Friends of Republican Atheists
Heather Mac Donald – Published Author, Speaker
Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald has covered a range of topics in her writing and research, including higher education, immigration, policing, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald’s newest book, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture (2018) (purchase book here), argues that toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Finally, Mac Donald has appeared on a wide variety political talk shows, such as Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Rubin Report, PBS Newshour, Fox Business, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson (Hoover Institution), and many more.
Ibn Warraq – Published Author, Speaker
WARRAQ, studied Arabic and Persian at the University of Edinburgh, and is the best-selling author of Why I am not a Muslim (1995). This book was a warning to the West about the dangers of political Islam, and multiculturalism. Since 1998, Ibn Warraq has edited several books of Koranic criticism, and on the origins of Islam (e.g. The Origins of the Koran, 1998; The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, 2000; What the Koran Really Says, 2002; Which Koran?, 2011; and Christmas in the Koran, 2014). Ibn Warraq’s Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, 2007, was described as “a glorious work of scholarship, and it is going to contribute mightily to modernizing the way we think about Western civilization and the rest of the world.” In Why the West is Best (2011), Ibn Warraq again defends Western civilization, and seeks to regain Western civilizational self-confidence, and to alleviate the Western burden of guilt about slavery and colonialism pointing out that Islamic civilization was a greater slaver, greater colonialist and destroyed many cultures when it imposed Islam. The West, on the other hand, was the first to abolish slavery, and preserved and encouraged the study of non-Western cultures.
Ibn Warraq is at present Senior Research Fellow at the Westminster Institute, in Virginia, USA.
Jillian Becker – Published Author, Commentator
Jillian Becker is founder and editor-in-chief of The Atheist Conservative (www.theatheistconservative.com). She writes both fiction and non-fiction. Her first novel, The Keep, is now a Penguin Modern Classic. Her best known work of non-fiction is Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang, an international best-seller and Newsweek (Europe) Book of the Year 1977. She was Director of the London-based Institute for the Study of Terrorism 1985-1990, and on the subject of terrorism contributed to TV and radio current affairs programs in Britain, the US, Canada, and Germany. Among her published studies of terrorism is The PLO: the Rise and Fall of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Her articles on various subjects have been published in newspapers and periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic, among them Commentary, The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal (Europe), Encounter, The Times (UK), The Telegraph Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Standpoint, New English Review. She served on an all-party committee that advised the British Parliament on terrorist issues during Margaret Thatcher’s prime-ministership. She was born in South Africa but made her home in London. All her early books were banned or embargoed in the land of her birth while it was under an all-white government. In 2007 she moved to California to be near two of her three daughters and four of her six grandchildren.
Mpagi M. Micheal – Uganda
Mpagi M. Micheal was born in Uganda in 1979 to parents who had not planned his birth. At 10 years old he became homeless due to hardships with his family, and lived on the streets of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. He gradually became an outspoken activist about human rights violations, political freedoms, economic justice, corruption, plunder of public resources and separation of church and state. In 2004, he spoke on a Uganda radio show in defense of LGBTQ rights, and the radio station was subsequently fined $1000 by the state and forced to make a public apology for hosting his commentary. He founded, and has been a member of, numerous organizations defending atheists and LGBTQ rights and health. In 2016 he relocated to the United States. His most recent organization he founded is called Secular Friends for Liberties and Rule of Law, which promotes separation of state and religion in Africa, governance and African public policy. Learn more about Mpagi at his personal website at this link.
Interested in connecting with Mpagi? Email info[at]republicanatheists.com.
Leandro Guimarães – Brazil
Guimarães is based in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil (“the 3 borders city” of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina). He has been a dentist since 2006 and is now studying Medicine. His political views are Libertarian/right-leaning, and he identifies as Agnostic/atheist. He follows European, American and South American politics, and is interested in getting rid of Cultural Marxism in South America.
Questions for Leandro? Email info[at]republicanatheists.com.