Dr. Charles Amjad-Ali 

Let me make some preliminary remarks which will set the context for a fuller discussion of religion and human rights. What has to be recognized immediately is that the concept of universal human rights embodies values which not only conflict with other strongly held values and conceptions but which are incompatible with, and subversive of, certain forms of society and social institutions. A.J. Milne has seen the paradoxical implications of this in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights which “professes to be a statement of human rights, irrespective of the particular social and political order under which they happen to live,” but which “goes on to enumerate a detailed list of rights which presupposes the values and institutions of a certain kind of social and political order, namely liberal, democratic, industrial society.”2 

Having said this, we must also face the paradoxical fact that there is a case for requiring some form of constitutional structure for all nations: they should be subject to the rule of law and with legal safeguards against the various forms of discrimination against, and violation of, the rights of their citizens. This is the fundamental problem we face today and a search for some direction for its resolution is always worthwhile. Such a search however should not mean a compromise or an acceptance of hegemony by any one.

It must be recognized that universal claims made in the name of all are often, in practice, claims on behalf of existing deprived groups or people against the more fortunate. It is also therefore at the same time a demand to surrender the privileges which are enjoyed by some at the cost of other members of society. Claims to universal rights must therefore be seen as claims which can establish universal entitlement, rather than claims which simply have universal support. Universal rights necessarily preclude any discrimination or exclusion, whether on grounds of “race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Maurice Cranston is thus correct when he writes of a human right being something of which “no one can be deprived without a grave affront to justice. There are certain deeds which should never be done, certain freedoms which should never be invaded, some things which are supremely sacred.”3 

While the universal claims on human rights are, as I asserted above, claims by the deprived, we have to face squarely the paradoxical fact that the Human Rights Declaration was a product of the concerns of the victorious parties after the Second World War. And that the further work on various human rights covenants are also largely the product of the powerful states. Therefore the difficulty we face is who is to monitor human rights and does such monitoring require a violation of the jurisdiction and authority of a state and its territorial integrity. We also need to ask about how human rights impact upon cultural and ideological diversity. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that all such actions which are done in the name of universal and global principles have been at the expense of the Third World and have ended up extending further the hegemony of the North. Dworkin’s distinction between weak and strong moral rights; where the latter are those rights which it would be wrong for a government to override simply on the ground that the exercise of the right is not in the public interest, or is contrary to the majority will4 can be helpful on a theoretical level but still leaves us short of some form of global implementing mechanism. These problems are compounded when we consider the topic “human rights and religion” and increase ten-fold when the religion in question is Islam. 

Jacques Waardenburg in his article “Human Rights, Human Dignity and Islam” makes some interesting observations about the religious reactions to human rights declarations. He argues that “It is significant that religious leaders nearly always adopted a critical attitude [toward these declarations] to start with. Following that, there were several possibilities of accepting human rights in principle, once it had become clear that public opinion was increasingly in favour of them.” He then goes on to list these possibilities: 

1. That these declarations had nothing new to offer “and that the religions concerned had a concept of human dignity and law which went further or was more profound than the Human Rights Declaration;” and 

2. “To accept human rights as an ethical norm or code, and then to proceed by developing a theological basis for them with an appeal to scripture, particularly by attributing their origin and that of human dignity less to human nature than to God’s grace.” 

He concludes by saying “that most religious responses to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights still reflect an ideological use of these human rights for the sake of the religions concerned, be it apologetically or polemically. Ideological or not, human rights undoubtedly have a spiritual meaning for religions people just as they have a political meaning in social life.”5 This spiritual dimension cannot be ignored and in this paper I want to try and move beyond both apologetic and polemic approaches which religion normally adopts towards the issue of human rights. 

In order to deal with the comprehensive concepts involved in the theme of human rights and religion, I first want to give a brief definition of belief which grounds these issues and provides the context for a discussion of human rights. For it is clear that the concept of religion is somewhat problematic in this context. 

It is characteristic of belief, both that it is the subject of debate, questioning and interpretation by believers and non-believers, that there are different views as to what constitutes a belief; and that among believers themselves there are varying degrees of commitment to the practical implementation of the principles of a given belief. To have a belief in this sense is to have faith. Faith may be seen and understood in terms of the outcome of two quite different kinds of experiences. The first is faith through birth in a society or a community where all, or virtually all, of the members have a particular tradition of belief or set of beliefs. In contrast is faith through personal conviction which is a matter of the individual struggling, possibly against parental, social and other pressures, to arrive for herself/himself at the truth. 

