KANO, Nigeria (AP) — When the megaphone called out for the daily Islamic prayers, the nonbeliever grabbed his prayer beads and ambled through the streets to join others at the mosque in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city. Formerly a Muslim, he now identifies as an atheist but remains closeted, performing religious obligations only as a cover.
“To survive as an atheist, you cannot act like one,” said the man, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity over fears for his safety. He said he narrowly escaped being killed by a mob in 2015 after some people found out he had forsaken Islam.
“If I ever come out in northern Nigeria to say I am an atheist, it will be an automatic death sentence,” said the man, a business owner in his 30s.
In parts of the world, the religiously unaffiliated are on the rise, and can safely and publicly be a “none” — someone who identifies as an atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. In countries like Nigeria, the situation is starkly different.
Nonbelievers in Nigeria said they perennially have been treated as second-class citizens in the deeply religious country whose 210 million population is almost evenly divided between Christians dominant in the south and Muslims who are the majority in the north. While the south is relatively safe for nonbelievers, some say threats and attacks have worsened in the north since the leader of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, was arrested and later jailed for blasphemy.
The Associated Press spoke to seven nonbelievers to document their experiences. Most spoke anonymously and in secret locations over concerns for their safety.
“Bala’s imprisonment rolled our movement underground,” Leo Igwe, a founder of the humanist association, said of the group’s leader, who in 2022 was jailed for 24 years. A court convicted him on an 18-count charge of blaspheming Islam and breach of public peace through his posts on Facebook.
Since Bala was prosecuted by the Kano state government, the humanist association — which has several hundred members — has gone underground, struggling with threats to members who no longer hold meetings, Leo said.
Nigeria’s constitution provides for freedom of religion and expression, but activists say threats to religious freedom are common, especially in the north.
Almost half of the countries in Africa, including Nigeria, have statutes outlawing blasphemy. In most secular courts in Nigeria, the stiffest penalty for a blasphemy charge is two years in prison, while it carries a death penalty in the Islamic courts active in the north.
There are no records of any such executions in recent years. The most recent instance of a death sentence, issued in December against an Islamic cleric, has not been carried out.
The Shariah law operating in Islamic courts defines blasphemous acts as those committed by anyone who “intentionally abuses, insults, derogates, humiliates or seeks to incite contempt of the holy Prophet Muhammad.”
But what exactly constitutes an insult to Islam is often open to interpretation by accusers; some alleged offenders have been attacked and killed before any trial.
At least three people have been killed for alleged blasphemy in northern Nigeria in the past year. The latest victim was a Muslim stoned to death in June after being accused of blaspheming Islam during an argument at a market. Those who stoned him included children, according to a video reviewed by the AP.
Authorities in Nigeria have failed to act to prevent such attacks, and prosecutions have been rare, said Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International in Nigeria.
“The alarming uptick in blasphemy killings and accusations underscores the urgency with which the authorities must wake up to Nigeria’s international legal obligations to respect and protect human rights, including freedom of religion,” Sanusi said.
Perpetrators of such attacks are ignorant of Islamic teachings, which discourage violence and do not compel anyone to become an adherent unwillingly, said Professor Usman Dutsinma, deputy director of the Center for Islamic Civilization and Interfaith Dialogue at Kano’s Bayero University.
“The best thing you can do is to subject him to reasoning,” Dutsinma said of nonbelievers. “But if somebody denounces Islam … some punitive measures must be taken against him. That is what Islam provides.”
Threats against the nonreligious in Nigeria are common on social media. On a Facebook group named Anti-Atheist, users frequently posted messages that trolled or threatened atheists, using the Hausa language of northern Nigeria.
The atheist in Kano, in a dimly lit room, spoke with a mix of grit and fear about his experiences as a nonbeliever in a nation where about 98% of the population are Christians or Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center. A Facebook post from Bala in 2015, critiquing some Islamic teachings, influenced the man's shift to atheism.
The man said he created a Facebook account of his own with a fake profile, regularly posting comments that questioned religion.
“My biggest fear is for people I live with to know that I am an atheist,” he said.
