Earlier this week, a story floating on the fringes of the news cycle caught my attention.
A man from Pakistan who arrived in the UK in 2011 — and renounced his Muslim faith, declaring that he was now a humanist — applied last year for asylum in Britain, on the grounds that his life was in danger if he returned home. But after being interviewed, Hamza bin Walayat's application for asylum was rejected by the authorities, and he is now facing deportation back to Pakistan.
Bizarrely, it seems that the clincher was that bin Walayat failed to correctly answer questions about ancient Greek philosophers. According to the Home Office — the UK government department that deals with immigration — he was unable to identify Plato and Aristotle as humanist philosophers, which, they said, demonstrated that his knowledge of humanism was “rudimentary at best,” and that his application for asylum was spurious.
Read Full Article »