Irreligion in Yemen is uncommon among Yemenis, as Islam is the predominant faith. [1] It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists in Yemen, as they are not officially counted in the census of the country. There is a great stigma attached to being an atheist in Yemen, so many Yemeni atheists communicate with each other via the internet. [1]
The punishment for leaving Islam in Yemen is the death penalty. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In response to the 2013 Sana'a attack, a Yemeni woman from Bajil in Hudaydah declared converting from Islam to Christianity and immediately, the government put her under investigations, after a chance timeout, sent her to a psychiatric hospital. [5] [6] By the end of 2013, a new page was founded on the Facebook and encouraging non-religious Yemenis to show up and not to get afraid of the wild community reaction. [7]
There has been also a broad misconception between secularism and atheism or even being non-religious, many activists were kidnapped due to that confusion, examples including the following events:
The persecution of Christians from 1989 to the present is part of a global pattern of religious persecution. In this era, the persecution of Christians is taking place in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Discrimination against atheists, sometimes called atheophobia, atheistophobia, or anti-atheism, both at present and historically, includes persecution of and discrimination against people who are identified as atheists. Discrimination against atheists may be manifested by negative attitudes, prejudice, hostility, hatred, fear, or intolerance towards atheists and atheism or even the complete denial of atheists' existence. It is often expressed in distrust regardless of its manifestation. Perceived atheist prevalence seems to be correlated with reduction in prejudice. There is global prevalence of mistrust in moral perceptions of atheists found in even secular countries and among atheists.
Yemen is an Islamic country. Nearly all Yemenis are Muslims, The U.S. government estimates that more than 99 percent of the population is Muslim. with approximately 60% belonging to Sunni Islam and 40% belonging to Shia Islam (Zaidi). Amongst the native population, there were approximately 1,000 Christians, and 6 remaining Jews in 2016. However, Pew-Templeton estimates the number of Christians to be as high as 40,000, though most do not publicly identify as such, due to fears of religious persecution. According to WIN/Gallup International polls, Yemen has the most religious population among Arab countries and it is one of the most religious populations world-wide.
Atheism and agnosticism have a long history in India and flourish within the Śramaṇa movement. Indian religions like Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism consider atheism to be acceptable. Doubt has been ingrained even in Indian spiritual culture.
Waleed Al-Husseini or Walid Husayin is a Palestinian atheist, secularist essayist, writer, blogger, ex-Muslim and founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. Born and raised in Qalqilya in the West Bank, he has been living in France since 2012.
Irreligion is present among a minority of mainly young people in Pakistan. Atheists in Pakistan face discrimination, persecution, and prejudice in society. Pakistan is reported by some sources to be among the thirteen countries where atheism can attract capital punishment, but according to the Library of Congress of the United States, "there is no specific statutory law that criminalizes apostasy in Pakistan." On the other hand, the Pakistani government can impose the death penalty for blasphemy.
Irreligion in Egypt is controversial due to the prominence of conservative social traditions and the persecution by the religious institutions in the country. It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists or agnostics in Egypt, as the stigma attached to being one makes it hard for irreligious Egyptians to publicly profess their views and beliefs.
Irreligion in Iraq has a societal, political and historical background. Although the Constitution of Iraq guarantees freedom from religious coercion, and states that all citizens are equal before the law without regard to religion, sect, or belief, irreligious people may encounter difficulties with the authorities. Another source of problem is usually the community and family, with reactions varying from one family to another. The “Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism” listed Iraq as one of six countries as having the lowest rate of atheism in 2012. After six years, with religious figures coming to power, the situation changed rapidly as the tide of religiosity receded. According to various Iraqi thinkers, this occurred after the religious politicians came to power, and their role in sectarianism and state corruption, and by regularly occupying television slots to spread their agendas. The increasing prevalence of atheism and agnosticism signals a tidal public opinion change.
Irreligion in Saudi Arabia is difficult to measure as it is illegal to leave the Islamic faith in the country. Most atheists in Saudi Arabia communicate with each other via the Internet.
Irreligion in Iran has a long historical background, but is difficult to measure, as those who profess atheism are at risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and the death penalty. Non-religious citizens are officially unrecognized by the Iranian government. In the official 2011 census, 265,899 persons did not state any religion. Between 2017 and 2022, the World Values Survey found that 1.3% of Iranians identified as atheists, and a further 14.3% as not religious. In the 1999-2004 cycle, the WVS had found 1% identified as atheist and 3% as not religious.
According to a study by Humanists International (HI), Afghanistan is one of the seven countries in the world where being an atheist or a convert can lead to a death sentence. According to the 2012 WIN-Gallup Global Index of Religion and Atheism report, Afghanistan ranks among the countries where people are least likely to admit to being an atheist.
Irreligion in the Middle East is the lack of religion in the Middle East. Though atheists in the Middle East are rarely public about their lack of belief, as they are persecuted in many countries where they are classified as terrorists, there are some atheist organizations in the Middle East. Islam dominates public and private life in most Middle East countries. Nonetheless, there reside small numbers of irreligious individuals within those countries who often face serious formal and, in some cases, informal legal and social consequences.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
Irreligion in the United Arab Emirates is rare, with only up to 4% of people reporting irreligious beliefs according to a Gallup poll. It is illegal for Muslims, with apostates from Islam facing a maximum sentence of the death penalty under the country's anti-blasphemy law. As such, there have been questions regarding freedom of religion in the United Arab Emirates.
Armin Navabi is an Iranian-Canadian ex-Muslim atheist, author and podcaster, currently living in Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, he founded the online freethought community Atheist Republic, a Canada-based non-profit organisation which now has hundreds of branches called "consulates" in several countries around the world such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, enabling non-believers to interact in societies where irreligion, apostasy, and blasphemy are often criminalised and repressed. As an author, he debuted with the book Why There Is No God (2014), and in 2017 he became a co-host of the Secular Jihadists from the Middle East podcast with Ali A. Rizvi, Yasmine Mohammad and Faisal Saeed Al Mutar. In January 2018, the show was renamed Secular Jihadists for a Muslim Enlightenment, with Rizvi and Navabi as co-hosts.
Muhammad Syed is a Pakistani-American writer, speaker, and political activist. He created the Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA) advocacy group in 2013 which seeks to normalize religious dissent and to help former Muslims leave the religion by linking them to support networks. He is the co-founder, executive director, and currently the president of EXMNA.
Ex-Muslims are individuals who were raised as Muslims or converted to Islam and later chose to leave the religion. These individuals may encounter challenges related to the conditions and history of Islam, Islamic culture and jurisprudence, as well as local Muslim culture. In response, ex-Muslims have formed literary and social movements, as well as mutual support networks and organizations, to address the difficulties associated with leaving Islam and to raise awareness of human rights issues they may face.
The situation for apostates from Islam varies markedly between Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority regions. In Muslim-minority countries, "any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal". But in some Muslim-majority countries, religious violence is "institutionalised", and "hundreds and thousands of closet apostates" live in fear of violence and are compelled to live lives of "extreme duplicity and mental stress."
Malaysia, a primarily Muslim country located in peninsular and insular regions of Southeast Asia, has a government heavily influenced by Islamic law, which expresses anti-heretical and anti-atheist views. Notably, in 2017, the official Shahidan Kassim faced backlash for threatening to "hunt down" atheists in response to a meeting of members of Atheist Republic.