Friday, May 29, 2015

Dentons Wins Award for Work with Syrian Refugees – مشروع دنتونز لتأييد اللاجئين السوريين فاز جائزة

مشروع مكتب المحاماة (Dentons) لتأييد ضحايا النزاعات المسلحة بالشرق الأوسط يقدم لللاجئين السوريين بالأردن ولبنان اِستشارة قانونية مجانية عن حقوق الانسان وحقوقهم في السكن والملكية وعن القوانين الأردنية واللبنانية التي تطبَق عليهم في ما يتعلق بالطرد والترحيل. فاز هذا المشروع جائزة (Corporate Counsel Middle East)  لـ(Corporate Social Responsibility Team of the Year) لعام 2015. اشكر (Dentons) على الدعم الذي قدم إلى هذا المشروع.
 
The law firm Dentons’ project to support the victims of armed conflict in the Middle East offers to Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon pro bono legal counseling on human rights, housing, land and property rights and on the laws of Jordan and Lebanon that apply to them in the areas of evictions and deportations. This project won Corporate Counsel Middle East’s “Corporate Social Responsibility Team of the Year” award for 2015. I’d like to thank Dentons for its generous support of this important project
Dentons lawyers receive CCME award - محامون شركة دنتونز يستلمون الجائزة

Friday, May 1, 2015

A Toolkit for Combatting Extremism in the Middle East


In his Harvard International Law Journal Commentary, “Saving an Ancient Community,” Jonathan A. Pride argues for a three-prong strategy to save Iraq’s ancient Christian community, now on the brink of extinction. His strategy consists of the following three-point plan:

1. The Iraqi government should act to deconstruct the “other” identity of Christians by enacting constitutional changes providing for equal protection and implementing the post-ethnic conflict reintegration methods that were effective in the Balkans;
 
2. The Christian area in the Kurdistan Nineveh Plain should be given a “safe zone” status, allowing villages to assemble local police forces to ensure security; and

3. The international community must invest in and help rebuild Iraq’s economy to help keep repatriation open as a viable option for Christians that have fled Iraq.

In addition to Mr. Pride’s suggestions for combatting the extinction of Christians in Iraq, I argue in favor of one additional, under-utilized tool: Islamic law. Because sectarian Islamic armed groups refuse to acknowledge the validity of non-Islamic international humanitarian law, there is a critical need for peace-loving Muslims to engage these armed groups from within the framework of Islamic law, the very system they claim to implement. This can be achieved by Islamic scholars and Imams, operating from within the framework of Islamic law, challenging armed groups’ interpretations of the sacred texts they use to justify attacks on Christians and other civilians, debating the apologists of jihād and highlighting the discrepancies between these armed groups’ acts and the acts strictly forbidden by Islamic law, including looting, the mutilation of corpses and the murder of non-combatants in times of war.

A full discussion of my Commentary has been published by the DesmondTutu Peace Foundation.