Customer Reviews

Human Rights and the World's Major Religions [Five Volumes] [5 volumes] (Human Rights and the World's Main Religions)

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I picked up "The Islamic Tradition" (volume three) for a research paper and found the material outdated and biased. The title and table of contents led me to believe that I would be reading about Islam's impact on worldwide human rights in the modern world. However, all I got were sermons on how well Jews and Christians were treated in the Middle Ages, complete with insinuations that it was the Jews committing genocide in Israel. I obviously cannot comment on the other volumes because I did not read them, but I do not recommend this one because, most importantly, the author goes out of his way to ignore the routine, blatant human rights violations by Islamic governments such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran. He makes baseless claims (predicting, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that women would "continue" to reclaim freedoms in Islamic societies) and essentially defends societies that condone, and even impose, mutilation sentences. Saudi Arabia has executed by decapitation 136 people this year alone. You would not even know that capital punishment there exists by reading this book, which is supposed to be about HUMAN RIGHTS. How about the fact that only Muslims can be citizens? Or a reference to the apartheid road signs on the highways to Mecca? This book has a clear agenda, and that agenda does not include providing the most relevant facts or the complete picture. Don't bother.