Even his relatives are unaware he is an atheist, though his wife, a Muslim, accepts him as he is. “Her type is very rare,” he said.
Bala, once a Muslim, was seen as an influential member of the humanist community; most of the nonbelievers who spoke to the AP credited him as an inspiration. Until his conviction, he made several posts on Facebook that questioned religion, often attracting threats.
In April 2020, he shared a post noting that he and other humanists in northern Nigeria “claim that there is no God.” One user called for Bala to face the death penalty.
Life as a nonbeliever in Nigeria is also difficult for women, who already are severely underrepresented in government and other key sectors.
“Your achievements are reduced to nothing if you are irreligious,” said Abosuahi Nimatu, who dropped out of university in Katsina state in 2020 to escape violence after her peers learned she was no longer a Muslim.
Nimatu was so close to Bala that his prolonged detention depressed her for a year, she said. She used her Facebook account to campaign for his release, prompting threats that reached her cellphone and email inbox. Her home address was shared among people threatening to attack her and her family.
Even at home, there is scant comfort. She is often reminded that — as a female nonbeliever — no man would marry her.
“You are seen as a rebel and as a wayward person," she said.
In 2020, Nigeria became the first secular democracy designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern” for engaging in or tolerating “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.” It later was dropped from that list of countries, prompting criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which says Nigeria should be re-added.
“Religious freedom conditions in Nigeria remained poor as both state and non-state actors continued to commit widespread and egregious religious freedom violations,” the commission said in its 2022 annual report.
Sometimes, such intolerance comes from one’s family.
A man from Yobe state said he was forced to leave home in 2019 when his uncle found out he belonged to an atheist group on WhatsApp, prompting death threats. He returned home only after pretending to be a practicing Muslim even though he remained a closeted atheist, with Bala a strong supporter.
“Before Mubarak was arrested, you had the feeling of someone who could be responsible for you even if your life was in danger. … But now, you are overwhelmed by a sense of fear and looming danger that you cannot have any way of being supported by anybody,” said the man, now a university student.
It is a different reality for the openly faithless in southern Nigeria; they even hold public meetings occasionally. The two atheists who spoke to AP in the commercial hub of Lagos said they had never been attacked or threatened because they are not religious.
Busayo Cole, who was once a Christian and had a foster father who was an Anglican bishop, said his family is indifferent about his religious status. Beyond his family, the worst consequences he faces are occasional snide remarks.
“People are more liberal about things like that down here,” said Cole.
At the Kuje prison in Abuja, Bala continues to serve his jail term, receiving visitors from time to time including his wife Amina Ahmed, also a humanist. She went to see him most recently with their 3-year-old son who was only six weeks old when Bala was taken into custody.
He is in good spirits, Ahmed said of her husband. But it has been difficult for her, beginning when she was healing from childbirth while her husband remained behind bars.
“I am trying to be strong (but) my strength sometimes fails me," she said.
In prison, Bala remains resolute as a humanist despite his experiences since April 2020 when he was arrested, though he worries about the safety of his family and the humanists he leads in Nigeria.
Such concerns were what prompted him to plead guilty, his wife said, recalling how worried he had been that a non-guilty plea could cause more anger in northern Nigeria and endanger him more. He also hoped a guilty plea would help him regain access to health care and his young family, which he had been denied for most of the nearly two years he was in solitary confinement before being convicted.
Like Ahmed, the Nigerian humanist community hopes that an appeal of Bala’s conviction would bring him freedom.
“For now, I just have to keep pretending (to be religious),” said the atheist in Kano. “Even if I run to somewhere and come out, my family will not be safe.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Chinedu Asadu, The Associated Press
Such are the ways that some of the religiously unaffiliated, or “nones” — people who are agnostics, atheists or nothing in particular — negotiate their existence in the Middle East and North Africa, or MENA, where religion is often ingrained in life’s very fabric.
Aware that rejecting religion can have repercussions, many conceal that part of themselves. Declaring disbelief may spur social stigma, ostracism by loved ones or even unleash the wrath of authorities, especially if going public is coupled with real or perceived attacks on religion or God.
