Doubt in Islamic Law – a history of avoiding punishment
Book Review - Doubt in Islamic Law: A History of Legal Maxims, Interpretation, and Islamic Criminal Law "Avoid imposing criminal sanctions in cases of doubt" - idra’u ‘l-hudud bi’l-shubahat - is the juristic maxim at the centre of Professor Intisar Rabb’s phenomenally well-researched work, Doubt in Islamic Law: A History of Legal Maxims, Interpretation, and Islamic Criminal Law. I came to this book largely due to my own lack of insight into the detail of how traditional Islamic jurisprudence viewed evidence and determined guilt or innocence within criminal law cases. Even where guilt was ascertained, was punishment to be taken as a final consequence? Rabb…
How the government makes you a terrorist without ever arresting you
In this piece, Asim Qureshi Research Director at CAGE takes us through how a routine stop under Schedule 7 and its specially engineered questions, can lead to oppressive civil orders leaving the individual having been declared guilty without judicial oversight, left to prove their innocence. Further, concerns about the implementation of the new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill which seeks to arbitrarily impose orders under the elusive idea of “extremism”. I want you to imagine going through an airport where you are subjected to a Schedule 7 stop under the 2000 Terrorism Act. This stop results in you being taken away…
Life in Britain is about to get MUCH worse…
1984 in 2015: Counter Terrorism & Security Bill A new piece of legislation currently being rushed through Parliament called the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill carries serious implications for communities across the UK. In particular, the Muslim community is brought under particular scrutiny as Part 5 of the Bill seeks to make reporting on those on pathway to terrorism (through ‘extremist’ actions, beliefs of statements) a statutory requirement. This means that nursery teachers, university lecturers, doctors, nurses and even opticians, will all be under a mandatory duty to inform to Prevent police if they feel one of their students, patients of…
An Alternative Christmas Message
An Alternative Christmas Message: The ummah's first extradition request Living in the western world, we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of rights and due process only within the context of an international framework established through key documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Often by doing so, we miss the history and importance that other cultures, communities and societies have brought to these modern day formulations. Currently the Muslim community in the UK has become the victim of a number of policies where due process has been removed completely. The cases of the five men who were…
Guantanamo Bay: Oxygen for ISIS
In light of the CIA Torture Report said to be declassified today, Asim Qureshi, Research Director of CAGE examines the use of the iconic orange jumpsuits from the detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to the hostages kept by the Islamic State. Islamic State's tactics have been taken directly from the American government in their use of torture techniques such as waterboarding and mock executions. Evidencing that the War on Terror and the impact of these torture policies affect mostly those who the they claimed they sought to protect. In 2003, I completed my Masters dissertation on the treatment of…
Babar and Talha Sentencing: A Welcome Anomaly
Asim Qureshi, who knew Talha and Babar personally, writes that their sentences earlier this month went against the grain of what we have come to expect from the War on Terror. In June 2011, CAGE released a report, Too Blunt for Just Outcomes, on the disproportionate sentences that are meted out to Muslim terrorism suspects in the US. The report very much concentrated on §3A1.4 of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, permitting a judge to apply an extra length to the sentence in a criminal case, even where there was no actual allegation of terrorism. Over the years we saw this terrorism…
Martin to Moazzam: from one Birmingham to another
Read this article by Asim Qureshi on the Cage UK site here
Some deaths are more equal than others
Asim Qureshi, who met one of the Woolwich attackers, writes about how the case reveals much about how we value human life. With the Woolwich trial now over, there are some important questions that need to be asked in relation to the value our societies give to lives lost both in the East and the West. The way in which we understand war crimes during the conduct of hostilities needs to also be addressed. For the last twelve years, I have advocated for a greater respect for the standards laid out in the Geneva Conventions and the humanitarian considerations expressed…
The Matter will be Debated in the House
Note; Please click here for an urgent updated Action Alert by the Free Babar Ahmed campaign. When considering the impact that not debating the Ahmad petition could potentially have, we should bear the words of Prime Minister Cameron in mind, that the matter should be debated, "whether we like it or not". In a House of Commons debate around the government's e-petitions initiative, UK Prime Minister David Cameron chose to speak of it in terms that related to empowering the public. On 11 August 2011, the Prime Minister said, "One of the points of the new e-petitions website is to make sure…
Khalid Shaikh Muhammad – the modern day Shylock?
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. [Shylock,…
