Category: World Affairs

  • Whose Life Is She Allowed to Live?

    Whose Life Is She Allowed to Live?

    By J Jones

    I have watched news clips of women attacked with acid and daughters beaten by people who were supposed to protect them. I have read about girls being married while they are still children. Somewhere in the explanation, somebody brings up faith, obedience or family honor. By then, I am usually wondering why so much explaining is needed for something that should have protected her in the first place.

    Maybe being a father makes me look at this differently. My daughter has school, friends and ideas about her future. She also has opinions, including a few about how much her father knows. Apparently that number changes depending on what she wants to do. We have our disagreements, but I want her to grow into her own life without being afraid of me.

    So I went looking at what Islamic sources say about women and how different countries turn those interpretations into law. I found rights, restrictions and enough disagreement to make a simple answer fall apart. The Qur’an, a scholar’s ruling, a government’s law and a family’s custom can influence one another. That does not make them the same thing.

    School gives us a place to start. UNESCO reported in August 2026 that about 2.4 million Afghan girls remained excluded from secondary education under Taliban rule. Afghanistan is the only country formally prohibiting female education beyond primary school. The report also describes restrictions on women’s work and travel. We need to name the Taliban here, because their rules do not establish what Islam requires everywhere. (15)

    Still, imagine being that girl. You want to learn, but somebody has decided you have learned enough. Now your future depends more heavily on the people deciding what comes next. Which brings me to marriage, where this research started getting especially uncomfortable.

    I found Islamic sources saying a woman should be consulted, including an account of Muhammad rejecting a marriage arranged against a previously married woman’s wishes. Sahih al-Bukhari also says a virgin’s permission must be sought, although silence can count as permission. I want those passages in the discussion. I also wonder how easily a frightened girl’s silence could be mistaken for agreement. (1a; 1b)

    Then I reached the rules concerning children. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta explains that traditional rules allowed a guardian to arrange a minor’s marriage without her consent. Its 2015 account describes majority classical support for marriage contracts before puberty, while also supporting government age limits for protection. Sahih al-Bukhari records Aisha saying Muhammad married her at six and consummated the marriage at nine. That is what the collection reports; modern debate about the historical chronology is a separate question. (2a; 2b; 3; 4)

    We should distinguish a marriage contract from the beginning of married life. But I cannot see how either discussion is complete without asking how much choice the child actually has. Adults being satisfied with an arrangement does not tell me that she is ready for it.

    Even adult women encounter different rules. Dar al-Ifta explains that Hanafi jurisprudence allows an adult woman of sound mind to contract her own marriage under specified conditions; other schools require a guardian. So saying women either always choose freely or never have a choice would leave out part of the evidence. (2a; 2b)

    The countries differ too. Saudi Arabia generally bars documenting marriage below 18 but permits court-authorized exceptions after puberty, and its Ministry of Justice requires the bride’s explicit consent. A 2021 UN communication described Iran’s threshold for girls as 13, with younger marriage possible through paternal consent and judicial approval; a 2023 UN committee review also raised concerns about marriages below 13. (22) UNICEF’s 2025 Iraq report describes a threshold of 18 with exceptions to 15, alongside reforms allowing religious rules and uncertainty about their effects. A 2026 UN committee review adds concern that Iraq’s new Ja’fari code allows marriage contracts to be changed without the woman’s consent. I would not squeeze those different, dated findings into one supposedly universal Islamic marriage age. (16a; 16b; 17; 20; 23)

    Once she is married, having a choice still matters. Can she work? Control her money? What happens when she and her husband disagree? Dar al-Ifta’s 2015 employment ruling says women may undertake lawful work and have financial independence, while requiring a husband’s explicit or implicit permission for his wife’s outside employment and recognizing his authority to prevent it. It places financial support on him. That is this institution’s ruling, but it leaves me wondering how independent a right is when somebody else can stop you using it. (8)

    The religious texts also give women financial rights while making distinctions between the sexes. Qur’an 4:4 directs bridal gifts to women; 4:11 gives a son twice a daughter’s inheritance share when they inherit together, though other arrangements differ. Verse 2:282 specifies two male witnesses, or one man and two women, for a debt agreement. Its particular subject does not establish that every woman’s testimony always counts as half a man’s. And 4:3 permits up to four wives, conditional on justice, directing a man to one if he fears he cannot maintain it. We need the conditions as well as the differences. (5a; 5b; 6; 7)

