Announcement to the World

June 8th, 2004
International Executive Committee (IEC)
International Committee to Protect Freethinkers (ICPF)

"What you call freedom I call freedoms. The battle for freedom is nothing but the continuous pursuit of the idea of freedom." [Henrik Ibsen]

There are no boundaries or chains for freedom of thinking....To deny secularism is to ignore the essence of modern civilization....To call for a religious state is to ignore human rights....To call for a return to the Islamic Khelafa is to ignore history....Oh, Reader of future times: read what we wrote, learn how a human being can take a stance, how we crafted with our pens a new age of enlightenment, and how words are more powerful than bullets." [Farag Foda]

FROM India, Germany, the USA, and Canada, the Executive of the International Committee to Protect Freethinkers announces to the world the establishment of this movement on three continents on this 8th day of June, 2004.

By choosing this symbolic date, we intend to signify the universality and global consciousness of our new entity. On June 8th, 1992, the Egyptian secular thinker and writer, Dr Farag Foda, was sprayed with bullets by Muslim fundamentalists in Cairo.

We consider our entity to be a member of the world family of the human rights, freethought, atheist, and humanist movements. It is not our intention to undermine or fragment the noble work and missions of other current and active entities.

What we are seeking to do is add another human power to them and to become part of global light- holders who are anticipating and struggle against the global forces of darkness in the forest of cultures.

Our current world is too complicated, too wide, and too variegated. The cases of suppression of free thought and expression, civil rights and freedom of consciousness are too numerous.

The global forces of darkness, in the clear-minded pursuit of their objectives, are more powerful than the holders of enlightenment values.

Therefore, we trust that our newly established entity will shine a new light, particularly in the tragic darkness of the Islamic world. The articles of our mission statement genuinely reflect what we mean to be and to do.

We extend our hands to every worldwide group, organization, and association that is in agreement with our principles.

For the history of truth, I am obliged to mention that the initial idea for the ICPF sprang from India, the land of mystic freedom and largest democracy on earth, through our friend Jaya Gopal.

While the second idea for the structure of the IEC sprang from Canada through the writer of this statement. But above all, without the La Cena conference held in Freiburg, the home, the head and the heart of the Alliance Against Conformism, and the members of AAC, this history would have not been written.

Moreover, without the collective efforts of other members in the US and Canada, this entity would have not been born. The truly intellectual task is to see, not to mirror, human endeavors, and to defend, not just to record them.

I am overwhelmingly honored by the intellectual trust that my friends put in me to write the announcement of this entity on their behalf.

Dr. Marvin F. Zayed, International Executive Committee (IEC)
[diahumanism-institute@sympatico.ca]