Human Rights group assail death sentence of Lebanese psychic
For making prediction on a satellite TV Channel, Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat was arrested by religious police in the holy city of Medina and then sentenced to death November 9, Startribune.com relays.
‘Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in Saudi Arabia for practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortune-telling. These practices are considered polytheism by the government of this deeply religious Muslim country’, Donna Abu-Nasr of Associated Press writes.
Withcraft which is then considered as polytheist by this Muslim nation means belief in God is only focused to Allah and no one else? Anyone believing or practicing their faith in other supernatural beings, gods or deities other than Allah is a crime.
Where freedom of faith and religion is deeply enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights but not adopted by Saudi Arabia, it raises questions on the government’s respect for some of its citizens’ practice on other faiths.
Some Islamic countries have criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its ‘perceived failure to take into the account the cultural and religious context of Islamic countries’. Is it not also logical that their perception be consistently followed to respect other individual faiths as well?
Muslim nation-members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference officially adopted the June 30, 2000 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam , an alternative document that says people have “freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari’ah”.
Yet the Shari’ah, similar to the Christian Bible, apparently is open to a wide array of interpretations.
The Human Rights report highlights the ongoing complaints over the Saudi justice system, based on the Shari’ah, ‘which can often result in dramatically inconsistent sentences.’ The Report called on the Saudi government to halt “its increasing use of charges of ‘witchcraft,’ crimes that are vaguely defined and arbitrarily used.”
Another Saudi woman Fawza Falih was sentenced to death by beheading in 2006 for the alleged crimes of witchcraft, recourse to supernatural beings, and animal sacrifice.
Refer to original story:
http://www.startribune.com/world/73539447.html?elr=KArks:DCiUBcy7hUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU
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