Secular matters – Details, episodes & analysis

Marte talks about H, the 100 page magazine the publishing house of the Norwegian Humanist Association issues three times a year, and her role as an editor. And she speaks about the non-fiction-books she has published.

The award-winning article BRYLLUPSNATTA (wedding night) about «Zahra», who rushes off to Paris to have her hymen surgically restored as her future husband must not know that she is no longer a virgin.

Marte Spurkland's most recent books::

• 2020 Pappas Runer (Dad's Runes)
• 2021 Ut av krisen (Out of Crises)
• 2024 1178 netter (1178 Nights)

Taha Siddiqui worked as a journalist in his home country Pakistan until the army tried to kidnap him. He is now living in exile in France. There he published his life story as a graphic novel together with the French artist Hubert Maury. I translated "Dissident Club" into German for the Alibri publishing house.

In the podcast we talk about the book, Taha's upbringing in Pakistan and Saudia Arabia, the religious radicalisation of his parents, the Wahhabi influence on Islam in Pakistan, the situation for non-believers in the two countries today and Taha's upcoming plans.

Wafa Bahri represents the Center for Inquiry at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. And she manages the Translations Project, an initiative by the Richard Dawkins Foundation to make scientific and humanist works by him and other authors available to readers as free downloads in languages, in which they have previously not been published, namely Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and Indonesian.

We talked about the Human Rights Council's approach to Freedom of Religion or Belief and about the Translation Project's current state, its successes and challenges.

If you want to support the Translations Project, send an email to development@centerforinquiry.org.

To learn more about the stories of Sherif Gaber and Salwan Momika, which Wafa mentions, click the links to their wikipedia entries.

Gynaecologist Joachim Volz is a chief physician in a hospital in Lippstadt, a town with a population just under 70 thousand, situated in Nord-Rhine-Westphalia, halfway between Cologne and Hanover. He took his employer to court because he was ordered to no longer offer abortions, a service he had been able to provide to his patients since 2012, when he had started working in the clinic. The reason: his hospital merged with two catholic clinics and the new co-owners imposed their strict anti-abortion policy on the Lippstadt clinic – and ruled that as a figurehead for their clinic, Joachim Volz also had to stop offering abortions in his private practice.

Recently, the regional labour court decided formally partially in favour of Joachim Volz. I discuss why the ruling is a difficult victory and what's at stake in Germany with Sarah Gonschorek, a feminism activist and member of the board of the North-Rhine Westphalia chapter of the German Council of Women's Organizations, and with Sophia Anders . She’s the daughter of Joachim Volz and herself a senior gynaecologist at a German University hospital.

My interviewees:

• Sarah Gonschorek (personal homepage)
• Sophia Anders - (University Hospital Ulm profile)

Background material (in German)

• online petition in support of Joachim Volz
• the 2024 survey on opinions about abortions (commissioned by the German Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, PDF)
• LinkedIn post by Joachim Volz about his case

Andreas Gradert was the driving force behind the newly founded Humanistische Akademie Österreich. We talked about Austria's secular and humanist scene, the role the Humanist Academy is to play in Austria's education system, what Austrians believe in, why the concordat with the Vatican needs to be adapted – and why Vienna is lacking a Karl Popper museum.

Links:

• Humanistischer Verband Österreich (Humanist Association of Austria)
• Atheisten Österreich (Austrian Atheists)
• Zentralrat der Konfessionsfreien (central council of the non-denominational)
• Results of the study "Was glaubt Österreich?" (what does Austria believe?)

Andrew and I talked about how the international humanist scene has evolved in the last decade, especially by humanist organisations from the Global South joining the umbrella organisation Humanists International. We also discussed cultural differences between humanist and secular organisations from different countries and why some tend to lobby for a strict separation of the state and religious or other life stance organisations, whereas others pressure more for an inclusion of humanist organisations in fields traditionally reserved for religious entities.

We also talked about how nonbelievers coming from Muslim or other religious communities relatively new to the UK are reshaping Humanist UK's activities and to what extent the organisation manages to cater for their needs.

Andrew Copson has written several books:

• The Litte Book of Humanism, with Alice Roberts (2020)
• The Little Book of Humanist Weddings, with Alice Roberts (2021)
• The Little Book of Humanist Funerals, with Alice Roberts (2023)
• What I believe - Humanist Ideas and Philosophies to Live By (2024)

His Podcast What I believe is hosted by Humanists UK.

Khadija writes for The Freethinker, the Daily Mail and co-hosts the A Further Inquiry Podcast.

She's on Facebook, and X,

Topics discussed in the podcast:

• BBC report on the successful appeal by Hamit Coskun against a "religiously aggravated public order offence" because he had burnt a copy of the quran outside the Turkish consulate in London to protest against the islamisation of his country of origin.
• Statement by the National Secular Society on the debated definition of "islamophobia".