Across Africa, faith is a central part of social and political life. It is taboo – and often risky – to be nonreligious. Many keep their lack of belief hidden. But a new generation is organizing and building communities of support for the nonreligious.
Amina Ahmed, the wife of Muhammad Mubarak Bala, an atheist who has been detained since April 2020, is photograph in her home in Abuja, Nigeria, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. Bala was held incommunicado in police custody for so long — eight months — that Ahmed was sure he was dead. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. The emotional torture was too much for me,” she says.
Bala’s lengthy detention and its traumatic effect on his young family illustrate the risks of being openly faithless in African countries where religious belief pervades social life and challenging such norms is taboo. Bala grew up Muslim but came out as an atheist in 2014. His family soon checked him into a psychiatric hospital, according to James Ibor, his attorney. Reemerging into public life, he became president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria two years ago and championed the nonreligious on social media.
Kano’s attorney general, Musa Lawan, told the AP his agency couldn’t be blamed for Bala’s lengthy detention because it didn’t take over prosecution of his case until a year after his arrest. A former church deacon, Mkhutche began to question his Christian faith while pursuing a theology and religious studies degree. He continued to attend worship services for two years to keep up appearances, but stopped in 2013.
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