The greatest and most consequential innovations in human history have never resulted from an abundance of religious piety. The progress that improves lives comes as a result of scientific inquiry and a spirit of rationality.
Thousand-year-old religious texts cannot provide meaningful insight into the material nature of our world, nor does orthodoxy tend to respect free inquiry. Today in the Islamic world, many states enforce anti-science laws as a direct result of their non-secular nature. Meanwhile, distrust for naturalistic explanations of the world is a problem that runs through religious communities of all stripes.
Scientific facts nearly always begin as heresies. It is only by recognizing this that we can hope to understand ourselves and the world we live in.
Welcome Back to This Week’s Insights
This week’s Unbelief Brief takes us from Bangladesh’s unsettling proposal to remove secularism as a guiding principle of the state, to Spain’s encouraging steps toward repealing its outdated blasphemy law, and finally to the murky complexities of a Sri Lankan monk’s imprisonment over incendiary anti-Muslim rhetoric. Finally, in EXMNA Insights we explore what Religious Freedom Day means to us.
Unbelief Brief
Your Weekly Dispatch Awaits
Welcome back! This week’s Unbelief Brief brings the good news of Mubarak Bala’s release from prison. In EXMNA Insights, we reflect on the lasting importance of Charlie Hebdo’s work, 10 years after the tragic attack, and discuss Meta’s latest change. Finally, explore Mubarak Bala’s story in our Persecution Tracker Update, and don’t miss the newly released 2024 Persecution Tracker Report.
Unbelief Brief
Dissent Dispatch: Current Perspectives
This week we discuss Syria in The Unbelief Brief while EXMNA Insights questions if the Quran can coexist with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Unbelief Brief
Back for more? This Week’s Dispatch Has Arrived
Welcome back. This week our Unbelief Brief brings up an issue of hate speech persecuted as blasphemy, along with staggering new statistics on blasphemy-related arrests and imprisonments in Pakistan.
Welcome Back to Dissent Dispatch
This week’s Unbelief Brief examines the rescue of a Yazidi woman trafficked to Gaza, Bibles in Oklahoma public schools and atheists outnumbering theists in the UK.
Dissent Dispatch: Your Weekly Update
In this week’s Unbelief Brief, we look at charges against an Iranian actress for dancing in public and Erdogan’s vow to purge military officials for supporting a secular democracy.
Welcome to This Edition of Dissent Dispatch
This week’s Unbelief Brief spotlights mob violence in Bangladesh, a terrorist attack in Afghanistan and Iranian citizens growing dissatisfaction with their government.
The Unbelief Brief
Welcome to the Latest Edition
This week’s Unbelief Brief covers another victim of Iran’s draconian hijab law and the return of a conservative Islamic political party in Bangladesh.
Hello and Welcome
This week’s Unbelief Brief looks at the Taliban’s decree against the sound of women’s voices and how Pakistan’s Supreme Court is kowtowing to extremists. In EXMNA Insights we delve deeper into Islam’s disdain for dogs and the prohibition on keeping them as pets.Persecution Tracker Updates: Afghanistan and Pakistan meting out harsh blasphemy punishments
