Transcript of Thought For the World's thought for the day

Marion Richardson

5th March 2008

For most of us, for most of the time, 'freedom' is just a word. It's a fine word. A word that can lift the spirits. It can straighten the backbone. It can even raise the hair on the back of the neck. But for most of you listening to this, and for me, it IS generally just a word.

In our age and society we have limited ambitions for our personal freedom, which, after all, isn't seriously challenged. The day of fighting for the most basic freedoms is past. Survival, emancipation, gender - pay, status and sexual orientation - are still work in progress here and there but no longer burning issues

What freedoms do we, in the UK in the 'naughties', now have seriously to defend? The right to say no. That's real. The right to avoid passive smoking. Fair enough. We certainly need to demand freedom for primary school children from indoctrination with the 'faith' of others before they reach the maturity to question and make fundamental decisions for themselves.

But if we choose, after serious thought, not to believe in God, we don't put our lives at risk. After I officiate at a secular funeral, I don't need to watch out for vengeful religious assassins. I don't wake each day grateful because I can choose to believe or not to believe, to worship or not to worship, to conform or not to conform.

And yet I know someone who has no such freedom - someone who is putting his life in danger merely by daring to be true to his convictions. This young man, from the Yemen, I will call him Hussain, faces this problem daily. Despite the rigid pressures of an extreme fundamentalist muslim upbringing, where dissent is death, he has somehow concluded that humanism is the only hope for mankind. We, who have met him during his studies here in Scotland, have learned to admire and respect him. We understand his incredulity that we don't properly appreciate our precious freedom of thought.

Now back in the Yemen, Hussain can't survive without fully and publicly worshipping with his family; they have no idea of his defection from what they consider the one true path. This week he has burned his boats and become a refugee, throwing himself on the pity of the Norwegian immigration authorities in an attempt to gain the freedom of thought which, both in Norway and in the UK, we assume is our right. His chances of admission are slim and there will be no way back. Despite his caution, word of his secular stance has begun to leak out; he has now begun to receive threats; it's only a matter of time before the place where he was born becomes a death-trap for him.

Hope and good wishes are feeble when what this young man needs is help. We have tried all we can think of. Do contact me via the Humanist Society of Scotland if you have any advice or practical help to offer. Otherwise, all I can say, sincerely but ineffectually, is 'Good luck, Hussain, my friend'.

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