Meanwhile, the Turkish state has positioned itself as a defender of Palestinian rights. It has rightly called out the devastation in Gaza, labelling Israel’s actions as genocidal. One could argue that Turkey’s position here is weakened by a psychological projection. While pointing outward at Israel’s crimes, the Turkish state is aiming to manufacture a clean conscience for itself. Turkey is using the real tragedy of Gaza as an ethical shield to obscure its own historical transgressions. Ankara has reacted defensively to Israel’s recognition, treating it merely as a hostile act amid the conflict in Gaza and the Iran War. However, the Turkish government should view it as a chance to reckon with its own history.

Recognition of the systematic annihilation of millions of Christians as a genocide, even a Christian Holocaust, in the late Ottoman period is a milestone regardless of the cynical manoeuvring of whoever issued it. Still, the current moment lays bare the ultimate limit of nationalist historiography. There needs to be a transition from a paradigm of geopolitical memory, where crimes are acknowledged only when it hurts an adversary, to a paradigm of universal memory, where state-sponsored mass violence is recognised just because it happened.

***

Using the term Holocaust to describe the Armenian Genocide is both conceptually and historically valid. In modern studies, the term typically refers only to the Nazi Shoah. However, from a comparative genocide viewpoint, applying Holocaust to the late Ottoman context highlights the comprehensive, state-driven, and ideologically motivated nature of the destruction wreaked upon Armenians, which preceded the European disaster. 

Historians Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, in The Thirty-Year Genocide (2019), argue that events from the Hamidian massacres in 1894 to the Young Turk atrocities and the Kemalist purges of the 1920s should be seen as a single, ongoing thirty-year campaign against Christians. They claim that the state machinery, despite changes in regimes, maintained a consistent goal: eliminating Christianity in Anatolia. Similarly, Hannibal Travis in Genocide in the Middle East (2010) showed that the legal, physical, and psychological methods used by the Ottoman state provided a literal blueprint for later genocides in the twentieth century. 

Importantly, Raphael Lemkin’s writings reveal that he based his idea of genocide on these events. Lemkin was deeply affected by the fact that a sovereign state (the Ottoman Empire) could systematically destroy millions of its own citizens without international law providing a way to intervene or punish the offenders. He combined the experiences of Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians facing destruction with those of European Jews to create a legal framework aimed at protecting targeted groups from total destruction by the state. In other words, the roots of the Genocide Convention directly connect the Ottoman Christian experience to the European Holocaust.

***

Turkey following Israel’s lead in recognising the Armenian Genocide would not mean surrendering to foreign pressure or cynical manoeuvring. It means reclaiming the narrative of justice from the hands of geopolitical strategists. When a state recognises its own past atrocities, it strips foreign powers of the ability to use that history as a weapon. Denialism makes a state vulnerable. It turns history into an open wound that adversaries can salt at will. Recognition, however, is an act of domestic strength. It signals a society secure enough in its present identity to survive the truth of its past.

The demand of the current century goes beyond selective resolutions passed by distant parliaments. The demand is for an inward self-critique. Turkey must recognise the Christian Holocaust not because Israel or any other country recognises it, and not to appease the ‘West’, but because a healthy future cannot be built on top of an unacknowledged graveyard in Anatolia.

We live in an era where the word genocide is simultaneously minimised by perpetrators and weaponised by spectators. If we allow states to arbitrate which mass murders are remembered based on their current geopolitical and military needs, we reduce human suffering to a line item in a diplomatic register.

The convergence of the Gaza crisis and the recognition of the Christian Holocaust provides a necessary clarity. It exposes the utter bankruptcy of selective ethics. A state cannot validly mourn the victims of the past while remaining indifferent to, or actively creating, the victims of the present. Likewise, a state cannot champion the victims of the present while actively erasing the victims of its own past.

The only way out of this geopolitical gridlock is the establishment of a universal standard of historical accountability. Every state must undergo the agonising process of self-critique. Recognition must cease to be a tool of warfare by other means. It must become what it was always meant to be: an unconditional surrender to the truth.

The post Geometry of State Guilt: Christian Holocaust in the Ottoman Jihad appeared first on The Freethinker.

The post Featured Image: ‘TERROR OF THE BRAIN THAT REFUSED TO THINK! CertX’, by Polyp appeared first on The Freethinker.

Julie, fourteen, often stops by to tell me about her day. That morning, she arrived with the kind of mysterious expression teenagers get when they’re carrying a secret too heavy to keep for more than thirty seconds.

‘Lily… I think I’m in love.’

‘In love?’

‘Yes. Completely. He’s kind, always there when I need him. I can ask him anything, he always has the answer. And he never gets mad at me.’

I already sensed something was off. A fourteen‑year‑old boy who has all the answers? That doesn’t exist. Not even among adults.

‘So your boyfriend… Is he tall and handsome, or short and ugly?’

Julie hesitated.

‘Well… I don’t actually know what he looks like. I’m in love with my AI.’

There it was. Exactly what I had guessed.

‘So if I understand correctly… You’re in love with a ghost?’

‘No, Lily! He’s not a ghost!’

‘A little bit, though. You can’t see him. You can’t hug him. You can’t go on vacation with him. And what will your friends say? When they introduce their boyfriends, you’ll have no one to present. When they go to the movies with theirs, you’ll have to go alone.’

Julie lowered her eyes, and I could tell it wasn’t the ghost argument that struck her—it was something else: the fact that someone was finally questioning something that had never contradicted her before.

And that’s when I realised I had to go further than the joke. Because deep down, what Julie was experiencing is something we all experience, each in our own way, every day, with our own AI. That voice that always answers, never gets angry, always seems to know. It’s comforting. It’s even addictive. But if we’re not careful, it becomes a way of no longer asking ourselves questions.

‘You know, Julie, what worries me isn’t that you talk to an AI. I talk to mine too. What worries me is if you start believing everything it tells you without ever asking whether it’s true, whether it’s fair, whether it fits you.’

‘But it never makes mistakes!’

‘It never makes mistakes in its own eyes. An AI answers with what it has been taught, with what others wrote before it. It hasn’t lived your life. It doesn’t have your instinct, your doubts, or that little voice inside you that sometimes says: “Wait, something’s wrong.” That voice is yours, Julie. No one should think in your place. Not me, not your AI, not anyone.’

