Denial of Human Rights in the Middle East:
Causes and Agenda for Remedy
By Dr: Muhamad Mugraby
11 December 1998
Prepared text of speech delivered in New York at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, organized by the New York Bar Association and area law schools

Fellow Humans,
When one speaks on this great occasion celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the speech cannot possibly be meant for any particular audience. For such speaker as the one standing before you is one human being who cannot see in his audience anything other than human beings of equal dignity and standing. It is my intention to address the conditions of human rights in the Middle East, which suffer from a tragic denial. This state of affairs must be a cause for grave concern to all mankind. It is of equal concern, however, that there is not one nation on Earth, including virtually all democratic and developed industrial nations, that is in full compliance with the articles of the Declaration and the Covenants.

Introduction
The eternal human quest for freedom, justice and peace is firmly documented in the history of mankind. It is embodied in ancient philosophy and in all known religions. Time and time again this quest was translated into a call for delivering humans from oppression and servitude: different peoples, different races, different regions, but always human beings who suffered from the denial of freedom (based on equality), justice (founded in compassion) and peace (characterized by humanity, tolerance and comprehensiveness). In modern times, and perhaps beginning with the French Revolution, the quest for freedom, justice and peace increasingly took the shape of a secular message, truly transcending the bounds of religions, nationalities and regions. The horrors of the Second World War, during which the rise of racism led to the Holocaust, opened the way to the birth of the United Nations and the inevitable proclamation of the Universal Declaration, which was partly authored by a great man from the Middle East and my country, Lebanon, Dr. Charles Malik.

Human Rights Denied
So, and based on the above premises, one would think that the universality of the Declaration, its genius articulation of a historical human message already firmly rooted, and the detailed provisions of the Covenants that followed in the form of international treaties, would have come upon fertile ground in the Middle East. But alas, and on this 50th anniversary of the Declaration, the Middle East is not exactly a haven for freedom, justice and peace. Is it possible that the Declaration could have had the opposite effect in the Region? On December 10, 1948, the Arab-Israeli military conflict was in progress. A few months later it came to a temporary halt with an armistice, not peace, only to be followed by many more wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and the ongoing mini-wars in the West bank and South Lebanon. So much for peace. As for freedom and justice, volumes upon volumes of reports by international human rights monitoring IGOs and NGOs testify to the routine violation of the basic rights guaranteed by the Declaration and the Covenants. A series of military coups d'Etat transformed many countries of the Middle East into the ranks of oppressive authoritarian regimes that had no interest in freedom, justice or peace, but quite the contrary. In fact that was the very foundation of their undemocratic systems. Where you have no military dictatorships you find royal or theocratic rule founded on similar denial of rights. Where one of these governments represents itself as a democracy beware, for this is the age of false and fabricated ballots. For democratic mechanics, elections, parliaments and other accessories, are used just to display the brand name "democracy" as a thin cover to the crushing of basic rights, denial of justice and evasion of peace. Why is that, and what went wrong?

Causes of Denial
History tells us that progress towards the full recognition of human and civil rights in Europe and North America was ultimately made possible in an environment of viable democratic institutions under a secular rule of law following the separation of church and state. For example the historic civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s could not have taken roots and triumphed had it not been for the role of the independent judiciary and the freely elected members of the US Congress who were duly responsive to the wishes of their constituents.

It is evident that there is a prevailing environment in the Middle East which is not only undemocratic but also not conducive to the emergence of true secular democracies. In fact the denial of human rights and the lack of democracy are twin phenomena which threaten one and the same human value. It follows that progress on democracy must lead to progress on human rights, and the upholding of human rights makes democracy inevitable. For the rulers who deny human rights to their people their are not democratically elected and practice no democracy. I submit that the above described sad state of affairs is the result of a number of causes which, in their turn, were brought into existence by powerful forces, prime among which are: (1) the religions, (2) the security doctrine, (3) the military, (4) the media, (5) the international community, (6) the national courts, (7) the culture of corruption, and (8) the human rights organizations.

