Message from Islamophobia Defending the Chairman Awards Muslim Rights PAGE 5 PAGES 8-9 PAGE 12 VOLUME 15 - RAMADAN 1435 / JUNE 2014 In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate THE AIMS OF THE ISLAMIC HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION I To champion the rights and duties revealed for human beings. I To promote a new social and international order, based on truth, justice, righteousness and generosity,rather than self-interest. I To demand virtue and oppose wrongdoing in the exercise of power (from whatever base that power derives - e.g. political, judicial, media, economic, military,personal, etc.). UNITED I To gather information about, and to publicise, atrocities, oppression, discrimination, and WE STAND, other abuses of divinely-granted rights. I To campaign for redress, and to DIVIDED support the victims of such crimes. Protesters at the I To campaign to annual Al-Quds Day bring the WE FALL march and rally, 2013 perpetrators and their accomplices to justice. I To cooperate with “If you don’t stand for something, other groups and individuals where you will fall for anything.” - Malcolm X such cooperation is likely to further the alcom X’s command and obvious necessity, those who strive for justice. How session and all it entails, as achievement of these quote high- Muslims do not unite. The mani- is it that a community that claims insignificant in comparison to the aims. lights the festations of such are everywhere to struggle for justice cannot crimes of whatever tyrant is de problems of – the internecine fighting and develop the theoretical and prac- rigueur in western press and pol- The Islamic M c o n c e p t u a l bloodshed in Syria and Libya, the tical understanding necessary to icy circles. illiteracy. As continued disintegration of Iraq do so? Rather we extend the idea Our existence is split between Human Rights I m a m and Pakistan, the rise of sectarian – a truly Enlightenment, not our aspirations and a reality Commission is an Achmad Cassiem of South Africa hatred in Indonesia and enlightened one – that the ends which not only is far from our often states the mission of the Malaysia, the list goes on. It justifies the means, and that our aims but a reality that we obdu- NGO in Special Holy Prophet Muhammad appears that the need to under- own personal and sectarian rately worsen whilst claiming to Consultative Status (peace and blessings be upon stand – another clear Divine causes define what Truth and hold onto Islamic values. We are Him) was not to teach the Arabs command – is one that we have Justice are. Where not so long trapped by ideas of the nation with the Economic Arabic but to bring conceptual yet to internalise. ago there was some semblance of state, yet claim we are part of the and Social Council literacy. All these events and so many Unity – on Palestine for example Ummah. We accept the narra- of the United It has been another difficult more - the coup in Egypt is yet – we have been lured into the tives of Western governments year, and yet despite the impera- another – serve agendas external trap of demeaning the momen- Continued on page 2 Nations tive on Muslims by dint of Divine and inimical to Muslims and all tous cruelty of 66 years of dispos- Islamic Human Rights Commission PO Box 598, Wembley HA9 7XH, UK - Tel: 020 8904 4222 www.ihrc.org 2 IHRC Liveon IHRC TV www.ihrc.tv IHRC TV has progressed this year with regular live events on www.ihrc.tv being broadcast and later added to our Youtube channel www.youtube.com/user/IHRCtv Highlights from this year include the following: Al-Quds Day, London, 2013 Continued from page 1 sight of the bigger picture because However, this sort of rhetoric we are being attacked from all should be expected from the likes that our lives and the systems we sides on a daily basis. One day it is of Tony Blair. What is more dis- live in are much better than those the government implying that all turbing is the actions of Muslim of the countries so many of us may Muslims have a propensity for states such as Saudi Arabia and the have hailed from. We do not see extremist behaviour in the United Arab Emirates, who have Islamophobia and anti-Muslim Tackling Extremism in the UK put into practice Blair’s policy,and hatred as we should, as the by- report, and on another it is a fabri- funded the military coup of the Poets Ibrahim Sincere (l) and Sanáa Sultan regaled product of wars against Muslims cated story of children being only democratically elected gov- audiences with their work to celebrate Mohammad Hamza's elsewhere and the precursor to 'Blair’s support ernment in Egypt’s history. They exhibition ‘Intifada Street' such military interventions. have also identified the Muslim Without anti-Muslim racism for the Egyptian Brotherhood as a terrorist organi- becoming the