A Human Rights Approach to Combating Religious Persecution

This study focuses on internal persecution among Muslims. Internal persecution within the Islamic tradition means the persecution of Muslims by other Muslims, what might be characterised as “intra-religious” as opposed to “inter-religious” persecution, exposing the political and sociological nature of religious persecution, since the persecuted group is of the same religion as the persecuting majority. This study also helps to challenge the alleged religious rationale of such persecution in that every religious majority was in the past, and may become in future, a minority. Three case studies (the Ahmadiyya in Pakistan, the Shi’is in Saudi Arabia and the Republican Brothers in the Sudan) are analyzed, and based on these cases, a contextual framework for understanding and combating intra-religious persecution is outlined.