    But what happens when the disagreement at home becomes physical? Qur’an 4:34 is central here. Recognized translations describe admonition, separation in bed, and striking or beating, sometimes qualified as light. Dar al-Ifta rejects violent abuse, discusses interpretations permitting restricted physical discipline, and identifies scholars who prohibited wife beating altogether. I cannot honestly present those positions as agreement. Nor can a passage about spouses automatically establish a father’s right to assault his daughter. (9; 10)

    Questions about her control over her own body also bring us to female genital mutilation. WHO says more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone it worldwide, across different religious communities. It has no health benefits. WHO identifies social pressure and attempts to control female sexuality among the reasons it persists, while saying no religious scripture prescribes it. (13)

    That does not mean nobody has defended cutting through religious interpretation. Dar al-Ifta discusses differing juristic opinions while rejecting an unequivocal religious requirement; its separate statement rejects the practice as a cultural custom wrongly presented as a religious injunction. Both belong in our understanding. Meanwhile, the girl lives with the consequences long after the adults finish explaining why they thought it was acceptable. (14a; 14b)

    Marriage raises another question about bodily safety: sexual consent. Dar al-Ifta’s 2013 marital-rape ruling condemns violence used to force intercourse and allows a complaint to a court. Its explanation nevertheless focuses on particular prohibited circumstances and grounds for refusal, rather than setting out freely given consent to every sexual act. That difference matters. So does checking a frequently repeated claim about rape: Qur’an 24:4’s four-witness provision concerns accusations against chaste women. The verse itself does not say every rape survivor needs four eyewitnesses. A country’s actual prosecution rules need their own examination. (12; 11)

    And if she wants to leave? Dar al-Ifta’s account of Egyptian khul’, a wife-initiated divorce, says she returns the bridal payment and relinquishes specified marital financial rights, but not custody or child support. There is a route out, with financial consequences. Knowing those conditions tells her more than simply hearing that divorce is permitted. (21)

    Of course, protection on paper is only part of the story. A 2021 UN communication raised concerns about Iran’s Article 301 and punishment when a father kills his child. It recorded a reported 2020 killing of a daughter by her father, followed by a nine-year sentence. A 2017 UN review of Pakistan documented honor killings, acid attacks and gang rapes, while Pakistan’s Penal Code criminalizes injury with corrosive substances. A 2026 UN review still raised concerns about honor crimes in Pakistan and low prosecution and conviction rates. We have to report both the violence and the prohibition. (17; 19a; 19b; 24)

    I struggle to find honor in making a daughter afraid of her family. Government authority deserves scrutiny too. UN investigators reported in 2024 that Mahsa Amini’s 2022 death in morality-police custody was unlawful and caused by physical violence. Qur’anic modesty provisions, including 24:31, and government enforcement methods are separate evidence. Invoking religion does not remove the need to examine what happened. (18a; 18b)

    I am still a father reading these sources, not somebody deciding what every Muslim family is like. The evidence gives us important differences, and readers should be able to examine them. But I keep thinking about whether a girl can learn, whether her answer matters, and whether she can get help when she needs it. Before we get too comfortable discussing the rules, I would like us to remember who has to live with them.

    References

    Sources checked September 30, 2026. Qur’an and hadith links provide English translations of religious texts. Dar al-Ifta links document that institution’s interpretations, rather than a universal Islamic consensus or current national statute. Government publications establish the cited legal provisions; UN and WHO publications document the findings attributed to them. Older reports remain identified by date. Saudi Arabia’s official law is in Arabic; PDF sources are labeled below.

    1. Sahih al-Bukhari 5136 and 5138, consultation and a rejected marriage.

    2. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, Legal guardianship in marriage and Forcing an adult female to marry.

    3. Dar al-Ifta, What is the ruling on marrying a minor, March 15, 2015. This is an institutional account of classical positions and its support for age regulation.

