Articles

This International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), Islamic Relief Canada’s Reyhana Patel explains that Islam does not advocate the practice – and can help eradicate it.

It is undeniable that religious beliefs inevitably influence individual behavior. In all faith communities, individuals turn to religion and seek advice from religious leaders to deal with and counter unbearable life events. Throughout its history, humanity has experienced numerous challenges, the latest and highly globalized of which is the COVID-19 outbreak. With this unprecedented pandemic brining to focus the globalization paradigm, some people from different faith communities worldwide wanted to fish in troubled water by promoting a distorted religious discourse in an attempt to convince their target audience that it is just a sort of divine “punishment”. They claim that God Almighty intends to punish “non-believers” and wrong doers unlike His believing servants! Consequently, they objected to the safety procedures taken to protect individuals with respect to suspending prayers in houses of worship!

The distinguishing characteristic of mankind, according to the Quran, is the dignity bestowed upon it by God: “We have dignified the children of Adam … and favored them over much of creation.” Human dignity is, therefore, a fundamental tenet of the Islamic worldview. It should be no surprise then, that Islam’s emergence and presence in the world has been one which has placed a very high regard on the protection of human rights. This concern is heightened considerably when one turns to the most vulnerable members of society. Indeed, one of the first missions of the Prophet Muhammad was to express his outrage and denunciation at the pre-Islamic Arab customs surrounding newborn girls, customs which saw them as less than human and a source of embarrassment to the family.

      The January 21, 2017 Women’s March in Washington is seen by social scientists as an attempt to prove that women’s rights are human rights.