Research - HUQUQ

Study: Britain used one of its medical schools as a colonial institution

Research Assistants Medicine, Public Health, Reports Colonialism, Eugenics, Exploitation, Supremacism 0

A recent study confirms that Britain used the London School of Tropical Medicine as an institution serving its colonial goals between 1899 and 1960; essentially confirming the use of science and medicine to further the system of colonialism, recognized by many scholars now as a crime. According to the study by Leuba Hirsch, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “The London School of Tropical Medicine was established as a colonial institution that benefited and contributed to British colonialism in a variety of ways between 1899 and 1960.” He pointed out that the school was established by the colonial office of the British Empire, which ran the British colonies, as the funds needed to establish and operate it came from colonial contributions, which were derived from the exploitation of resources and labor in the colonies. He pointed out that the school played an active role during the two world wars, in protecting British forces from tropical diseases and protecting imperial property. He added that students and members of the school team traveled and did research on colonial populations throughout the empire. In at least one case, a British doctor deliberately infected Chinese “Hen Lu” with malaria, to test his theory about the role of mosquitoes in transmitting the disease. He explained that some of the school’s lecturers and staff were also dedicated to ethnic sciences such as eugenics, which promote the improvement of a nation’s genetic quality through selective procreation. It is noteworthy that the London School of […]

Towards a global alliance to compensate for colonialism and its crimes

Research Assistants Comments on Rights Colonialism, Exploitation, Human Rights 0

by Muhammed Khalil Al-Mousa * The idea of colonialism has historically been based on the practice of imposing political, economic, social, cultural and legal domination by a foreign state, often a Western state, over a foreign territory and its inhabitants. Colonialism, which extended from the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century, was a practice not prohibited under traditional international law, but it became prohibited since the middle of the twentieth century, when the United Nations decolonized the world. Colonial practices and policies were built on plundering the wealth of the colonial peoples, accumulating wealth and capital at their expense, impoverishing, marginalizing, enslaving and trading them, destroying their industries and agricultural and commercial activities, as well as the oppression, oppression and brutality practiced by the colonial powers in the lands under their control. Those colonial policies and practices led to structural imbalances between colonial and colonial states, manifested in historical injustice and inequality.

PERKEMBANGAN POLITIK HUKUM ISLAM PASCA REFORMASI DALAM PERSPEKTIF NEGARA HUKUM HANS KELSEN

Research Assistants Journal, Jurisprudence Indonesia, Islamic Law Reform 0

by Marsono Wibowo Abstract As a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, it will directly or indirectly affect the development of the living order of the Indonesian people. The regimes change from time to time with policies that different from one to another, provide a variety of colors in the life of the nation and state. As a legal expert, Hans Kelsen explains the connection between law, morality and religion. How do each other influence each other, and what is the connection of that thing in the life of the nation and state in Indonesia.

Poverty Law and Equality Rights: Preliminary Reflections

Research Assistants Law Poverty 0

by James C. Hathaway, University of Michigan Law School Abstract The traditional governmental response to the phenomenon of poverty has been the enactment of legislation to permit or effect the transfer of some measure of economic resources to the poor. From feudal times to the present, governments of our political tradition have consistently embraced an economic definition of poverty: the poor are identified by financial criteria and are assisted by financial means. The legislative evolution in regard to poverty, based on this underlying economic premise, has achieved only superficial advances. First, twentieth century legislation incorporates a more humane standard of minimum acceptable resource allotments. Second, the modern social welfare system represents a somewhat more comprehensive and less stigmatizing legislative bandage than were such earlier legal vehicles as the regulation of begging, institutionalized almsgiving and workhouses. Recommended Citation Hathaway, James C. “Poverty Law and Equality Rights: Preliminary Reflections.” Journal of Law and Social Policy 1 (1985): 1-16. (Work published when author not on Michigan Law faculty.) Download: UM Repository

Torture and Islamic Law

Research Assistants Essays, Jurisprudence Torture 0

Abstract This article considers the relationship between Islamic law and the absence or practice of investigative torture in the countries of today’s Muslim world. Torture is forbidden in the constitutions, statutes, and treaties of most Muslim-majority countries, but a number of these countries are regularly named among those in which torture is practiced with apparent impunity. Among these countries are several that profess a commitment to Islamic law as a source of national law, including some that identify Islamic law as the principal source of law and some that go so far as to declare themselves “Islamic states.” The status of investigative torture in Islamic law has long been unsettled: most early classical jurists forbade it, but some later classical jurists permitted it in at least certain circumstances. The permission some jurists gave the practice in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) was matched and augmented by a broader license jurists gave executive actors in the realm of governance or administration (siyasa), a realm seen as necessarily less constrained by jurisprudential limitations. Historical evidence indicates that investigative torture was indeed practiced by executive actors at various periods and places of the pre-modern Muslim world. Nevertheless, statistical analysis indicates little or no correlation between the absence or practice of torture in today’s Muslim-majority countries and the degree of commitment these countries profess to Islamic law. Instead, this article concludes, the absence or practice of torture in a given Muslim-majority country today (and the willingness of Muslim-majority countries to join international covenants that ban torture) […]