    4. Sahih al-Bukhari 5134.

    5. Qur’an 4:4 and 4:11.

    6. Qur’an 2:282.

    7. Qur’an 4:3.

    8. Dar al-Ifta, A woman’s right to work, May 5, 2015.

    9. Quranic Arabic Corpus, Seven parallel translations of 4:34.

    10. Dar al-Ifta, My husband beats me and says it is his right.

    11. Qur’an 24:4. This verse alone does not establish a modern rape prosecution’s evidentiary rules.

    12. Dar al-Ifta, Does marital rape exist in Islam, July 29, 2013.

    13. WHO, Female genital mutilation.

    14. Dar al-Ifta, Female Genital Mutilation and Female circumcision contradicts Islamic law.

    15. UNESCO, Five years on, August 11, 2026, updated August 19, 2026.

    16. Saudi official gazette, Personal Status Law, Article 9; Ministry of Justice, Requirements for marriage contract.

    17. UN special-procedures experts, Communication to Iran AL IRN 4/2021. Allegations and legal concerns are attributed to the communication, which is dated evidence rather than a comprehensive current legal survey.

    18. UN Geneva, Fact-Finding Mission report on Iran, March 18, 2024; Qur’an 24:31.

    19. UN Human Rights Committee, Concluding observations on Pakistan, 2017, paragraphs 59–60; official Criminal Law Second Amendment Act 2011, section 3 inserting Penal Code sections 336A–336B.

    20. UNICEF Innocenti, Child marriage in humanitarian settings report, 2025, PDF page 29. The report describes reforms and uncertainty; it should not be used as a complete account of subsequent implementing rules.

    21. Dar al-Ifta, Seeking khul and what the husband may take back, March 19, 2015, citing Article 20 of Egyptian Law 1/2000.

    22. UN Human Rights Committee, Concluding observations on Iran, 2023, paragraph 17. 23. UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Concluding observations on Iraq, 2026, paragraphs 55–56. 24. UN Committee against Torture, Concluding observations on Pakistan, 2026, paragraph 36.

  • What They Thought They Were Supporting

    What They Thought They Were Supporting

    History usually looks a lot cleaner after the fact than it did while people were actually living through it. Revolutions are especially good at that. Years later, we draw neat little lines between events and act like everyone should have known exactly where things were headed. If history were really that easy, we would probably make a lot fewer mistakes.

    The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is a good example.

    Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became the face of the movement that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The Shah was authoritarian, and opposition to him came from several directions: religious conservatives, liberals, nationalists, leftists, students and ordinary citizens who simply wanted political change. That coalition mattered because not everyone standing on the same side of the street was headed to the same destination.

    Years before the revolution, Khomeini had already laid out a very specific vision of government. In lectures given in Najaf in 1970, later published as Islamic Government, he argued that Islamic jurists should exercise political authority. The doctrine became known as velayat-e faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist. So the idea of clerical rule did not suddenly fall out of the sky after the Shah was gone. It was already there.

    But something changed in the way Khomeini spoke publicly as the revolution approached.

    During his exile in France in 1978, he emphasized elections, freedom and popular choice. In a November 1978 interview reported by The Washington Post, Khomeini said the Iranian people would choose their government through universal suffrage. He also said he had no intention of heading the government or becoming part of it. Now, I am no constitutional scholar, but that sounds quite a bit different from building a system where the highest political authority belongs to a religious jurist.

    And apparently some of Khomeini’s own allies heard the difference too.

    Mehdi Bazargan, a respected opposition leader and later the first prime minister after the Shah fell, supported the revolution but did not support supreme clerical government. Encyclopaedia Iranica reports that Bazargan and his Freedom Movement mistakenly believed Khomeini no longer supported velayat-e faqih. They expected him to serve more as a spiritual or general leader than as the ultimate political authority.

    That may be one of the most important pieces of this entire story. These were not simply people who supported the revolution and then got cold feet when things became difficult. Some of them appear to have believed they were helping create a government fundamentally different from the one that eventually emerged.

    Bazargan’s provisional government prepared an early draft constitution that did not contain the later system of supreme clerical rule. The structure was much closer to a conventional republic, with elected officials holding greater authority and religious oversight far more limited.

    Then things changed, and not in a small-print-at-the-bottom-of-the-contract kind of way.

    An Assembly of Experts dominated by clerics rewrote the proposed constitution. Encyclopaedia Iranica says the earlier draft was altered “beyond recognition.” The new constitution placed velayat-e faqih at the center of the political system, giving enormous authority to the supreme religious jurist.

