Islam and Human Rights
The jailed ayatollah appealed previously for the abolition in Iran of all restrictions on women's rights and of such punishments as stoning. He has released a concise statement of his views, which are summarized under the simple title, "Secularism." While in prison, he voluntarily abandoned his clerical turban as a protest against the state ideology of "Velayat-e Faqih," or rulership by religious jurists. He wrote, "the non-secular, so-called 'Islamic' religious government in Iran so disadvantages and damages the people, and its effects are so negative, widespread and profound, that they demolish the people's pride in and honor [toward] Islam's religious founders. . . . Secularism is the only way to save Iran from continued material and spiritual regression.".....
In place of such a cruel and outrageous way of disposing of the prisoners of war, Islam preferred to spread them in the population and thus brought them in contact with individual human beings. Over and above, their guardians were ordered to treat them well. The result of this humane policy was that most of the men who were captured on foreign battlefields and brought to the Muslim countries as slaves embraced Islam and their descendants produced great scholars, imams, jurists, commentators, statesmen and generals of the army. So much so that later on they became the rulers of the Muslim world.….
Religious freedom conditions in China have continued to deteriorate, particularly for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims. To inhibit the growth of independent Catholic and Protestant groups, the government has arrested leaders, shuttered churches and selected Catholic bishops without Vatican approval. The Falun Gong and other groups deemed “evil cults” face long-term imprisonments, forced renunciations of faith and torture in detention. Saudi Arabia still restricts public expression of any religion besides Islam, allowing no non-Muslim houses of worship. Favouring its own interpretation of Sunni Islam, the government arrests and detains Shi’a dissidents and imprisons individuals for apostasy, blasphemy and sorcery……
"Islamists" as a presumably monolithic term are frequently cited for terror, but Muslims are also the most numerous victims of human rights abuses by other Muslims and non-Muslims. The challenge for both Muslims and the international community is to counter the hijacking of the Muslim identity by extremists and also to respond to the victimization of all, including Muslims who are targeted by bigotry as well co-coreligionists…..
One of the proofs of the divinity of the Quran is the revolutionary thoughts that Quran presented in that age. These theories do not have precedence in history. Though the human intellect was progressing gradually, the principles Quran presented were ahead of its age. Since human intellect progress slowly, the human mind also rises along with it and accepts lofty ideas. But when the Quran raised its revolutionary ideas, only those who have believed in it accepted the ideas. People out of this group had not accepted the ideas as their intellectual level was not up to that level.....
This is because human rights in Islam are governed under the purview of Huquq Allah and Huquq al-‘Ibad, the rights due towards the Creator and the Sustainer and the rights of Allah’s servants, i.e., human beings. As such, rather than wasting their time creating sentiments among Muslims that human rights are a dangerous threat to them, Muslims should instead spend more time and encourage others to read, research and understand what Islam actually says about human rights……
Dallia M Abdelmoniem
Sudan's ruling regime prides itself in a constitution that "preserves the rights of non-Muslims", but Mariam's case completely goes against that claim. In addition, Sudan is a signatory to a number of African and international treaties that "protect privacy and absolutely prohibit corporal punishment and the use of the death penalty in these contexts"….
Mujahid Hussain, New Age Islam
Member of National Assembly and head of Pakistan Hindu Council Dr Ramesh Kumar has said on the floor of the Assembly that no member belonging to minority sections in Pakistan is safe even as the government has completely failed to provide protection to their places of worship and religious scriptures. ... Since we have looked at Dr Ramesh Kumar’s statement through the prism of conspiracy against Islam and Pakistan, his statement is not important to us nor have we to be bothered about the least bit. As the proverbial good riddance, if every year five thousand Hindus (according to Dr. Ramesh Kumar) migrate to India from Pakistan, it is a good omen for the purification of the country. It is also a warning to other minority communities of the country that they should leave the God’s own country for their own good.
Daoud Kuttab
Imagine being stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and being taken into custody. Then finding yourself in an Israeli jail for six months without charge or trial. After six months, the administrative order signed by a military commander is renewed. An Israeli military judge is presented a secret file which neither you nor your lawyer are allowed to see. Within minutes your nightmare is extended for another six months…..
Irwin Cotler
The Iranian regime also incites hatred and violence against other religious and ethnic minorities, violating their political, social, religious, economic, cultural, linguistic and educational rights. Among other abuses, minority schools and houses of worship have been closed or destroyed, restrictions have been imposed on both the public and private use of minority languages, and members of minority groups -- including the Baloch, Kurds, Ahwazi Arabs, and Christians -- have been imprisoned on spurious charges such as "spreading corruption on earth."….
Karen J Greenberg
It’s mind-boggling. Torture is still up for grabs in America. No one questions anymore whether the CIA water boarded one individual 83 times or another 186 times. The basic facts are no longer in dispute either by those who champion torture or those who, like myself, despise the very idea of it. No one questions whether some individuals died being tortured in American custody. (They did.) No one questions that it was a national policy devised by those at the very highest levels of government. (It was.)….
Andrew Coyne
Really? So if someone were fired for speaking in favour of gay marriage, we'd be OK with that? If a university lecture on "rape culture" were shouted down by a bunch of frat boys, it would just be an interesting clash of perspectives? Or leave aside the hypotheticals: those federal scientists, forbidden by their employer from sharing their expertise on environmental issues? They should just find other work? Really?...
