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RELIGION and human rights have always had an intense, tortured relationship. On one hand, liberty of conscience and belief is one of the first and most fundamental principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and other documents that lay out humanity's minimum entitlements. On the other hand, secular campaigners often blame oppressive forms of religion for a high proportion of the worst assaults on human welfare: from religiously inspired ethnic cleansing to female genital mutilation to the nihilist jihadism which treats every form of faith but its own as a legitimate target.
At this year's tenth-anniversary session of the Oslo Freedom Forum, an ever-expanding international festival for campaigners against tyranny, victims of religion were more obviously in evidence than practitioners. Speakers included Fatemah Qaderyan, 16, an Afghan teenager who led an award-wining female robotics team but lost her father in a jihadist bomb attack; and Omar Mohammed, an Iraqi...Continue reading
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