Islam and Human Rights

Beyond “Liberal” Female Piety or “Women Read the Qur’an Too” by Amy Levin

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

I’m a teacher’s assistant for an undergraduate course at New York University called, “What is Islam?” The other day in... more I’m a teacher’s assistant for an undergraduate course at New York University called, “What is Islam?” The other day in class, my professor asked the students whether or not the Qur’an is considered a “book”. Fraught with anxiety over inheriting such a problematic scholarly tradition of defining and delineating what “religion” is, I kept quiet. While my professor was aiming more for something sounding like, “a book is read, while the Qur’an is recited,” I kept thinking about the physicality and sacrality of the Qur’an (among other authoritative religious texts) and the way it is handled, revered, preserved, loved, an constantly under interpretation. It was about a week later when news broke out that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan were guilty of burning several copies of the Qur’an on their military base, followed by an unfortunate slew of casualties including at least 30 Afghan deaths and five US soldiers.

"Did Somebody Say 'Islamophobia'?: An Essay on the American Liberal Understanding of Park51 and the 911-Event"

by Laurie Rodrigues

Some of Badiou and Žižek’s most disquieting claims include their opposition to liberal multiculturalism, tolerance... more Some of Badiou and Žižek’s most disquieting claims include their opposition to liberal multiculturalism, tolerance discourses and particularist “ethics” concerned with respecting the “Other.” This has particular relevance to recent liberal media coverage of the hotly-debated “Islamic Cultural Center” slated to be built near the ground zero of 911 in Manhattan (the Park51 debate). In this article, I argue that the positions of Badiou and Žižek are valuable for examining the seemingly benign, “tolerant” position held by the American liberal Left that purports to be the sole logical, “moderate” stance to assume in this debate. However, this dangerous construction, offers a fallacious notion of choice: one has the “freedom” to choose either a Right or Left-side stance with respect to Park51; however, one risks condemnation if one chooses to stand with the Right. In this article, I will adapt and expand upon Badiou and Žižek’s converging viewpoints in order to fashion an examination of American liberalism’s media presence and its self-conception as the force of “good” within the post-911, “Ground Zero Mosque,” tolerance debates. Ultimately, I aim to show how the Left’s structure of thought within and around the Park51 contention betrays a fundamental infidelity to the 911-event. The proposed building of an Islamic cultural center near ground zero represents a new kind of problem that American, liberal media cannot meet head-on, I propose that we begin to question the central role of tolerating the Other within discourses concerning American “rights.”

Movimentos sociais em contextos islâmicos: abordagens antropológicas

by maria cardeira da silva

"We have made you nations and tribes...": A Quranically Based Vision of Multiculturalism and Inter-Religious Relations

by Aisha Musa

The UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” and the Muslim World's Need for Regulated Democracies.

by Abdulmalik M Altamimi

This essay has endeavoured to develop a deeper reading of the Muslim World so that our analysis of the United Nations... more This essay has endeavoured to develop a deeper reading of the Muslim World so that our analysis of the United Nations (UN)’s role can be better related to that fast changing nature of the current Middle East. There are three issues of critical importance for the stability of the Muslim World that the UN should be fully of aware of when authorising states to military intervene on humanitarian grounds under the “Responsibility to Protect” (RtoP) principle in an Islamic failed state. They are namely; the Muslim communities’ ideological and sectarian crises; the UN credibility after the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, and the crisis of authority. Therefore, these issues shall be discussed in this essay from both historical as well as legal perspectives about the often-misunderstood Muslim World so as to measure the effectiveness of the UN applying the RtoP norm to future Islamic conflicts, and enhance the role that the NGOs could play in facilitating the process of democratisation; especially, in the Middle East. Finally, the conclusion concerning the operationalising of the RtoP shall be divided into three parts: the responsibility to protect before a crisis breaks out; the responsibility to protect during a crisis; and the responsibility to rebuild after a crisis in a Muslim-majority country.