    At roughly the same time, the political atmosphere was changing too. Opposition newspapers were closed. Liberal and secular groups that had helped overthrow the Shah began losing influence. Bazargan and others became increasingly frustrated that the provisional government had authority on paper but far less control over the revolutionary institutions actually shaping the country. Having a title is one thing. Having the power that supposedly comes with it is another.

    By November 1979, Bazargan resigned. The revolution he had helped support was no longer becoming the government he thought he had been helping to build.

    Abolhassan Bani-Sadr followed a similar path. He had been close to Khomeini during exile and became the Islamic Republic’s first elected president. Yet he eventually came into conflict with the clerical leadership over the growing power of religious institutions. He was removed from office in 1981 and fled Iran. Once again, people who had helped overthrow the old government ended up opposing the system that replaced it.

    That brings us to the uncomfortable question: were they deceived?

    History does not give us a single document in which Khomeini writes, “I will tell these people one thing until I have power and then do another.” History almost never makes things that convenient. Without that kind of evidence, it would be irresponsible to claim that his private intentions have been proven.

    But the documented record still shows something important. Khomeini had already written about clerical government years before the revolution. During the critical period when he needed broad public support, he emphasized elections, popular sovereignty and a limited personal political role. Some of his major allies apparently believed those statements and expected a government without supreme clerical control. After the revolution succeeded, the political system moved much closer to the model Khomeini had described years earlier.

    That does not automatically prove a secret plan, but it does give us a reason to ask whether everyone standing beside him understood what they were helping create.

    There is another part of the story that deserves attention. Once Khomeini was in power, political crises repeatedly strengthened the clerical leadership. Contemporary American diplomatic reports observed that conflicts such as the Kurdish uprising allowed Khomeini to rally support, restrict opposition and strengthen his authority. The American hostage crisis later intensified internal political struggles and helped weaken liberal and moderate factions.

    That does not mean Khomeini created every crisis. Sometimes history hands political leaders a crisis whether they want one or not. The more revealing question is what they do with it, and Khomeini and his allies proved very effective at turning turmoil into political advantage.

    That may be the larger lesson in all of this. Political movements are often judged by what they promise before gaining power, but history judges them by what they do afterward. In Iran, the distance between those two moments was enormous. Many people believed they were helping overthrow an authoritarian monarchy and build a republic influenced by Islam. What emerged was a system in which religious authority stood above elected political institutions, and some of the very people who helped make the revolution possible eventually found themselves pushed aside by it.

    There is something painfully human in that. People can become so focused on tearing down what they oppose that they do not always ask enough questions about what is waiting to replace it. In Iran, that question mattered enormously, because by the time some of Khomeini’s early allies fully understood the direction the revolution was taking, the balance of power had already shifted.

    Maybe the most important question, then, is not simply whether these leaders supported Khomeini. We already know they did. The better question is whether they truly understood what they were supporting, and whether the government they helped bring into being was the government they believed they were being promised.

    References

    Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Khomeini II: Works”
    https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khomeini-ii-works/

    Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Khomeini I: Life”
    https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khomeini-i-life/

    Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Constitution of the Islamic Republic”
    https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/constitution-of-the-islamic-republic/

    Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Islamic Political Movements in 20th-Century Iran”
    https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/islam-in-iran-xiii-islamic-political-movements-in-20th-century-iran/

    Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Hostage Crisis”
    https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hostage-crisis/

    The Washington Post, November 7, 1978, reporting Khomeini’s comments on universal suffrage and his future political role
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/11/07/military-cracks-down-on-rebels-in-iran/75800364-a814-487e-a420-ad9165698a80/

    U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XI, Part 1, Document 37
    https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v11p1/d37

    U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XI, Part 1, Document 94
    https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v11p1/d94

    U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XI, Part 1, Document 281
    https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v11p1/d281

    By J Jones

  • When Faith Becomes Law

    When Faith Becomes Law

    I started thinking about this with a pretty firm opinion: I don’t believe Sharia law has a place governing a free society.

    Notice I said governing.

