December 30, 2014

"Sharia is based on wisdom and achieving people’s welfare in this life and the afterlife. Sharia is all about justice, mercy, wisdom, and good. Thus, any ruling that replaces justice with injustice, mercy with its opposite, common good with mischief, or wisdom with nonsense, is a ruling that does not belong to the Sharia, even if it is claimed to be so according to some interpretation."

-- Islamic Jurist and Theologian, Ibn al-Qayyim (1292-1350AD)

MPAC's Human Rights Report Card for Muslim Countries is a research project assessing the human rights record of nine countries that profess to have Islamic governments, i.e. their constitution and system of governance are based on Islamic guidelines. The countries have been chosen both by this initial criterion of self-proclaimed Islamic identity in governance and jurisprudence and by the variety they represent in terms of culture, geography, and ethnicity. The country reports are meant to be comparable, that is they examine the same issues in areas such as civil liberties, social rights, minority rights, women’s rights, and migrant worker or refugee rights, and the scoring is consistent, as much as possible, across the countries. The final product for each country is a report card based on a total possible score of 100 on human rights compliance based on Sharia requirements in these areas.

We hope think tanks and policy makers use the reports to inform their understanding and perspective. The individual country reports are structured so that they may be used as a resource for both the Muslim and non-Muslim audience. Most importantly, each report is an evaluation based on Islamic principles of the state of human rights in Muslim nations prepared by a Muslim organization (MPAC) that does not have an agenda other than to inform and to educate.

Each score is based on data gathered from the constitutions and legal codes of each country, as well as information gathered from human rights groups within the country, as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. A final source of data came from news outlets such as Al Jazeera and the British press, as well as AFP (Agence France Presse).

The first report card is now available: Algeria.