Volume 13, Issue 1 -

While much optimism about the future was expressed at the time of the Egyptian revolution in January 2011, little progress has been made on human rights including the protection of the fundamental right of freedom of religion and belief. In fact some argued that the situation in Egypt is worse today. This paper examines why many individuals (Copts, Atheists, Shiites, etc…) are unable to freely express their beliefs or practice their religion in Egypt. Some have argued that the denial of freedom of religion and belief is due to statism. But analysis of freedom of religion and belief that focus only on statism capture one aspect of the denial of this human right in Egypt. They neglect the intolerance in society that allows non-state actors to contribute to the difficult environment of FoRB in Egypt. This essay attempts to explore both the role that statism plays concerning the denial of FoRB, as well as how social hostilities contribute to an intolerant climate. This has important policy implications for future progress on this issue. Without more attention to attitudes and dispositions, Egypt will only make limited progress in the future.

This article argues that the AKP government in Turkey is carrying on a strategy of securitization (Buzan, B., O. Wæver, and J. de Wilde. 1998. Security: A New Framework for Analysis . Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers) of the Kurdish minority. This strategy, thought to be to the benefit of Turkish democracy and indeed to the goals of the AK party itself, is not conducive to more stability and democracy, but on the contrary is jeopardizing the practice of democratization in Turkey. Following the arguments of Wæver (1995), Roe (2004. “Securitization and Minority Rights: Conditions of Desecuritization.” Security Dialogue 35 (3):279–94.), and Aradau (2004. “Security and the Democratic Scene: Desecuritization and Emancipation.” Journal of International Relations and Development 7:388–413) the article also recommends that in order to go back on the path to democracy and stability, Turkey would need either to de-securitize the Kurdish issue, “manage” its securitization with liberal democratic forms, or create politics of universality and recognition, in a new emancipatory course. The importance of this study is based on the fact that the failure or success of democracies, especially in Muslim countries as the Arab Spring has shown, depends often on the exclusion or inclusion of ethnic, religious, or political minorities by the elites (see Egyptian, Iraqi, and Turkish democratic regression versus Tunisian and Indonesian progresses). This study therefore argues that with the securitization of Kurds, among other things, Turkey is going backwards on its path towards a meaningful and substantial democracy. This is particularly worrisome due to Turkey’s membership in NATO – meaning Turkey is not only a member of a collective defense organization but also part of a group of countries that share the values of democracy – and in the process of EU candidacy. Unfortunately, the intensification of the securitization after the end of the ceasefire in summer 2015 coincided with the war in Syria and the refugee crisis in Europe, and so the EU recently reduced the pressure on Turkish domestic issues, representing Turkey as a bastion against DAESH-ISIS expansion and also a buffer zone for millions of refugees. This, indirectly, contributed to the recent re-securitization of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. The methodology followed in this research is based on two main theoretical approaches: the concept of inclusiveness in democracies and the securitization theory, as well as on an historical excursus of the treatment of the Kurdish minority by the Turkish Republic and since the recent events of summer 2015. The article starts with an introduction on the concept of inclusiveness in democracies and on the Turkish history of exclusion of ethnic minorities, specifically the Kurds. Later, following the securitization theory, the study analyzes the past and current securitization of the Kurdish minority as the element that is jeopardizing democratic rule in Turkey. Finally, the article concludes with policy recommendations on desecuritization, management of the securitization process, and emancipatory policies, as the only paths for Turkey to get back on track on its democratization.

Managing the issue of a Muslim minority has been an important question for some Western democracies over the last 50 years, and different states have implemented varying frameworks to grant some sort of group autonomy to Muslim minorities in a show of support for diversity. In recent years, however, scholarly analysis of these frameworks has exposed some of the vulnerabilities women from Islamic minorities face when navigating personal status systems. This article explores some of those frameworks and the ways democratic nations grapple with the rights granted to women under a human rights agenda, and the conflicting tension between these rights and the rights of women in Islamic personal status law. This article will focus particularly on Islamic inheritance laws and the way these laws interact with the legal systems of India and the United Kingdom. Part I will address the conflict between theories of liberal multiculturalism and feminism, and discuss the common desire for Muslim minorities to exercise some sort of control in the areas of personal status laws (being marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance). Parts II and III seek to contextualize and outline women’s rights within both the general international human rights framework and the Islamic inheritance law framework. Parts IV and V will then explore the two different ways that India and the United Kingdom grant autonomy to Islamic minorities and address vulnerabilities women face in a human rights context. Analysis of these systems will show that it remains questionable whether they comply with each country’s international law obligations. Finally, Part VI of this article will outline a proposed working model drawing on Shachar’s intersectionist approach to recognize and prioritize the multiple identities of Muslim women and the necessity for inter and intra group dialogue in resolving tensions between minority rights and the rights granted to women within the human rights framework.