Laughter the Best Medicine: Muslim Comedians and Social Criticism in Post-9/11 America

by Amarnath Amarasingam

This paper explores the role that Muslim standup comedians are playing in breaking down cultural barriers, promoting... more This paper explores the role that Muslim standup comedians are playing in breaking down cultural barriers, promoting inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue, as well as tackling the misperceptions about Muslim and Arab Americans in the United States. I argue that Muslim comedians are increasingly taking on the role of Gramscian “organic intellectuals” capable of successfully participating in a quintessentially American activity—standup comedy—on behalf of their respective communities. Some scholars of Islam may argue that Muslim comedians, if they have any significance at all, are confined to the periphery of any meaningful discussions regarding Islam and Muslims after September 11. I will show that this is not only false, but fails to fully grasp the multifaceted responses that have arisen to combat Islamophobia and Arabophobia in the United States since the events of September 11, 2001.

Ifta 2.0: Negotiating Authority in the Public Sphere of Islam Online

by Steve Welsh

This was a final project for an Anthropology class with Brinckley Messick at Columbia misleadindgly entitled "Islamic Law". It needs some work, but it's a start.

Over the course of the last quarter century, a new paradigm has emerged in the construction of Islamic knowledge and... more Over the course of the last quarter century, a new paradigm has emerged in the construction of Islamic knowledge and authority with the maturing of the Internet as a medium for publication of Islamic legal discourse. The Internet has come to occupy a common middle space between the super-literate communities of conventional Islamic authority and less-literate communities of Muslim practice, creating what may be considered a new Islamic public sphere. The emergence of this sphere has yielded profound discursive shifts in Islamic learning, and spurred a reintellectualization of Islamic knowledge, thus enabling new strategies of engaging (and contesting) conventional religious authority.2 Imagined communities of interpretation and practice form and overlap in a new epistemic venue of multilateral cultural transmission. Islamic scholars and seekers communicate across cultural and territorial boundaries asynchronously, citing core texts while creating new discourses of Ijtihad in response to questions about ‘modern life.’

Social Exclusion of Muslim Youth in Flemish-and French-Speaking Belgian Schools.

by Michael Merry

Islamists vow to one-up ultras with clean-up of Egyptian sports

by James M. Dorsey

By James M. Dorsey

Flush with victory in Egypt's first-post revolt election, Islamists are vowing to... more By James M. Dorsey

Flush with victory in Egypt's first-post revolt election, Islamists are vowing to initiate change that militant soccer fans and youth groups have failed to achieve in a year of bloody street battles with security forces.
In doing so, the Muslim Brotherhood is seeking to distinguish itself from more militant Islamists, including more radical Salafis who propagating emulating life in the 7th century at the time of the profit and fundamentalist Egyptian and Saudi clerics as well as the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabab militia in Somalia or factions of the Taliban in Afghanistan who denounce soccer as a game of the infidels and as a distraction from the obligation to worship Allah.

The dichotomy of the Islamists striving to achieve the militant soccer fans' sports-related goals while the two sides face off on the streets of Cairo is vividly on display this week as Egypt celebrates the first anniversary of the protests that last year ousted President Hosni Mubarak from 30 years in office.

Egypt's military that last year temporarily took power from Mubarak with a pledge to lead the country to democracy is seeking to undercut with anniversary celebrations this week that include concerts and soccer matches the youth and soccer fan groups that were at the core of last year's revolt and are now demanding the armed forces' immediate return to the barracks. The military effort is backed by the Brotherhood.

The militants have been campaigning in recent days in an unsuccessful bid to convince a public tired of political turmoil and frustrated that their revolt has produced few material benefits of the evil of the soldiers who responded increasingly brutally to their protests against the military and Mubarak era sports officials over the past year.

Youth activists and soccer fans in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis erected projector screens to show residents looking down from their balconies with little sense of engagement videos of what they see as the military's abuse of power "Why are you silent? Have you won your rights already?" the revolutionaries shouted at them in frustration.

