(Ebook) Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics

by Ann Elizabeth Mayer ISBN 9780813344652,

9780813344676, 0813344654, 0813344670, 2012011622 Pdf
Download

https://ebooknice.com/product/islam-and-human-rights-tradition-and-
politics-10875726

★★★★★
4.8 out of 5.0 (31 reviews )

DOWNLOAD PDF

ebooknice.com
 (Ebook) Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics by
Ann Elizabeth Mayer ISBN 9780813344652, 9780813344676,
0813344654, 0813344670, 2012011622 Pdf Download

EBOOK

Available Formats

■ PDF eBook Study Guide Ebook

EXCLUSIVE 2025 EDUCATIONAL COLLECTION - LIMITED TIME

INSTANT DOWNLOAD VIEW LIBRARY

 We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit ebooknice.com
to discover even more!

(Ebook) Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook by Loucas, Jason; Viles,

James ISBN 9781459699816, 9781743365571, 9781925268492,
1459699815, 1743365578, 1925268497

https://ebooknice.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-6661374

(Ebook) SAT II Success MATH 1C and 2C 2002 (Peterson's SAT II

Success) by Peterson's ISBN 9780768906677, 0768906679

https://ebooknice.com/product/sat-ii-success-math-1c-and-2c-2002-peterson-
s-sat-ii-success-1722018

(Ebook) Matematik 5000+ Kurs 2c Lärobok by Lena Alfredsson, Hans

Heikne, Sanna Bodemyr ISBN 9789127456600, 9127456609

https://ebooknice.com/product/matematik-5000-kurs-2c-larobok-23848312

(Ebook) Master SAT II Math 1c and 2c 4th ed (Arco Master the SAT
Subject Test: Math Levels 1 & 2) by Arco ISBN 9780768923049,
0768923042

https://ebooknice.com/product/master-sat-ii-math-1c-and-2c-4th-ed-arco-
master-the-sat-subject-test-math-levels-1-2-2326094
(Ebook) Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Workbook 2C - Depth
Study: the United States, 1919-41 2nd Edition by Benjamin
Harrison ISBN 9781398375147, 9781398375048, 1398375144,
1398375047
https://ebooknice.com/product/cambridge-igcse-and-o-level-history-
workbook-2c-depth-study-the-united-states-1919-41-2nd-edition-53538044

(Ebook) Human Rights Matters: Local Politics and National Human

Rights Institutions by Julie A. Mertus ISBN 9780804760935,
0804760934

https://ebooknice.com/product/human-rights-matters-local-politics-and-
national-human-rights-institutions-38574542

(Ebook) Human Rights and Healthcare by Elizabeth Wicks ISBN

9781841135809, 9781847313713, 1841135801

https://ebooknice.com/product/human-rights-and-healthcare-2359016

(Ebook) Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights: Third Edition by

Katerina Dalacoura ISBN 9781845113827, 1845113829

https://ebooknice.com/product/islam-liberalism-and-human-rights-third-
edition-1882560

(Ebook) Feminist Advocacy, Family Law and Violence Against

Women: International Perspectives by Mahnaz Akhami; Yakin
Erturk; Ann Elizabeth Mayer ISBN 9781138344938, 1138344931

https://ebooknice.com/product/feminist-advocacy-family-law-and-violence-
against-women-international-perspectives-7229322
 ISLAM
AND
HUMAN RIGHTS
 FIFTH EDITION

ISLAM AND
HUMAN RIGHTS
Tradition and Politics

Ann Elizabeth Mayer

University of Pennsylvania

New York London

First published 2013 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Every effort has been made to secure required permissions for all text, images,
maps, and other art reprinted in this volume.

Designed by Trish Wilkinson

Set in 10.5 point Adobe Garamond Pro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mayer, Ann Elizabeth.

Islam and human rights : tradition and politics / Ann Elizabeth Mayer. —
5th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8133-4467-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8133-4465-2
(e-book) 1. Human rights—Islamic countries. 2. Human rights—Religious
aspects—Islam. I. Title.
KBP2460.M39 2012
341.4'80917671—dc23 2012011622

ISBN 13: 978-0-8133-4467-6 (pbk)

Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv

1 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East 1

Background: Legal Hybridity in the Middle East, 1
Misperceptions About Applying International Human Rights
Law as Serving Imperialism, 4
Cultural Relativism, 8
Muslims Challenge Cultural Relativism, 13
Actual Human Rights Concerns in the Middle East, 17
The Emergence of International Human Rights Law, 19
Muslims’ Responses to and Involvement in the UN Human
Rights System, 20
Summary, 26

