Portal: Islam and Human Rights
While some modern Islamic scholars have struggled to reconcile Islam and modern, largely Western notions of human rights, the majority of traditional Islamic scholars today have generally defied what they perceive as a attempt at intellectual colonialism. The conflict between modern human rights doctrine and Islamic law can, for the most part, be understood as a product of their extreme historical and contextual distance. Whereas Islamic law was formulated in the harsh, unpredictable, and austere environment of 7th-9th century Arabia, modern Human rights doctrine is generally traced back to the European Enlightenment, starting especially with the English philosopher John Locke's ideas of natural rights in the 17th century.
Women
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Islamic law and doctrine holds women to be inferior to men in many respects, including in their intellect, their ability to serve as witnesses on topics other than female biology, ability to handle wealth, and ability to operate independently in society, among other things. While modernist Islamic movements have attempted to reconcile Islam with feminism, mainstream orthodox thought remains strictly antithetical. With some adjustments, Islamic law mandates the gender norms of 7th century Arabia.
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Rape, known in Islamic law as zina bil-ikrah or zina bil-jabr (literally "fornication by force"), is generally defined by Muslim jurists as forced intercourse by a man with a woman who is not his wife or slave and without her consent. As with enslaved females, according to Islamic law, married women are required to oblige their husbands sexual advances - raping one's wife is permissible. The concept of "rape" is thus deemed to be equally non-existent in the contexts of both marriage and slavery.
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Child marriage and sexual activity between adults and children are sanctioned by Islamic law and were practiced by Muhammad and his companions. The only restriction on sexual activity with children of any age within the contexts of marriage and slavery is that the child should not come to severe physical harm as a consequence of the encounter ("mental anguish", as such, is not considered, and consent is regardless irrelevant).
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Verse 4:34 of the Quran instructs men to, among other things, beat their wives "from whom [they] fear rebellion" or "disobedience". As a consequence, Islamic law sanctions and instructs wife-beating as a legitimate domestic disciplinary measure.
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Minorities
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The word Dhimma in modern parlance refers to the non-Muslim persons permitted to live under the Islamic regime (The Caliphate), namely those of Abrahamic faiths, as well as the system of financial, legal, and social subjugation that must be brought to bear over them so as to bring about their humiliation, as instructed by the Quran. Included in this system are the practices of Zunar (yellow-badge practices) and Jizyah (non-Muslim tax).
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The Jizyah is the tax imposed by the Islamic regime, or caliphate, upon the non-Muslims permitted to live under its reign, namely those of Abrahamic faiths. The Jizya tax is intended as a form of humiliation, as stated in the Quran, whereby non-Muslims are financially incentivized to convert to Islam. Conquered non-Muslim peoples are given the choice between conversion, mass execution and enslavement, and paying the Jizyah. The Jizyah is four times the Zakah Tax, imposed upon Muslim.
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Part of the subjugation system imposed upon the non-Muslims permitted to live under the Islamic regime, or caliphate, is the Zunar. The Zunar is prominent article of clothing or an accessory designed to plainly distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims so as to enable the humiliation of non-Muslims in social, legal, and financial interactions, such as the requirement for non-Muslims to step out of the way when a Muslim is on a street. Some suggest this was a predecessor of the Yellow-Badges imposed by the Nazis upon the Jews.
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Conscience
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In Islamic terminology, a kāfir is a disbeliever, or someone who rejects or does not believe in Allah as the one and only God and Muhammad as the final messenger of Allah. In the context of Islamic scriptures, "kafir" is the broadest, all encompassing category of non-Muslim, which includes all other sub-categories, such as mushriqun, or polytheists, dahriyah, or those who deny the existence of any gods outright, as well as those who would today identify as agnostics or who are simply ignorant of religious figments.
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Apostasy is a serious offense in Islam. Rejecting any part of Islamic doctrine, whether derived from the Quran or from what are held by Islamic scholars to be incontrovertibly reliable hadith, amounts to apostasy. The punishment for apostasy as prescribed by Muhammad and as delineated in all four schools of Islamic law is execution. In Sahih Bukhari, for instance, it is recorded that “Allah's Apostle said, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him'”.
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The four Sunni schools of jurisprudence all agree that practicing homosexuality is an egregious crime that earns an especially harsh punishment, although the schools vary regarding what exactly this punishment should be. Punishments range from execution by beheading, execution by stoning, execution by being thrown off a tall building, and imprisonment until death.
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According to Islamic law, it is a criminal offense to speak ill of Islam, its Prophet, and its holy Scriptures (Qur'an and Hadith). Blasphemy is punishable by death. Sufficiently unorthodox perspectives constitute blasphemy just as well as only partially orthodox perspectives (that is, those perspectives that affirm some tenants of blasphemy while denying others).
Corporal punishment
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Islamic law sanctions several forms of physical violence in domestic, civil, and international contexts, ranging from unprovoked imperial Jihad, to wife-beating, to amputations. While a few modern Islamic scholars have challenged the legality of imperial violence, a smaller minority that also of domestic violence, and yet smaller minority that of civil violence, the overwhelming majority of Islamic scholars today embrace the tradition of Islamic violence in all three respects.
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Various forms of amputation are prescribed as punishments in Islamic law, drawing on the Quran in particular, which instructs the delimbing of thieves as well as those who 'spread mischief in the Earth' (variously interpreted as everything from political corruption to promoting atheism). Muslim-majority implement these punishments even today, most notably Saudi Arabia and Iran.
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Stoning (رجم, Rajm) is primarily a mode of capital punishment for persons who engage in unlawful sexual relations. The criminals "hands are tied behind their backs and their bodies are put in a cloth sack." They are then "buried in a hole, with only the victims heads showing above the ground. If its a woman, she is buried upto her shoulders." The stones which are to be thrown at the criminal "should not be so large that the offender dies after a few strikes, nor so small as to fail to cause serious injury."
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Crucifixion is prescribed as a punishment in the Quran for those who 'spread mischief in the Earth' (variously interpreted as everything from political corruption to promoting atheism). The practice of crucifixion can range from execution and/or torture by tying and/or nailing someone to a cross, stake or tree to the public display of a body after execution.
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Modern movements and events
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In what became known as The Rushdie Affair or The Satanic Verses Controversy in 1988, the British novelist Salman Rushdie published a novel which in drawing on the Satanic Verses incident from Muhammad's life so incensed large parts of the Muslim world as to compel international protests and a death sentence in the form of a fatwa from the then Grand Ayatollah Khomeini. Numerous deaths followed.
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Everybody Draw Muhammad Day began when, on May 20th, 2010, cartoonist Molly Norris responded to death threats directed at follow cartoonists who had drawn Muhammad by suggesting that if everyone drew Muhammad, then Jihadists would be dumbfounded about who to kill. Subjected to threats herself, Norris later recanted, but her idea lives on.
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With the banning of the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP), an Islamist political party in Turkey, and a further sanction in the form of a ban on its leaders sitting in Parliament or holding certain other forms of political office for a period of five years, the European Court of Human Rights determined on July 31, 2001, that "the institution of Sharia law and a theocratic regime, were incompatible with the requirements of a democratic society."
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In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jylands-Posten published cartoons of Muhammad including, most famously, one of Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. The cartoons sparked international controversy. Widespread protests throughout the Muslim world followed and more than 250 reported deaths followed. Assassination attempts were made against Kurt Westergaard, who drew the bomb-turban image.