Adding insult to injury, the Brotherhood is vowing to succeed where the militants have failed. Repeatedly the soccer fans demanded unsuccessfully with few exceptions the resignations of the Mubarak appointed boards of the Egyptian Football Association (EFA) and major soccer clubs. Some supporters of sports reform take heart in the recent replacement of the Mubarak-era heads of the national sports and national youth councils.

The Brotherhood, which last year briefly toyed with the idea of launching soccer teams of its own, has vowed to clean out the sports sector of Mubarak associated by removing the heads of associations starting with EFA president Sami Zaher as well as club board members linked to the ancien regime. Under pressure from fans and clubs, Mr. Zaher pledged last year to end his term early but has since given no indication that he intends to live up to his promise,

In their effort to distance themselves from the rejection of sports, and particularly soccer, by some Salafis and jihadists, Brotherhood members emphasize sport's health benefits. Some also stress the need for sports to stay in line with Islam.

"We support sports in general and encourage them. Sports flourished in the age of Islam, so why shouldn’t they under the Islamists? We are looking to encourage more sporting activities nationwide. ... Islam doesn’t have any problem with soccer and other sports," Al Akhbar el-Youm newspaper quoted Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan as saying.

Mr. Ghozlan's statement is a far cry from a condemnation of soccer by Egyptian Salafi Sheikh Abu Ishaaq Al Huweni, an attempt by Saudi Salafi clerics to rewrite the rules of the game to allegedly Islamify it, and the outright banning of soccer by Al Shabab jihadists in Somalia.

“All fun is bootless except the playing of a man with his wife, his son and his horse… Thus, if someone sits in front of the television to watch football or something like that, he will be committing bootless fun… We have to be a serious nation, not a playing nation. Stop playing,” Sheikh Al Huweni said in a religious ruling published in 2009 on YouTube. Egypt's Salafist Al Noor party, which emerged as the country's second largest after the Brotherhood, has yet to distance itself from Sheikh Al Huweini.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOE-tGmAI18

Al Noor has also yet to take issues with views such as those expressed in 2005 in a controversial ruling by militant clerics in Saudi Arabia, the world’s most puritanical Muslim nation where soccer was banned until 1951. The ruling denounced the game as an infidel invention and redrafted its internationally recognized International Football Association Board (IFAB) rules to differentiate it from that of the heretics. It banned words like foul, goal, and penalty and like shorts and T-shirts and ordered players to spit on anyone who scored a goal. 

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

The Journey Back to the Ancestral Homeland: The Return of the Somali Bantu Wazigua to Modern Tanzania

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authhored with Omar A. Eno;  In Abdi M. Kusow & Stephanie R.  Bjork (Eds.) From Mogadishu to Dixon: The Somali Diaspora in a Global Context. Trenton NJ: The Red Sea Press Inc.

A Tale of Two Minorities: The State of the Gaboye and Bantu Communities of Somalia

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno; In Michael Mbanaso and Chima Korieh (Eds.) Minorities and the State in Africa, Cambria Press Inc., (2010)

Identity Crisis and Ethnic Marginalization in Somalia: The Case of the Bantu Jareer Community

by Mohamed Eno

VERITAS: The Academic Journal of St Clements University Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2009

Sherene Razack, La chasse aux musulmans. Evincer les musulmans de l'espace politique

by Rachid ID YASSINE

Compte-rendu dans Lectures de Sherene Razack, La chasse aux musulmans. Evincer les musulmans de l'espace politique,... more Compte-rendu dans Lectures de Sherene Razack, La chasse aux musulmans. Evincer les musulmans de l'espace politique, Montréal, Lux, coll. « Futur proche », 2011, 352 p.