2 Human Rights in International and

Middle Eastern Systems: Sources and Contexts 27
International Human Rights: Background, 27
Islamic Human Rights: Sources, 28
The Impact of Islamization on Constitutions and Justice, 33
The Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan and Its Aftermath, 40
Saudi Arabia Confronts Pressures for Reforms and
Liberalization, 41
Summary, 42

v
vi Contents

3 Islamic Tradition and Muslim Reactions to Human Rights 43

The Premodern Islamic Heritage, 43
Muslim Reactions to Western Constitutionalism, 47
The Persistence of Traditional Priorities and Values, 48
Consequences of Insecure Philosophical Foundations, 55
Islamic Human Rights and Cultural Nationalism, 57
Ambivalent Attitudes on Human Rights, 64
Summary, 65

4 Islamic Restrictions on Human Rights 67

Permissible Qualifications of Rights in International Law, 67
Islamic Formulas Limiting Rights, 69
Restrictions in the Iranian Constitution, 71
Restrictions in the UIDHR, 76
Restrictions in Other Islamic Human Rights Schemes, 79
Islam and Human Rights in the New Constitutions of
Afghanistan and Iraq, 81
Summary, 84

5 Discrimination Against Women and Non-Muslims 85

Equality in the Islamic Legal Tradition, 85
Equality in Islamic Human Rights Schemes, 86
Equal Protection in US and International Law, 89
Equal Protection in Islamic Human Rights Schemes, 90
Equality in the New Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions, 96
Summary, 96

6 Restrictions on the Rights of Women 99

Background, 99
Islamic Law and Women’s Rights, 99
Muslim Countries’ Reactions to the Women’s Convention, 103
Tabandeh’s Ideas, 104
Mawdudi’s Ideas, 105
The UIDHR, 107
Islamization in Iran and the Iranian Constitution, 114
The al-Azhar Draft Constitution, 119
The Cairo Declaration and the Saudi Basic Law, 121
 Contents vii

Women’s Rights in Pakistan, 124

The New Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions, 126
The Influence of Sex Stereotyping, 128
Summary, 131

7 Islamic Human Rights Schemes and Religious Minorities 133

The Historical Background of Current Issues Facing
Religious Minorities, 133
International Standards Prohibiting Religious Discrimination, 136
Shari‘a Law and the Rights of Non-Muslims, 137
Tabandeh’s Ideas, 139
The UIDHR, 140
The Iranian Constitution, 142
Mawdudi and Pakistan’s Ahmadi Minority, 145
The Cairo Declaration, the Saudi Basic Law, and the al-Azhar
Draft Constitution, 147
US Policies on Religious Minorities and Developments in
Afghanistan and Iraq, 148
Summary, 150

8 The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and

Muslim States Resist Human Rights for Sexual Minorities 151
Background, 151
Sexual Minorities in the Middle East, 153
Contested Islamic Authority, 158
Tensions with the West over the Treatment of Sexual Minorities, 160
Muslim States’ Objections to New UN Initiatives, 161
Summary, 166

9 Freedom of Religion in Islamic Human Rights Schemes 169

Controversies Regarding the Shari‘a Rule on Apostasy, 169
Muslim Countries Confront Freedom of Religion, 170
The Contemporary Significance of Apostasy, 171
Tabandeh’s Ideas, 176
The UIDHR, 177
The al-Azhar Draft Constitution, 179
The Iranian Constitution, 180
Sudan Under Islamization, 182
viii Contents

Mawdudi and Pakistani Law Affecting Religious Freedom, 183

The Cairo Declaration and the Saudi Basic Law, 185
The Afghan and Iraqi Constitutions, 185
US Interventions in the Domain of Religious Freedom, 186
Expanding the Reach of Laws Criminalizing Insults to Islam:
From the Rushdie Affair to the Danish Cartoons Controversy, 187
Summary, 201

10 An Assessment of Islamic Human Rights Schemes 203

Appendix A: Excerpts from the Iranian Constitution 209

Appendix B: The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam 221
Appendix C: 2009 Resolution on Combating Defamation of Religions 229
Glossary 235
Bibliography 239
Notes 247
Index 285
Preface

