Shaving human rights

IN A COUNTRY with a long track record of multiculturalism as ours, the facts at the centre of the case of Imam Shazim Mohammed are startling.

Yet, from a certain vantage point his treatment at the hands of prison authorities is not surprising. It serves as a chilling reminder of the challenges faced by societies as diverse as ours to live up to the lofty ideals that we often claim to uphold.

We hope such cases become a thing of the past.

While serving a six-year prison sentence, Imam Mohammed’s beard was repeatedly shaved off. This is not supposed to happen under prison rules unless there are public health or medical grounds for doing so – none of which applied in the circumstances.

Additionally, he was not allowed to attend jumah or go to Eid teachings, he was not allowed to attend prison school, he was not allowed to attend a total of 5,225 Muslim prayers, he was deprived of the opportunity to give Khutbah, or the Friday sermon, at jumah and he was also prevented from conducting services as an imam at several of the prisons.

The first of these incidents of discrimination dated back to May 2001, several months before the infamous September 11 attacks of that year on US soil, which triggered a global resurgence in Islamaphobic stances, racial profiling and xenophobia.

But we are a country largely untouched by such spite and that has long come to accommodate every creed and race within our institutions and practices. Our national anthem boasts of our citizens enjoying equality. So the fact that any citizen, even a prisoner, could be so brazenly discriminated against by public officials is a direct affront to our values.

It is also counter to the rehabilitative aims of a prison system that is being bogged down by spiralling rates of recidivism.

We endorse, therefore, the ruling of High Court judge Justice Robin Mohammed who has ordered compensation of $200,000 for the breaches of human rights featured in this case. Not only is such compensation appropriate given the gravity of the flagrant breaches featured in this case, but it sends a strong message to all and sundry that individual rights are not to be trifled with. There is a very real cost that is incurred when the State violates the trust bestowed upon it by its subjects.

“An individual does not lose his civil and constitutional rights simply because he has been detained in prison custody,” Justice Mohammed noted.

“To deny an incarcerated individual the freedom to enjoy and practise his religious beliefs and penalise him for his attempts to uphold his fundamental human rights is a disregard for his human dignity.”

We agree.