Muhamad Helmi Md. Said

Trade wars and sanctions have become pivotal tools in modern international relations, especially in an era marked by rising geopolitical tensions. While economic sanctions aim to coerce state behavior without military intervention, their effectiveness, ethical justification, and unintended consequences remain widely contested. This paper addresses the gap in understanding the dual-edged nature of sanctions—both as instruments of peace and as catalysts for conflict. The study's primary objective is to critically analyze the geopolitical, economic, and humanitarian consequences of sanctions on both target and sanctioning states. Employing a doctrinal legal research methodology combined with empirical analysis, the paper draws on legal statutes, case law, and real-world case studies—including U.S. sanctions on Russia, Iran, and Venezuela—to assess outcomes. Findings reveal that while multilateral sanctions can compel policy change under specific conditions, most sanctions yield limited success and often backfire. They may deepen authoritarianism, provoke retaliatory alliances, and cause civilian suffering, thus undermining their original purpose. The paper concludes that sanctions must evolve into “smart sanctions,” targeting specific entities rather than entire populations, and must be embedded within broader diplomatic frameworks to remain effective and ethical in a multipolar world.

Secularism is a political ideology that disintegrates religion from state governance. While secularism may work for countries where the majority professed religion that has no specific legal system viz. Christianity, it begins to exhibit its ineptness in countries that either have a multicultural identity or adopt a systematic religion like Islam as its official religion. To unravel this, secularism acquiesced to embody two divisions of secularism entailing freedom of religion and freedom from religion. The objective of the writing is to resolve the conflicts of the secularism ideology in multicultural state.  The methodology adopted in the research is doctrinal legal research which employed qualitative research. For multicultural counterparts, the absolute disintegration of religion raises difficulties, hence, they opt for the secular concept of freedom of religion. However, from the Islamic perspective, secularism contrasts with Islamic teachings as it is conclusive in every aspect of human life. It has its own foundations and laws that shall be followed at all times. Additionally, the impacts of secularism on the social, educational, and moral aspects have made its germaneness be put in question. Thus, there must be a law to regulate the abovementioned matter in order to ensure the community live with peace and harmony