Perspicacious readers will note that the title of this book is a misnomer. A more
accurate title might be along the lines of “A Comparison of Selected Civil and
Political Rights Formulations in International Law and in Actual and Proposed
Human Rights Schemes Purporting to Embody Islamic Principles, with a Criti-
cal Appraisal of the Latter with Reference to International Law, Evolving Islamic
Thought, and Relevant State Practice in the Middle East.” The actual title stands
as it is simply because it is the kind of rubric that people tend to consult when
looking for material on human rights in Muslim milieus. That is, it has been se-
lected for purely practical reasons despite its not being very informative. The rea-
son why this book focuses on the Middle East is simply that my own research
interests center on this region.
The reference to “Islam” in the book title is potentially misleading because I
repudiate the commonly held view that Islam by itself determines the views on
human rights that one finds in the Middle East. A central thesis of this book is
that there is no Islamic consensus on a single Islamic human rights philosophy.
The precepts of Islam, like those of Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and other
major religions possessed of long and complex traditions, are susceptible to in-
terpretations that can and do create conflicts between religious doctrine and hu-
man rights or that reconcile the two. Even where the discussion is limited, as it is
here, to Muslims living in the area stretching from North Africa to Pakistan, one
observes Muslims’ attitudes toward human rights running the gamut from total
rejection to wholehearted embrace.
Although human rights are debated in purely secular terms in many Muslim
milieus, in the wake of the Islamic resurgence, questions of human rights, like other
great political issues facing Muslim societies, cannot easily be severed from disputes
that are raging about the implications of Islamic law for contemporary problems.
Whether in governments or in the opposition, many Muslims have recourse to
interpretations of Islamic sources to develop positions supporting or condemning

ix
x Preface

human rights. This has been dramatically illustrated in Iran, where the ruling cler-
ics and dissident clerics who are at odds with the oppressive theocracy both invoke
Islamic authority for their stances. In these circumstances, “Islam” has become
both a vehicle for political protest against undemocratic regimes and a justification
for the repression meted out by such regimes, often simultaneously expressing as-
pirations for democracy and equality and providing rationales for campaigns to
crush democratic freedoms and perpetuate old patterns of discrimination.
The focus of this book is on the era since the emergence of the UN human
rights system, when what are called here Islamic human rights schemes were
produced—schemes in the sense of combinations of elements connected by de-
sign. As will be demonstrated, these schemes are designed both to mimic inter-
national law and to degrade the protections afforded by international human
rights law. They embody highly selective and often less-than-coherent combina-
tions of Islamic principles with extensive but unacknowledged borrowings from
international human rights documents and rights principles in Western consti-
tutions. These hybrid schemes offer truncated and diluted human rights that are
emphatically rejected by the large segment of Muslims who endorse interna-
tional human rights law.
As will be shown, these schemes can be criticized on a number of grounds, in-
cluding oversimplifying and stereotyping Islamic doctrines, failures to acknowl-
edge and address actual patterns of human rights abuses in the Middle East, a
weak grasp of international human rights principles, misrepresentations of com-
parative legal history, imprecise legal methodologies, and the deliberate use of eva-
sive and ambiguous formulations. These flaws should be ascribed to the failings of
the authors, not to Islam per se.
Much of the secondary literature on the relationship between Islam and hu-
man rights is likewise flawed and must be cautiously used. Many works embody
an uncritical approach that contributes little to an understanding of the subject.
In many ways, the first edition of this book was inspired by a wish to correct
common defects in the secondary literature, defects that should be summarized.
Many authors do not analyze and explain the criteria that are being employed
to decide what does or does not qualify as “Islamic law,” a term with a wide vari-
ety of potential connotations. One encounters failures to make needed differenti-
ations respecting the categories involved, such as principles that are expressly set
forth in the Islamic sources versus the historical patterns of diverging interpreta-
tions of these sources, which can alter over time. Authors may devote dispropor-
tionate attention to the classical theory of Islamic sources in use by premodern
jurists, failing to explain how it happens that Islamic human rights schemes are
studded with terms and concepts that have been borrowed from international law.
Treating Islamic law as static and mired in premodern jurisprudence, some
authors may dismiss the relevance of new understandings of the sources, as if the
 Preface xi

