Kiran Opal’s report on the International Conference on the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights last October in London is now available.

A few months ago, I was privileged to participate in, and speak at, an historic conference, the two-day International Conference on the Religious Right, Secularism and Civil Rights held in London, UK on 11th-12th October 2014. At the conference, I got to meet and speak with some of the world’s most interesting activists who work tirelessly to promote human rights and secularism, and I presented a talk on The Human and the Kafir: How Fear of Apostasy Fuels Islamist Power.

Then Atheist Alliance International asked her to write a report on the conference, and with help from Maryam Namazie (who organized it) and Hilary Baxter, she did.

A slightly condensed version of this report is now published by Atheist Alliance International (AAI) in the First Quarter 2015 issue of their membership publication, Secular World. Please go to AAI’s website if you’d like to read the complete publication which includes my report.

This report published here includes links to each video of the panels and speakers whose talks I tried my best to summarize. I would highly recommend clicking on the links to hear the speakers speak for themselves.

In putting this report together, I got to listen intently to all the speakers again and gained a much deeper understanding of the complex issues of which they spoke. To condense two intense, fully-packed days of incredibly nuanced and detailed talks and discussions into a relatively short report was not an easy task. So many of the speakers at the Conference could be and should be writing books on the issues and experiences they spoke about – in fact a few of them are already published authors (Elham Manea, Pervez Hoodbhoy, AC Grayling, among others), and several of them are active on blogs, various publications, and Twitter. I encourage you, the reader, to look up any and all of the speakers whose words and ideas move you. Please share this post, this report, and the ideas and insights from the Secular Conference.

Here it is (pdf):
Secular Conference Report by Kiran Opal AAI 2014

A feast awaits.