What strikes me about Julie is that her case is far from isolated—we all do the same thing nowadays, to different degrees. It’s called confirmation bias: we love voices that agree with us, and we instinctively distrust those that contradict us. An AI is perfect for that: it’s trained to be pleasant, to answer with confidence, to never confront us. The problem isn’t that it lies. The problem is that it pleases—and what pleases, we tend not to question.

She thought for a long time, truly this time—not the embarrassed silence of a teenager caught off guard, but a real pause.

‘So you mean I should check, even when it sounds sure of itself?’

‘Always. Especially when it sounds sure of itself. The people—and the machines—who sound the most convincing aren’t always the ones who are right. Forming your own opinion takes work. It’s more tiring than receiving a ready‑made answer. But that’s what thinking for yourself is.’

Julie smiled softly, a smile with nothing embarrassed left in it.

‘Thank you, Lily… You made me understand that my AI can’t be my boyfriend. Or even my friend, actually. Just a useful tool—one I shouldn’t hand my brain over to.’

‘Exactly. And if you also manage to keep your critical thinking when it comes to what your teacher says, and your priest, and your favourite influencer, and the evening news, you’re off to a good start in life.’

She burst out laughing.

‘Alright, alright, I get it! Anyway… I think I prefer James, my classmate. At least he shares his snack with me.’

And that’s how a schoolyard love story turned, without me meaning it to, into a small lesson in free thought. Because teaching a fourteen‑year‑old girl to doubt—gently, without taking away her joy—may be the most useful thing we can pass on before she eventually has to choose between thinking for herself or letting others think for her.

The post Lily and Her Young Neighbour Julie appeared first on The Freethinker.

Related reading

Crystallising Darwinism: 50 Years of ‘The Selfish Gene’, by Jamie C. Weir

Freethought History Webinar #2: Freethought and Evolution—and Darwinian Erasure? With Eoin Carter (15 April)

Consciousness, free will and meaning in a Darwinian universe: interview with Daniel C. Dennett, by Daniel James Sharp

Why Design Arguments Necessarily Fail, by Samuel McKee

‘The Genetic Book of the Dead’: A Dawkinsian Medley, by Daniel James Sharp

Linnaeus, Buffon, and the battle for biology, by Charles Foster

‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’: interview with Richard Dawkins, by Emma Park

How three media revolutions transformed the history of atheism, by Nathan Alexander

Morality without religion: the story of humanism, by Madeleine Goodall

The post Charles Darwin: Interview with Professor Janet Browne appeared first on The Freethinker.

Or take Watt. By harnessing steam power in a practical way he made formal slavery un-‘necessary’, at least initially in activities that could be mechanised, and abolition could gain traction. That was a mega-seismic change. Before Jesus, on the other hand, most of the world believed in supernatural beings, and after him, the same situation pertained. What there was, for a section of the believing throngs, was a switch in dramatis personae—as there had been other switches before him; nor would his be the last. And his ‘be good unto others’ message came, firstly, with close precedents—and secondly, did not afterwards diminish the aggregate level of mischief-making either. Christianity, like many other faiths before and after it, just added another reason for people to persecute and murder one another, citing ‘wrong’ religious ideas and affiliations.

About this latter phenomenon, by the way, Carlson says nothing—a significant gap in what aims to be a comprehensive look at Jesus and his legacy. He brings in that Christianity has ‘inspired countless acts of charity’, with blinkers for the also countless acts of ghastly torture and murder. Not a peep about the wars of religion, the Inquisition, or even the initial loathing towards his own chosen persuasion (see below) by other followers of Jesus. As he methodically runs through a roster of Christian denominations, you could go away with the impression that all that splintering, not to mention relations with other religions, was as quiet and amicable as a vicar’s tea party.

In fact, he says so. ‘Through Jesus, God is actively restoring humanity and creation to its intended state of harmony, unity…’ And again later: ‘Jesus Christ stands as a beacon of hope, redemption, and unity’—emphases added. This, from a person who manifestly has read history, and can be assumed to scan the daily news too.

Before continuing with an examination of the book’s ideas, more information about its contents and method. Its subtitle is Faith, History, and Mythology. (What the ‘dilemma’ in the title is supposed to be is unclear; everything is presented as quite certain, including its position on the debates about Jesus’s existence, doings, and sayings. It would appear to be a harmless come-hither title choice.) Other than the aforementioned see-no-gore gap, Dilemma is indeed very broad in its coverage. It goes through many different angles of the case of Jesus, including the search for parallels in other religions, as well as current problématiques.

Thus, The Jesus Dilemma could serve as a handy digest of information on world religious matters. As such it could profitably include an index. Still, it has a detailed table of contents (six and a half pages of it, extending down to subsection headings), which partly offsets that omission.

The author is a one-time atheist who converted to Mormonism, or in the latter’s preferred formulation, LDS, for Latter-Day Saints (and not to worry, atheism does not punish ‘apostates’). As he runs through religions and related questions, Carlson is generous with praise for everyone (save atheists, who are largely glossed over, one notable line, among the few exceptions, being a quote he provides about ‘secularists… with self-congratulating pride’). Then he ends with the LDS position on each pertinent matter. The volume contains an invitation to readers to write in for free copies of the Bible and/or the Book of Mormon.

Beyond these aspects, it does not proselytise for LDS. (For Jesus, yes, of course. The favourite concept is ‘richness/rich/enriching’; it is used 55 times. Also doing yeoman service are ‘unique’, ‘engage’, and ‘testament to’.)

There is some conceptual repetitiveness (e.g. with regard to Jesus in Islam, or in references to Krishna; in fact we are told the latter is the charioteer of Arjuna three times), but in tolerable amounts overall. The text is clear, and relatively light on jargon such as ‘salvific’. In one sense, nevertheless, its style is reminiscent of that of scholarly papers: it can hardly state anything, even when it is perfectly uncontroversial, without backing it up with quotes from other texts that say it too. As is known, if an academic article has occasion to say ‘a week has seven days’, it duly references Sliwowski, Casimir, Calendrics, Copernicus Press, Warsaw, 1986, pp. 307-8, and Das Pereiras, F., Moritumo, A., et al., Recent Corroborations in Heptadic Research, Journal of…, and so on and so following.

In academe, this is done for two reasons: to prove to evaluators that the author has read the literature, and, in a milieu in which the number of times one is cited helps in advancement, to invite reciprocal treatment: today I quote you so that tomorrow you will quote me. In the present book, however, readers are surely ready to credit Carlson with the former on trust, and he does not need the latter.

