Following are excerpts from an address delivered by Massoud Shadjareh, representative of the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on March 26, 2010.
Shadjareh, who in 1997 was one of the founders of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, has authored several papers on Islamophobia and human rights.
In his bio, Shadjareh is described as "a veteran human rights campaigner, who began his activism on campus at UCAL Berkley during the anti-Vietnam protest movement in the late 1960s… He currently sits on the Home Office Stop and Search Review community panel, which is addressing the disproportionality of stops against minorities."[1]
According to the UK daily The Telegraph, Shadjareh criticized the prosecution of radical cleric Abu Hamza.[2]
Shadjareh spoke in English, with his address translated into Arabic. MEMRI TV's subtitles are based on the English. To view the clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memri.org/legacy/clip/2448
Masoud Shajara: "What we are gathering here is a very important aspect of the lives of those who are oppressed in the world. In particular, we know that in the current situation, there is no-more oppressed than our Palestinian brothers. No-one has gone through all these 60 years of oppression on a daily and weekly and monthly basis. [...]
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"Tears come to our eyes every night, watching, on our television screen, oppression and atrocities being committed on the children and the innocent of Palestine. [...]
"The world and international community are not only silent, but they’re actually helping and encouraging the oppressors. [...]
"Unfortunately, even in the Muslim and Arab world, with the exception of few, we see silence, and indeed, in some cases – as was said before – help and support for this oppression. [...]
"What is left is us ordinary people – those of us who have a covenant with Allah, and those of us who recognize our responsibility under the covenant with Allah... We need to rise up. [...]
"The money in our pockets is actually power, and we need to use it for the sake of Allah, and the sake of those who are being oppressed. [...]
"If we buy Coca-Cola, if we buy Starbucks, if we buy Motorola – you are giving money to those who are killing your brothers. Who pays the killers money to continue killing? [...]
"Can I just say that we had a meeting with the Universal Justice Network. Universal Justice Network [which[ is actually a group of between 30 to 50 civil society NGOs around the world – from Malaysia, Indonesia, Europe, America, India, Pakistan, Turkey, etc. We had a meeting, and unanimously, everybody agreed that they were going to be party to this campaign. We will do everything in our power to make sure that money of the believers, money of the people, will not be used for killing our children. [...]
"We need to make sure that within the next year – this is just the beginning... The responsibility is now on the shoulders of every single one of us. We need to make sure that our friends, our relatives, our colleagues, our countrymen – everyone – is going to stop buying these products. [...]
"What we can promise you, from the Islamic Human Rights Commission, who did all the research, is that every item that is being presented to you has been researched over and over again, and every aspect that we put forward is a 100% guaranteed fact. If there was any doubt on the information which we collected, we put it aside, because there is plenty of information and evidence available on these companies. So what you hear and what you receive is actual factual information."
