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Islamic Principles Integral Part Of Human Rights: U.N. Rights Chief
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| "Islamic states have succeeded in ensuring that Islamic principles have been taken into account and find expression in international human rights standards," said Robinson.
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GENEVA, March 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Islamic principles are an integral part of international human rights standards, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said Friday.
"No one can deny the acceptance of the universality of human rights by Islamic states," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Robinson as saying on the closing day of a two-day U.N. symposium on human rights in Islam.
The symposium, held at the United Nations' European headquarters in Geneva, comes ahead of Monday's opening of the six-week annual session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
The symposium on human rights in Islam includes talks on racism and human rights, the rights of foreigners in an Islamic state and the human rights of civilians during armed conflicts.
"Islamic states have succeeded in ensuring that Islamic principles have been taken into account and find expression in international human rights standards," Robinson said.
She also warned against the spread of what she described as "Islamophobia" in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States, AFP reported.
"The tragedy of 11 September brought in its wake a resurgence of Islamophobia in many parts of the world," she said.
"I see the worldwide reaction and repudiation of the September 11 attacks as an illustration of how our fates are inextricably linked one to the other, whatever our cultures."
Human rights group Amnesty International expressed Thursday, March 14, concern that the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism did not respect human rights, a view supported Friday by the head of a Khartoum-based human rights organization, Ahmed Al-Mufti.
On the opening day of the symposium on human rights in Islam, Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Abdelouahed Belkeziz, said that human rights had a "central and fundamental place" in Islam.
Belkeziz said Islam was distinguishable from other religions because it advocated a "new, larger concept of human rights with more global and generalized dimensions".
"It is evident ... that the subject of human rights is as old as Islam itself and that it has a central and fundamental place in Islam," Belkeziz told the two-day symposium.
It was therefore unfair to target Islam and "label it as a religion that does not care for human rights" by generalizing crimes of some who claim to belong to the religion, he added.
In an implicit attack on the United States, Belkeziz talked of “states [that] even committed violations and reprisals against innocent people in a way that is unjustified by any measure of justice be it locally or internationally.,"
The United States has come in for severe international criticism for the mass civilian killings in its war on Afghanistan and its notorious handling of captured Afghan fighters held at its military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In particular, the U.S. decision that the Geneva Conventions should apply to Taliban fighters but not Al-Qaeda fighters, and that neither group would be accorded prisoner of war status has been criticized widely.
Ahmed Al-Mufti, director-general of the International Center for Human Rights in Khartoum also pointed the finger at the United States for failing to respect human rights, especially in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
The fight against terrorism "becomes all the more critical when the strict measures of security taken the day after attacks are directed exclusively at people of the Muslim confession," he told ambassadors and Islam experts.
Hossein Mehrpour, an adviser to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, said the failure to respect the right to self-determination was also a violation of basic human rights.
"The Muslim world is witnessing the occupation of the Islamic territory of Palestine and the denial of the right of self-determination of the oppressed people of Palestine by the Zionist regime," he said, in reference to the occupying state of Israel.
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