Campaigners will gather in London at the weekend to promote an international front of secularism to counter the rise of extremist groups such as Islamic State (Isis) in the Middle East, Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling and the Algerian sociologist Marieme Hélie-Lucas will be among the participants at the two-day conference, titled the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights.
Hélie-Lucas, one of the organisers of the event, said: “This century is not, as many still think, marked by a religious or spiritual revival. What we are actually witnessing is the rise of extreme right political movements, working under the cover of religion.”
Another organiser, Maryam Namazie, emphasised that the battle with groups such as Isis was not religious but political. “The way to push back Isis and other forms of the religious right – from the Hindu right, Jewish right, Christian right, Buddhist right and so on – is by pushing it out of the state and unequivocally defending secularism, universalism and citizenship rights,” she said.
Namazie and her fellow secularists argue that secularism is not a western ideal, but one shared by many believers and non-believers in the Middle East, north Africa and Asia. “This is a fight between secularists and theocrats. This does not preclude religious allies as the religious can also be – and often are – secularists,” Namazie said. “In fact, in places under the rule of the religious right, you will find no greater adherents to secularism and the separation of religion from the state. They may not call themselves secularists, but that is what they are.”
Karima Bennoune, author of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, argued that Islamism by definition was not moderate as it advocated a theocratic stance, using its own interpretations of religion and religious language as a cover for a far-right political project.
“It is a politics, not a religious opinion,” she said. “The current Turkish government is indeed part of the religious right and opposed by many progressive, left, secularist, moderate religious people in Turkey, as the Gezi Park demonstrations show.”
Isis can be expected to loom large at the conference. The militant group, which has been condemned as too violent and extremist even by al-Qaida, has attracted thousands of adherents in the west despite its brutal tactics, which include public beheadings.
“You cannot have a conference today on the religious right and not begin and end with Isis,” said Namazie. “The fight against Isis is not about western versus eastern values. Isis is the result of the retreat of universality, secularism and the Iraq-isation or division of the world and societies into everything from religion to ethnicity, rather than seeing them as human beings and citizens first and foremost. We have the historical task of raising those ideals and demands.”
The conference organisers have issued a secularist manifesto calling for a complete separation of religion from the state; abolition of religious laws in the family; separation of religion from public policy, including the education system, healthcare and scientific research; freedom of religion and atheism and freedom to criticise religions; and equality between women and men and citizenship rights for all.
They said the conference was an “attempt to gather some of the secularists on the frontlines, show our strength, and provide a progressive alternative to the religious right that does not involve bigotry and fascism, US-led militarism or cultural relativism”.