I. The Religions
It is popular in some quarters to talk in this context of one religion, Islam, and how Islamic extremists favor terrorism and threaten world peace and Western interests. There has also been much theorization by certain writers on the seemingly inherent incompatibility between Islam and democracy. Much of this talk is manifestly prejudiced and some of it has the obvious motive of justifying the unconscionable relations between Western governments and certain authoritarian governments that allegedly base their laws and policies on Islam according to their self-serving interpretations! The supporting argument for this doctrine is so simplistic that it could easily apply to all religions. I submit that Islam and all other religions in the Middle East do not pose, by themselves and purely as religions, any impediment to human rights. The true and formidable impediment lies in the role that many religious organizations and leaders are exercising in the civil and political life of the Region. Such a substantial role and status for religions in the Middle East is not at all understandable to most outside observers and is not always so clear the people of the Region. For a starter, there are not just three major religions in the Middle East. In fact there are more than twenty active different religious establishments that constitute, for all practical purposes, autonomous religions or religious entities. As an example quite representative of the area, nineteen such entities are officially recognized in Lebanon, but this list excludes almost all Protestant churches, Buddhists Bahaiis, Ahmadis, and other existing religions with some followers in the country. The Saudi policy of recognizing only one religion, a Hanbali sub-school of Sunni Islam, and banning all others, is unique and not at all representative.

The fact is that the status and role of the Christian churches and the Jewish rabbinates was decreed fourteen centuries ago by the Islamic Caliphate based on the teachings of the Prophet Muhamad. It was a major step in the quest for freedom, justice and peace which had more limited precedents in Roman and Persian times. The Prophet taught that the religious organizations of the Christians, Jews and other peoples of the book, i.e. all organized religions, had the right to be let alone in full autonomy. Consequently each of the Christian churches and Jewish rabbinates took the status of quasi states under the Islamic Caliphate which to some extent resembled a federation. Not only did they continue their religious structure without governmental interference, but they took the right to have and enact their own religious laws and form their own courts. Furthermore, they were assured jurisdiction over their respective religious communities in all matters related to personal status and family law. They even had their own prisons and could issue and enforce prison sentences on their "subjects". Lastly they acted as the political and commercial representatives of, and spokesmen for, their communities before the Prince, whether a Caliph, a Sultan or a King. Taxes were often collected through the churches and rabbinates. This autonomous communal system of religions survived without interruption till the collapse of the last Islamic Caliphate, the Ottoman Sultanate. Surprisingly, while the emerging Republic of Turkey took on the status of a strictly secular state, the system continued unabated, and managed to increase its power, in the other states of the Middle East that seceded from the Ottomans. Although the system called for religions other than Islam to organize on their own, outside the boundaries of the official government structure, the Islamic religious structure had to remain an integral part of the state. This, in addition to autonomy, had the following results. The government embraced only one sect and theological school of Islam, under the Ottomans the Sunni sect according to the Hanafi School. Hence other Islamic sects had to organize on their own outside the umbrella of the Sultanate, learning from the Christian and the Jewish models. But unlike the Christians and the Jews, they were not recognized or accorded any autonomy, and they were often suppressed or even persecuted.

The patriarchs, bishops and rabbis exercised autonomous temporal powers as as princes and virtual rulers of their respective communities, and continue to exert every effort to maintain that position. Whenever the opportunity arose after the collapse of the Ottoman Sultanate, leaderships of autonomous religious communities, whether having been officially recognized by the Sultanate such as the Christian and Jewish, or unrecognized, such as the Shiites and Alawis (originally known as "Nussairis"), took all the power they could seize. In Iran (which was not part of the Ottoman Empire) the Jaafari Shiite clerics took over everything. In Syria the Alawis assumed supreme political and military power. In Lebanon the churches, whose leaders are already treated like heads of state, openly participate in the political process in violation of the secular constitution. In concert with Islamic religious communities, most Lebanese Christian church leaders oppose modernization in any way that could infringe on their powers. Israel was established as a Jewish state, and the power of the Rabbinates is far reaching; open conflict between religious and secular forces continues unabated. This may be one of the reasons why Israel does not have a written constitution that could challenge the ages old authority of the original Jewish religious establishment. The impact of the communal religious system is far reaching. What started as a reform fourteen centuries ago has turned into a living nightmare with many features that are directly in open conflict with the universality and meaning of human rights as spelled out in the Declaration, to wit:

Sectarianism is in charge, which translates into open and institutionalized discrimination. Citizenship does not exist independent of religious affiliation.

