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OIC effort to modify UN human rights declaration opposed

* Tarek Fatah points out almost all Muslims live under dictatorship, oppression
* Says Islamists using OIC to validate policies traumatising Muslim societies

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: For the first time, the Saudi-backed move made through the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) at the annual session of the UN Human Rights Council to water down the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Universal Human Rights and introduce shariah law into the UN, has been opposed by a number of Muslim groups.

The opposition to the effort, made by the Kingdom every year, was led at Geneva, where the UN Commission is meeting, by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the Cairo Centre for Human Rights. In past years, as in this, Riyadh has used Egypt and Pakistan as well as Iran to modify the UN Declaration on human rights.

Dictatorship: One of those invited to speak on the subject at the ‘alternate session’ was Pakistani-Canadian Muslim liberal and activist Tarek Fatah who pointed out that the world’s Muslims are over a billion strong, but almost all of them live under varying forms and degrees of dictatorship and oppression. Barring a few exceptions such as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, and very recently Pakistan, Muslims live under the tyranny of rulers who have used Islam as a tool to secure absolute power, and to suppress the human rights of their citizens. He said it was incumbent on Muslims living in the West to expose the duplicity of the OIC when it seeks to water down the 1948 UN human rights declaration and substitute it with so-called Islamic human rights. “We are alarmed that not only is the UN declaration under attack, but that the UN rappateur on freedom of expression is being asked to report back on those who are brave enough to question medieval superstitions that challenge the elementary norms of reason and ,” Fatah added.

He said many of those who rule Muslim countries claim to do so in the name of Islam, even the Almighty Himself. They believe that they have the divine entitlement to do so. Repressive regimes that claim to speak in the name of Islam, while practising repression against their people should be challenged by liberal Muslims. The result for the ordinary Muslim is the same: the complete absence of human dignity, dignity that can only be guaranteed if the 1948 UN declaration is honoured and implemented in letter and in spirit.

Validation: Fatah said the Islamists are using the OIC to validate actions and policies that have resulted in the creation of traumatised and dysfunctional societies across the Muslim world. “Why should Muslims only enjoy human rights and freedom of expression to discuss their own religion where they live as minorities, yet never be able to do so where they form a majority? Why have so many Muslim societies failed despite their enormous natural wealth? Today the same people who have denied human rights to their Muslim subjects have the audacity to appear before the UN and demand that their policies be validated by the Human Rights Council and that anyone who dares to criticise the principles under which they govern as absolute monarchs, dictators or self-anointed guardians of Allah, be silenced,” Fatah stated.

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