These two faith experiences can lead to situations of tension and conflict as the move to the second type of faith can well be seen as a betrayal of the first kind of faith-indeed as a betrayal of religion itself and of the integrating structures of society. This tension lies at the heart of the issue of religion and human rights. I will therefore deal with the specific issue of the universal right of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion within the religious sources and specifically Islam as compared to those enshrined in the various declarations and documents dealing with human rights in the international context. 

Much has been written about the relation of Islam and Islamic culture to western (and assumed Christian) notions concerning the organization of society and human rights. And, one must admit, that the point of much of this writing is to demonstrate that Islam and the west are at opposite poles with respect to these important issues. Thus Adda Bozeman concludes that Islamic culture is not guided by notions of right or principle, as the west understands them. Instead, Islamic culture is characterized by the governance of personalism and pragmatism, where ruling authority is “illegitimate and coercive almost by definition.”6 Similarly, Max Stackhouse has indicated that Islam is a religious tradition ill suited to democratic conceptions of society. It simply does not present the individual with those opportunities for freedom of action and association that are characteristic of western Christianity (in certain cases).7 Even an otherwise sound scholar such as James Piscatori who can conclude that the respect for life and property which Islam teaches and its practice of tolerance and fraternity indicate that it “unquestionably shares much of the spirit of the present human rights movement,” can also say that Islam “does not advance the basic idea of inalienable rights, nor does it avoid distinguishing according to sex and religion.” In short, “Islamic theory does not present a notion of the rights of the individual. Rights do not attach to men qua men. It is more appropriate to refer to the privileges of man.”8

Given such evidence, what is one to think of the proposal that Islam and the west (generally and falsely understood as the universal criterion) have much to talk about in relation to human rights and freedom of conscience? If one follows Bozeman and Stackhouse, for example, it seems that our dialogue is over before it has begun! And while Piscatori’s discussion is more nuanced, his findings indicate that the best one can hope for is a limited exchange. This is so particularly with respect to the issues of freedom of conscience with which I am concerned.

A closer examination of the arguments of Bozeman and others reveal a gap of major import, which we must discuss given our desire for a “dialogical” process. This “gap” consists in the failure to pay close attention to what Muslim thinkers themselves have to say about human rights, especially freedom of conscience. Or, even where there is some attention to Islamic “self-statement,” as in Piscatori’s article, it is limited to the point of view of one school or party within Islam. It is plain enough that western culture is characterized by diverse perspectives on issues of human rights. Should one not expect a similar diversity within other world cultures and ideological frameworks? And how is one to evaluate this expectation without more extensive attention being paid to the statements of representatives of these cultures and ideologies?

Any discussion of Islam and religious liberty must begin then with the stipulation that a dialogical approach requires a greater appreciation of the statements of Muslims on matters of human rights. Further, it is important to know the extent and nature of disagreement among representatives of Islam on these matters. Our goal should be to understand the different perspectives that may be connected with the traditions of Islam. However, before we come to a discussion of these different perspectives in Islam and their approach towards human rights issues, it is important to lay out a little more fully the quality of attack which is made against Islam in general vis-a-vis its attitude on the universal human rights issues.

Pollis and Schwab conclude their essay “Human Rights: A Western Construct with Limited Applicability” by expressing a familiar objection to Euro-American ethnocentrism: “Unfortunately not only do human rights set forth in the universal declaration reveal a strong western bias, but there has been a tendency to view human rights ahistorically and in isolation from their social, political and economic milieu.”9 This criticism is frequently applied to statements of rights that are contained in various internationally recognized human rights documents. The complaint is that these are so many manifestations of a highly parochial cultural and historical experience in these statements that, at certain points, they neither have nor ought to have anything definitive to say to peoples with other experience and traditions. 

The charge is a serious and challenging one. Human rights advocates need to face it squarely and respond to it with precision and care. The charges of western bias and cultural discrimination have been most persistently lodged by Muslims and by western students of Islam against the statements in various human rights documents concerning the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. ...............

[The full text is in "Human Rights and Spirituality" available at AHRC. Please see the back cover for ordering details.]