On Thursday 7th December 2017, MDI’s Abdullah al Andalusi, was invited by the internationally renown think tank , Chatham House’ [The Royal Institute of International Affairs], to a debate the title ‘Should Religion be Separate from State?’.
Chatham House was established in 1920, and is a world renown policy institute. It is Ranked the world’s most influential (non-U.S.) Think Tank, and second most influential Think Tank worldwide after the Brookings Institute (2016 Global Go To Think Tank Inbex Report, University of Pennsylvania).
The debate was decided by seeing which speakers managed to change the most minds by the end of the debate, and concluded in more minds going to the side of Religion not being Separate from the State. The debate was rather shorter compared to other debates, and we think that makes the voting result and conclusion, a great achievement al-hamdu’lillah.
The other speakers were Andrew Copson, director of the Secular advocacy group, ‘Humanists UK’, and Zineb El Rhazoui, an ex-Muslim, former columnist for CHARLIE HEBDO, who spoke on the side of separation.
Whereas Abdullah al Andalusi, and Nick Spenser, of the Christian thinktank THEOS, spoke against separation of religion from state.
MDI has participated in many previous events on the question of Religion and State, and we hope to see more events in future.
The Muslim Debate Initiative 
Andrew Copson is gay and knows sodomy would be recriminalised in an Islamic State. Basically, those who want to continue enjoying sexual liberation will feel threatened by the Abrahamic faiths because both the Bible and the Koran would treat those having extramarital sex as sexual offenders. Obviously they don’t want to be treated like sex offenders, but why should those who intend to have exclusively non-procreative recreational sex be treated as the equal of the married parent?
Zineb El Rhazoui is not a mother.