Linked with National Secular Society NSS.
Mina Ahadi (born 1956) is an Iranian Communist political activist and current member of the Central Committee and Politburo of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. She is the main figure of the International Committee against executions and International Committee against stoning. She is also a member of the German Central Council of Ex-Muslims. Mina Ahadi was born in Abhar, Iran to an Iranian Azeri family. Her husband, who was also a political activist, was executed on the date of the couple’s anniversary. His execution became her motivation to fight against capital punishment. She is currently living and working in Germany and recently helped to gain the freedom of Nazanin Fateh in Iran. Due to death-threats against her, she has been living under police protection from the moment of her public appearance as the chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims. On 20 October 2007 she was awarded the Secularist of the Year prize by the UK’s National Secular Society. She is the mother of two daughters. (full text).
Die offizielle Webseite von Mina Agadi, in persian & auf deutsch.
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Mina Ahadi – Iran
She says: « The only way is to apply sanctions to countries with the death penalty … According to Amnesty International, the number of minors sentenced to the death penalty reached 71. However, I have data which says that 250 teenagers, including 17 citizens of Afghanistan, were sentenced to the death penalty in Iranian prisons ». (full text).
Mina was spokeswoman of the International Campaign in Defense of Women’s Rights in Iran. She has been invited by Amnesty international several times to attend their annual meetings and address their members. She is a well- known figure in the movement for women’s rights and has had many interviews with leading newspapers and TV programs in Europe. (full text).
Video: Mina Ahadi, 8 march, women’s right, Islam veil, hejab hijab, 19.17 min., March 9, 2007.
Video ‘Secularist of the Year presentation, 2007’, part 1, 9.59 min., and part 2, 9.59 min., and part 3, 10.11 min.
See all her videos on Google video-search.
She says also: « As a Muslim girl, I was not allowed to do so many things. From the age of 12 onwards I was basically not allowed to leave the house. I couldn’t play on the street, I couldn’t mix with boys, I couldn’t even do the shopping. I hated it. There was terrible violence towards the women in my community, everywhere. One of my cousins, Nahid, went into a man’s house unaccompanied, and the men in my family tied her to a tree and whipped her. When I read the Koran for myself I was shocked, because many of these things are actually recommended by the Prophet Mohammed ». (full text).
The Central Council of Ex-Muslims has also spoken out against the project. Speaking on German public radio, Mina Ahadi, chairwoman of the ex-Muslims group, argued that were already enough mosques in Germany. « If more mosques are built, then women are put under increased pressure and even more children will be sent to school in headscarves, and become isolated, » she said. (full text).
Human rights activists have formed a « Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany » to help women renounce the Islamic faith if they feel oppressed by its laws. Its Iranian-born founder Mina Ahadi, under police protection after receiving death threats, talks to DER SPIEGEL about its goals … Iranian-born Mina Ahadi, 50, said she set up the group to highlight the difficulties of renouncing the Islamic faith which she believes to be misogynist. She wants the group to form a counterweight to Muslim organisations that she says don’t adequately represent Germany’s secular-minded Muslim immigrants. Ahadi has been put under police protection in recent days. Renouncing Islam can carry the death penalty in a number of countries including Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and Mauritania. In other countries people who turn their backs on the faith aren’t punished by courts, but they are often ostracized by family and friends. It’s a difficult subject among Muslim communities in Europe too. (full text).
A woman who has spent her life opposing the mistreatment of women by the Iranian clerical regime has been awarded the £5,000 prize for Secularist of the Year by the National Secular Society. Mina Ahadi, an Iranian exile now living in Germany, was presented with the prize in London on Saturday (20 October). (full text).
Find her also on Google blog-search.
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Listen to her: Mina Ahadi, Ex-Muslim speech (she speeks in german, and is translated in english), 6.44 min.
The end of 1980 her house was raided by the police and her husband and four of their comrades arrested. Mina escaped only because she wasn’t at home at the time. Her husband and the four arrested were all executed by firing squad soon after. She lived underground for some time and then fled to Iranian Kurdistan in 1981, where she continued to struggle against the Islamic regime for the next ten years. In 1990 she went to Vienna. She moved to Germany in 1996 and has lived in Europe since then. (full text).
See 2 pictures.
Download the book: « die islamische Republik Iran »: Die Herrschaft des politischen Islam … « .
Kurzbiographie (short bio in german).
Lies: Vorkämpfer für Islam-Austritte mit dem Tod bedroht.
