Habib Siddiqui

China has one of the worst records on human rights. Its inhuman and savage treatment of Uyghur (also spelled as Uighur) Muslim minorities living in the far western Xinjiang region (East Turkistan) is one of the worst our world is witnessing outside how the Rohingyas are treated inside Myanmar. Beijing’s leaders do not tolerate any dissent and consider anyone questioning their Draconian measures inside Xinjiang an enemy of the state. On September 23, Tuesday, a Chinese court imposed a life sentence on Professor Ilham Tohti (born October 25, 1969), a Uyghur economist who taught at Beijing’s Minzu University, on separatism-related charges. The Urumqi People’s Intermediate Court handed down the sentence after a two-day kangaroo trial of Prof. Tohti. The court also ordered the confiscation of all of his possessions. The 44-year-old defendant was calm during the session but shouted “I don’t accept this!” when the sentence was read out. It is the most severe penalty in a decade for anyone ...

Nearly 200,000 civilians have died in the Syrian conflict. The world community has watched the tragedy unfold in front of its eyes and let the massacre of unarmed civilians happen unbridled. Even when it was obvious that Syria’s ruthless murderer President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against his own civilian population, nothing was done to punish him or his regime. In his address to the nation on August 31, 2013, President Obama promised of taking military actions against the hated Assad regime. After the speech the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed an authorization to carry out military action. But instead of securing votes necessary in the House and Senate, Obama abruptly abandoned it. He, instead, opted for a Russian-brokered deal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, which gave Assad the green signal to continue with his murderous campaign. Many Syrians have lost their entire family in this tragedy. It is not difficult to understand why many Syrians have...

I was recently made aware of a very disturbing news about the holy sites of Islam in today's Saudi Arabia. During my pilgrimage, I had the first hand knowledge of the sad state of affairs of those places. Outside the two mosques in Makkah and Madinah, all the historical sites showed serious disregard or criminal neglect.  An important historical site, the Jabal al-Noor, was not accessible and was discouraged by the authorities to make a visitation. It seemed more like going through a junkyard for any visitor! No efforts were made to preserve such sites close to Makkah and Madinah and were left to the mercy of nature and people to see to their eventual disappearance. In the USA I have seen how much care and attention are paid to preserving historical sites even though there is so little of history to celebrate about. On the other hand, when I saw the neglect in the Saudi Arabia with well-known historical sites dating from the time of the Prophet of Islam (...