Freedom of speech must give way to the views of the religious leaders, who know better because they are closer to divinity, some time under the penalty of death. The famous threat to the life of Salman Rushdi could have come just as easily from a Christian or a Jewish religious authority in the Middle East.

Basic rights could only be fully accepted within the religious community, as every community has to fend for itself on its own. Hence there could be no recognition of equality among human beings as human beings.

There could be no equal rights for women as required by the Declaration, the Covenants and other international treaties. Such rights depend on the religious laws of each of the autonomous communities.

Intermarriage is discouraged, very difficult to enter into, and occasionally hazardous to the spouses involved. There are no modern civil laws in the Middle East providing for civil marriage. The right to license and celebrate weddings is one of the most dearly protected privileges of the autonomous communities.

II. The Security Doctrine
In the Middle East, human rights are much of the time set aside under the pretext of national security. Whether it is the security of the undemocratic regime or mere sectarian security, the outcome is the same: human rights denied. To emphasize the national security cause or repression, and all over the Region, political and other prisoners are regularly tried before military and special security courts that have little or no regard for due process. Such courts are active in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Israeli administered Palestinian territories, Palestinian Authority and most other countries of the region. In Israel judges of regular courts often listen to police and/or army officers explaining the security angle of situations, particularly when it concerns Palestinians and Israeli settlers. The Israeli Supreme Court has declined many times to rule favorably or to intervene on petitions by lawyers representing Palestinian prisoners actually being tortured under interrogation. Israeli gunners scored a direct hit in South Lebanon on a prefabricated building, in a UN compound, full of scared civilian refugees, which resulted in the loss of more than a hundred innocent lives, mostly women and children. Such contempt by many elements of the Israeli Army for the human rights of "others" is reciprocated by groups (consisting mainly of Islamic extremists) fighting the Israelis in South Lebanon and elsewhere.

Members of the legal profession are also affected by the national security doctrine. Lebanese prisoners in both Syria and Israel have no access to lawyers and lawyers appointed by their relatives or international are often denied access to them. Disciplinary charges were brought by the Cairo Bar against an Egyptian lawyer who dared represent the alleged Israeli spy Azzam Azzam in bizarre proceedings before an Egyptian state security court. The Lebanese Government attempted to prosecute a Lebanese lawyer who argued before a Beirut Military Court that Israel does not fit the legal definition of the "enemy" for purposes of enforcing the penal code, on the ground of endangering the moral of the armed forces. Defenders are regularly harassed and it is very hard for persons charged with security related crimes as "collaboration with the enemy" to find lawyers who are agreeable to representing them. Even if they do it is almost impossible for such lawyers to make a serious and credible defense on their clients' behalf. Even in non-security related matters lawyers are easily intimidated as evidenced in a recent case in Lebanon. When a Lebanese Jew who occupies a sensitive position in an international organization earned the wrath of former prime minister Hariri by publicly criticizing the high level of corruption in the country, his lawyers in landlord-tenants cases in Sidon were intimidated into dropping him as a client, for fear of being accused of sending money to Israel. How easy it is for human beings, for their own selfish interests, to dehumanize other human beings!

III. The Military
The glorification of the military is a Middle Eastern phenomenon of major negative consequences to democracy and human rights. Former military officers play major roles as leaders, co-leaders or policy makers in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Israel and Lebanon. In North Africa the same phenomenon exists in Tunisia and Algeria. Following the war of 1948, military uprisings took the helm of government from the hands of civilians in Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, and Iraq. The Lebanese army commander has just been made president. In Israel the army has long been a national icon with super credentials arising out of a series of military successes in the Israel-Arab wars. In a country long living in an ocean of hostility, many Israeli army generals look forward to shiny political careers upon their retirement. The same wars that gave the political advantage to Israeli officers boosted the careers of officers in the armies of neighboring countries they once fought against. With very few exceptions, Middle Eastern military commanders have proven to be natural enemies of human rights. The Israeli-Arab military and political confrontation has provided the most tragic framework to human rights abuses by both sides.

