The issue at hand.

In the face of religiously identified terrorism, humanists and freethinkers find it easy to recall Voltaire's dictum that those who believe absurdities commit atrocities. This idea emerges from an ancient tradition of rationalism wherein any departure from reason is regarded as dangerous. The Roman Stoic philosopher and playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca expressed the principle most dramatically in his tragedies, creating characters who, once they succumbed to irrational thinking, descended headlong, like Shakespeare's King Lear, down the slippery slope to madness. Centuries later, Sigmund Freud would put the matter more delicately, posing it as a question: if I am to believe nonsense, why only this nonsense? (And, by implication: if I am to believe absurdities, why not act on them?)

While there is much that is instructive in such analysis, we need to be sophisticated enough to acknowledge that human emotion, belief, and politics are hardly so simple. In the context of present events, this means recognizing that there is more behind acts of terror than religion, and all religion isn't fanatical.

It is to provide this greater understanding of current events and belief that many of the articles in this issue of the Humanist are dedicated.

To begin, Tahmeena Faryal of Afghanistan shows how the traditional Islam in her country shouldn't be equated with the fundamentalist variety imposed by such groups as the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. Indeed, religious, social, and political practices which were leading the country toward modernism had long been developing in Afghanistan--right up until the 1980s when politicized Islamists from elsewhere were brought into the country by Pakistan and the United States to combat the Soviets.

David Schafer reveals the larger history behind the modern development of politicized Islam, exposes the great variation in Muslim belief and practice, and reacts to those humanist writers who have emerged from the Muslim community highly critical of the faith. While Schafer agrees that conversion from Islam to humanism is a good thing, and the more the better, he finds this an unrealistic solution to the problem of Islamic fanaticism. Better to side with liberal and mainstream Muslims to drive the wedge deeper between them and the dangerous extremists.

There is, after all, a future for a humanized Islam and a secularized Middle East--as shown by Matt Cherry in his analysis of the Republic of Turkey, a modern nation, predominantly Muslim, which has recently become a candidate for admission into the European Union. The example of Turkey may well provide a model that other predominantly Muslim nations can follow toward achieving the ideals of secular government, religious liberty, and peace.

Such is the general theme of this issue: a call for a kinder, gentler, and more nuanced approach to traditional faiths--faiths which, though technically incompatible with the humanist commitment to reason and compassion, nonetheless offer opportunities for humanist alliance and cooperation.