Hi my name is Abdullah Sameer and I am out here in the wintery cold Canada to tell you a bit about secularism.  What is secularism? Secularism is actually separating the church and state, meaning the mosque, the temple, the church does not get involved in politics or ruling or laws of the government.  By having such laws, we have freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and we're able to live our lives without worry about being persecuted for what we believe.  I was a practising Muslim for 15 years here in Canada and I never had to feel scared to show that I was a Muslim. I used to have a big beard, and I used to pray at the office, I used to tell them openly that I was Muslim and I don't drink or eat pork or certain activities I could not be involved in - didn't want to work for any bank jobs, and this is for religious reasons.  Canada protected my rights as a Muslim not to be discriminated against. I was able to go for friday prayers, to say my prayers 5 times a day. I wasn't scared that because of my religious beliefs I would be discriminated.  Secularism allows societies to grow. If it's not for secularism, we would be stuck in the dark ages. If you look at Galileo, he challenged the idea that the sun went around the Earth and because of that he was persecuted by the church, they put him in jail and threatened him with torture. Why were they able to do that?  Because the church and the state were closely linked.  It should never be that way.  If you allow such things, you will end up with sunnis persecuting shias like in Saudi Arabia, or in Iran there's shias persecuting Sunnis, or you'll end up with  state sanctioned terror against minorities, a situation in Saudi Arabia, or even in Israel where the Orthodox Jews didn't want to allow Christmas trees in the hotels because it went against their religion.  Secularism protects and allows minorities including believers and non believers both to express themselves and say what they want and to live their lives without fear of being harmed for what they believe.  On top of it, I was free to promote Islam, I had an islamic website and I was promoting it, and I wasn't scared I was going to go to jail for that because I was allowed to talk about stuff like that without fear of being persecuted, whereas in some countries you can actually be tortured, like in Saudi Arabia some atheists are being sent to jail and lashed and whipped for doubting Islam or for criticizing any Islamic theology.  Who is to say which version of Islam is the correct one?  What if your particular sect doesn't agree with some of the practices of the other sects?  Does that mean you are allowed to persecute them? Of course not.  Here I am, I wanted to make this message hoping for a better world, a world where people are free to live their lives the way they want without persecution, how we can criticize scientific ideas and not worry about religious dogma getting in the way.  Stem Cell research is another thing that is being blocked in the states because of religious values and secularism and a strong division between church and state helps us to avoid such things. Anyways thanks for watching, take care, bye.