Dr Lois Lee, Research Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies, has provided a comment article on the case of Hamza bin Walayat, currently hitting the headlines.
Hamza bin Walayat is a Pakistani humanist who application for asylum in the UK was recently rejected by the Home Office on the basis he did answer a question correctly about Plato and Aristotle.
The article is published at The Conversation, an online collaboration between editors and academics to provide informed news analysis, and is titled ‘The Conundrum of How to Prove You Hold a Nonreligious Worldview’.
‘The Home Office’s understanding of what it means to be a humanist and of humanism’s history is deeply flawed, and the potential consequences are very serious,’ states Lois in the article, who goes on to add, ‘it is also just the latest indication that illiteracy about what it means to be nonreligious is widespread – even in relatively nonreligious societies such as the UK.’
Lois’s research interests include nonreligious belief, and she is Principle Investigator on the Understanding Unbelief programme.
She concludes her article with an argument that the UK needs to better recognise nonreligious belief: ‘In the UK, nonreligious people often hold elite positions, but this doesn’t mean that they are properly represented or protected in public life, nor that they are free from discrimination and persecution… our historically superficial understanding of atheism and other nonreligious worldviews demands an overhaul.’
To read the full article, please see The Conversation page here:
https://theconversation.com/the-conundrum-of-how-to-prove-you-hold-a-nonreligious-worldview-90405