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Maryam Namazie (Persian: مریم نمازی; born 1966 in Tehran, Iran) is a British-Iranian secularist, communist and human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster. Most of her early work focused on refugee rights, especially in Sudan, Turkey, and Iran, and she has actively campaigned against sharia law. Namazie became well known in the mid-2000s for her pro-secularism positions and her critique of the treatment of women under Islamic regimes. In 2015, her lectures were opposed by groups labeling her as too provocative. Namazie was born in Tehran to Hushang and Mary Namazie, but left with her family in 1980 after the 1979 revolution in Iran.She has subsequently lived in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where she began her university at the age of 17. Namazie first worked with Ethiopian refugees in Sudan. After a 1989 military coup when Islamic law was instituted in Sudan, her clandestine organisation in defence of human rights, Human Rights Without Frontiers, was discovered and she was threatened by Sudanese security and had to leave the country. Back in the United States in 1990 she became the Founder of the Committee for Humanitarian Assistance to Iranian Refugees (CHAIR). In 1994 she worked with Iranian refugees in Turkey and produced a film about their situation. Namazie was then elected Executive Director of the International Federation of Iranian Refugees with branches in more than twenty countries. She has led several campaigns, especially against human rights violations of refugees in Turkey. Namazie has also broadcast programmes via satellite television in English: TV International. Namazie has not limited her activism for secularism to her country of birth: she has also campaigned internationally including in Canada, Britain, where she currently lives. In numerous articles and public statements she has challenged cultural relativism and political Islam. These activities were recognised by the National Secular Society with the 2005 Secularist of the Year award, making Namazie its first recipient. After the gesture of the Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, who posted nude pictures of herself to provoke the Islamists, Namazie launched a calendar with pictures of naked female activists in February 2012, with among others the Ukrainian Alena Magela of the FEMEN group.
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