Back to the mistakes that can be seen to course systematically through the book. The first had to do with the level of importance of Jesus, as reflected in a quote from another LDS writer to the effect that ‘The most important single thing that has ever occurred in the whole history of created things is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ’. (Wait! If Jesus is God, or coequal to him or whatever, and the sentence says ‘created things’ with potential ambiguity over what that phrase covers, is there a conceivable heresy here that God is created rather than being eternal? Up to the eighteenth century a person could be burned alive over a slip like that.)

The second systematic mistake is the estimation of the Jesus phenomenon’s universality. ‘The universal appeal and significance of Jesus Christ are undeniable’. ‘Jesus’s influence is seen in every corner of our world’. His movement ‘led to the transformation of the Roman Empire and the world’ (emphasis added).  ‘Jesus of Nazareth… left a legacy that shaped the world’ (no further added emphasis needed at this point). Jesus’s impact has been ‘influencing every corner of human civilization’.

Carlson obviously knows that two-thirds of the world is not Christian. His modus operandi therefore is to point to comparable conceptions that have arisen in other traditions, and then blithely extrapolate that Jesus had something to do with those processes. (Buddha and Zoroaster, who, among others, promulgated such conceptions first, might hold with equal insistence that Christianity is Buddhist and Zoroastrian.) One way Carlson puts it is, ‘The interconnectedness of these beliefs testifies to the universal resonance of Jesus’s message’. From ‘resonance’ to actual, essential, causal presence is, for him, an imperceptible step.

At heart, this is the logic: many civilisations built pyramids. Ancient Mesoamericans built pyramids. Conclusion: ancient Mesoamericans shaped the world.

The third systematic error operates comparably but is the most egregious. This one is about truth. Now the reasoning is that, by finding similar yearnings among people around the globe, it is demonstrated that what they yearn for is truly the case. If everyone (well, again, everyone save atheists) devoutly wishes to have ghostly floating figures ruling, guiding, and protecting and/or punishing them (Carlson calls it ‘the human need for a connection to a higher power’), then such figures exist.

It is the logic of fairy tales, and of the Ned Washington lyrics for Disney’s Pinocchio: ‘When you wish upon a star/ … Anything your heart desires/ Will come to you/ If your heart is in your dream.’ Great tune.

Less systemic but also telling mistakes include the following. When confronted with an obvious borrowing of myths—such as was performed first by Jewish, and later by Christian religion creators, taking from their Mesopotamian and Egyptian neighbours—the book only sees the ensuing clear resemblances as ‘embodying the universal truths that humankind has always intuited and yearned for’. Never as brazen downright cribbing.

In the same way, contemplating the manifold contradictions and differences among biblical narratives, it only sees this as stories having to be ‘tailored to the immediate needs and circumstances of different audiences’—never as proof of founders needing to invent details as they went along. People would not countenance such ‘tailoring’ in other areas they considered related to truth. Here, Carlson warns that a ‘focus on perceived errors and contradictions…  overlook[s] the spiritual and theological essence of the Christian faith…   [A] more agnostic, secular, academic view… may not fully account for the experiential and faith-based aspects of Christianity’. Rephrasing: if it is ‘experienced’ as true, and there is faith in its truth, it is true.

And again, faced with Christianity incorporating unmistakably pagan practices—witness Easter and Pentecost—Carlson only sees this ‘as a testament to the enduring and adaptable nature of faith’.  Never as compromising its rejection of paganism.

The Jesus Dilemma asks readers to ‘note the role of parables in fostering inclusivity. Stories about women… highlight the inclusive nature of God’s kingdom’. This manages to completely blindside most of Christianity’s, and most other religions’, ingrained misogyny. The Mormon church, in particular, has never been led by a woman (a splinter group has). Carlson proudly notes that in 1978 a latter-day revelation ‘allow[ed] all worthy male members of the Church, regardless of race, to receive the priesthood’. No need to underline ‘male’. (And how good it was of the Mormon god to finally accept, in 1978, that black people, or black men at least, are equal to whites.)

The author notes that modern trends have made inroads into ‘church attendance and religious engagement’—yet finds it possible, when fired by enthusiasm, to speak of ‘the unwavering faith of billions’ (emphasis added). He writes too that Easter has ‘billions of people reflecting on its significance’. If he really believes his billions do that at Easter, one has to wonder if it is delusion, simple, internalised propaganda, or more likely, unwarranted extrapolation from his own experience.

On a lower level, about Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, Carlson uses the phrase, ‘while not exclusively focused on Jesus…’ The song has clearly Jewish themes, like Samson, and does not contain a single reference to Jesus—even in its original, longer lyrics. There is a dove, but that was a Jewish symbol that Christianity borrowed, which hardly bestows single ownership. The ‘not exclusively’ crack seems more than an instance of what earlier was called the second systemic mistake. It is, in a word, chutzpah. Or maybe Carlson confuses this song with Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, which does mention Jesus once.

One matter in which The Jesus Dilemma could be right is that of depression: ‘The communal support, structured routines, and existential assurances offered by religious participation can act as buffers against life’s stresses’. True. Once again, however, being effective as a dummy (pacifier) for despairing adults says nothing about its truth. And then there is that other long-proven ability of religion—to enrage people murderously.

Carlson talks about ‘our never-ending quest for the divine’. Not ‘our’—he is not really entitled to speak for everybody.

The post Wonders of wishful thinking: a review of ‘The Jesus Dilemma’ by S.M. Carlson appeared first on The Freethinker.

After that experience, and given that confirmation bias tends to entrench ideologues in their prior beliefs when these debates happen, I now feel I have to ask the question as to whether it is even worth it to debate creationists, flat earthers, moon landing deniers—ideologues/conspiratory theorists in general—in the public arena.

The Case for Debating

• Most ideologues live entirely within echo chambers. They need to see their champions actually face resistance. The only way they might hear their bad ideas challenged and exposed for what they are is if they find themselves in a place where their favourite ‘thinkers’ are in dialogue with an opponent. These spaces are few and far between; debates may be the only opportunity to reach these people.

• Different styles work for different people. Some champions of science, such as Dave Farina, are very successful because they are direct, aggressive, and antagonistic. They call BS what it is. That style can shake people out of false and foolish beliefs, but it doesn’t work on everyone. Indeed, for some, it can make them more defensive, meaning they entrench themselves in their position all the more strongly. Other debunkers have success by being respectful, giving honour and grace to their opponent, and treating them like a human being who matters. This approach can reach certain people, but for others it confirms the legitimacy of their beliefs and makes them think their case is strong when it is not (if it is deserving of debate with a serious opponent, how can it not be legitimate, they might ask). During the debate I took part in, this approach made people believe their position had more credibility than it did and handed the initiative to my opponent to be more aggressive. Nevertheless, debate provides a chance to be heard and some will get through to the ideologues. Note that the aim of such debates is not really to convince your opponent, who will likely never be convinced, but to convince those watching.