IV. The Media
Middle Eastern media has played a central role in an ongoing campaign of misinformation and trade in hate. Most of the printed media is owned by governments and the few publications which are not are either corrupted by government money or by fear of ruthless repression. TV and radio broadcasting is no better. More recently satellite channels available to television have experienced the same fate. It is unfortunate, but it is certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that the dissemination of information to the people of the Region is influenced financially by the governments of Libya, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and other wealthy Gulf states, on the one hand, and/or is at the mercy of the daggers and guns of assassins working for the said, or other, governments or armed extremists groups.

Unfortunately, this media does not only fail miserably in performing its duty to bring unbiased information, news and opinion to the people, but it lies to them and distracts their attention from the real and local causes of their misery and the denial of their basic rights. The political advantage to the ruling oppressive regimes from the media results from brainwashing the people who are denied their human rights by these regimes in such a way as to shift the burden, responsibility and blame to external culprits and scapegoats that their leaders would like them to hate, supporting the manifestations and tactics of the religious communal system, legitimizing the national security basis of oppression, and portraying the very concept of universal human rights as alien to the national culture and a tool of Western political policies aimed at destroying their indigenous way of life.

V. The International Community
It is regrettable that the international community, led by the big powers, has done all the wrong things with the effect of supporting the above described state of affairs. Western governments, in particular, have done and continue without regret to do business as usual with regimes that deny human rights to their own people. They have given their direct and indirect support to the corrupt media. They have recognized military adventurers as legitimate leaders. And they miserably failed to lift a finger in the defense of beleaguered human rights in the Middle East. That role is best described in the 1998 report of Human Rights Watch as follows: 

One of the reasons publicly advanced in the West for this regrettable apathy is deference to "Islamic sensibilities", an obvious reference to the above described religious communal system. In fact they are the same Western governments that were responsible for the survival of that system after the collapse of the Ottoman Sultanate. At that time the League of Nations placed Iraq, Jordan and Palestine under the British Mandate and Syria and Lebanon under the French Mandate. Egypt and the Sudan were already under British occupation. Under the terms of the mandate Britain and France were supposed to guide those nations in the democratic ways, but their choice was to maintain the status quo ante of the autonomous communities. Thus the communal religious system breathed new life and actually thrived under the mandate. For example, it was the French High Commissioner for Lebanon and Syria who issued Decree No. LR/61 dated March 13, 1926, naming eighteen religious denominations as officially organized and entitled to the special privileges within the system. Very recently the Coptic Church of Egypt was added to the list and its leader began making regular long visits to Lebanon complete with political statements! Something similar took place in Jordan, Iraq and Palestine which was inherited intact by the State of Israel.

Deference to "Islamic sensibilities" is a mere excuse for failure to make the choices mandated by the Declaration and international law. The best illustration can be found in comparing the Western position on Islamic law in the Sudan with that on Saudi Arabia. Under the presidency of General Jaafar Numeiri, a chapter on Islamic punishments was added to the otherwise modern penal code of Sudan. This raised very few eye brows in the international community. Soon a highly respected Sudanese scholar was charged with apostasy, convicted and publicly executed. No big deal! When a new government came to power in the Sudan heavily influenced by the Turabi party of Islamists, hell broke loose over the same penal code! In the meantime, and across the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, there is nothing but Islamic punishments applied to Saudis and foreigners alike and scoring the highest rate of executions in the World. In Saudi Arabia there is no due process, no right to counsel, nothing! In a recent case documented by Human Rights Watch a Syrian worker in the Kingdom, member of an ancient Sufi sect, was executed on charges of witchcraft for possession of an amulet cherished by Sufis. The evil character of the amulet was established from the expert testimony of the Committee for the Enforcement of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a huge Saudi religious police organization! There was no trial in any sense of the word and when the poor man was executed he was not aware that he had been sentenced. Is this the kind of sensibilities that the United States and other Western governments wish to protect?