Mark Steyn
As it happens, the biggest ‘safe space’ on the planet is the Muslim world. For a millennium, Islamic scholars have insisted, as firmly as a climate scientist or an American sophomore, that there’s nothing to debate. And what happened? As the United Nations Human Development Programme’s famous 2002 report blandly noted, more books are translated in Spain in a single year than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years. Free speech and a dynamic, innovative society are intimately connected: a culture that can’t bear a dissenting word on race or religion or gender fluidity or carbon offsets is a society that will cease to innovate, and then stagnate, and then decline, very fast. As American universities, British playwrights and Australian judges once understood, the ‘safe space’ is where cultures go to die…..
Nesrine Malik
The defence of free speech often hides a multitude of sins. Since Brandeis University withdrew an honor it had intended to bestow on the author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, many have flocked to her defence in the name of free expression — no matter how offensive. But implicitly they are suggesting that Islam and Muslims are worthy targets of Ms. Hirsi Ali’s scorn. And their preciousness about the right to offend won’t be credible until they advocate extending it beyond Islamophobes — to racists, anti-Semites and homophobes, too....
Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP) has passed a resolution in a public gathering in Khwaja Khela against the construction of military cantonments in Swat. Earlier, Aza Khel Qaumi Jirga, Nikpa Khel and Swat Qaumi Jirga had also unanimously opposed this decision. Mehmood Khan Achakzai leader PMAP has reportedly conveyed the opposition of local population to the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif against this ill-advised plan which shall seriously impact the climate and productivity of the entire region....
Farzana Hassan
It is time to protect the long-cherished ideal of free, critical thought, which the West has fought for through many of its own convulsions. It is time to formulate a cogent response to Islamist assaults on freedom of speech and to implement it in an unflinching manner…..
Abdulrahman al-Rashed
All we know so far is that the poor shepherd arrived in Saudi Arabia on a contract with the stockyard’s owner who only paid the former around $300 of his wages, prevented him from travelling to see his family and did not even allow him to call them. The Indian worker could not escape because the stockyard was in the middle of the an-Nafud desert and he was afraid he would get lost and die if he tried to escape....
The Iranian regime's execution campaign demonstrates that any form of Arab civic organisation in Iran is portrayed as terrorism, enabling it to impose the death penalty. Ahwazi Arab activists maintain this is part of the regime's campaign of ethnic cleansing against indigenous ethnic Arabs. Unfortunately, endemic anti-Arab racism has meant that the Ahwazi cause has been alienated by some so-called "opposition" groups.....
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh
Nevertheless, every report independently conducted by human rights watch groups; the United Nations, Amnesty International as well as the official statistical numbers revealed by the Iranian government, indicate not only that Rowhani has not delivered on his promises (not even keeping the status of human rights similar to that of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s era), but that the condition of human rights has significantly worsened in Iran…..
Nesrine Malik
It's not surprising that these moves are being greeted with scepticism. The report comes after some terrible press for the Saudi royal family, and the king in particular. One of the king's ex-wives has appealed to western media organisations to intercede in the case of her three daughters, allegedly virtually imprisoned in the royal compound by their father in Saudi Arabia......
Khaled Abou El Fadl
Very much like in the Christian tradition, in the Islamic intellectual tradition there was an earlier intellectual battle between those who believed that the notion of right and wrong exists in a primordial and transcendent essence, and that it was not dependent upon a divine command, and those who made the locus of the existence of natural right - what they used to call al-Husn (beauty) versus al-Qubh (ugliness), very much like the idea of dark and light - to be the divine command and not anything beyond the divine command. These two factions battle it out throughout Islamic history and, as often happens, eventually both factions are completely swept up by the political trends of the day……
The Sufis asked for the return of two of their imprisoned members, Farshid Yadollahi and Reza Entesari, who has been summarily removed from Evin to Rajai-Shahr. They further demanded that Saeed Madani, an Iranian sociologist and member of the dissident Nationalist-Religious Front, be brought back from Rajai-Shahr, where he too had been shifted. Madani has been in jail since 2000. The Sufis also appealed for improvements in medical care for prisoners……
According to AP, the case stems from an email sent to the United Nations and The Sunday Times of London, which published a story saying two daughters of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia — Princesses Sahar, 42, and Jawaher, 38 — had appealed for help claiming they and their sisters have been held for 13 years in the royal compound…..
Milica Javdan Chairwoman,IWA in Norway
Ms. Milica Javdan: The theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran is misogynist to its very core and relies on oppression in order to stay in power. What we consider subordination of woman, they consider the divine order of things and any claims to the contrary is severely punished as heresy. So it is not enough to put the finger on the escalating number of executions and street arrest to warn of the treat the mullahs pose to humanity. If the mullahs were to abandon misogyny, the ruling theocracy would surely collapse. So, what do they do? They resort to misinformation instead. In order to present themselves as moderates while at the same time curbing the will of the people in their iron fist, they hide behind cultural and religious differences as a means of escape. When criticized for inequality and injustice in the Iranian penal code, they claim Iranian Islamic culture and society has a different view on these issues.
Andreas Harsono
The Islamic People’s Forum, the Islamic Defenders Front and other Islamic groups are at the forefront of this intolerance. These groups have attacked the places of worship of Shiite and Ahmadiyah Muslims as well as some Christian churches. Although government officials and security forces have played a passive, or even active, role in such violence, Mr. Yudhoyono’s government has failed to confront those responsible or to obtain any redress for the victims…..