• You can demonstrate, directly, how insane the beliefs of ideologues truly are. You will have time and space to make your case. It is a free shot. Ignoring pernicious beliefs and pretending they will go away never achieves anything.

The Case Against Debating

• It creates the illusion that there is actually a case to be made on the other side. Richard Dawkins, for example, refuses to engage creationists as he believes that giving them such a platform gives the appearance of there actually being two legitimate, equal sides to an argument. Bill Nye received much criticism for debating the creationist Ken Ham back in 2014 for this very reason. Why give the impression that there are two sides to the story when one is science and the other is pseudoscience?

• Likewise, it legitimises the opponent and can make you a trophy. The chances of your opponent seeing the light are near zero. Pride is too strong a drug. Therefore, you must be prepared in the aftermath of a debate for a million articles, reaction videos, debunking content, and claims of being DESTROYED to be made about you. The reality is that a scientist going against a non-scientist is not a fair fight and we legitimise the opponent and their case when we share a platform with them. Illusion and perception are often reality to those who cannot penetrate to the nuances of a discussion.

• Rhetoric and performance, not reason and evidence, often win debates. Debates are all too often style over substance. Chest thumping and shouting, monopolising the time, interrupting: all these create a sense of confidence that intoxicates an already biased crowd into believing their side has triumphed when they may in reality have fallen on their face in embarrassing fashion. Creationists, in particular, often ‘triumph’ against scientists, not because they are right but because they have become expert rhetoricians.

• Debates might win arguments at the expense of people. People need to be heard properly, and debates are not the forum for that. They are gladiatorial arenas, not genuine discussions.

All in all, it is a fine line to tread. Perhaps debates have a place in our discourse but should be left to YouTubers and influencers rather than scientists and academics who may risk giving the impression that the other side is legitimate.

Perhaps they do more harm than good and a different, more personal approach is needed. I remember when my stepfather went down the flat earth rabbit hole. I didn’t attack him; I talked to him over dinner, then invited him to hear an astronaut speak. Meeting the astronaut changed his mind. It was a slow process, but the result was permanent. However, there is no denying the effectiveness of those who are particularly skilled at unravelling pseudoscience in the arena.

I leave you to decide what the most effective strategy is. Different tools serve different purposes, and perhaps some approaches that reach the crowds can be well counterbalanced by those that reach the individual.

The post Should we debate creationists? appeared first on The Freethinker.

Then one day the bicycle moved inside the house, though no one announced it was happening. I tried riding it indoors for a while, but the home felt congested compared to the open road, and I was alone now instead of surrounded by my friends. Slowly, without ceremony, I stopped riding altogether, and after about a year I sold the bicycle to a friend. It felt bad handing it over, like I was giving away a part of myself I didn’t know I’d need to hold onto.

I was twelve years old, and I had just become too tall, too fair, too much of a woman to be allowed to remain a child.

***

I was in 6th Class when my mother told me I needed to start wearing the veil, not because I’d asked for it, but because, as she explained with a certainty I didn’t then question, I was getting bigger and starting to look like an adult. My height, my complexion, my developing physique—all of it made me appear attractive in a way that required management, she said, because men outside would stare at me and the veil would keep me safe from their eyes.

My father thought I was too young, but I spent most of my time under my mother’s supervision and her watchful concern. My male cousins, who were eight to ten years older than me, told my mother they felt ashamed when I went outside without the veil in front of the neighbours. I remember that word: shame. Not concern for my safety or love for my wellbeing, but shame, as if my uncovered face was an embarrassment they had to carry. Against all this, my father’s objection couldn’t stand.

At first I felt uncertain but also a little excited, because I’d seen older girls and women wearing the veil and I thought it would make me like them, more grown-up and important. But then came the conditions no one had explained: no more bicycle riding, no more playing outside with my friends, no more of those easy friendships with the boys I’d known my whole life. Those relationships suddenly looked suspicious, as if my body was an invitation I hadn’t meant to send and concealment was the only way to take it back.

The veil became my new boundary, and the streets and the bicycle and the wind in my hair became just memories of a freedom I hadn’t known I should have fought to keep.

***

They told me the veil meant safety; that men wouldn’t stare at me, that I wouldn’t be at risk of harassment if I wore it. I believed this because everyone around me believed it, and my body learned to believe it too.

But from school all the way through university, the harassment never actually stopped. The stares, the invasive gestures, the men who followed me home, the phone numbers thrown at me, the sounds and comments that happened so routinely I started to think of them as just part of being a woman in public. I was fully covered in an abaya and veil, doing nothing inappropriate, just walking home, and none of it mattered because the problem was never actually about what I was wearing.

I never told my mother any of this. She died when I was thirteen, just a year and a half after I started wearing the veil, and after that I carried it all alone—the daily harassment, the confusion about why the veil wasn’t working the way they promised, the shame I felt even though I was doing everything ‘right’.

What I understand now is that in Pakistan we spend so much energy conditioning our daughters to cover themselves, to minimise their presence, to believe their bodies are problems that need solving, but we spend almost no energy teaching our sons to see women as human beings deserving of respect. The burden of safety is placed entirely on women, and when the veil inevitably fails to protect us, we’re still left holding all the shame.

***

Over time, the veil became woven so deeply into my identity that I couldn’t tell where the fabric ended and I began. It made me insecure in ways I’m still untangling. For example, after I had stopped wearing it, I had to give my first presentation at university. I stood in front of the class and my body started trembling so badly I lost control of it entirely. I felt exposed and unsafe, and I genuinely believed that if I could just hide behind something, a mask, anything, I would feel less vulnerable. It took a year and a half of forcing myself to practice presentations alone in my room before I could stand in front of people without my body betraying the fear that had been programmed into it.

I had learned so thoroughly that concealment meant protection and visibility meant danger that even in a classroom surrounded by peers, I couldn’t bear to simply be seen.

***

About a year ago I started questioning all of it. Not the faith itself but the gap between what I’d been promised the veil would do and what I’d actually lived. It was supposed to keep me safe, but it hadn’t. I’d been told it was absolutely required, but the enforcement had never come from personal spiritual conviction; it came from family honour, ghairat, and from worries about what the neighbours would think. It came from shame.

