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey. In this interview, he speaks with Scott Jacobsen about what has driven him to pursue this career, his socially progressive outlook, […] Read more

Interview with ​Terry Sanderson – President, National Secular Society

Terry Sanderson, the President of the National Secular Society –  a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism and separation of Church and State. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How’d you become an activist? I became an activist entirely by circumstance, by accident even. My recently published autobiography The Adventures of a Happy Homosexual is subtitled Memoirs of […] Read more

Catholic Integrity Relies on the Rejection of Mother Teresa

Outwardly, the doting “mother” doing Christ’s work on Earth makes it easy to fall in love with the legend of a woman who founded the ‘Missionary of Charities’, which has mustered up to 4500 Sisters in 133 countries. At first glance, this may seem somewhat in line with the Catholic Church’s edicts on the poor and […] Read more

The Evils of Sexual Oppression Forced Upon Women

Written by Sonia Joseph My own story starts in a Catholic boarding school in Madras, Chennai in the south of India. At the vain age of 16, I left the USA to go to this boarding school, and I was wired and insufferable to everyone around me. I was elated to be going back to […] Read more

Stopping Olukoya and Witch hunting in UK Black Communities

Witchcraft related abuse is a very serious problem in African migrant communities in the UK. There is documented evidence that these abuses are linked to activities of African pastors and churches. Unfortunately efforts to address this problem are bogged down by concerns over racism, minority rights and abuse of religious liberty. Vulnerable members of the […] Read more

The Twofold Wrongheadedness Of The Burkini Row

“The burkini is like a uniform, a symbol of Islamist extremism.” These were the words of David Lisnard, the Mayor of Cannes, explaining why he was banning the use of ‘burkinis’ on beaches in his city – a city just a few miles away from Nice, which last month was the target of an Islamist […] Read more