Declaration of the IAFT International Council
“Violence and Religions”
On the occasion of the recent tragic events in Paris, Brussels, London, Barcelona, Cambrils, Charlottesville, Sorgout, Turku, Bengalore; the International Council of the International Association of Free Thought insists on repeating its historic and traditional positions:
- Any monotheistic religion with their apparatus carry within themselves the violence of revealed truth, dogma, the holy war, the crusades and Islamic Jihad.
- The bloody terrorist acts which were committed, from the US to Russia, from France to Spain, from Finland to Belgium going through England, are the bloody demonstrations of the violent and barbaric character of monotheistic religions
The IAFT condemns these heinous acts and refuses the logic theories that schedule to term a confrontation generalized across the planet between different cultures and religions, with gigantic massacres at the key. These theories are intended to promote the Christian West as the “bulwark of civilization”.
The IAFT remember that the victims (dead and wounded) of these crimes are thousands and the killers are from all religions. Neither has the exclusivity of barbarism. The most numerous victims of the barbaric acts jihadists are far Muslims themselves.
Given his determination to resolutely combat any form of dogmatism and religious obscurantism, IAFT acknowledges the following facts:
- political Islam is an ideology and an obscurantist international political and religious movement, anti-laique, draconian, theocratic, proselyte and totalitarian. He is a fundamentalist form of Islam. Globally, this movement is at least as dangerous as the most fanatical of any other religious fundamentalism, including Christian fundamentalism.
- the political Islam has various ways to promote and spread, the most spectacular of these means being terrorism. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, because Islamism has a range of means of propaganda, ranging up to the more mundane and daily, as the standardization of several Islamic practices in public areas, overflowing Thus the framework private in which religious practice should be limited.
- it is necessary to ban the veils in State institutions and in public schools.
IAFT denounces Islamism, as she denounces and combat all religious fundamentalism, and declares its willingness to fight hard against this draconian movement by analyzing its ideology and its various means of propaganda and by proposing measures to deal with.
The IAFT reaffirms that the respect for freedom of conscience is an essential democratic demand to be implemented everywhere on all continents, notably by the full and entire advent of the separation of religions and the State. The law must be the same for all in the name of the principle of equality of human beings human.
As a democratic and secular association, the IAFT considers that the right of nations to self-determination is also an essential democratic demand.
The negation of these two demands, notably, is a source of conflicts and confrontations which can only lead to wars and barbaric acts where the human element is always the first and the last victim.
As the congress of the International Free Thought of Rome in 1904 pointed out, States must be “democratic, secular, and social”. Such is the only peaceful path to the emancipation of peoples.
Paris, September 24th 2017
This article is also available as a PDF document.
