A.C. Grayling

Diary – 7 March 2013

issue 09 March 2013

My friend and colleague Roy Brown has just sent me the draft of a statement he will submit to the UN Human Rights Council this spring, on behalf of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. This is a group to which we both belong, which campaigns on freedom of thought and expression, women’s and children’s rights, education and much besides. Roy’s draft concerns discrimination against people who do not have a religious faith. It is extraordinary how many countries discriminate by law against nonbelievers, in violation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which protects freedom of conscience. Most of the offenders are Muslim-majority countries, in some of which apostasy, ‘insulting’ the religion or its prophet, and blasphemy, are punishable by death.

Here in the United Kingdom it is (mainly Christian) believers who think they are discriminated against, not because — as in those sunny climes — they suffer as nonbelievers do there, but because they no longer command automatic respect or enjoy immunity from criticism.

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