Michael Nugent

Atheist Ireland welcomes the statement from Dermot Ahern, the Irish Justice Minister, that he is proposing a referendum this Autumn to remove the offence of blasphemy from the Irish Constitution, along with two other referendums that the government is already committed to.

The Minister has told the Sunday Times that “I was only doing my duty” in bringing in the new blasphemy law, and that “there was an incredibly sophisticated campaign [against me], mainly on the internet.”

Atheist Ireland thanks everyone who has helped to make the campaign against this new law as effective as it has been to date. It is now important we maintain the pressure on this issue to ensure that the referendum happens as proposed and, more importantly, that it is won.

We reiterate our position that this law is both silly and dangerous: silly because it is introducing medieval canon law offence into a modern plularist republic; and dangerous because it incentives religious outrage and because its wording has already been adopted by Islamic States as part of their campaign to make blasphemy a crime internationally.

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This is the second in a series of articles on secular education and human rights law. The first article is here.

Secular schools are neither religious nor atheist

There are two reasons why State schools should be run on a secular basis. But first, it is important to explain that a secular school is not the same thing as an atheist school.

A religious school teaches that a god exists, an atheist school would teach that no gods exist, and a secular school is neutral on the question of religion: it does not teach that gods either do or do not exist.

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Parents and children have a right to a secular education under international human rights law. This is the first in a series of posts outlining the issues involved.

International Human Rights Treaties

What are the main international human rights treaties? Founded in the aftermath of World War Two, the United Nations soon adopted the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was later strengthened by two legally binding treaties: the 1976 International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Together, these three UN documents became known as the International Bill of Human Rights. By then Europe in 1950 and America in 1969 had already adopted regional human rights treaties, followed later by Africa in 1981. Islamic states signed a rival treaty in Cairo in 1990 based on Sharia law, which limits rather than protects many human rights. The UN has also brokered other treaties dealing with specific human rights issues including children, women, race, genocide, slavery and torture. So today, thanks to an ongoing process first triggered by the horrors of World War Two, many but not all people have someplace to turn to if their own State denies them their human rights.

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