    A Muslim has every right to practice his faith. The same freedom that allows me to open my Bible, pray to Jesus and call myself a Christian must protect his right to open the Quran, pray and live according to his beliefs. Otherwise, what I am defending isn’t religious freedom. It is simply freedom for my religion.

    But that left me with a question I couldn’t ignore.

    If I don’t want another man’s religion governing me, how much power should my religion have over him?

    That is where this became more complicated than I expected.

    Sharia isn’t one giant Islamic law book followed identically everywhere. Its interpretation and legal authority differ considerably from country to country. A Muslim personally choosing to live according to Islamic principles is one thing. A government making its interpretation of those principles compulsory law is something very different.

    Iran shows just how different.

    Article 4 of Iran’s constitution requires its laws and regulations—including civil, criminal, economic, administrative, military and political laws—to be based on Islamic criteria. Islamic jurists within its governmental structure have authority to determine whether legislation conforms to those requirements.

    Think about what that actually means.

    As a Christian, would I willingly live under a government where Islamic religious authorities could determine whether the laws governing my life were religiously acceptable?

    No.

    But fairness requires me to turn the question around.

    Would the Muslim living next door want Christian religious authorities deciding whether America’s laws properly followed my Bible?

    Probably not.

    And I couldn’t blame him.

    That doesn’t mean Christianity and Sharia exercise equivalent governmental power today. They don’t. Christianity influences American politics enormously, but the Bible isn’t America’s criminal code and Christian ministers don’t possess constitutional authority to reject federal legislation because it violates Christian doctrine. America’s First Amendment protects religious exercise while restraining government from establishing religion.

    That difference becomes much more important when we stop talking about political influence and start talking about human lives.

    Life and death.

    Look at homosexuality.

    I am a Christian. My faith has teachings about sexual morality, and I am entitled to believe them. A Muslim is entitled to his beliefs as well.

    But my freedom to believe something is sinful is very different from my government having the authority to punish someone because my religion says it is sinful.

    Saudi Arabia criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual activity under its Sharia-based criminal system, with punishments that can include the death penalty. Under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, LGBT people face severe persecution, and same-sex sexual activity can potentially be punished by death under the interpretation of Sharia applied there.

    Whether you believe homosexuality is right, wrong or somewhere in between, stop and consider what we are actually discussing.

    A human being can potentially lose his life because a government controlled by religious doctrine has turned a matter of faith into a matter of criminal law.

    That isn’t merely someone’s freedom to believe anymore. That is the power of the state.

    Christians shouldn’t get too comfortable pointing across the ocean, either.

    Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act includes the death penalty for an offense classified as “aggravated homosexuality.” Its Constitutional Court upheld most of the law in 2024, including the availability of the death penalty in certain circumstances. Religious leaders have been among those contributing to the country’s hostile political environment toward LGBT people.

    Uganda isn’t Iran. Christian religious authorities do not possess the sweeping constitutional authority Islamic jurists possess within Iran.

    But if religious belief contributes to government having the power to imprison or execute another human being, Christians should be willing to examine our own influence just as critically as we examine Islam.

    I cannot condemn religious coercion when Muslims practice it and conveniently look away when Christians contribute to it.

    Then there is Israel, which refuses to fit neatly into either box.

    Israel defines itself as the nation-state of the Jewish people while maintaining democratic institutions. Religion nevertheless possesses real governmental authority in certain areas. Its legal system includes Rabbinical, Sharia, Druze and Christian religious courts, including jurisdiction involving important personal-status matters.

    That helped me realize that religion and government aren’t simply two switches marked ON and OFF.

    There is a line, and different governments stand at different places along it.

    Israel also forced me to examine something else I had heard: that Sharia calls for the death of Jews.

    I couldn’t substantiate that as a blanket description of Sharia.

    In fact, Iran’s Islamic constitution expressly recognizes Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians as religious minorities, although recognized and unrecognized religious minorities can still face significant restrictions and discrimination there.

    But that doesn’t make the darker part of this subject disappear.

    Hamas’s original 1988 charter contained explicitly antisemitic religious language, including a passage about Muslims fighting and killing Jews. Its later political document changed that framing and presented its conflict as being with Zionism rather than Jews simply because they are Jewish, while Hamas continued to reject Israel’s legitimacy.

    Iran’s government has likewise maintained fierce opposition to Israel in its present form.