“I have a double life all the time,” said the 27-year-old Tunisian woman. “It’s better than having conflict every day.”
Many nonbelievers seek community, ideas or pockets of digital defiance on the internet even though online spaces can come with risks.
Most of those interviewed by The Associated Press spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions and because some of their families don’t know how they religiously identify.
“The Middle East is the birthplace of the three heavenly religions and there’s no doubt that the region’s culture has long been intertwined with religion,” said Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid, a political science professor at Cairo University. “Religion has also been a source of legitimacy for rulers, a source for knowledge and behavioral norms.”
Many in Arab countries, he said, associate lack of religion with immorality. “To them, you cannot talk about the rights of someone who is a danger to society.”
Bans on blasphemy appear in different parts of the world. But, according to a Pew Research Center analysis, they have been most common in the MENA region as of 2019.
The Tunisian woman said she fasts to avoid being found out by her family. She pretends to sleep to skip gatherings, where relatives may take aim at her suspected disbelief.
From an early age, she rejected how Islam was practiced in her home. She said her father would sometimes force her to pray. Resisting traditional interpretations of such things as gender roles, she turned to progressive Muslim readings.
She now sees herself as nothing in particular and open to different spiritual paths.
“You’re socially perceived like you are public enemy,” she said. “People hate you without knowing you.”
Hany Elmihy hoped conditions could change. The 57-year-old Egyptian agnostic and some other nonbelievers saw a window for visibility following the “Arab Spring" uprisings.
Elmihy said he founded a Facebook group for Egyptians without religion in 2011, while similar ones formed in other Arab countries. Mass protests demanding political change had just unseated an Egyptian president then, highlighting the power of social media for dissent.
“It’s not the revolution that turned some into atheists or irreligious; the revolution gave them the freedom and courage to speak up,” Elmihy said.
Elmihy said he was insulted, threatened, and attacked by unknown assailants.
Seeking recognition, he tried to change the “Muslim” designation listed on his identity card to state he adheres to no religion. He failed.
After the post-revolt euphoria fizzled out, he left Egypt in 2015 and now lives in Norway.
“Society scared me the most,” Elmihy said. “I felt isolated."
He views his earlier advocacy with mixed feelings, but says “it was important to let the society know that the religiously unaffiliated exist.”
Some took note.
Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said Egypt’s youth ministry announced plans in 2014 to combat atheism in collaboration with religious bodies.
Local press also reported on anti-atheism efforts by some Islamic and Christian institutions.
“We believe that those who don’t belong to religion are committing a sin but it’s not our responsibility to hold them accountable,” said Abbas Shouman, an official with Al-Azhar, the Cairo-based seat of Sunni Muslim learning. The role of religious authorities, he said “is only to explain, clarify, spread the right education and respond to suspicions.”
Shouman rejects attacks on religion, saying nonbelievers "have the right to defend their beliefs as they wish but not to go after others’ beliefs and affiliations.”
Atheism is not criminalized in Egypt, Ibrahim said. Last year, Ibrahim’s EIPR said an Egyptian court upheld a three-year-prison sentence and a fine against a blogger charged with contempt of religion and misusing social media. The organization, whose lawyer appealed the earlier verdict, has said the man was accused of managing a Facebook page for Egyptian atheists that allegedly criticizes religions.
In May, Iran hanged two men convicted of blasphemy, carrying out rare death sentences for the crime. The men were accused of involvement in a Telegram channel called “Critique of Superstition and Religion,” according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The Mizan news agency of Iran’s judiciary described the two as having insulted Prophet Muhammad and promoted atheism.
In Saudi Arabia, a court has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes on accusations of expressing atheism online; a media report said in 2016 that religious police found tweets denying the existence of God and ridiculing Quranic verses.
For some, like Ahmad, religious disbelief hasn’t caused tensions. But the 33-year-old Lebanese, who comes from a Shiite Muslim family and now lives in Qatar, wanted his last name withheld because of the sensitivity of the subject.