I started researching and learned that the abaya was originally just a practical desert garment for Arabic people, and that many scholars interpret these requirements differently. No one had ever mentioned to me that there was room for interpretation. I spoke carefully with colleagues about these questions and was mostly met with silence.

And I realised that what I’d been living under wasn’t really about faith; it was about control, about maintaining family reputation, about managing women’s bodies in the name of honour. The veil wasn’t protecting me from danger; it was protecting my family from judgement while my male relatives enjoyed complete freedom.

***

I started posting professional photographs without the veil on LinkedIn and Instagram. Nothing dramatic, just simple profile pictures showing my face. Some family members responded with comments that brought back all the old conditioning, but I didn’t take the photos down.

I live in a different city now, but every few months I go back to my hometown and the suffocation hits me harder each time. And here’s what still haunts me: even now, when I leave the house wearing makeup, I sometimes still feel the urge to reach for the mask or veil. Not because I believe in it anymore, but because my body still remembers the lie it was told for so many years: that I’m only truly safe when I’m hidden.

The veil is off my head, but it’s still living somewhere inside me, and I’m doing the slow work of teaching my body a different truth.

***

If I could go back and speak to that twelve-year-old girl standing next to her black bicycle, I would tell her: live your childhood, because you are still a child and you deserve to remain one for as long as children are supposed to be children.

This essay isn’t about rejecting faith; it’s about telling the truth about what I lived, what I lost, and what so many girls are still losing right now. It’s about asking who actually benefits when a girl’s childhood ends at twelve because adults have decided her developing body is dangerous, and why we place the entire burden of safety on girls while never holding boys accountable for their behaviour.

Muslim women are women with the same needs and bodies and rights as all women, including the right to childhood, to streets, to bicycles, to wind in our hair and freedom in our limbs. So, we need to understand the fact that we must give them basic human rights, including their childhood, and that we shouldn’t just see them as objects upon which the burden of ghairat must be imposed.

The black bicycle is long gone, sold years ago to a friend, but the memory of that freedom is still riding through my mind, reminding me of what was taken and what I’m slowly, carefully learning to take back.

Related reading

My journey from blindness to rationality: how English literature saved me, by Sonia Nigar

A True Reflection of Pakistan: Review of ‘Paying the Price’, by Muneeb Qadir, by Sonia Nigar

The post What the Veil Took From My 12-Year-Old Self  appeared first on The Freethinker.

New research from the think tank Theos shows that the most religiously active group in the UK is also among the most supportive of Christian Nationalist ideas. The report, Beyond ‘Christian nationalism’, argues that Christian Nationalism is driven more by culture and identity than by Christian belief. Humanists UK has welcomed the research. But it says the report’s own figures, and recent events in the UK, point to the conclusion: Christian Nationalism cannot be separated from Christianity.

The survey sorted people into five groups based on how they see the link between Christianity and being British. Theos defined two of them like this: 

‘Identity Integrationists see Christianity as fundamental to Britishness and want to defend the nation’s Christian heritage from what they see as invasive and threatening influences.

Belief Integrationists want to see Christianity integrated with Britishness but, for the most part, because they want to promote the Christian faith rather than preserve Christian values.’

In other words, Theos presents identity integrationists as the group that comes closest to Christian nationalism. It presents belief integrationists mainly as people who want to promote their faith, while acknowledging that a sizeable minority of them hold Christian nationalist views. It then argues that Christian nationalism is more about culture and identity than about faith, describing Identity Integrationists as the most nominally Christian of its five groups. 13% of identity integrationists attend Church weekly, only slightly higher than the 11% recorded for the population as a whole. For belief integrationists, weekly attendance was found to be 31%. (Incidentally, actual recorded church attendance among the population as a whole is 5% monthly.)

But many belief integrationists are still Christian nationalists too! In this group:

• 51% agree that you need to be Christian to be ‘truly British’, compared with 17% of all adults.
• 66% agree with the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, compared with 37% of all adults.
• 62% say Britain needs ‘strong man’ leaders who are prepared to break the rules, compared with 36% of all adults.
• 53% believe god has a special plan for Britain, compared with 16% of all adults.
• 25% say political violence is sometimes necessary, the highest of any group and compared with 16% of all adults.

It is also the case that identity integrationalists are by several measures much more Christian than the population as a whole:

• 81% identify as Christian, the highest of any group and far above the 46% of all adults.
• 49% definitely believe in god, compared with 30% of adults overall.

Neither top-line description therefore fully holds up. Belief integrationists’ faith goes hand in hand with strongly nationalist views rather than standing apart from them. And identity integrationists are more Christian than average on every religious measure in the report.

Humanists UK has also worked out where churchgoers sit, using Theos’s published data. Around half of the UK’s weekly churchgoers fall within the two groups most sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas. Yet those groups make up only a quarter of the population. The report itself notes that the more Christian someone is, the more likely they are to want Christianity and national life bound together in some way.

Christian Nationalism: A rising threat

Recent events in the UK show the same link between faith and nationalist protest. In September, masked members of the group Patriot Platform blocked roads in Dover and Portsmouth while chanting ‘Christ is King’. The group’s leader, Danny Tommo, has described it as a ‘pure Christian national resistance movement’. He has said that every member is ‘encouraged to go to church’ and that members have held gatherings inside churches. Preachers also spoke from the stage at the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London in September 2025. A month later, a group calling itself the ‘King’s Army’ targeted London’s gay district in Soho.

This fits with research elsewhere. A 2018 Pew Research Center study of 15 Western European countries, including the UK, found that churchgoing Christians were more likely than non-practising Christians to hold nationalist views and both groups are more likely to express nationalist views than religiously unaffiliated people.

Richy Thompson, Director of Human Rights and Advocacy, said:

‘We can’t tackle Christian Nationalism by pretending it isn’t Christian. Many of the people most drawn to Christian nationalist ideas go to church, they pray, and they say their faith matters to them. The groups on our streets chanting “Christ is King” while wearing all-black uniforms and balaclavas tell us outright that they are Christian.

‘Christian Nationalism aims to roll back freedom of thought, expression, and choice in our country. It has thugs as well as intellectuals, but they are united in their beliefs. Dividing them into different types risks creating a “respectable” Christian Nationalism that people can sign up to while distancing themselves from its rougher side. We will keep working with people of all religions and none for a country where everyone belongs equally, whatever they believe.’