Systemic Racism in the U.S. Immigration Laws

Research Assistants Essays, Journal, Law 0

by Kevin R. Johnson, UC Davis Abstract This Essay analyzes how aggressive activism in a California mountain town at the tail end of the nineteenth century commenced a chain reaction resulting in state and ultimately national anti-Chinese immigration laws. The constitutional immunity through which the Supreme Court upheld those laws deeply affected the future trajectory of U.S. immigration law and policy. Responding to sustained political pressure from the West, Congress in 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, an infamous piece of unabashedly racist legislation that commenced a long process of barring immigration from all of Asia to the United States. In upholding the Act, the Supreme Court in an extraordinary decision that jars modern racial sensibilities declared that Congress possessed “plenary power”—absolute authority—over immigration and that racist immigration laws were immune from judicial review of their constitutionality. The bedrock of U.S. immigration jurisprudence for more than a century and never overruled by the Supreme Court, the plenary power doctrine permits the treatment of immigrants in racially discriminatory ways consistent with the era of Jim Crow but completely at odds with modern constitutional law. The doctrine enabled President Trump, a fierce advocate of tough-as-nails immigration measures, to pursue the most extreme immigration program of any modern president, with devastating impacts on noncitizens of color. As the nation attempts to grapple with the Trump administration’s brutal treatment of immigrants, it is an especially opportune historical moment to reconsider the plenary power doctrine. Ultimately, the commitment to remove systemic racism from the nation’s social […]

UN Human Rights Report Says Israel Guilty of ‘Apartheid’

Research Assistants Reports Apartheid and Segregation 0

The UN’s human rights body has accused Israel of the “crime of apartheid,” saying it has established a “regime of systematic racial oppression and discrimination” against Palestinians. The conclusion follows a long line of similar findings from from Israeli, Palestinian and international organizations. A report issued Monday by United Nations investigator Michael Lynk states that Israel’s system “ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other,” namely in the occupied West Bank, arguing that it meets the legal definition for apartheid. “The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” he wrote. Lynk’s report mirrors previous findings from a number of humanitarian orgs, among them Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem, which have each similarly accused Israel of apartheid and the persecution of Palestinians. [useyourdrive dir=”1RMvtajJPYEjFXo-75m6m9yE4Ww50Y24X” account=”117128953801471050864″ mode=”files” viewrole=”administrator|author|contributor|editor|subscriber|guest” downloadrole=”none”]

Treatise On Rights

Research Assistants Documents HUQUQ 0

Treatise On Rights رسالة الحقوق [Risalat al-Huquq] Attributed to Imam Ali Zayn al-Abidin In the Name of Allah, the All-merciful, the All-compassionate Know – God have mercy upon you – that God has rights against you and that these encompass you in every movement through which you move, every rest through which you rest, every way-station in which you reside, every limb which you employ, and every instrument which you put to work. Some of these rights are greater and some less. بسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحِيمِ إعْلَمْ رَحِمَكَ اللهُ أَنَّ للهِ عَلَيْكَ حُقُوقًا مُحِيطَةً بكَ فِي كلِّ حَرَكَةٍ تَحَرَّكْتَهَا، أَوْ سَكَنَةٍ سَكَنْتَهَا، أَوْ مَنْزِلَةٍ نَزَلْتَهَا، أَوْ جَارِحَةٍ قَلَّبْتَهَا وَآلَةٍ تَصَرَّفْتَ بهَا، بَعْضُهَا أَكْبَرُ مِنْ بَعْضٍ. The greatest of God’s rights against you is the right which He has made incumbent upon you for Himself and which is the root of all rights, then those which He has made incumbent upon you in yourself, from your crown to your foot, in keeping with the diversity of your organs. وَأَكْبَرُ حُقُوقِ اللهِ عَلَيْكَ مَا أَوْجَبَهُ لِنَفْسِهِ تَبَارَكَ وَتَعَالَى مِنْ حَقِّهِ الَّذِي هُوَ أَصْلُ الْحُقُوقِ وَمِنْهُ تَفَرَّعَ. ثُمَّ أَوْجَبَهُ عَلَيْكَ لِنَفْسِكَ مِنْ قَرْنِكَ إلَى قَدَمِكَ عَلَى اِختِلافِ جَوَارِحِكَ. He has given your tongue a right against you, your hearing a right against you, your sight a right against you, your hand a right against you, your leg a right against you, your stomach a right against you, and your private part a right against you. These are the seven […]

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

Prof. Souaiaia HUQUQ Bookreview Capitalism, Migration 0

While working on my recent work, Muslims and the Western Conception of Rights, I struggled with the application of the systems thinking framework to the topic of human rights. I wanted the framework to yield practical recommendations that promote and foster fundamental rights. By the end of the project, I realized that such expectations are a limiting burden, not indicative of the utility and usefulness of the approach. The utility of the framework should not be judged by one’s ability to successfully apply it, but by its capacity to explain. Reading Border and Rule underscored the importance of nuanced understanding of the analysis framework over its application to critical human rights issues, such as migration, labor, and economic rights. Among the fundamental features of systems thinking framework are its capacity to exploit the properties of dynamicity and interconnectedness of systems to identify determinant forces that shape human rights as lived experience and as a conceptual discourse. Harsha Walia, perhaps without explicitly identifying these properties, masterfully identifies the structures, instruments, and actors involved in the displacement of persons and peoples and exposes the systems that produced them. For instance, Walia disputes the qualification of migration as a crisis in and of itself in favor of presenting it as “the outcome of the actual crises of capitalism, conquest, and climate change.” She explains migration, as a global event by linking it to national issues such as labor, prisons, and domestic policies. She traces the cause of mass migration to settlers’ and colonizers’ […]

UN: “Stop denying racism, start dismantling it”

Editorial Team Reports, Comments on Rights Supremacism 0

UN Human Rights Chief urges immediate, transformative action to uproot systemic racism GENEVA (28 June 2021) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Monday issued an urgent call for States to adopt a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism, as she published a report casting a spotlight on the litany of violations of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights suffered by people of African descent – on a daily basis and across different States and jurisdictions. The report states that the worldwide mobilization of people calling for racial justice has forced a long-delayed reckoning with racism and shifted debates towards a focus on the systemic nature of racism and the institutions that perpetrate it.