The Honor Roll of Freethinkers and Defenders of Human Rights
This is a partial list of mostly alive and mostly real people: writers, philosophers, ethicists, historians, activists, gadflies, and publications. They comprise an Honor Roll of those who have spoken out for human rights, free inquiry, freedom of expression, science, secularism, equality, reason, and against the forces that threaten all of these today:Islamism and all fundamentalist religions.
They cover the political spectrum, from the independent left to the center, and, some might think, the right. But their work and their shared beliefs transcend these relatively unimportant divisions. Anyone wanting an accurate history and depiction of today's leading political and social struggle - against Islamism and the enslavement of women in the Arab and Muslim world - needs to consult their writings and statements.
I include the appropriately offensive Sacha Baron Cohen, the leading adversary of Political Correctness, misguided multiculturalism, and cultural hype, and his (late) comrade in arms, the murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who gave his life in the cause of freedom of expression, as well as the quite alive filmmaker Geert Wilders, whose film Fitna (Submission) should be seen by all as the firsthand witness and entirely accurate testimony to the brutality of Islam.
Apologies to those inadvertently left out.
Steve Emerson
Nick Cohen (The Guardian)
Fred Halliday (UK)
Pascal Bruckner
Bernard-Henri Levy
Phyllis Chesler
Caroline Fourest
Rachel Ehrenfeld
Salman Rushdie
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Irshad Manji
Taslima Nasreen
Tawfik Hamid
Wafa Sultan
Gita Sahgal
Brigitte Gabriel
Brooke Goldstein
Nonie Darwish
Ibn Warraq
Christopher Hitchens
Sam Harris
Oriana Fallaci
Richard Dawkins
Daniel Dennett
Paul Berman
Bernard Lewis
Nicholas Kristof
Ahmed Rashid
Robert Spencer
Bruce Bawer
Mark Steyn
Walid Phares
Geert Wilders
Sacha Baron Cohen
Gary Hull
Jytte Klausen
Jyllands-Posten/Flemming Rose
Fred Siegel
International Free Press Society
George Orwell (post.)
Theo van Gogh (post.)
Center for Inquiry/Free Inquiry
Freedom from Religion Foundation
First of the Month
The Onion
In memoriam: National Lampoon