“We have an unspoken agreement: I don’t criticize religion and you don’t criticize my lack of religion,” he said. He’s religiously unaffiliated, and says he cannot believe “in something that I cannot touch or cannot see.”
The role of sectarian divisions in fueling conflicts in Lebanon is one reason Talar Demirdjian distanced herself from religion.
“People either go very into their religion or their sects, or the other side.” A Lebanese Armenian of Christian heritage, Demirdjian said about religion, “I don’t even think about it enough to tick a label.”
For one Iraqi woman, questions started when a childhood dream to one day become an imam like her grandfather was quashed because she is a girl. Iraq’s turmoil fueled her disbelief.
The 24-year-old's generation witnessed the U.S.-led invasion, militancy, sectarian violence, the brutal reign of the Islamic State and increasing clout of militias.
She’s worn the Islamic headscarf before and, for a while, after she became agnostic. When militants proliferated where she lived, she donned it to stay out of danger; at other times, it was to socially fit in. She removed it around 2020.
“I don’t tell people that I am agnostic,” she said. “It’d be an act of stupidity to do so in such a society.”
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AP writers Youcef Bounab in Paris and Abdulrahman Zeyad in Baghdad contributed.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Mariam Fam, The Associated Press
Nonreligious struggle to find their voice and place in Indian society and politics
CHENNAI, India (AP) — Despite India’s millennia-old history of nonreligious movements, most atheists and rationalists choose to keep quiet about their skepticism of faith — it’s easier and far less risky than going public in one of the world's most religious countries.
The space that does exist for debating religious authority and belief is shrinking, said Avinash Patil, a religious skeptic who was born Hindu and is now a leader of an anti-superstition group working in one of the country’s western states. He blames the growth of nationwide religious and communal tensions over the last decade as well as rising Hindu nationalism under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
“When you are open about it and engage in activism, it can get challenging, and even dangerous,” said Patil, chairperson of Maharashtra Andhashradha Nirmulan Samiti.
In fact, Patil and his organization are still seeking justice for its founder and renowned rationalist, Narendra Dabholkar, who was gunned down during a morning walk in Pune 10 years ago. Patil helped organize vigils and rallies Aug. 19-20 for Dabholkar in Mumbai and Pune. The murder trial is ongoing.
Indians not affiliated with any religion — known as the "nones” — are a very small minority among the nation’s 1.4 billion people, according to government statistics and independent surveys. They include atheists, agnostics, the culturally religious but not observant, rationalists and the spiritual but not religious.
It is possible that nones in India are underrepresented in such surveys due to societal taboos and shortcuts taken by interviewers, said Stephanie Kramer, a senior researcher at Pew Research Center who led a 2020 survey about the nation’s religious makeup.
Only 13 out of the 30,000 Indians surveyed by Pew said they were unaffiliated with any religion, while many more responded that there was no such thing as having no religion, Kramer said.
“Such a tiny percentage of people with no religion is unusual,” Kramer said.
Hindus are the largest religious group in India by far. They comprise about 80% of the population while Muslims account for 14%, the largest of the minority religions. The country also is home to Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Sikhs and numerous Indigenous faith traditions.
Renouncing one’s religion is allowed in India, and the Special Marriage Act of 1954 permits people with no religious beliefs to marry, as well as nonreligious and non-ritualistic weddings. But the country doesn’t officially recognize atheism or the nonreligious. To avoid a hassle, some feel forced to list a religion on government forms such as birth certificates, or on school admissions paperwork.
“There are delays with documents when you don’t state your religion,” said Jaswant Mohali, a coordinator for the rationalist group Tarksheel Society Punjab. “Sometimes we take this issue to court, but most of the time we just state our religion at birth to avoid problems with official documents.”
Mohali’s and Patil’s organizations are among those pushing for the government to add a “no religion” checkbox to the country’s new census form. But irreligious activists don’t just advocate for their specific causes; they have long pushed for other social justice issues like caste and gender equality.
