IHEU member organization American Humanist Association reports: The Saudi king yesterday pardoned the "girl from Qatif," a woman whose case stunned and outraged the world. The woman was brutally raped, and her male companion assaulted, by several men who discovered them alone in a car. She was then sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison for the "offense" of being alone with a man who was not her husband or relative. Her harsh sentence spurred a debate within Saudi Arabia and throughout the world about the treatment of women and the terrors of fundamentalist Islam.

In the August 2007 International Humanist News, Taner Edis wrote about creationism in the Islamic world and in particular "Harun Yahya". Now we hear that the man behind the Yahya franchise has obtained a legal block on Internet access to all Wordpress blogs from Turkey. (However, a number of technical workarounds have been suggested.)

Recent reports on the Islamic regime of Iran’s crackdown on women who are ‘badly’ veiled (bad-hejab) and their resistance to the regime’s campaign of arrest and harassment has been reported quite extensively in comparison to other similar events over the years.

Those of us who live in the industrialized West have become used to a particular relationship between science and religion. Whatever intellectual tensions there may be between modern science and supernatural belief, the institutions of science and religion have largely learned to keep out of each others’ hair.

A recent article in The Independent by Tom Coghlan (15 April 2006) recounts the story of Gulsoma, an Afghan girl who at the age of four was sold by her widowed mother to a neighbour, as a wife to his three-year-old son. Her in- laws made her into their slave.

The report (below) on the fourth session of the Human Rights Council that ended on 30 March concentrates on two substantive issues where resolutions were actually adopted: Darfur and Defamation of Religions. What it does not cover, however, are the gaping holes where resolutions ought to be: against systematic human rights abuse in North Korea, Myanmar (Burma), Iran, Sri-Lanka, China, Zimbabwe and elsewhere, and against torture, summary executions and disappearances. No resolutions were presented or approved on any of these subjects. Pressure continued to be applied by the so-called “like-minded” states to wind down investigation by special rapporteurs of specific cases human rights abuse in their countries, while several countries, including Israel and the Sudan had refused to cooperate with missions to their territory. Particularly disturbing was the decision of the Council in closed session to end the monitoring of human rights abuse in Iran and Uzbekistan even as the human rights situation in both of these countries continues to deteriorate.

The fourth session of the new Human Rights Council was held in Geneva from 12 to 30 March 2007, but high hopes that the Council would find a way forward on Darfur were dashed when the Council declined to act on the report of a High-Level Mission to Darfur led by Nobel prizewinner Jodie Williams because of obstruction by the Sudanese government. And the Council further reverted to type when Pakistan pushed through a resolution “combating Defamation of Religions” against numerous objections from the western democracies.

This article is difficult to write, more difficult still to bring before a large audience. But I need the input from an intelligent audience able to look both ways regarding the value of religion, and this organization must surely have the requisite audience. I therefore ask your indulgence to survey theoretical work developed over a thirty year period and make your comments freely available, with my sincere thanks in advance.

An Alien at Home

When a Muslim intellectual – reared and educated in a Western country – returns home, he finds himself in an alien land. His way of life and his outlook on the world is not approved by those with whom he has social relations, and more especially by those with whom he lives. In social gatherings, he remains guarded, fearing his views may cause offence. Owing to differences in tastes and convictions, he is virtually treated as a pariah. He cherishes ideas which are anathema to the public. At best, he is viewed as a campaigner of Western liberal thought, culture, and civilization.