Mina Ahadi (* 1956 in Abhar, Iran) ist eine iranische politische Aktivistin, die seit 1996 in Deutschland lebt. Sie ist Gründungsmitglied und Vorsitzende des Zentralrats der Ex-Muslime.
Ahadi, die der nationalen Minderheit der Aserbaidschaner im Iran angehört, studierte an der Universität Täbriz Medizin und war an der linken Opposition gegen den Schah Reza Pahlavi beteiligt. Nach Gründung der Islamischen Republik Iran durch Chomeini, organisierte Ahadi Protestaktionen und Demonstrationen, wurde daraufhin vom Studium ausgeschlossen und begann in einer Fabrik zu arbeiten. Ende 1980 durchsuchte der Geheimdienst ihre Wohnung und verhaftete ihren Mann sowie fünf Gäste, die kurz darauf hingerichtet wurden. Die wegen ihrer politischen Aktivitäten gesuchte und später zum Tod verurteilte Ahadi verbrachte mehrere Monate im Untergrund in Teheran und floh schließlich 1981 in die Kurdenregion im Westen des Landes. 1990 ging sie ins Exil nach Wien und 1996 schließlich nach Köln.
Ahadi kämpft für die Rechte von Frauen und gegen die Todesstrafe, besonders die Steinigung. 2001 gründete sie das Internationale Komitee gegen Steinigung. Sie ist Vorsitzende des 2004 gegründeten International Committee Against Executions (I.C.A.E.). und des 2007 gegründeten deutschen Zentralrats der Ex-Muslime. Daneben ist sie Mitglied des Politbüros und ZKs der Arbeiterkommunistischen Partei Irans.
Mina Ahadi wurde im Oktober 2007 von der britischen National Secular Society mit dem mit 5.000 britischen Pfund dotierten Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year ausgezeichnet … (ganzer Text).
Two thumbs up for Mr. Rasmussen. He seems to understand how important it is to do what it takes to protect the most courageous defenders of Europe’s values. During the Cold War it was individuals like Vaclav Havel, Adam Michnik, Andrei Sakharov and others east of the Iron Curtain. Today it’s people like Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, Irshad Manjii, Mina Ahadi and other dissidents from the Muslim world who are the most ardent defenders of our civilization. (full text).
And finally she says: « Another time, during the uproar over the Mohammad caricatures, I saw a bearded man saying in an interview that 3 and a half million Muslims in Germany were offended by the caricatures. In Germany, the Islamic organisations see themselves as the representative of 3 and a half million Muslims, of which I am one, and the government recognises them as such too ».
« I have stood up against the policies of the German government and Islamic organisations and carried out many campaigns; the media and politicians know of us. But after a while I realised that a campaign was needed that would take into consideration all the various issues I have been campaigning for. I went into the centre of society and said: I am not a Muslim. I called on those who wanted to provocatively show their opposition to Islam and the German government’s policies to say ‘I have turned away from religion’ with their photographs. In 1971 there was a campaign of pro abortion rights where women who had had abortions came forward with their pictures and said: I have had an abortion. There are now 300 of us with our photos saying: we have turned away from religion. The news of our coming together exploded in German society. At our press conference, 110 media outlet representatives attended, including Reuters, BBC, CNN and others. At the press conference we said that we are representing another policy. We are against the division of the world into Islamic and non-Islamic countries. We are against the label that all those who have left Islam-stricken countries are Muslim or that being Muslim is their most important characteristic. At the press conference, I said they have put so many labels on us; I in turn would like to put a label on Islamic organisations – out of date ».
« Today I have come to say our campaign has received unprecedented support from innumerable people. I receive 250-300 letters daily – most of which congratulate me and calling me brave. 3% say they will kill me with god’s poison. 3 hours after my picture and interview was published In Focus where I said I was born into a Muslim family by accident and that I was 14 when I turned away from Islam, the German police were at the door of my home saying I had to be protected because the Islamists had threatened to kill me. The political Islamic movement is an international movement and assassination is one of the important means they use ».
« People ask me if I am not afraid to speak out against the Islamists. I say I know this movement very well. We have brought the leaders of this movement in Iran to their knees. 28 years ago I was given an execution sentence by Khomeini and the Islamic regime’s leaders. But today I say if we stay silent, they will stone women in the streets of Germany and England in a few years » … (full text).
links:
Why do we ignore the plight of ex-Muslims? 25 October 2007;
Iran, Public Executions Signal New Wave of Suppression, October 9, 2007;
Child executions violate international law – « No capital punishment … shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age », Article 37(a) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;