Although small in numbers, atheists in India have been able to exert influence and advance their agenda “with a human approach and empathy,” said K. Veeramani, president of the Chennai-based Dravidar Kazhagam, a social justice organization advocating for equality. It was launched in the 1940s by E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, popularly known as Periyar, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
“It’s not about a show of hands,” Veeramani said. “It’s about clarity of thinking. The rationalist way of life is about equality and equity.”
The group, along with its coalition of political parties, has resisted Modi’s central government policies. Their biting rhetoric has sometimes proved controversial.
On Sept. 2, speaking at an event in Chennai, Udayanidhi Stalin, Tamil Nadu’s sports minister and son of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, called to eradicate Hinduism, comparing it to coronavirus, malaria and dengue. After a firestorm of criticism from opponents, allies and Hindus both within India and in the diaspora who called his statements anti-Hindu, Stalin, who identifies as atheist, doubled down on his comments, clarifying that his fight is against a system that perpetrated caste discrimination.
Sharp rhetoric about Hinduism often stems from deep-seated hurt and the trauma of caste, and not from hatred of Hindus or upper-caste Brahmins, said Annamalai Arulmozhi, a Chennai-based lawyer born to parents who were followers of Periyar and raised their children as atheists. Arulmozhi, who is still an atheist and a feminist, says feminism and fighting inequities perpetrated by the caste system have been central to Periyar’s movement, which continues today.
Fighting for justice means facing opposition from religion, culture, caste and everything else the system throws at you, Arulmozhi said.
“Atheism has given me the strength to stand against all of this,” she said. “To get justice, you have to oppose all these structures, branches and corollary institutions. You need to reject all that and only view your path and your goal as a humanist. That feeling, to me, is atheism.”
Arulmozhi said her family would not have had the opportunity to get an education without the push for equality that Periyar led. She has found living as an atheist “freeing.”
The nones in India come from an array of belief backgrounds, including Hindu, Muslim and Sikh. Atheism is still largely invisible and ignored in India, said Mohali, who was born into a Sikh family. Rational thought, he said, is without a platform.
“There are a lot of television channels for religion, but not for science or rational thought,″ he said.
Sultan Shahin, founder of a progressive Muslim website called New Age Islam, said he is seeing more Muslims in India questioning their religion and some even calling themselves “ex-Muslims.” Shahin shuns such labels but said most would view him as a “cultural Muslim.”
“I question how the Quran is compiled and I ask these questions openly,” he said. “We need to have room for these discussions without fearing for our safety.”
Historically, doubt has been an integral part of India's spiritual DNA. The gurus or spiritual masters, including the Buddha, encouraged followers to ask questions. Ancient Indian scriptures, such as verses in the Rig Veda, address skepticism around the fundamental question of a creator god, and the creation of the universe, said Signe Cohen, associate professor of religion at the University of Missouri who focuses on Hinduism and Buddhism.
“Buddhism is a functionally atheist religion because there is no belief in a god who is the creator of the universe or a savior of humans,” Cohen said.
Other religions that took root in India pose similar questions, she said. Jain texts raise the question most atheists ask: If there is a creator god who is the ruler of the universe, why is there so much suffering?
Materialist schools of thought dating back to the fifth and sixth centuries include declarations that human beings are nothing more than their physical bodies, and denied the existence of god, the soul and life after death. Others that denied the existence of gods still believed in rebirth and the soul.
India has also seen several movements in the last century that emphasize spirituality over religion and ritual, like the one started by philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. His foundation is headquartered in Chennai and emphasizes living in the present.
“He (the philosopher) said we don’t need to go the previous or next life because how we live now dictates the quality of the next moment or the next day,” said Harshad Parekh, a longtime follower and educator in Krishnamurti schools who was born Hindu and now is agnostic.
Krishnamurti died in 1986, but his view on the search for truth lives on in followers like Parekh.
“Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique,” according to the late philosopher.
Krishnamurti also repeatedly stated that he held no nationality or belief and belonged to no particular group or culture. Parekh strongly aligns with that belief.
He does, however, support the Modi government.
“I'm not for or against any religion or faith group,” he said. “But I do like what this government has done for the economy.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Deepa Bharath, The Associated Press
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