VI. The National Courts
For all the above mentioned reasons, and the impossibility of an independent judiciary without democratic government, national courts in the Middle East have failed to play an effective role in defending human rights Where the rule of law existed in theory, it has not at all been upheld in practice, especially when confronted with alleged religious or national security imperatives.
The role of military and security courts all over the Region has already been mentioned. I have also cited the impotence of Israel's Supreme Court, as well as other regular courts, in the face of the national security doctrine justifying, among other things, the regular practice of torture. In Egypt a Cairo court of appeals (June, 1995) declared the dissolution of the marriage of Dr. Nasr Abou Zaid and his wife Dr. Ibtihal Younis, both Egyptian university professors, against their will, for apostasy. i.e. on purely fundamentalist religious grounds. This decision is not the work of some bearded religious clerics with ideas that belong in prehistoric times. It was, surprisingly, authored by a panel of three learned and senior civil judges who were graduated from civil law schools, and made part of a sophisticated judicial system on the continental model. The case came before the high judicial panel on appeal from a lower court that had rejected the action brought by an unrelated third party, another college instructor. The plaintiff appealed and the appellate court ruled that Dr. Abou Zaid, as evidenced from many of his published scholarly writings, had indeed committed apostasy and that any Muslim was entitled to sue for the dissolution of the marriage. The panel emphasized that the Egyptian state was not secular, atheist, or Christian but Muslim. Hence it considered any attack on what is sacred in Islam as an attack on the state. Dr. Abou Zaid was quoted extensively as ridiculing religious belief in the existence of devils and jinis, and the court found such quotations to be an affront to Islam.  Furthermore, the appellate court found Dr. Abou Zaid's call for upholding positive law over religious law as another evidence of his apostasy. Most significantly, the court, in finding, Dr. Abou Zaid guilty of the crime of apostasy (punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan) declared that Islamic punishments were indeed still in force as part of the law. In Lebanon courts are prohibited from refusing to enforce statutes for conflict with the constitution. Hence they are precluded from playing any effective role in protecting and enforcing the constitutional guarantees to civil and human rights as provided in the Lebanese constitution. Although Lebanese courts are under the statutory duty of enforcing international conventions over local statutes, they become suddenly impotent when it comes to human rights. Examples of flawed justice are abundant. An informative summary introduction to the subject is contained in a recent report by Amnesty International (April, 1998) titled: "State Injustice: Unfair Trials in the Middle East and North Africa".

VII. The Culture of Corruption
The above described causes for the denial of human rights have also given rise to a culture of corruption in the rulers and cronies. Some of the regimes in question are corrupt in simply taking advantage of naked power to achieve rapid and enormous private enrichment. Other regimes no better but, in addition, they see in corruption a useful tool of government. As long as all senior public servants and security commanders are busy making illicit money, they have no time to plot against the regime and no moral grounds for criticizing their superiors. It is no secret that enormous wealth generated by astronomical oil revenues in the oil producing parts of the Region was largely blundered. The absence of natural resources has not presented any problem to corrupt rulers and officials in most other Middle eastern countries, but those had to work harder in stealing from the less abundant means of their poorer nations. For example, an enterprising prime minister of resources-poor Lebanon, with contracting business of his own in Saudi Arabia suspected of being a mere front for the ruling family, caused the country to run public debt of nearly $20 billion within six years of his tenure and, within the same period, was able to appropriate together with his associates public properties and wealth in amounts estimated to exceed $10 billion. This prompted the World Bank to declare that corruption in Lebanon had exceeded the level it had reached in Indonesia. Corruption creates a very powerful and obvious incentive to jeopardize democracy, and hence human rights, for fear of accountability.

VIII. The Human Rights Organizations
During the fifty years since the birth of the Universal Declaration dozens of non-governmental human rights advocacy groups have come into existence worldwide and many of them have become very influential morally. Inevitably, the role of these NGOs has been substantially confined to research and monitoring of human rights violations. This function has been extremely helpful in bringing out the truth about the horrible practices of oppressive regimes around the world in general and in the Middle East in particular. Many of those NGOs are based in countries perceived in the Middle East as colonial or neo-colonial powers. Hence enemies of human rights have some illegitimate ammunition for discrediting their great work by accusing them directly or indirectly of being tools of their countries policies. Such accusations are often used as ammunition for sinister attacks on the whole subject of human rights as an intrument of Western colonialism! It is quite encouraging that the prestige and influence of international human rights NGOs is constantly rising as a result of their increasing external political activism in the promotion of their ideals. But this activism has been mainly directed against the known human rights violators, most of whom could not care less. Little energy has been focused on political activism within their own countries aimed at making human rights part of the top national interests of foreign policy of such countries This is where international human rights violators may be compelled to worry and to take human rights issues much more seriously.

