ICLA – VOS

Welcome to VOS, the Victims of Sharia Observatory. We have launched this initiative as a way of tracking the harm that sharia does to human rights all over the world. For some time now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has lectured the world on human rights despite the severe human rights abuses that take place in many OIC member states. Invented terms such as “Islamophobia” have been put into circulation to blame the victims of sharia abuse rather than its perpetrators. We hope that this monthly report will help bring the truth to public attention.

VOS forms part of the Brussels Process that we launched in the European Parliament in July 2012. We will collect and collate news stories from around the world that illustrate the way sharia undermines the most basic principles of human rights. To help us in this task we would ask individuals and organisations to participate in VOS. If you are aware of any news story that needs to be noted by VOS then please let us know. We hope that other websites will get involved and republish the monthly reports and other VOS related materials.

It is important for the whole world to realise the threat that sharia poses to human rights so that they can lobby for appropriate reforms. Indeed some sharia practices are so degrading that need to be considered by international law as crimes against humanity.

Islamic tradition divides the world into two principal components, the House of Islam (Dar al Islam), and the House of War (Dar al Harb). The former is the Islamic world, and the latter is the land of the non-Muslims. This division is itself is provocative, divisive and encourages discrimination. The Dar al Harb is regarded as the House of War because it is expected that Islam will agitate in those areas in order to convert it to the House of Islam. Mechanisms that encourage sharia in that area are ones that are intended to facilitate that transformation. For this reason we separate our observatory based on these two components. The observatory will have separate sections for each component. Initiatives in Western countries that we believe will facilitate the spread of sharia into those areas will be highlighted in the Dar al Harb section. Sharia based human rights violation in the Islamic world will be highlighted in the Dar al Islam section.

If you want to be part of the VOS initiative then please email us at: [email protected]

We will document stories that are either directly related to sharia or that we believe are inspired by sharia principles.