Tag Archives: sharia

IfI Press Release on the Radicalization Among Isolated Migrants

Bonn (February 22, 2010) The number of German jihadists (“holy warriors”) in Afghan, Pakistani, and Yemenite training camps is rising. According to a 2007 study by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior titled “Muslims in Germany”, ten to twelve percent of Muslims shows the potential for a politically and religiously motivated radicalization. The Islam scholar Christine Schirrmacher warns: The danger of a “home-grown terrorism” is increasing in Germany, too.

IFI Press Release on the Discussion Concerning Islamophobia

BONN (October 26, 2009) – On the occasion of the trial beginning on Monday, October 26, 2009, in the Marwa el-Sharbini murder case, the scholar of Islam Christine Schirrmacher, from the Institute of Islamic studies, speaks out in favor of the necessary distinction to be made between legitimate criticism of the ideology of political Islam and justified criticism of deficits in integration on the one hand, and a general rejection of all Muslims or even xenophobic offenses against Muslim fellow citizens on the other.

Islamic Human Rights under scrutiny

The frequent human rights abuses which take place in nearly all countries of the Muslim world are often the result of corrupt or dictatorial regimes and not necessarily due to either Islam or these countries’ view of human rights. Less widely known, however, is that international associations in Muslim countries have formulated their own human rights declarations in opposition to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the Plenary session of the United Nations in 1948.

Defection from Islam: A Disturbing Human Rights Dilemma

The discussion of human rights flares up when Muslims in an Islamic country convert to Christianity and are threatened with death, as happened a few years ago in Afghanistan and as happens from time to time in other Muslim countries. In the West we immediately regard this as an attack on human rights and a restriction of the freedom of religion, but, in fact, almost all of the Islamic countries signed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, and they regard their actions as consistent with their understanding of human rights. Obviously we face a huge divergence of opinions on the nature of human rights and what it means to protect them, but what is the source of such fundamentally different ways of thinking?