Trump has been eating up too much of my attention. From over two weeks ago: the National Secular Society named Yasmin Rehman Secularist of the Year.

The Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year 2017 has been awarded to Yasmin Rehman, the secular campaigner for women’s rights.

Yasmin has spent much of the past two years working to get the Government to recognise the dangers faced by ex-Muslims and Ahmadi Muslims from Islamic extremists. She has used her own home as a shelter for women at risk of domestic abuse.

Accepting the prize, Yasmin Rehman thanked the Society for recognising her work and said she was “incredibly humbled” to be nominated among other figures who were “personal heroines.”

She said there were two women, Maryam Namazie and Gita Sahgal, whom she couldn’t have campaigned without, and that she was “honoured” to stand beside them.

Yasmin posted part of her speech on Facebook and gave me permission to quote it:

For those who do not understand how I can have a faith and be secular I thought I would share a section from my speech. This is my understanding of secularism and why a secular approach is one that I strongly advocate.

I should explain: I use secularism not to mean absence of religion but to mean a state structure which defends both freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief, but where there is no state religion, where law is not derived from God and where religious actors cannot impose their will on public policy. A secular state does not simply limit religion, it also maintains as a duty, not a favour, the essential right of religious freedom – the freedom to worship and maintain churches, mosques and temples unhindered and to protect minorities from attack. Such a right also includes the right to challenge dominant religious interpretations and importantly to leave religion. Such a state is crucial to the protection of rights, not only for women, but also for religious minorities. In fact it is the only structure in which religious fundamentalists have a voice, but which is capable of limiting the inevitable harm they will cause.

This is not to say that women in secular spaces are not oppressed. The battle for women’s emancipation continues across the world and in any conversation about feminism we cannot ignore patriarchy. Of course, patriarchy controls both religious and secular spaces. Here, I wish to make a distinction between a faith based space and a religious space. As a dear friend pointed out to me, “feminists need faith – faith to change the world when all history tells us we’re on the losing side”. No, what I am talking about is religious spaces where religion and particular interpretations are used to reinforce and legitimize discrimination, inequality, violence and abuse. Islamism is being normalised.

Back to the NSS:

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “I’m particularly pleased that this afternoon we have a secularist who is also a Muslim to present our prizes. She is living proof that secularism and Muslims can co-exist if given half a chance and co-founded British Muslims for Secular Democracy in 2006.”

Mr Sanderson described how secularism protected the rights of all and said it and democracy were “interdependent”.

Dr Michael Irwin kindly sponsored the £5,000 award. The award was presented by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. She said: “The thing I find interesting and frightening at the moment is when I talk to young Muslims is how little they understand what secularism means.”

She said the Society’s most important work was in explaining what secularism meant for young people, particularly Muslims, and demonstrate that secularism was not atheism.

She warned of the growth of Muslim “exceptionalism” and that “universalism needs to be promoted.”

The Society was joined at the central London lunch event by previous winners of the prize including Maryam Namazie, who was the inaugural Secularist of the Year back in 2005. Peter Tatchell, who won the prize on 2012 also attended.

I wish I could have teleported myself to London for that.