    It would still be wrong, however, to turn that into “Muslims want Israel destroyed.”

    The 2025 New York Declaration supports a sovereign Palestinian state living beside Israel in peace and security and says Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand its weapons to the Palestinian Authority. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation likewise reaffirmed in 2025 that a two-state solution is the only viable solution for regional peace and stability.

    That distinction matters.

    Iran is not Islam. Hamas is not Islam. Hamas is not every Palestinian. And the actions of a Christian extremist don’t represent every Christian.

    The more important question is what happens when any religious movement becomes powerful enough to turn its beliefs into compulsory law for everyone else.

    Pakistan gives us another example. Its constitution provides for a Federal Shariat Court that can examine whether laws are incompatible with the injunctions of Islam. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws can also result in death sentences. Whether or not those sentences ultimately result in execution, the fact that a person can face death under law for a religious offense should make anyone who values freedom stop and think.

    This is where my original concern about Sharia remains.

    There is a profound difference between allowing a Muslim to practice Sharia voluntarily and allowing religious authorities to make Sharia compulsory for people who do not believe in it.

    One is religious freedom.

    The other can become religious control.

    And Christianity deserves exactly the same warning.

    If Christians tomorrow demanded governmental authority to punish people simply for violating biblical teachings, I would have the same problem with it.

    Because if I demand freedom to follow Christ while denying another person the freedom not to, I haven’t really defended religious freedom at all.

    I have defended myself.

    I started this article with a bias, and I might as well admit it.

    I believed Sharia law had no place governing a free society. I had seen what can happen when religious authority becomes government authority, and much of what I saw disturbed me.

    After researching it, that opinion has not changed.

    It has broadened.

    I no longer believe the warning should be directed only toward Sharia. I believe no religion—Islam, Christianity, Judaism or any other—should control government, write its religious beliefs into criminal law, or determine punishment simply because someone has violated its teachings.

    That realization forced me to look at my own Christianity by the same standard I was applying to Islam. If I would reject living under another man’s religious law, I cannot honestly demand that he live under mine.

    And perhaps the greatest danger comes when the most extreme voices gain enough power to stop persuading people and start controlling them.

    Extremism does not become less dangerous because I happen to recognize the holy book being carried beside it.

    I am still a Christian. My faith still guides the way I live and the decisions I make. I want elected leaders with moral conviction, and I don’t expect them to leave their faith at the door when they enter government.

    But there is a difference between faith guiding a leader and faith controlling the law.

    The moment faith needs a prison to keep someone from leaving, an executioner to punish someone for loving differently, or a government to silence the person who questions it, something has changed.

    That is no longer simply faith.

    It is power wearing the robes of faith.

    And perhaps that is the line the free world can never afford to cross.

    We protect religious freedom by electing leaders who understand something that extremists of every faith too often forget:

    Faith may guide government, but it must never control it.

    by J Jones

    References

    Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran — Articles 4, 13 and 14, including Islamic review of legislation. Constitute Project.

    Constitution of Pakistan — Provisions establishing the Federal Shariat Court and review of laws for conformity with the injunctions of Islam. Government of Pakistan.

    First Amendment Religion Clauses — Constitution Annotated, U.S. Congress.

    Saudi Arabia: Criminalization of Same-Sex Activity — Human Dignity Trust. Current country profile covering Saudi Arabia’s Sharia-based criminal system and applicable penalties.

    Afghanistan: Criminalization of Same-Sex Activity — Human Dignity Trust. Current country profile covering Taliban rule, LGBT persecution and penalties under its interpretation of Sharia.

    Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act — Human Rights Watch. Reporting on the 2023 law, its constitutional challenge and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”

    Israel: Religious Courts and Personal-Status Law — Government of Israel. Official information concerning Rabbinical, Sharia, Druze and Christian religious courts.

    Hamas: 1988 Charter and Later Political Positions — Wilson Center. Analysis of the organization’s original charter and later political document.

    New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and Implementation of the Two-State Solution — United Nations, 2025.

    Istanbul Declaration — Organization of Islamic Cooperation, 2025. Reaffirmation of support for a two-state solution.

    Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws and Religious Freedom — U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

    1
  • What If the Whole World Were Looking

    What If the Whole World Were Looking

    Somewhere tonight, a family is waiting for a phone call that may never come. A mother stares at her phone, hoping it will ring. A father replays his last conversation with his daughter, wondering whether he missed something that could have changed what happened. A younger brother asks when his sister is coming home, and no one knows how to answer him. Every birthday passes with an empty chair, every holiday carries a little less joy, and every unexpected knock at the door brings a moment of hope before silence settles over the house again.

    Human trafficking does not steal only one person. It steals peace from everyone who loves them.

    According to the International Labour Organization, Walk Free, and the International Organization for Migration, nearly 50 million people were estimated to be living in modern slavery in 2021. About 27.6 million were trapped in forced labor, while another 22 million were living in forced marriages. Forced labor in the private economy generates an estimated $236 billion in illegal profits every year, revealing the enormous financial incentive behind human exploitation.

    Yet the international community cannot reliably tell us how many trafficking victims are actually rescued each year. Countries use different definitions and reporting systems, and being detected, identified, safeguarded, or removed from immediate danger does not always mean someone has reached lasting freedom. That missing information should trouble us almost as much as the numbers themselves. How can humanity measure whether it is winning this fight when it cannot accurately measure how many people have been brought to safety?

    The world has not ignored this crime. The United Nations has a Global Plan of Action, international organizations have held high-level meetings, and law enforcement agencies have shown what international cooperation can accomplish. During INTERPOL’s two-week Operation Liberterra III in late 2025, more than 14,000 officers working across 119 countries safeguarded 4,414 potential trafficking victims and arrested 3,744 suspects. That achievement deserves recognition, but it also raises a larger question: What could that level of cooperation accomplish if it continued every day instead of during individual operations?

    If 50 million people were trapped beneath the rubble after an earthquake, nations would mobilize almost overnight. If a disease threatened that many lives, governments, scientists, businesses, and charitable organizations would pour their resources into finding a cure. When nearly 50 million people are estimated to be living without freedom, scattered programs and occasional operations cannot be the end of our response.

    The world needs a permanent international effort built around one unmistakable goal: not simply managing human trafficking, but ending it. It should unite governments, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, survivor-led and anti-trafficking organizations, and experts from every field capable of contributing to the solution. Titles should matter less than knowledge. Every participant should arrive prepared to answer one question: What can you contribute that no one else in the room can?

    The answer might be a new investigative method, a financial strategy that follows criminal profits, technology that detects hidden networks, a safer way to identify victims, or knowledge from a survivor that no official report could ever teach. It must also include long-term protection, because removing someone from immediate danger is only the beginning. Survivors may need secure housing, medical care, counseling, education, legal protection, employment, and help rebuilding a life that traffickers tried to destroy.

    Any serious strategy must also confront corruption. International authorities have documented how bribery and official complicity can help traffickers obtain documents, cross borders, avoid inspections, receive warnings about investigations, or operate without consequences. That does not mean every failed investigation proves corruption, and accusation should never replace evidence. It does mean that a permanent coalition must be independent enough to follow the truth wherever it leads. A trafficking network cannot be dismantled while the people protecting it remain untouched.

    Governments alone cannot win this fight because trafficking often hides in ordinary places. It can appear in hotels, truck stops, schools, hospitals, farms, factories, construction sites, private homes, online advertisements, or businesses that seem completely legitimate. A teacher, nurse, truck driver, hotel worker, cashier, neighbor, or friend who recognizes something unusual and reports it may become the reason a victim is found and brought to safety—or, perhaps even more importantly, the reason someone never becomes a victim at all. Public awareness is not an afterthought. A world that understands the warning signs gives traffickers fewer places to hide and fewer lives to steal.

    The true measure of success will not be the number of meetings held or declarations signed. It will be networks dismantled, corrupt protectors exposed, survivors given the chance to rebuild, vulnerable people protected before they are taken, and families spared the agony of wondering where someone they love has gone.

    Until every trafficker is stopped, none of us is completely free from the fear that the next victim could be someone we love. This fight belongs to every nation, every community, and every person willing to refuse indifference.

    The day no family has to wait beside a silent phone, hoping against hope that the next ring will bring their loved one home, will be the day humanity can finally say it refused to look away.

    By J Jones

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