فصلنامه مطالعات حقوق بشر اسلامی
پیاپی 14 (بهار و تابستان 1397)

 Some Western ideologies, such as feminism, consider women’s sociopolitical participation as a duty for them and the ultimate goal for their empowerment. In the meantime, some governments like the United States have used this as a cover to represent themselves as the proponents of human rights, and the rights of women in particular, to pretend that Islamic perspective is against this branch of human rights. This paper has adopted a descriptive-analytical approach to delve into Imam Khomeini’s viewpoints on the rights of women to participate in sociopolitical activities. The results of this study indicate that, thanks to Imam Khomeini’s all-embracing knowledge on Islamic teachings, he has had a precise and thorough approach toward the conceptual domain of the rights of women in social and political participation. Although Imam Khomeini has never rendered it religiously forbidden – and still religiously recommended in some cases - he has considered superb role and goal for women such as playing an active role in upbringing the Islamic society. In Imam Khomeini’s thought, women can be employed but this must not end in forgetting, denying or understating principal responsibilities of women. Therefore, in Imam Khomeini’s school of thought, Islam considers women’s presence and their activities primarily within the family atmosphere and inside the house. While placing emphasis on women’s participation in the social activities, Islam insists on their primary role in the house as a good mother and a good wife.

Inherent dignity is the basis for human rights. Human persons per se possess human rights and in the age of post-socialism and the emergence of the governments, they are always seeking realization of their human rights. When human rights are to be translated into action in a society, the democratic state is forced to embark on restricting rights of individuals in line with enforcing right ethical codes, establishing public order and meeting public welfare. In this political-legal affiliation of citizenship, any semantic narrowing or broadening of the “human rights” will lead to the enactment of citizenship rights. A glance at Quranic literature indicates that in verbal dispute on human rights and responsibilities, human dignity is the preliminary ground and the cornerstone for any type of right and responsibility. The Holy Quran has made good references to the rights of human person but the basis of this right is another principle known as inherent dignity. Irrespective of their race, religion, color, language, gender and nationality, the Holy Quran attaches a sort of inherent dignity to all humans. Given the hypothesis, this paper claims that there is a direct link between inherent dignity and human rights in the Holy Quran. To that end, this paper will indicate that in the holy verses of the Book, like the human rights international system, inherent dignity is the basis for human rights, and the rights and dignity of human persons – as the presupposed reality vis-à-vis religion – are among the accepted principles of the religion of Islam.

This paper intends to analyze the contents of general courses on history of Islam for BA degree, in view of covering the contents on citizenship rights. The statistical population comprises books on Islamic history and civilization, analytical history of early Islamic period and the history of Imamate or Islamic leadership. Given the nature of the research and limitedness of the statistical population, we have put aside selective sampling and taken the entire population as the single sample. The checklist prepared by the researcher as the measurement instrument comprises of nine components from among the major components of citizenship rights, whose validity was approved by specialized jury and its reliability was measured by Scott’s pi method with an overall agreement of 0.97. The findings suggest that books on Islamic history and civilization have made mention of citizenship rights components for 689 times. Its coefficients of significance for political, cultural, social, economic, religious, security, judicial, organization and scientific variables have been 0.113, 0.099, 0.123, 0.124, 0.126, 0.123, 0.102, 0.093, and 0.098 respectively. The figures for courses on history of Islamic culture and civilization, analytical history of early Islamic period and history of Imamate stood at 0.332, 0.341 and 0.327 respectively. Given the results, this paper proposes including more citizenship rights concepts in university textbooks.

This paper intends to study factors that affect student awareness on citizenship rights. In other words, this paper is pursuing a sort of correlation between economic, social and cultural factors and awareness on citizenship rights among university students. The statistical population includes all students at Payame Noor University of Bandar Abbas, from among them 350 students were selected randomly through Cochran formula as first respondents. We have used survey research and questionnaires for data gathering. The collected data was processed and analyzed with the aid of SPSS software. Results indicated that such variables as age, gender, major, father’s education level, mother’s education level, mass media usage, attitude toward participation, and attitude toward citizenship have significant relations with the students’ awareness on citizenship rights. However, there was no meaningful relation between such variables as employment, family’s social and economic standing, and the students’ awareness on citizenship rights. The step-by-step regression analysis indicated that after inputting all aspects of citizenship rights, at the end, only four gender, political, civil and cultural aspects clarified that the proportion of variance in dependent variable (awareness on citizenship rights) was 9.1 percent.

Fighting piracy through marine patrolling or round-the-clock presence of navy forces in international waterways may reduce pirate attacks against ships but will bear no fruit in the long run, without introducing approaches for trial and punishment of the main culprits. During the past decade, pirates have been tried within their country of origin but for various reasons such as asylum-seeking, high costs, political problems and the like, this sole approach has failed to be of positive effect in the course of fighting piracy. Moreover, resorting to such methods as the trial of pirates in third countries has faced numerous restrictions in practice. Therefore, the trial of pirates at a regional or international court can be evaluated as a long-term approach with positive effects. This approach, however, may face serious challenges although there are solutions under study to overcome these challenges. This research intends to have a critical review of the challenges and approaches to the trial of pirates in international courts of justice.

Myanmar is one of the ethnically, racially and religiously diverse Asian countries. Such diversity in race and religion have plunged the country into crisis. Violence by a majority against a religious minority as an act of ethnic cleansing, coupled with the government’s inefficiency and inability to control and overcome the crisis have escalated the tension, turning it into the most atrocious crime against humanity in the region. This paper intends to review the history of these religious clashes and study the occurrence or non-occurrence of genocide and ethnic cleansing in this country based on the reports by the Human Rights Watch, in order to compare and contrast the events with the elements of this crime in international documents. To that end, this paper has reviewed the elements of genocide crime with respect to the crimes taken place in Myanmar in view of the human rights and international law in order to prove the occurrence of this crime in Myanmar after scrutinizing root causes.

The unbridled growth of cities and burgeoning population during the recent centuries have led to accumulation of wealth and capital in urban space, so that enactment of urban rules and regulations and publicizing the citizenship rights and responsibilities for establishing social order and security in the cities have always been the major concerns of thinkers and city planners. The return to the teachings of Islam and the strategies and approaches remaining from the religious leaders such as Imam Ali (AS) offers solutions to many of these complicated problems. One of the major issues today, deals with the citizenship rights and responsibilities. One can assuredly claim that Imam Ali (AS) in his Nahj ul-Balagha has proposed the best approaches for handling citizenship rights and responsibilities. This is because Nahj ul-Balagha is known as the “brother of the Holy Quran” and Imam Ali (AS) is believed to be the second influential person in Islam after the Prophet (pbuh). In view of Imam Ali (AS), human beings are members of a unified Islamic umma with deep and friendly relations and mutual rights. This paper will proceed in two sections of descriptive study and strategic research. The research method is documentary and based on library and archive sources. The research hypothesis is this that Islam and those educated in the school of Islam, like Imam Ali (AS), have maintained a progressive approach toward citizenship and its rights and responsibilities.