Human Rights Abuses CHAPTER V

By the standards of Western humanrights activists  and of many Muslims as well  several countries in the Muslim Middle East are alleged to have very bad "humanrights" records. In the last chapter, in our discussion of "Islamic law" in contemporary practice, we gave some instances of conduct which would surely be regarded as outrageous and indecent in Western eyes. Much of this conduct  most notably, perhaps, the alleged rape of young women prisoners in Iran in order to render them ostensibly suitable for execution  would perhaps appear even more outrageous and indecent in orthodox Muslim eyes.

Human rights violations in the Middle East continue. Amnesty International, in its Annual Report Summary (1990), reported sharp increases in the number of executions in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Torture was reported to be widespread in Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, and also was reported in Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

To the Western public, these are all grouped together as Muslim (or even as "Arab") nations and societies, and all of their humanrights abuses are liable to be laid at the door of Islam. Yet it will be noted that many of the worst Middle Eastern humanrights abusers are under nonIslamic  often, indeed, rigidly secular  regimes. The plainest examples of this are Iraq and Syria, ruled