Civil rights in the Mid East

[riderinthestorm]

My daughter has to write an essay about civil rights in the Middle East. Here's the question:

"How can you as an individual support the struggle for civil rights in the Middle East? Without waiting for the government to act, consider how you can leverage your freedom to challenge repression by dictators. Reflect on recent technological advances that empower individuals, as well as recent grassroots organizing by people your age across the Middle East. Consider the tools you have access to that American civil rights activists in the 1960s did not. Propose a specific campaign young Americans could lead to help defend civil rights in the Middle East."

Does anyone have any suggestions on resources/books/scholars/authorities we could look up to get more information to present some good answers for comparison with the US civil rights efforts? Or can you give me any ideas for her to use in the essay? She is really stumped and I told her that DU has such a wide variety of scholars online that this would be a good place to start!

This is a senior class essay project and worth a good portion of her grade so please feel free to range wide and far with suggestions, sources and ideas.

Many thanks!

[PsychoDad]

1. Well, here are some net resources/Ideas

The internet has allowed for public discourse and access to information on a scale unimaginable just a decade ago. You can peruse news articles from almost any nation, view UN Human rights reports, legal cases and opinions. You can discuss your findings with a wide range of people on forums like DU, then send an E-mail to the UN consulate of Iran ( http://www.un.int/iran/ ) about the human rights abuses to Sufis in that country.

Pretty Impressive when you think about it, and a wonderful tool for the empowerment of the individual and for democracy worldwide.

Some sources that I found online on Human/Civil Rights in the ME are:

http://hrw.org/doc/?t=mideast
http://www.oneworld.net/article/archive/64/
http://hamsaweb.com/index.php

A number of links to NGO's and reports can be found here.
http://www.derechos.org/human-rights/mena/

From the Center for International Studies of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Publishes scholarly writing related to the modern Middle East.
http://web.mit.edu/cis/www/mitejmes/intro.htm

You could also explore the violations of Human/Civil rights in the ME as a violation of Islamic Law. It may surprise many westerners that The Quran teaches us, as does the US Constitution, that various inalienable rights have been granted to Men and Women by God Itself.

These rights include:

The Security of Life and Property.

The Protection of Honor.

Sanctity and Security of Private Life.

The Security of Personal Freedom.

The Right to Protest against Tyranny.

Freedom of Expression.

Freedom of Association.

Freedom of Conscience and Conviction.

Protection of Religious Sentiments.

Protection from Arbitrary Imprisonment.

The Right to Basic Necessities of Life.

Equality of All Before the Law.

The Right to Participate in the Affairs of State.

Some links to explore if interested:
http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Books/M_hri/index.htm
http://www.islam101.com/rights/index.htm
http://www.alhewar.com/ISLAMDECL.html

There are also various news sources that might be of interest. May have current articles useful to your project.

http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://payvand.com/news/
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/home3.asp
http://english.daralhayat.com/
http://www.abunimah.org/
http://www.arabicnews.com/ (mostly from official Arab sources)
http://www.memri.org/ (Washington based pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute providing translations and analysis of Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew media reports)
http://www.meionline.com/ (Respected London based magazine offering selected articles from the current issue)
http://www.sahafa.com/
Find even more news links here:
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/

If there is anything else I can help with, please feel free to ask.

Peace.