Feb 6, 2017 Newsletter

Our Vice-President Gord Leslie spoke with CBC this weekend about how peace and compassion are now more important than ever. Gord was invited to speak about the World Interfaith Harmony pilgrimage that was schedule for Sunday but was ultimately cancelled because of the snow.

Listen to the interview.

Also over the weekend, one of our Humanist Chaplain, Marty Shoemaker attended a vigil for the victims of last week's attack in Quebec and Ian Bushfield attended the rally against Islamophobia downtown. Read more on CBC.

Crowd at Al Jamia Mosque

Panoramic of Rally Against Islamophobia crowd (click to view in Google Photos)

These events together are a strong symbol of solidarity against bigotry and irrational hatred. While many of the speakers were Muslim, they still spoke of Humanist values: tolerance, peace and compassion.

It's events like these that give us hope.

PS We know many atheists dislike the term "Islamophobia." We take it here to mean arbitrary bigotry based on the sole fact that a person is Muslim. There is a time and place to debate the tenets of Islam and problems of Islamic extremism but these events were about standing up for peace and against bigotry.