Media Review Network – Page 1215 – Providing Context and Substance

Islam laid basis of refugee laws un

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

Islam Laid Basis of Refugee Laws: UN

By IOL Staff

"The international community should value this 14-century-old tradition of generosity and hospitality," said Guterres.

CAIRO — Islam has influenced and enriched modern-day international refugee laws more than any other source, a United Nations study said on Tuesday, June 23, lamenting that Muslims make up a large bulk of the world refugees.
"The international community should value this 14-century-old tradition of generosity and hospitality and recognize its contributions to modern law," UN High Commission for Refugees Chief Ant?nio Guterres wrote at the forward of the study.

The study, "The Right to Asylum Between Islamic Shari`ah and International Refugee Law", sought to assess the impact of Islamic laws and values on modern-day legal framework upon which UNHCR bases its global activities on behalf of tens of millions of uprooted people.

Islam’s Stance on Refugees
Rights of Refugees in Islam

It concluded that Shari`ah, 14 centuries ago, created the bases for many of the refugee-related international laws.
The study, commissioned by Guterres and compiled by Cairo University Law Professor Ahmed Abu Al-Wafa, cited several examples on how Shari`ah gives due attention to refugees.

It noted that under Shari`ah Muslims and non-Muslims alike have the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution.

Islam prohibits sending those in need of protection back into danger and urges followers to help refugees reunite with their families and guarantee protection of their lives and property.

It also prohibits forcing refugees to change their beliefs and rules out compromising their rights, concluded the UN study, done in tandem with the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC).

In 1990, the OIC adopted the Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, asserting that any human fleeing persecution has the right to seek asylum and receive protection in another country.

The iron cage “ book excerpt

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

The Iron Cage – Book Excerpt

Rashid Khalidi’s: The Iron Cage, 2006.

Introduction

The following is an excerpt from Rashid Khalidi’s book, ‘The Iron Cage’, which discusses the April 2004 letter from US President George Bush to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Though written in 2006, this letter has taken on new significance of late because of US president Obama’s demand that Israel desists in further settlement expansions and the Israeli governments claim that this letter legitimizes continued expansion and provides the American government’s imprimatur for what Israel calls “natural growth” of the settlements. However, what Israel calls “natural growth”, is what looks to those who have studied the maps like the continued populating with Jewish settlers of large swaths of land mapped out in the West Bank and called ”settlement blocks.”

George Bush’s letter to Sharon was the result of limited discussion between the Israeli government and the Bush White House without any input from the Palestinians or their representatives and without any consideration of legal precedent, either from international law or from this history of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Bush’s right to give away land ends at the boundaries of his ranch in Crawford, Texas. This letter cannot be considered legitimate and should not constrain the Obama administration.

William James Martin

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Obamas financial reform proposal a stealth scheme for global monetary control

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

Obama’s Financial Reform Proposal: A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
by Stephen Lendman

When politicians plan reform, it’s wise to be skeptical and hold on to your wallets. So fixing the economy by bailing out Wall Street is wrecking it, and Obama’s proposed health care reform taxes more, provides less, places profits above human need, avoids the most vital solutions, and leaves a broken system in place.

Now there’s "Financial Regulatory Reform, A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation" – announced June 17 with Obama saying he’ll send Congress a plan to create new government agencies, give the private banking cartel Federal Reserve more power, and address five major problems needing regulatory and legislative measures to fix.

Addressing business executives in the White House East Room, he said:

"A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street" with no mention that months of it worsened on his watch. "A regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis – the Great Depression – was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy." In fact, 30 years of deregulation since the late 1970s, not technology, caused speculative excesses, market bubbles, and inevitable collapses that always follow.

Of course, these problems are endemic under a system that’s crisis-prone, unstable, anarchic, ungovernable, and self-destructive through repeated cycles of booms creating bubbles, then busts, followed by recessions or depressions with today’s collapse grave enough for Michel Chossudovky to call it "far more serious than the Great Depression (because all) major sectors of the global economy are affected."

The necessity of cultural boycott

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

The necessity of cultural boycott

Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada

The international movement to boycott Israel has gained irrepressible momentum. (Mushir Abdelrahman/MaanImages)

June 23, 2009

If there is anything new in the never-ending sad story of Palestine it is the clear shift in public opinion in the UK. I remember coming to these isles in 1980 when supporting the Palestinian cause was confined to the left and in it to a very particular section and ideological stream. The post-Holocaust trauma and guilt complex, military and economic interests and the charade of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East all played a role in providing immunity for the State of Israel. Very few were moved, so it seems, by a state that had dispossessed half of Palestine’s native population, demolished half of their villages and towns, discriminated against the minority among them who lived within its borders through an apartheid system and divided into enclaves two million and a half of them in a harsh and oppressive military occupation.

Almost 30 years later it seems that all these filters and cataracts have been removed. The magnitude of the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is well known, the suffering of the people in the occupied territories recorded and described even by the US president as unbearable and inhuman. In a similar way, the destruction and depopulation of the greater Jerusalem area is noted daily and the racist nature of the policies towards the Palestinians in Israel are frequently rebuked and condemned.

The reality today in 2009 is described by the UN as "a human catastrophe." The conscious and conscientious sections of British society know very well who caused and who produced this catastrophe. This is not related any more to elusive circumstances, or to the "conflict" — it is seen clearly as the outcome of Israeli policies throughout the years. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu was asked for his reaction to what he saw in the occupied territories, he noted sadly that it was worse than apartheid. He should know.

As in the case of South Africa, these decent people, either as individuals or as members of organizations, voice their outrage against the continued oppression, colonization, ethnic cleansing and starvation in Palestine. They are looking for ways of showing their protest and some even hope convince their government to change its old policy of indifference and inaction in the face of the continued destruction of Palestine and the Palestinians. Many among them are Jews, as these atrocities are done in their name according to the logic of the Zionist ideology, and quite a few among them are veterans of previous civil struggles in this country for similar causes all over the world. They are not confined any more to one political party and they come from all walks of life.