{"id":8304,"date":"2018-01-26T16:55:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T16:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=8304"},"modified":"2018-01-26T16:55:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T16:55:45","slug":"lois-lee-on-humanist-asylum-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2018\/01\/26\/lois-lee-on-humanist-asylum-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Lois Lee on humanist asylum case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/staff\/lee.html\">Dr Lois Lee<\/a>, Research Fellow in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/index.html\">Department of Religious Studies<\/a>, has provided a comment article on the case of Hamza bin Walayat, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2018\/jan\/26\/philosophers-urge-rethink-of-pakistani-humanist-hamza-bin-walayat-asylum\">currently hitting the headlines<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The article is published at <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/uk\">The Conversation<\/a>, an online collaboration between editors and academics to provide informed news analysis, and is titled \u2018The Conundrum of How to Prove You Hold a Nonreligious Worldview\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Home Office\u2019s understanding of what it means to be a humanist and of humanism\u2019s history is\u00a0deeply flawed, and the potential consequences are very serious,\u2019 states Lois in the article, who goes on to add, \u2018it is also just the latest indication that illiteracy about what it means to be nonreligious is widespread \u2013 even in\u00a0relatively nonreligious societies\u00a0such as the UK.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Lois\u2019s research interests include nonreligious belief, and she is Principle Investigator on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/understandingunbelief\/\">Understanding Unbelief<\/a>\u00a0programme.<\/p>\n<p>She concludes her article with an argument that the UK needs to better recognise nonreligious belief: \u2018In the UK, nonreligious people often hold elite positions, but this doesn\u2019t mean that they are properly represented or protected in public life, nor that they are free from discrimination and persecution\u2026\u00a0 our historically superficial understanding of atheism and other nonreligious worldviews demands an overhaul.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>To read the full article, please see The Conversation page here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-conundrum-of-how-to-prove-you-hold-a-nonreligious-worldview-90405\">https:\/\/theconversation.com\/the-conundrum-of-how-to-prove-you-hold-a-nonreligious-worldview-90405<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2018\/01\/26\/lois-lee-on-humanist-asylum-case\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":6953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,18581],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8304"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8306,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8304\/revisions\/8306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}