norm, military inter- sation. This is the same Muslim ventions against Muslims else- military, as well Brotherhood they are supporting where would not be so readily against Bashar al-Assad in Syria. accepted or formulated. as for the Syrian Arab Spring When movements arise to Disillusionment change those situations ‘over opposition, there’ they are crushed or demonstrates this socialised to neo-liberal norms, or What is also shocking is our as in the case of Egypt, both. Yet conflation of inability to think outside arenas of we continue to play the same nationalism and sectarianism, and game, to blame and fight each Western and look at the bigger picture in order other while the world burns, in to realise that no Muslim, be they part at our own hands. Each party Zionist interests Egyptian or Syrian, Bahraini or in this intra-Muslim melee seeks Libyan, is better off than before the not reconciliation with the other in the region' ‘Arab Spring’. If anything, there but with the powers that be - par- Mark Gonzales shared his 'Secrets to Surviving the Idiots' has been more death, destruction ticularly the US and its satraps. during an evening of Spoken Word and displacement, and the only When David Cameron launched indoctrinated in a Birmingham smiles are on the faces of our ene- an enquiry into the Muslim school, or that the food we eat is mies. They are agent provocateurs Brotherhood in the UK with a view unethical, or that we are collec- who promote disunity on all sides to criminalising the organisation, tively responsible for the violent and create the ugliest of images the failure to understand the enor- actions of Boko Haram. The under the banner of Islam. Boko mity of enmity was staggering. attacks we are subjected to are end- Haram, the so-called mujahideen Instead of exposing the British less. who eat the hearts of fellow human government for its support of a One of our problems is that we beings with an audience shouting military coup at the behest of a are failing to understand the rheto- ‘Allahu Akbar’, and those sectar- ruthless dictatorship, activists lim- ric of prominent figures such as ian agents who in reality represent ited their criticism to the meek Tony Blair, who in his latest speech neither Shia nor Sunni , are all the request that a member of the on the Middle East, articulated that same. And they are all given plat- Brotherhood should be on the the world should be united in tack- forms in the west to promote their inquiry panel. ling the ‘problem’ of political poisonous messages and lies. Islam. China, Russia and the West Western Machinations At the height of the conflict in should put aside their difference Bosnia, when Muslims were sys- and unify against politically active tematically being slaughtered and Veterans for Peace activist Joe Glenton joined us to discuss his Muslims. Part of the strategy, he book Soldier Box raped, the consensus was that this The time to excuse such said, should include supporting could have been prevented if they manoeuvring as naïve is long the military junta in Egypt, which were united, and it was the West gone. As easily as Westernised has set up kangaroo courts and which was ‘stopping us from governments promoted a full scale sentenced over one thousand peo- being unified’. Mustafa Ceric, war in Syria, they now just as eas- ple to death for the alleged murder Mufti of Bosni Herzegovina ily demonise those young men and of one police officer. Conversely, asked: ‘then why do you let them?’ women, who emboldened by a not even one member of the police One of the most effective ways of political and media narrative, went has been held accountable for the identifying the enemies of Islam to fight. It is nothing new. When murders of thousands of civilians. and Muslims is on the basis of the USSR was defeated and Blair’s support for this atrocity, as those who work hard to finance expelled from Afghanistan, those well as for the Syrian opposition, disunity. Why are we not more hailed as brave mujahideen by the demonstrates this conflation of organised? Why do we not stand BBC no less, were then demonised both Western and Zionist interests up for our rights and the rights of as Islamic extremists. How did we in the region. Anyone who sup- others with the compassion of the make the same mistake again? ports this atrocity and the junta likes of the Prophet of Allah, sent Played time and again, Muslims while at the same time champi- as a mercy to all creation? must surely at some point learn oning the Syrian opposition can- Standing for justice for ourselves and seek guidance from the time of not claim to support justice, and all human beings is a com- our Prophet (peace and blessings democracy or the people of the mandment of Allah (the Glorified be upon Him) of when and how to region, but instead simply exposes and Exalted).