Conclusions and Agenda for Action
The Middle East is one region of the world with deep rooted pluralism. People of different religions, languages and ethnicity have lived together for thousands of years. They are all, and without exception, good and noble people and they all deserve, without exception, to enjoy and exercise their human rights in full, thus fulfilling the common and historic quest for freedom, justice and peace.
Turning the tide that works against human rights would simply require turning the tide that opposes freedom, democracy and peace. The people of the region are like a patient who had an accident that confined him to bed for years, hence when he is recovered from his original illness he must learn to do things that came natural to him before his hospitalization, such as walking. The first order of business is to put an end to the control of the media by governments and groups that spread misinformation and trade in hate. This requires the full international enforcement of Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that incites discrimination, hostility or violence. The universal enforcement of this article will make the need for the services of international criminal tribunals against criminals, who usually base their political careers on national, racial or religious hatred, less likely.
As a first step in this direction I call for the setting up of one or more impartial private and/or public international group to monitor the media, public statements by politicians and declared governmental policies for traffic in national, racial, or religious hatred aimed at inciting discrimination, hostility or violence, and to recommend appropriate international sanctions against such abuse, not only in the Middle East but also where it equally counts, i. e. Europe and North America.
Secondly, with the reduction and eventual removal of this obstacle, an internationally funded human rights education program should be launched with its own media tools and directed at the people of the Region with the acquiescence, but not direct involvement of their governments. The purpose of this program is to teach people "how to walk", i. e. that they can indeed live together in freedom, justice and peace like most of their ancestors did.
Thirdly, a similar internationally funded program to uphold the rule of law as a national priority in every Middle Eastern nation should be launched with the aim of reforming the local judicial systems and establishing a truly independent and effective judiciary with the integrity, training and experience to be relied upon for swift and effective intervention for the protection of international law. Throwing the political weight of big powers behind such an innocent but highly vital program will be more worth it than lobbying for an arms contract.
Fourthly, the political activism of the human rights NGOs should be redirected and with new vigor at their own home governments with the aim of improving and eventually perfecting human rights compliance in such countries and commencing a new international political initiative by the family of free nations. Such initiative would have the following medium and long term objectives:
Recognizing human rights as a universally common vital international policy interest of all nations.
Making the recognition and enforcement of human rights a precondition for admission into the family of nations. Thus nations that do not uphold human rights to the satisfaction of the family of nations should not receive economic assistance or become the beneficiary of any international economic, trade or security advantages. Their leaders and officials will not have customary immunities. They will not be admitted into world organizations and if already admitted their membership will be frozen. They will be candidates for international sanctions.

Encouraging the secularization of government in the Middle East by cutting the historic religious communal system down to the size necessary to achieve the full separation of church and state. In return, it should be understood that the individual constitutional and human rights of parishioners of all religious groups are fully guaranteed under the procedures of an effective regional human rights court on the European model and by the international community through the United Nations.

Affirming without exception that no member of the family of nations shall have the right to enforce, or be in the business of enforcing, religion, any religion, for such enforcement violates human rights and turns religion from a question of personal conviction into an instrument of coercion as a matter of perceived religious duty by authoritarian governments, extremist private groups and zealous individuals alike, often with hazardous consequences.
Notes1 In the presentation to follow it will be noticed that references to the state of human rights in Israel are limited. The reason is that the speaker has little or no reliable access to knowledge about what goes on in Israel. Therefore, he has relied largely on reports by international human rights NGOs on Israel, which are of limited focus. As a citizen of Lebanon I am at such a knowledge disadvantage because there is no cultural or any other civilized exchange between the two neighboring countries. As long as Lebanese are not permitted to travel to Israel and Israelis may not come to Lebanon, there will be little or no chance for any significant human or civil dialogue furthering the cause of human rights among the two nations.
2 Lebanon is the land of the Phoenicians who were not only successful free traders but also accomplished teachers and jurists. It is and has always been a central part of the Middle East. This region was once very fortunate as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of several major world religions. The message of freedom, justice and peace is at the heart of all the religions that flourished in the old times, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
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