Please Help CFIC Help Vulnerable People

by | November 19, 2015

CFI

2015 has been a terrible year of faith-based violence around the world.  We need your help to make a difference.

CFIC began the year condemning faith-based violence when terrorists attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo and then again when Avijit Roy was murdered in the streets of Dhaka.  Unfortunately, many other assassinations and terrorist attacks were to follow.

In the spring of 2015, CFIC began to provide direct assistance and support to a Bangladeshi writer and intellectual and his family, who had escaped Bangladesh. Though we have not publicized our work, CFI Canada has been a significant part of securing the safety of this family; we actively assisted with such things as: identifying and coordinating legal assistance, organizing housing and furniture needs, assisting with access to medical supports and providing a community to assist in orienting to life in Canada.

Even on our shoe-string budget, we made a difference and helped provide a safe destination for a targeted family…we didn’t fundraise then, we focussed on providing help.

Now, we are working urgently to put what we have learned to work for the spouse of a Canadian citizen who was brutally attacked on October 31st in Dhaka. Tareq Rahim, spouse of Monika Mistry, is a poet and intellectual who as terribly injured by fanatic terrorists.  We are urging the Canadian government to do what is needed to bring him to Canada to recover from those injuries with his wife. We have urged 17 organizations to join us in a call to Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to offer shelter and support for Tareq and the other targeted individuals.

Take Action to Protect Secular Writers and Intellectuals

Sign the on-line petition to help Tareq and Monika

Send a letter to the PM and your MP calling for assistance

Make a donation to help us continue this important work

Join CFIC as a member today

Together, we can make a difference. CFIC has already helped one secular writer and his family to escape near-certain execution.  Now we want to continue to help other writers, atheists, agnostics and intellectuals.  Our current plans include:

Continuing to push Canada and international governments to help Tareq Rahim and the targeted atheist/secular writers of Bangladesh. Media coverage CFIC has helped to coordinate: CBC, Global News.

Continuing to urge human-rights organizations in Canada and around the world to coordinate efforts to speak out for safe asylum for secular writers

Applying to be recognized as a Sponsorship Agreement Holder agency in Canada.  To be Canada’s leading Secular Asylum Sponsorship agency for secular, atheist and intellectual writers who cannot in good conscience accept aid from a religious organization.

Extending practical advice and support to the secular writers and intellectuals from Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Egypt and Turkey who have desperately reached out to Canada and CFIC for assistance.

Please help save the lives of secular, atheist, agnostic and humanist intellectuals. The government of Canada estimates the sponsorship costs for a small family to be between $25,000 and $30,000 – and CFIC does not have funding even for that woefully under-estimated figure.

We can only do this work with our donors’ and members’ support.

For the Secular writers and bloggers of Bangladesh who are living under an active death threat, we do not have time to spare. There is already evidence of the real intent of the attackers given the murders of Avijit Roy, Washiqur Rahman, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Neel and Faisal Dipan and the brutal assaults on Tareq Rahim, Rafida Bonya Ahmed and others.

A few facts about CFI Canada:

as a registered charity, we are able to issue charitable receipts

Your gift of $10, $25 or $50 will go help us to fight faith-based violence and oppression

CFI Canada is volunteer-driven and directed – we do not have a large staff or significant administrative overhead

CFIC’s membership has nearly doubled over the past 12 months – people are coming to CFIC as their community and solution provider.

Please consider the actions you can take from the above list; please consider making a donation today so we can continue to be a leading organization to help secular, atheist, humanist writers and intellectuals.

CFI Canada is the leading national charitable organization dedicated to secularism, skepticism, science, non-belief and free-thought!.

Donate Now

Eric Adriaans

National Executive Director

CFI Canada

3 thoughts on “Please Help CFIC Help Vulnerable People

  1. Court

    BLOG: I’m so depressed, I considered prayer.

    Firstly, I’m sick and tired of hearing about fear. Yours, mine, France’s, refugees’, Jebus’s. Not just since Paris, but back to ninth grade, sitting in a Career And Life Management class (some administrator’s moronic attempt to teach ethics), being told of 9/11.

    For those you who did the math, I’m (nearly) thirty years old. And, so irrationally depressed I don’t know what to do with myself.

    I should be dreaming 2.5 kiddos, home ownership, a bustling career (with paid off student loans, to boot), and the best years of my life; but alas, I’m so distracted by some blonde fox on Fox and her bosses who want me scared, that I’m writing a stupid blog. (Yes, regrettably, I’ve become ‘one of those people’. Please help; send money.)

    But, good news, folks, I’m not scared. I’m just pissed off.

    I was starting to accept that I may never, technically, own the Toronto backyard my kid plays in, so be it; and I was starting to accept that the job market may never return to the glory days of my forefathers and mothers; nor own a sports car; nor retire at fifty-five; will I endure a menial existence until the day I drop dead just to feed, clothe, and educate(!) my family? (Private school is overrated anyway, right?)

    Let’s not forget (the mind-numbing amount of time and breathe wasted) ‘debating’ my dear mother on the fragility of the Canadian economy. Hey, seniors, there’s almost more of you than the rest of us… (Pre-middle-aged and middle-aged, majority, tax payers.) Why debate your rights to be a snowbird on OAS, while our beloved Medicare system is on the edge of collapse? Hint: your pills are under Medicare. But, our convo gets cut short, for my sweet mother’s response is unchanged, “no grandkids, yet? By the time I was your age…”

    And, please tell me more, World, about how I coulda/woulda/shoulda help the Syrians, the homeless, the LGBTQ, the starving children in Africa (who have rarely been mentioned since last Christmas’ sad children’s choir aired), the cancers, the environment. And more. I’m not even (satisfactorily-)successful in the eyes of my lovely mother, yet the mass populous expects me to save the world? Well, pay for its saving.

    C’mon, irony much?

    Call it first-world problems, call it middle-class(-hopeful!) problems, call it whatever you want, but, my life hangs in this sling, so priority numero uno, it is.

    When do I get to exercise my right to not give a flying F, anymore? That’s how near-manic I think society has become, myself, most certainly, included. Video games and TV didn’t desensitize the kids, the world did.

    So, what will I do? I will not cower. I will not hate. And I will not give up my Canada.

    “No I don’t mind dying
    I don’t mind dying
    I don’t mind dying
    When it comes time, I will say no no no to war.”
    – Buffy Sainte-Marie

    Reply
  2. Tim Underwood

    Everybody loves Buffy, Saskatchewan’s favorite songbird.

    Some of us feel despair, always in the background, at the slow pace of religious dissolution. We know it is untrue, and divisive, but it has so much political support. This is the Achilles Heel of democracy. Politicians pay very close attention to potential votes as opposed to ethics.

    Not only do politicians not support superstition eradication, they don’t even make provisions for people trying to escape religious domination by their own family or from community based religious gangs.

    Our Universities are well versed in what is true about: thermodynamics, particle physics and natural selection. However they are deemed unfit to properly analyze: myths, stories, prophecies, dogmas, old literature or just plane bullshit.

    Our Universities are actually very able to dissect all this crap, so why don’t they. Is it just the manifestation democracy’s Achilles Heel?

    Reply

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