Bearing Witness to the (In)visible: Activism and the performance of witness in Islamic orthopraxy

by Dominika Laster

ALBINO KILLINGS IN TANZANIA: Witchcraft and Racism?

by Ernest Makulilo

Author: Ernest Boniface Makulilo (MAKULILO, Jr.)
MA Peace and Justice Studies - emphasis in Conflict Analysis and Resolution

In Tanzania, there is a high rate of Albino Killings. The killings are associated with witchcraft and racism. The... more In Tanzania, there is a high rate of Albino Killings. The killings are associated with witchcraft and racism. The eradication of such killings has become a very difficult and complicated process. The absence of witchcraft law and policy, lack of government readiness, increasing racism on cultural sphere (“we” and “they”), to mention a few make prevention methodologies to fail and ultimately increase of the killings. It is until and when all these are addressed and “fixed”, albinos in Tanzania will be safe.

Saudi Woman to Be Lashed for Driving, Despite Royal Pardon

by Nivien Saleh

Article about my student Shaima Jastaniah, written for The Atlantic on December 5, 2011.

Remember Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi woman who made international headlines in September by being condemned to ten... more Remember Shaima Jastaniah, the Saudi woman who made international headlines in September by being condemned to ten lashes for driving a car through the coastal city of Jeddah? King Abdallah pardoned her personally. But it now turns out that she may be lashed after all. ....

Liberalism, Islam, Power, and Religious Violence

by Carool Kersten

Review Essay in the Journal of International and Global Studies 31:3 (2011)

Human Rights in Modern Islamic Discourse

by Abdulkader Tayob

Tayob, Abdulkader. 2011. “Human Rights in Modern Islamic Discourse.” In The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki, ed. Nicolet Boekhof-van der Voort, C.H.M. Versteegh, and Joas Wagemakers. Leiden: Brill.

This chapter is a closer reading of arguments in the twentieth century that claimed that Islam had its own unique... more This chapter is a closer reading of arguments in the twentieth century that claimed that Islam had its own unique approach to human rights. There are Muslims who completely ignore or reject human rights as a product of Western and modern influence. Among these are jurists ( fuqahāʾ) who see no reason to depart from Islamic law and radical Islamists who frame human rights as an intellectual onslaught of the West.
This analysis of Islamic discourse on human rights in this article is not concerned with the compatibility between traditional Islamic law and human rights. It is also not directly concerned with the particular effect of Islamic law, or Islamic human rights, in specific contexts. Rather, it examines the construction and appeal of the dominant discourse that rejects or expresses reservations towards international human rights norms. Within this limited frame of reference, the analysis shows that human rights have been accepted as a public frame of reference. Rights are regarded as a positive value in society. This includes a certain critical approach to some practices within Muslim societies, the denial of which is regarded as a violation of Islamic human rights. Secondly and simultaneously, however, any adaptation of and departure from Islamic scriptural sources is rejected. This rejection is not only based on simple adherence to tradition and to the past. The rejection included a conception of Islamic law as a natural order of social relations. Islamic law, each and every one of its rules and pronouncements, is suited to the very nature of humanity (fitṛa). This naturalism is projected on a conception of human existence and human relations that are not open to change and adaptation. This naturalism gives Islamic law a new foundation that is very appealing to modern sensibilities and pro- vides justification for a rigid approach to human rights. This approach thus promotes a traditionalist viewpoint within a modern framework. This article, then, presents a deeply fractured discourse consisting of a conception of social order and a fidelity to scriptural texts. Closer examination reveals incongruence between the two, wherein fidelity to scriptural texts breaks down against a commitment to a social order.

Rey Ty. (2011). "Ten Years Later, Is the World Any Safer?" A poem.

by Rey Ty 鄭文華 (郑 文华)

Rey Ty. (2011). "Ten Years Later, Is the World Any Safer?" A poem.

Rey Ty. (2011). "Ten Years Later, Is the World Any Safer?" A poem. Rey Ty. (2011). "Ten Years Later, Is the World Any Safer?" A poem.

Reconciling the Opposites: Equal but Subordinate

by Asma Abdel Halim