H.A. Hellyer

One of the Arab world’s most pre-eminent human rights institutions is the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, which has worked with institutions across the region, including intergovernmental bodies such as the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute. Its efforts in keeping track of state excesses for more than 20 years have been lauded around the world....

Diana Moukalled

In Egypt, it is common to blame women for being attacked, particularly when expressing their right to protest. A few weeks ago, amid the life sentences and executions being issued by the Egyptian judiciary, Nafea was sentenced to life in prison over accusations of sabotage and terrorism. It went largely unnoticed that she turned from victim to defendant, something many others have experienced....

Wars are a nasty killing business, the culmination of a failure of diplomacy or resolution of conflicts in a peaceful manner. Like religious fanaticism, where reason and logic stop and aggression gives way to hostility, mankind and nations often take refuge in manoeuvring and manipulating to go one up and control situations by non-peaceful methods....

Mehdi Hasan

At a recent Arab American Institute dinner I attended here in Washington DC, the keynote speaker was US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who claimed that a "comprehensive peace between Israelis and Palestinians" was still "possible"....

Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi

The United Nations recently described the Rohingya Muslims in the Arakan state of Myanmar as the “the world’s most persecuted minority.” For several decades, these people have been subjected to murder, arson, displacement and deprivation....

Asa Winstanley

Al-Qaeda has now won an important series of victories in that region. Who is behind this newly invigorated military push to install al-Qaeda in Syria? According to one expert, it is none other than that most important of US and British allies: the Saudi dictatorship....

To identify the boundaries of an Islamic legal order, the existence of other legal orders, and what happens when they “bump” into each other (both in terms of law and sovereign claims) lies at the heart of my research, given an assumption that the international state system is not dissolving any time soon. Answering those questions will not only offer insight into a specific issue like international child abduction, but arguably will help inform the ways by which those inside and ¬outside the Muslim world reflect on sharing a future amidst different histories, political orders, and legal orders……

Amanda Paul

The euphoria of the “new Egypt,” President Morsi, his Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government and the hope that a new era of democracy and prosperity was about to be ushered in did not last long. A year to the day after Morsi's inauguration, an estimated 15 million Egyptians filled streets across the country calling for Morsi's departure. ...

Yasser Latif Hamdani

The Rome Statute opens up a new vista. It defines crimes against humanity as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of the population, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity….

Omer Aziz

Having dared to challenge the Islamist zealots who have become increasingly threatening in Bangladesh, these writers were repeatedly threatened online before their executioners, bearded and superficially devout, hacked them to death in the open street. Their story in many ways symbolizes the story of their country: daring to be independent and paying the price for it.....

Aijaz Zaka Syed

The Responsibility to Protect principle commits the international community “to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council” to intervene on behalf of civilians when national governments fail to protect them from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity....

The group paraded and traded Syrian and Iraqi girls in 'slave bazaars' before the victims were shipped to other provinces, it was claimed. 'ISIL have institutionalized sexual violence and the brutalization of women as a central aspect of their ideology and operations, using it as a tactic of terrorism to advance their key strategic objectives....

Rafia Zakaria

Just as the terrorism report reveals that girls’ schools are more likely to be targeted for destruction, so the Unesco report reveals that girls are less likely to be educated and less money is spent on their education. Destroying girls’ access to education is a top priority for terrorists — providing that same access is a low priority for the state. Together they create a perfect collusion of ignorance, an insistence that the female remain relegated to a short life of child bearing and illiteracy....

Tufail Ahmad

It is time Saudi Arabia is declared an apartheid state. Recently, US Senator Rand Paul urged a boycott of Saudi Arabia, telling Americans: “Remember when South Africa was misbehaving? We organised a boycott of South Africa. We should be boycotting Saudi Arabia.” Indian diplomats at the UN are too spineless: we should have moral stance on global issues so that our children know where we stand in this world.....

Islam commands kindness, respect and obedience to parents and specifically emphasizes and gives preference to mothers. The command to be good to one’s parents is in the Holy Qur’an. Allah says: “Worship God and join not any partners with Him; and be kind to your parents....

Tariq A. Al-Maeena

It concerns the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar who for the most part have been ignored by the rest of the Muslim world. Researchers from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum recently stated that “conditions in Myanmar are ripe for genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority and the treatment of Rohingya Muslims could be the prelude to genocide....

The first symptom of this religiosity is the allegations against various party leaders for using mosques and Imambargahs as launching platforms for their political activities. The second symptom is the current unanimous decision of a so-called Jirga (local council) which bars women to vote....

Hussain Nadim

Freedom of speech may be prevalent in the ‘free world’, perhaps, when it comes to criticising religion, but should you dare to say a word against the military and soldiers — bastions of national pride — and the skies fall apart, as can be seen in the case of McIntyre....

These are the people who claim Islam as a fair and just religion, yet make contradicting statements of how a Muslim husband is the rightful owner of his wife’s body. These religious scholars promote kindness and love in Islam....

Not only is terrorism a complex and reviled phenomenon, due to the darkness and bloodiness of its crimes, it also poses a host of other serious and sometimes embarrassing problems for those societies affected by it. One of the first victims of terrorism, aside from the peace and security of the afflicted society, are those of personal freedoms, civil liberties, and human rights....

David Ignatius

Where do I look for hope on this day that marks the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide? To the brave Turkish and Armenian human rights activists who have gathered in Istanbul this week to commemorate together the tragic events of 1915 and find a pathway to the future....

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Why do people migrate? Given a choice, who would want to leave the comforting familiarity and security of their homes, loved ones and the land of their birth? And when one does leave, one often does so compelled by extreme circumstance. This is why the act of migration is seen as a great act of courage and sacrifice in Islam. The Prophet (pbuh) was the saddest when he left Makkah for Medina. The distance between the two holy cities may not be much. But the journey that he undertook defined the trajectory of the new faith....

In many of his speeches, Gaddafi declared himself both as an “Islamic socialist” and an “Islamic feminist”—whatever and however those terms mean to him from the point of view of strict political theoretic. “Even the United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights. When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law....

Ramzy Baroud

The Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, which is overrun by militants, and besieged by the Syrian army? Palestinians — and Syrians — there are killed in a myriad of ways, including starvation. ...

Imtiaz Gul

In 1986, sections 295(b) and 295(c) of the blasphemy laws introduced the additional clause of life imprisonment for Islam-specific blasphemy. Subsequently, in 1991, the Federal Shariat Court struck down the additional clause of life imprisonment in section 295(c), and, instead, made the death penalty mandatory upon conviction under this section....