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The first symposium of a series of the Islam and the Human Rights symposiums will be held on Friday at 7 PM in 16/1/2004, in “El-Lutes” hall in Pyramiza hotel (opposite Cairo Sheraton hotel). As HRAAP will manage an open discussion about the extent of accordance between the Islamic law and the principles and thoughts of the Human Rights, which is argued from time to time. The last argument was about the consequences of the disaster of the eleventh of September, as it posed a historical question “Are the Human Rights, as it is specified by the west since two centuries, applied to all people or it belongs only to its own history?” At the beginning, we reply that the Human Rights can’t be constrained to the central racial European as some say, because the Human Rights don’t take its principles from the heritage of the west, but it benefited from the Islamic principles also. That is what the International Islamic Declaration for the Human Rights assured, which was issued by UNESCO in 1981. In addition, the Human Rights philosophy doesn’t object to religions but it objects to the fanatic explanation to it. Moreover, the Islamic principles maintain the human honor and pride, because man is the successor of God on the earth. Consequently, there is no objection between God rights and the human rights if we understand the religion mentally and properly.
If what has been previously said belongs to the views of the west or the other to the extent of the Islamic religion respect to the honor of man and confirming the principles of the Human Rights, however there is another motive which calls us to assure the importance of the religion and the religious culture in spreading the principles and thoughts of the human rights and preventing all kinds of violations, specially when we realize the fact that the Egyptian citizen is religious by nature, and this motive increased after a strange incident happened to a lawyer from our association, as he received a phone call from a police officer from Quena who was accused of torturing a citizen by pouring boiling water over his body and beating him to confess to committing a theft crime. The strange thing in this matter is not the call itself, especially after submitting an announcement by the association to the prosecution – belongs to the torture crime – but it was strange that the officer didn’t deny (in his phone call) the incident of torture, but he assured it without any hesitation and what increased the oddness is that the officer’s declaration to the lawyer of the association that he isn’t absolutely regretful for what he did, but he was reassured after having an interview with a sheikh (Islamic religious preacher) who stated the legality of his deed, depending on a hadieth (holy speech of the prophet Mohammed peace be upon him)!
For all the previous, the association will organize a series of symposiums, which will discuss, as it is mentioned above, the attitude of Islam towards torture. Dr. Abdallah El-Naggar (professor in the faculty of Islamic Law an Code, and the member of the Islamic researches Institute a lawyer in the Cassation Court, ) and Dr. Ra’fat Osman ( professor of Islamic Law in El-Azhar university, and a member of the Islamic researches Institute) will give lectures in this symposium. Mr. Negad El-Bora’y, a lawyer in Cassation court, will manage the discussion
The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners
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