“Human rights has been turned (by the West) into a field for blackmailing and attacking the (Islamic) establishment,” said Mohammad Javad Larijani, Chief of the Iranian Judiciary’s Human Rights Council (the parenthetical material is in the original report from Iran’s state-run Tasnim News Agency).
And so that’s two Muslim leaders in one day who see contemporary understandings of human rights as incompatible with Islam (the other was Zaid Abdul Rahman of Malaysia). Yet many Muslim spokesmen in the West denounce as greasy Islamophobes everyone who points out that many elements of Sharia conflict with basic principles of human rights. What will they say now? Will they denounce Mohammad Javad Larijani and Zaid Abdul Rahman as Islamophobes?
“West Misusing Human Rights Issue to Attack, Blackmail Islamic Iran,” Tasnim, April 26, 2014:
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior Iranian judiciary official said the issue of human rights is exploited by the West against the Islamic Republic.
“Human rights has been turned (by the West) into a field for blackmailing and attacking the (Islamic) establishment,” Chief of the Iranian Judiciary’s Human Rights Council Mohammad Javad Larijani said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency.
He highlighted the strategy of resistance against this onslaught launched by the West in the name of human rights.
He rejected Western criticism of Iran’s implementation of Islamic laws, stressing “we are steadfast in our commitment to Islamic rules and the Islamic system”.
Larijani underlined that human rights is not a western issue and the West has no right to impose its interpretation of the issue.
“We are proud of Islam and we implement the (Islamic) rules,” he stated.
The judiciary official also dismissed anti-Iran reports by Ahmad Shaheed, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, describing the reports as “superficial and professionally flawed.”
In June 2011, the UN Human Rights Council, under pressure from the United States and its allies, named former Maldivian foreign minister, Ahmed Shaheed, as human rights rapporteur on Iran.
Tehran insists that the appointment of a UN special rapporteur on Iran’s human rights situation is a selective, politically-motivated and unacceptable move.
Elsewhere in his interview with Tasnim, Larijani pointed to the talks between Iran and the six world powers over Tehran’ peaceful nuclear program, and urged the Iranian government to avoid extending the six-month period predicted for the negotiations with the world powers.
“We must demonstrate that we will not back down (from our position) either on the nuclear issue or on human rights,” he reiterated….
Noted.