Fauzia Ilyas فوزیہ الیاس | |
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Born | Pakistan | 26 May 1989
Nationality |
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Occupations |
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Years active | 2012–present |
Known for | Criticism on Islam |
Movement | Secular movement |
Fauzia Ilyas (born 1989 [1]) is a Dutch Pakistani speaker, political activist, and the president and co-founder of Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan. [2] [3] [4] [5] Ilyas, an open atheist and apostate of Islam, fled from Pakistan after receiving threats to her life and faced potential legal charges for blasphemy in Pakistan. Ilyas received asylum in the Netherlands, where she is now a critic of Islam and campaigner for feminism, secularism, and atheist rights in Pakistan. [3] [1] [6] [2] [4]
Ilyas was born in 1989 and grew up in a religious Sunni Muslim family in Pakistan. [3] [1] At the age of 16, her father announced her arranged marriage with a businessman whom she had never met, and her new husband forced her to wear a veil and sexually abused her. [3] [1] Ilyas sought help from her parents, but they refused, giving Islamic excuses for her husband's behaviour. [3] [1] After daily unanswered prayers, Ilyas increasingly questioned the existence of Allah and professed her doubts to her husband, who reacted by forcing her out of their home and preventing her from seeing their daughter. [3] [1]
Later, Ilyas met a fellow atheist in Lahore named Sayed Gillani. [3] [1] They married and together founded Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan in 2012. [3] [1] After failing to keep their identities secret, Ilyas and Gillani faced death threats and charges of blasphemy, which is legally punishable by death in Pakistan. [3] [1] In 2015, they fled via Dubai to the Netherlands. [3] [1] First, Ilyas arrived in an asylum centre in Den Helder on 30 August, and was joined by Gillani in December after friends helped him fund his escape from Pakistan. [3]
As of December 2015, the Atheist & Agnostic Alliance of Pakistan had about 3,000 members. [3]
Ilyas featured both in Deeyah Khan's British documentary Islam's Non-Believers (October 2016) and in Dorothée Forma's Dutch documentary Non-believers: Freethinkers on the Run (December 2016). [1]
In January 2017, Ilyas presented her story to the European Parliament with the International Humanist and Ethical Union. [5] In April, she also received the International Atheist of the Year award. [7] Ilyas criticised Facebook for taking down almost all Pakistan-based secular and Islam-critical pages in response to mass flagging campaigns by Islamists. She argued that Facebook should be a platform for freedom of expression, and stop facilitating the Islamist crackdown against so-called "blasphemers". [8]
Het tweetal vlucht via Dubai naar Nederland waar ze nu al een jaar verblijven in een asielzoekerscentrum. [...] Fauzia en Sayed weten te ontkomen, al wordt er wel een aanklacht ingediend bij de politie tegen Fauzia wegens godslastering, afvalligheid en het oprichten van een organisatie voor ongelovige ex-moslims.
This website [Atheist & Agnostic Alliance Pakistan] was set up in 2011 for atheists in Pakistan, but its founder Fauzia Ilyas faced multiple death threats and was charged with blasphemy.
Het betekende het begin van een jarenlange lijdensweg, die haar van haar islamitische geloof zou doen vallen en voorlopig zou eindigen in een asielzoekerscentrum in Den Helder. [...] Nog datzelfde jaar richtten de twee de Atheists & Agnostics Alliance Pakistan (AAAP) op. [...] In april van dit jaar gebeurde wat Fauzia en Sayed al langer hadden gevreesd: iemand kwam achter Fauzia's identiteit en toog naar de politie om een aanklacht in te dienen wegens blasfemie: hij zei aanstoot te hebben genomen aan haar opvattingen.
Samen met haar man Syed richtte Fauzia in Pakistan een vereniging voor atheïsten en agnosten op. Ze kregen te maken met een aanklacht wegens blasfemie.
Την έκθεση παρουσίασε ο Διευθυντής του IHEU Bob Churchill, ενώ για τις απειλές θανάτου που έλαβε ως ιδρυτής της αγνωστικιστικής και αθεϊστής συμμαχίας στο Πακιστάν μίλησε η Fauzia Ilyas.
Ze verliest haar dochtertje en vriendinnen en wordt door familie met de dood bedreigd.
I was honoured to jointly receive the International Atheist of the Year 2017 award, along with Fauzia Ilyas of the Pakistani Atheist Association, at the Polish Days of Atheism in Warsaw this weekend.