Access to health care represents an important juncture between domestic labor migration and human rights in the GCC. The notions of “ambivalence” and legal hybridity shed light on how health care access is limited for migrant domestic workers, and why the legal framework is not enforced. Our research reveals that the lack of access to health care under the kafala , the labor sponsorship scheme organizing migration in the region, occurs at the household level given the private and dependent nature of domestic work. Ambivalence permeates the relationship between employer-sponsor and migrant domestic worker. In the liberalizing health care landscape, health insurance and health insurance cards issued, and held independently, by migrant domestic workers would allow domestic workers to access health care in the region with the critical support of the employer-sponsor.

The topic of the rights of women is a contentious and diverse one; it continues to fuel debates in both Muslim-majority and other countries. In principle, all agree that women are entitled to rights. However, particularly in Muslim-majority countries, there is a fierce debate about how and to what extent women are entitled to certain rights. On the one hand, some scholars advocate for the rights of women without deference to gender inequality or discrimination in comparison with men, while on the other hand, other scholars try to defend the inequalities and discriminations that arise from religious or cultural norms. In this regard, the literature relating to the status of women’s rights in the Muslim-majority countries gives rise to vigorous criticism. Much of this criticism relates only to the domestic laws of specific countries and their interaction with the broader international human rights norms. Although there is some discussion about the status of women’s rights in the Maldives, this discussion occurs only in Non-Governmental Organizations (both local and international) and in international forums; apart from an occasional passing mention of the Maldives in other areas of debate, thus far, there has been no academic discourse devoted to the rights of women in the Maldives and their relationship to the international human rights norms of equality and non-discrimination. This article contributes to filling this gap by studying the status of the two norms of international human rights – equality and non-discrimination, in the Maldivian context. The study hypothesises that there are potential tensions within these two norms arising out of the incorporation of Islam in the Maldivian Constitution and that these tensions can be harmonized through the techniques and tools of Islamic Shari’ah. The research finds that a maqasid -oriented ijtihad ( al-ijtihad al-maqasid ) could be the most suitable method for easing the tensions arising out of qat’iatil dilala (the explicit rulings in the Quran and Sunnah); in the case of tensions falling under zanni (speculative) sources, the tools of takhayyur and talfiq could bring harmony to the tensions arising. It is suggested here that these methods be used for the reforming and interpretation of laws and by way of fulfilling the international obligations of the Maldives. This article concludes by discussing the challenges and recommendations for overcoming the challenges in order to achieve the main objective of resolving the potential tensions between the Maldivian law and the international human rights norms of equality and non-discrimination.

This paper focuses on the reproductive function of women from an Islamic religious perspective. It aims to depict motherhood as it is imaged in some verses of the Qur’an with the objective of understanding how the Islamic Tradition positions the feminine with regards to maternity. Motherhood is not all a bundle of joy and the Qur’an clearly acknowledges that pregnancy, as well as childbirth, are painful events that mothers live with much difficulty; meanwhile, some verses portray maternity as an act of deep spirituality, mingled with an intellectual awareness of the role to be undertaken and much feelings. Through a thorough study of some verses of the Qur’an, I will undertake a deep literary analysis with the objective of outlining maternity from an Islamic perspective. The objective is to answer one major question at the core of the feminist debate: is motherhood an acknowledged only a biological destiny that is incumbent on women as a duty meant for the species’ survival and therefore rather a burden hindering women’s full engagement as productive agents in society or contribution by women and thus a feminine particularity to defend.