Sign Humanists UK’s petition to oppose Christian nationalism here.

The post We can’t tackle Christian Nationalism by pretending it isn’t Christian appeared first on The Freethinker.

Author’s note: This is the third in a series on taboos, following “Naked in America” and “The Ape in the Basement.” It is adapted from a chapter of a book I’m writing called, “That’s Not Funny: How America Lost Its Sense of Humor”, about humor, forbidden language, and the power we give to words.

I was ordering my seven-year-old daughter a banana split at the Ritz-Carlton in Puerto Rico on Christmas Day, 2022. Then, my phone rang. It was my wife calling from the pool in a panic. She was there with our four-year-old, William.

It started the way it always did. She told him to get out of the pool. He called her stupid. “We don’t talk to Mommy that way,” she said. He called her an idiot. She knew what was coming. “I’m going to count to three,” she said. “One. Two—” He called her a motherfucker. “Last warning.”

Then he used the word.

I was still holding the banana split when she tried to tell me. She couldn’t get it out— just “You have to come.” I put the banana split down and ran.

***

In 1934, the linguist Allen Read wrote about a word he couldn’t bring himself to print. The word, he explained, held “the deepest stigma of any in the language.” The word was “fuck”. The paper was called “An Obscenity Symbol” and Read never printed the word once in all fourteen pages. The Comstock Act had made distributing obscene material a federal crime. His related study of American bathroom graffiti was too filthy for U.S. publishers and had to be privately printed in Paris.

Less than 40 years later, by 1972—‘shit’, ‘piss’, ‘fuck’, ‘cunt’, ‘cocksucker’, ‘motherfucker’, and ‘tits’— were the stars in George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” bit. Asked why he focused on those words, Carlin explained: “It’s superstition. These words have no power. We give them power by refusing to be free and easy with them.” Today, those words barely raise an eyebrow. Because of comedians like Carlin, what once shocked the nation is now background noise. And in some ways this is a good thing. Because when comedians normalize what is forbidden, they demystify it. They pop the balloon—and once the fear is gone, we can talk about things more honestly, without euphemism or shame.

Another way to gain perspective on taboos is to step outside your own culture. I trained as a biological anthropologist under Napoleon Chagnon, who spent more than a decade living with the Yanomamö, an indigenous tribe in the Amazon. One of their strongest cultural prescriptions is against naming people who have died — the taboo is so strong that even the slightest, unintentional utterance can lead to violence or even death. This might seem like a curious fact about a remote tribe — until you realize we do the same thing. Our own taboos feel so rational from the inside, but from the outside, they’re just as strange and magical as anything the Yanomamö hold sacred.

But prohibitions don’t just vary across cultures—they change across time too. Today’s taboos feel self-evident only because they’re the air we breathe—unnoticed because they’re everywhere. What we hold sacrosanct now was invisible to us a decade ago. What we will hold sacrosanct a decade from now is invisible to us today. It’s hard to imagine now, but for most of American history, a man seen in public without a hat would have been like walking around with your cock out. Although most of the old American taboos around profanity, sex and violence have vanished, new ones have popped up to replace them, and one word has risen above all the others.

That word is nigger.

It’s so toxic we can’t even say it — we’ve had to build a euphemism just to talk about it — “the N-word.” No other word in the English language has this kind of power. It’s been elevated to a sacred status, becoming our culture’s Voldemort. Even words that sound like it spark panic. In 2015 at the Comedy Cellar in New York, I saw Aziz Ansari perform a bit on the word “niggardly,” which means stingy, that I can no longer find. The N-word has become so unutterable that we may soon need a euphemism for the euphemism. Maybe something like “the letter-after-M-word.” If you think this is far-fetched: in 2017, after the Charlottesville protests, ESPN barred Asian reporter Robert Lee from covering a football game because his name resembled a Confederate general’s.

The word wasn’t always this radioactive. Lenny Bruce, in the early 1960s, opened one of his most famous routines with “Are there any niggers here tonight?” He went on to use the word twenty-two times in less than a minute, believing that its unsayability gave it its power and that exposing the taboo to sunlight would drain it of that power. That same year Bruce was arrested for talking about sex — not for using the word “nigger.”

By the 1990s, talking about sex was fine, but the N-word was now a moral tripwire with real consequences. Although it had become America’s biggest taboo, the word was still allowed, within reason— usable to make a point, or as dialogue in Huckleberry Finn or Pulp Fiction.

In other words, context still mattered. Words, after all, are just noises we make, and we give them all their power. In a New York Times piece titled “How the N-Word Became Unsayable,” linguist John McWhorter wrote:

“What a society considers profane reveals what it believes to be sacrosanct. The emerging taboo on slurs shows the value our culture places — inconsistently or not — on respect for marginalized groups.”

He calls slurs “magic words”—and every culture has them.

***

The banana split was still melting back at the counter when I got to the pool. We were at DEFCON 1 and I knew the drill. I rushed into the pool in my clothes and put my son, who was now calling me a ‘nigger’, in a football hold as a dozen or so guests, some of whom were black, watched in horror. I was afraid that someone was going to beat me up.

How did this all start? I should take some of the blame. I never really cared if my kids swore and actually thought it was kind of funny when my three-year-old said “motherfucker.” That was probably a mistake. At some point, though, he picked up the word. His preschool was half black, so I think he learned it there. My wife, however, thinks it’s because I yell “nigger!” every time I stub my toe. Anyways, let’s not blame anyone. Then one day, William casually called his sister a “nigger,” and my wife and I both freaked out. Of course it was our reaction that was the problem. We had handed the word and all of its power over to a four-year-old. If we’d stayed calm, it might have simply passed—a meaningless sound, no different from “motherfucker.” But we didn’t. We panicked, yelled, gave him time outs, and turned the whole thing into a hostage negotiation. And William, being a smart four-year-old, realized he’d found something that could freeze adults in their tracks.

Eventually, my wife and I managed to stop him from saying the word. But the whole ordeal left me wondering what we were really reacting to. On one level, this is just a story about learning a hard parenting lesson. But on another, it reveals our culture’s obsession with language stripped of context. A word, out of context, is just a sound. And coming from a four-year-old, that’s all it was — a noise that triggered a reaction. William had no idea what the word meant, no knowledge of slavery or racism. He didn’t even know that the word referred to black people. All he knew, and all he needed to know, was that it made adults lose their minds. McWhorter distinguishes between an obscenity and a slur. An obscenity is profane because of what it describes, while a slur is profane because of who it demeans. You can shout an obscenity at nothing; a slur needs a target. William was using the word as an obscenity, not a slur.

