Foehammer’s Anvil

The title strikes you as a contradiction, I’m sure. This is no joke though.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission is an actual organization, founded in the UK in 1997 (as if it could ever have been founded in Iran), and proposing “to campaign for justice for all peoples regardless of their racial, confessional or political background.”

From the ‘About Us’ section of the IHRC:

The Islamic Human Rights Commission was set up in 1997. We are an independent, not-for-profit, campaign, research and advocacy organization based in London, UK. We foster links and work in partnership with different organizations from Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds, to campaign for justice for all peoples regardless of their racial, confessional or political background.

Our aims are manifold, and our inspiration derives from the Qur’anic injunctions that command believers to rise up in defence of the oppressed. IHRC volunteers and campaigners come from many different parts of the world and many different backgrounds to share in the common struggle against injustice and oppression.

Rise up in defense of oppressed Muslims, not infidels.

Our work includes submitting reports to governments and international organizations, writing articles, monitoring the media, cataloguing war crimes, producing research papers, organizing vigils, taking on discrimination cases and so on.

Aside from our countries index we have a number of country specific projects and research areas e.g. Chechnya, Mauritius, Turkey, Palestine and Nigeria. Our issue related work includes researching war crimes, campaigning for prisoners of faith and other prisoners held for their beliefs, campaigning against religious discrimination and persecution, as well as many other issues in and across areas as far a field as the UK to China, Bosnia to Papua New Guinea , Europe to the United States of America and South Africa.

Um..ok. Let’s look at that statement through the words of their own website for a moment. How about this report I found by doing a quick, simple site search:

WE ARE VICTIMS TOO, SAY DARFUR’S ARAB REFUGEES

13 August 2004

A few miles from a camp at Opash is another at Mossei. One is packed with African refugees, the other Arabs, the dispossessed from the opposing sides of Darfur’s internecine conflict. The perceived view is that the African civilians have been the victims of the murderous Janjaweed militia in a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Sudanese government.

But the Arabs say they have been so demonised their own suffering is being ignored. They say they too have been attacked, driven from their homes,and abandoned to face pending epidemics of cholera, malaria and hepatitis. They say their persecutors are African tribes in league with the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, with their own campaigns of driving out another community, Ten thousand people are in the three camps at Mossei, near Nyala, the capital of south Darfur. Some are from Arab tribes who supply recruits to the Janjaweed, and are viewed with deep suspicion by the African villagers.

The rumour in the souks is that these people are not refugees, but a fifth column awaiting orders to act. The suspicious say a large number of young men are among the refugees. Some say other men visit the camps at night. The charities which predominate here are from Arab countries, often with strong Sunni links. The same groups have tried to persuade African refugees to return to their homes, and the waiting Janjaweed, with money.

Abdullah Hassan Suleiman, the omdar or chief sheikh at Mossei, vehemently denied links with the Janjaweed, and said this was the kind of false accusation which was putting them in danger. “If we were with the Janjaweed, do you think we’d be sitting here in this misery? We had to flee our village because the Zarghawa and the Daju [tribes] attacked us. They killed 18 of our men and kidnapped three women and two men.

“We have never had any problems with our African neighbours. It was outsiders who came and did this to us. The excuse always is what the Janjaweed are doing, and that seems to make it all right to do bad
things to us.”

The three abducted women had returned. They say they were captured returning to retrieve belongings from their village, 22 miles from Nyala, with two male relatives. Noura Abdullah Usman, 45, said: “We were almost home when they caught us. Four men started dragging us from my brother Abdullah and my uncle, Abdul Hamid, when their leader came and took charge of us women. We were put in a car and taken to Hijer, a village where the Africans used to live before they were driven away by bandits. We feared that we would be attacked.

“One of the women started to cry and pleaded with the men not to hurt us. They took us to Lobado [a town to the south] where we were tied up and accused of being the women of the Janjaweed. A man came in and beat us with a belt, and said they’ll do to us what the Arabs did to their women.”

Another woman, Ayasha Abdullah Abu, 20, said: “We saw our men being brought into the building. They looked scared and one of them shouted they were going to be killed. That was the last we saw of them. We were threatened with beatings, but the commander sent three men to guard us and nothing more happened.”

The next morning the three women were driven to Nyala and freed at the camp. The African commander also gave them a note for the police explaining why they were held.

The only Middle East charity at Mossei is the Haiat Al-Amal, from the United Arab Emirates. Dr Mirgani Mohammed Isa, who is Sudanese, said: “All we are doing is providing medical help. I have heard about Sunni Arabs who are said to be trying to convert Africans who are Sufis, but we do not do that. We work closely with Unicef.”

Feelings of bitterness run deep among many refugees. Asif Omar Sayeed, a 23-year-old from the Arab Targim tribe, said: “The foreigners blame us for everything. But I realise what is going on. The Americans and the British want to use this as an excuse to occupy our country, just as they have done in Iraq. Like Iraq, we have oil. What has happened made me realise that as a true Muslim I must fight for my country when the foreigners come.”

By Kim Sengupta in Mossei, Darfur- the Independent

Excuse me, I have to go get a tissue.

The Arabs (99.9% chance they are Muslims) in Africa are calling themselves victims at the hands of the Africans, so Islamic Human Rights Commission picks up the story and the torch? I see. Truth or lies? Hard to tell when dealing with that part of the world, I have to admit. But, considering that the majority of violence in the Sudan has been caused by Arab Muslims raping, murdering and enslaving blacks of both Christian and Muslim backgrounds, I’d hardly jump at the chance to help Arabs in that region without having many suspicions.

Armies do not run on air and water alone. They require support systems and that requires civilians. How do the armies of the United States and Britain maintain themselves? Taxes. Family support. Donations and charities.

Repeatedly the Arabs in the above article cry foul and blame “outsiders” and “foreigners” and (!) “the United States”. The Arab Muslims claim they are being “demonised”, not by the actions of their own, but by everything else but.

I’ll call that a lie.