Commentary
Burmese Monk Against Human Rights
In a shocking video sent to AAI by affiliate Burmese Atheists, a senior monk derides the protestors and their demands for human rights, particularly over gay marriage which he prays never happens in M...
Flogging to honor Ramadan
In June 2017 and according to the state-run ILNA news agency, officials in Iran’s northwestern province of Qazvin sentenced 20 people to flogging for eating outside during the fasting month of R...
Iranian women protest the obligatory hijab
In early December 2017, Vida Movahed, known as ‘the Girl of Enghelab Street’ stood on a Junction box in Tehran’s Enghelab Street without a veil and lifted her white scarf to protest compulsory v...
AAI Responds to Freethought Prophet Podcast Allegations
Let me introduce myself: I am Jason Sylvester, aka Diogenes of Mayberry on social media. For the past year I have functioned as both the blog manager for AAI and as an unofficial advisor to the board....
Islamic Indoctrination in Iranian Schools
In certain societies, children are indoctrinated in religious values and beliefs and there is an effort to instill unshakeable truths such as God’s existence. Religion, in fact, has a major infl...
Ultra-Conservative Buddhists Support Myanmar Coup
All religions contain a spectrum of zealotry among their members, from the very liberal to the fiercely orthodox. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar are no different in this regard. Among the protestors, B...
#NoVaticanStatehood
This week, a story emerged that the Archbishop of Cologne, had, with breath-taking cluelessness and audacity, asked reporters for their ‘absolute silence’ regarding a report of sexual abuse within his...
Open Letter to East Carolina University
Today, East Carolina University announced they are honoring Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, the Governor of Kano State, Nigeria with a visiting professorship. Ganduje, you will remember, presided over the egr...
Atheist woman among the favorites to be the next Governor of Puerto Rico
Tomorrow is a very important day, not only because it is a general election day in the United States of America and its territories, but because tomorrow the atheist community makes history once again...
Is the Universe Indifferent?
In a discussion with a theist, I stated that one of the most basic observations we can make about the world, when looking at it objectively, is that there is no god protecting anyone. As far as we can...
The Erosion of Secular Democratic Values
There is a worrying trend: the erosion of democratic values in a number of supposedly secular countries around the world. In the United States, Christian Nationalists are in the throes of ecstatic rap...
Two Iranians on Trial for Blasphemy
On April 23, the death sentence of two prisoners who are being held in Arak prison in Iran on the charge of Sab-Al-Nabi was announced. According to Islamic law in Iran, anyone who insults the Prophet ...