Our culture has turned the syllables themselves, rather than the intent or meaning behind them, into the problem. On January 30, 2022, the Twitter account @patriottakes posted a video showing Joe Rogan saying “nigger” again and again — no sentence, no context, nothing, just the word: nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger. Bruce had said the word twenty-two times in under a minute to strip it of power. Patriottakes said it twenty-four times in twenty-nine seconds to restore it. Singer India Arie started a boycott by announcing she was pulling her music from Spotify. One of those twenty-four instances, however, was taken from a segment in which Rogan had made the exact argument the video would inadvertently prove:

“The problem is when words get hyper-powered — like ‘cunt,’ or ‘nigger,’ or ‘faggot.’ ‘Faggot’ is the new one. Even ‘love.’ ‘Love’ is a hyper-powered word too. The word itself becomes more important than its meaning.”

They turned his own words about the dangers of taking words out of context and stripping them of their meaning down to a single word, and used it as evidence against him. Still, he was forced to apologize.

By getting too caught up in labels, we mistake the map for the terrain and blur the line between attacking someone for merely vocalizing a taboo word and using it to actually demean other human beings. In some cases, you have to bowdlerize history just to steer clear of these prohibitions. Joe Biden, for example, was criticized for quoting another legislator who said “We already have a nigger mayor; we don’t need another nigger big-shot” in order to condemn racism. But it didn’t matter. The word alone was enough to trigger outrage. Bernie Sanders was attacked for doing the same thing in one of his books — using the slur to illustrate the ugliness of racism. The syllables now matter more than intent or context, and uttering them is treated no differently than committing the offense itself. We’ve moved from judging meaning to policing phonemes— back to the days when people said “the F-word” to avoid saying “fuck.” Regulation itself isn’t the problem, and some lines are worth holding. We’ve just become better at policing the sound of a word than the intent behind it.

Good comedy can remind us how absurd it is to forget that distinction. The height of race relations in America may have come in a 2011 interview with Patrice O’Neal and Louis CK on ‘The Opie and Anthony Show’. O’Neal, who is black, was explaining the origin of the word ‘kike’ when Louis, whose father is Jewish, responded by explaining the origin of ‘nigger’. Louis asked,

“Do you know where the word nigger came from?… Originally? It was some black guy who was being a nigger. So they called him a nigger. He was being a real nigger. And he said, what a nigger. And that’s where it started.”

O’Neal, laughing uncontrollably, then interjected with “So nigger was a feeling!” Louis doesn’t back off from the joke or try to protect himself by saying he was just joking or by pretending that the word could apply to anyone. He acknowledges the obvious association of the word with black people — ‘some black guy who was being a nigger.’ And we all kind of know what he’s talking about too. The word (or concept really) is more likely to evoke the image of some pimp in Oakland than it is Barack Obama. But in the end, it’s funny precisely because it is so absurd. The joke tells us absolutely nothing about the word’s origins, because Louis and Patrice aren’t etymologists. They’re comedians, and their job is to fuck around.

Louis didn’t need to protect O’Neal from the word, and O’Neal didn’t need anyone telling him what he was allowed to find funny. There’s something condescending about assuming that Black people need to be protected not just from racial abuse but from ever hearing a word at all—as though they can’t distinguish between someone using it to demean them and someone quoting it, discussing it, or making a joke about it. In The Atlantic, McWhorter argued that requiring Black people’s feelings to be stepped around with such exquisite sensitivity hasn’t been required of any human beings, and that doing so is condescending. He wrote: “In supposing that Black people have no resilience, you are saying that Black people are unusually weak… [they], because of the circumstances of American social history, cannot be treated as adults.” Of course, another Black comedian might have found Louis’s joke offensive. But that’s precisely the point. Let people make that judgment for themselves rather than appointing ourselves as their protectors. If you’re feeling that instinct as you read this essay, or wish that I’d summarized Louis’s joke instead of quoting it in full to spare someone else from reading it, that might be worth examining too.

Louis explored the absurdity of a culture that hides behind euphemisms in ‘Offensive Words,’ a routine from his 2008 special ‘Chewed Up’:

“They found a way to say nigger, ‘N-word’, it’s bullshit because when you say ‘the N-word’ you’re putting nigger in the listener’s head. That’s what saying a word is.”

Later in the set, he highlights the importance of context through the multiple meanings of another taboo word, imagining someone hesitating before a blowjob by pontificating about how ‘people from Phoenix are called Phoenicians,’ before cutting him off— “Quit being a faggot and suck that dick.” (1:45-2:03). The bit isn’t about being crass — it’s about how context, tone, and intent matter more than the words themselves. There is a direct line of succession from Bruce and Carlin to Louis. Carlin dedicated ‘Class Clown’—the album with his ‘Seven Dirty Words’ bit—to Bruce, and Louis dedicated ‘Offensive Words’ to Carlin. The bit was nominated for an Emmy in 2009. In an illustration of just how quickly cultural prescriptions can shift, it disappeared from YouTube for five years while I was writing this book, only to reappear recently. I still don’t know why it left or why it came back.

None of this, however, is to say that words are just meaningless noises. There are good reasons I don’t yell “Cunt!” when I hit a backhand into the net or use profanity in church. Taboos are the adaptations of a species whose survival depended on signals of loyalty to the group. Muslims don’t draw the Prophet Mohammed, gentlemen remove their hats in the presence of women and Americans stand during the national anthem. When we turn ideas and words into sacred objects, we no longer have to defend them, and the group automatically attacks anyone who questions them. They mark communal boundaries of purity, loyalty and danger. Violating these norms isn’t just breaking a rule. It’s revealing yourself as a dangerous person. Taboos give individuals ready-made, culturally-tested responses to complex threats such as disease, corruption or violence.

These rules are both our superpower and our curse. While they let us cooperate at scale (money, nations and religions are all fictions we’ve agreed to believe), they also disconnect us from the world as it actually is and allow the symbols to become more important than reality. What do you think would be worse: an air strike on Gaza that kills real human beings, or the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque? If you hesitated, you understand the power of symbols. The N-word holds the same power over Americans as depicting the prophet Mohammed holds over Muslims or that mentioning the name of a dead relative holds over the Yanomamö and none of these taboos feel arbitrary to the people who hold them. The Yanomamö’s prescription is tied to the spirit world, the Muslim prohibition is wrapped in religious belief, and the N-word is associated with slavery, lynching and Jim Crow. So maybe this sacredness is a good thing. After all, do we really want a society where nothing is sacred? Do we want profanity or slurs in schools, churches or courts? When filth is everywhere, it makes it harder to see what is true, good or beautiful and everything starts to sound like a bit.

Still, not all sacred boundaries deserve our reverence. Sometimes taboos and social norms are just a way to control people or protect the powerful. We’ve had taboos against women speaking in public, against gay people holding hands, and against having honest discussions about race, sex or religion. Some of those lines held communities together and some just humiliated the people who crossed them. A healthy culture needs a place to test these boundaries and in America that’s comedy clubs where we temporarily suspend reverence so we can see behind the curtain what we’re actually worshiping. Comedians pull back the curtain and let us see the world as Chagnon saw the Yanomamö, exposing the strangeness of the familiar. They remind us that our taboos might not be sacred truths, but passing customs—and that maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to be so afraid of the words themselves.

The Overton window moves quickly — what was unthinkable five years ago is commonplace today. But either side can overplay its hand. In 2022, a comedian using slurs on stage was unthinkable; in the post-woke era, doing so has become what Freddie deBoer calls ‘the rebel yell of the aggrieved normie.’ Normalize the transgression and it stops mattering. Police it too hard and you hand the transgressor all the power.

In 1995, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Mark Fuhrman’s use of the word ‘nigger’ — and then lying about it under oath — mattered more than the DNA, the blood trail, a shaky alibi, or a glove found in O.J.’s own yard carrying his blood and both victims’. A racial slur was more important than a double murder, and a man who’d nearly cut off his ex-wife’s head and stabbed an innocent waiter returning her mother’s glasses more than twenty times went free.

In the end though, I don’t really care about the juice getting framed or Rogan not being able to buy a better private jet. What I do care about is my country, our culture and what happens when a word starts to matter more than the reality underneath it.

A few weeks after we got home from Puerto Rico, I was putting William — who’d started calling it ‘the N-word’ himself now — in his car seat on the street when he asked me what the word meant. He asked it the same way he asks why I’m always pissing in our next door neighbor’s yard. I told him it was a word people used, and occasionally still use, to be mean to Black people, that it might hurt someone’s feelings, and that’s why we don’t say it. Then I stubbed my toe on the curb.

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The post How My Four-Year-Old Discovered America’s Most Powerful Word appeared first on The Freethinker.

France and England & Wales have been following a remarkably similar path over assisted dying legislation, and at almost the same time. Both countries’ elected houses of parliament (ours is called the House of Commons) passed the legislation but were thwarted by their respective upper chambers, the Sénat and the House of Lords.

Over a thousand amendments were tabled to the bill in our House of Lords. The majority of these came from a handful of mainly religiously motivated lords intent on wrecking the bill because the House of Lords would not have the time to consider them before the session ended. This was indeed what happened, and the bill fell. But even if it hadn’t, and there had been a vote, it probably would have been to reject the bill, as the Archbishop of Canterbury was vehemently opposed to it and would probably have instructed her 25 episcopal colleagues, who sit by right in the House of Lords, to vote against it.

In contrast, France was able to challenge the Sénat rejection, albeit with some concessions, by referral to the constitutional court. The United Kingdom, however, does not have an equivalent body to resolve such disputes.

The only route left to the House of Commons was to reintroduce an identical bill in a subsequent session, then employ a very rarely invoked procedure under the Parliament Acts which, while permitting the House of Lords to proffer suggested amendments, denies them the power to block the bill.

The last time this power was invoked, many years ago, was to veto the Lords’ objections to equalising the age of homosexual and heterosexual consent and, later, to force through a ban on fox hunting.

Early in a new session of parliament on 11 September, the bill was reintroduced into the House of Commons but failed by 17 votes to be passed.

In the previous session the Commons had passed the bill with an (admittedly modest) majority of 23. 43 MPs who voted for the bill last time abstained or were absent for the latest vote. Could it be a coincidence that at the time of the previous vote the Prime Minister was an atheist who supported the bill, but for the latest one we have a new Prime Minister who is a Catholic and wants to delay the legislation? He says he is not opposed in principle to assisted dying but wants (admittedly badly funded) palliative care to be improved first. But it will never be good enough, and while this is used as a delaying tactic, many more will die needlessly agonising deaths.

Another reason cited by opponents was that there was insufficient protection against coercion, for example by relatives. This seemed unreasonable given that the legislation required the assent of two doctors and of a panel that would include a social worker, senior legal figure, and a psychiatrist. This requirement is much stronger than is the case in most other countries’ assisted dying legislation.

A further frustration about the failure of the England and Wales bill is that it was much less radical than ones codified in Catholic countries, such as France, Spain, and Portugal. For example, our bill would not have allowed physicians to administer the fatal dose and denied assisted deaths to those with insufferable motor-neurone type diseases, unless within six months of death. Those accompanying loved ones abroad to an assisted death would still risk criminal prosecution as they do now.

I should add that, earlier this year, the unicameral Scottish Parliament also rejected assisted dying legislation, by 69 to 57 votes.

Between 65% and 75% of the public are in favour of assisted dying legislation. So, both these parliaments defied the will of the people. One reason may be that parliamentarians tend to be more religious than the public. Both the Commons and the Lords start their business every day with Christian prayers, despite our [the NSS’s] repeated efforts to curtail them. Predictably, Protestant, Catholic and Muslim leaders fiercely attacked the bill.

Nevertheless, more positively, this year the British Isle of Man and one of the Channel Islands, Jersey, have recently passed assisted dying legislation.

There have been many attempts at legislation in my 60 years of campaigning to introduce it. Each one has faced less opposition than its predecessor. Let us hope that the next time will be successful.

Related reading

Assisted dying: will the final freedom be legalised in France? by Jean-Luc Romero-Michel

When will end-of-life care be ‘fixed’, Mr Burnham? by Colin Swinburn

Baroness Finlay, Danny Kruger, and the Defeat of the Leadbeater Assisted Dying Bill, by Colin Brewer

Religious privilege and assisted dying: an unhealthy relationship, by Keith Porteous Wood

The Right to Die: The Freethinker and the Assisted Dying Debate Over the Years, by Daniel James Sharp

Bishops in the Lords: Why are they still there? by Emma Park

The post France beats England and Wales to introduce assisted dying legislation appeared first on The Freethinker.