progressive and reformist perspectives of contemporary Muslims did not count

or were necessarily to be viewed as less legitimate than rules ratified by hoary Is-
lamic tradition. Giving too much credence to the shibboleth that in Islam reli-
gion and state are one, people may overlook the existence of trends in Islamic
thought that are supportive of a secular public domain, imagining that secular
perspectives are antithetical to any Islamic worldview.
Comparisons of Islamic rights standards with their international counterparts,
if undertaken at all, are frequently underdeveloped, with a common disposition to
minimize the extent to which Islamic human rights schemes both borrow from
international law and deviate from it. Writing in this area often reveals an unfamil-
iarity with how international human rights law developed, as well as a lack of
awareness of how Muslims contributed to its formulation. In an ironic twist, hu-
man rights tenets originally promoted by representatives of Muslim countries may
be mistakenly identified with Western values.
Specific analyses of how actual Islamization measures correlate with human
rights violations perpetrated by governments in the Middle East are commonly
wanting. Failing to consider how badly people suffer under corrupt despotisms, au-
thors may choose to indulge in visions of harmonious societies whose members are
united by a common Islamic ethos, imagining that Muslims willingly defer to offi-
cial policies that claim Islamic authority. The ingrained tendency to downplay the
degree to which Middle Easterners yearn for rights and freedoms may now be di-
minishing after the magnitude of popular uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring con-
veyed how bitterly people in the region resent being left to the mercies of tyrannical
ruling cliques.
In the following study, I am critical of governmental and ideological claims
that unimpeachable Islamic authority warrants denying human rights, even
though I understand that individual Muslims may freely decide to accept inter-
pretations of the Islamic sources that place Islamic law at odds with international
human rights law. Muslims’ right to have such private beliefs must be respected.
The situation becomes different, however, when claims that Islamic rules should
supersede international human rights law are put forward with the aim of strip-
ping other people of human rights that they aspire to enjoy and to which they
are entitled under international law. Here one is not talking about personal reli-
gious beliefs but rather projects in the domains of law and politics.
In discussing Islamic human rights schemes, I have endeavored to evaluate all
sources and arguments objectively, but that does not mean that I feel obligated to
withhold judgment or to suppress my own opinions. My own views—with sup-
porting reasoning—are expressed at various points in this book. On human rights
questions, I do not consider that it is possible or even advisable to withhold all
judgment regarding which positions are meritorious. In clarification, I would say
that one can write on questions of slavery and torture in a serious and fair manner
xii Preface

without taking a neutral stance about whether slavery and torture are benign or
reprehensible institutions and without suppressing all one’s moral judgments and
philosophical convictions.
I believe in the normative character of the human rights principles set forth
in international law and in their universality. Believing that international human
rights law is universally applicable, I naturally also believe that Muslims are en-
titled to the full measure of human rights protections offered under interna-
tional law. This inclines me to be critical of any actual or proposed rights policies
that violate international human rights law, including US government actions
and policies affecting the Middle East that clash with this law.
I welcome the emergence of principled human rights advocacy in Middle
Eastern countries and the growing tendency to interpret Islamic sources in ways
that harmonize Islamic law and international human rights law. Underlining the
progressive and humanistic dimensions of contemporary Islamic thought seems
particularly appropriate in an era that has seen an upsurge in vituperative, bigoted
Islamophobia. The partisans of this trend refuse to distinguish Islam as a vastly
complex, multifaceted religious heritage from the political uses of Islam by corrupt
and thuggish regimes and by groups wedded to hate-driven ideologies and terrorist
agendas, distorting Islam by portraying it as having only repressive and violent ten-
dencies. At the same time, I recognize that I am an outside observer commenting
on developments in another tradition, one in which my views can have no norma-
tive or prescriptive value. Therefore, I do not endorse any particular reading of Is-
lamic doctrine, nor do I presume to signal which interpretations Muslims should
deem authoritative.
Because the ideas of Muslims supportive of human rights are under constant
attack by powerful and extremely well-financed conservative forces determined
to delegitimize their programs, their beleaguered positions cannot escape being
subjected to the harshest possible critical scrutiny and attacks. In reaction to this
kind of imbalance, I think it appropriate to focus my critiques on projects anti-
thetical to human rights.
At a time when Islamic themes and terminology frequently shape political dis-
course in Muslim societies, it can be difficult for insiders and outsiders alike to dis-
tinguish between what are properly classified as political issues and ones that
should be deemed religious issues. Nonetheless, no matter how extensively Islam is
invoked, analysis shows that campaigns for democracy and equality are going on
in the Middle East that resemble similar campaigns by restive populations else-
where. When antidemocratic governments are proffering Islamic rationales for fa-
miliar patterns of human rights violations, this should not immunize them from
critical scrutiny.
Reacting to the unfair and often grotesque demonization of Islam in the West,
some are disposed to attribute any critical perspectives on the ascendancy of politi-
 Preface xiii

cal Islam and the concomitant rights violations to ugly Western prejudices. In
reality, there is a big difference between studies that seek to illuminate how Islam
figures in contemporary human rights controversies in the Middle East and the
current efforts by Islamophobes in the West to portray Islam as a barbaric religion
inherently opposed to rights and freedoms, which is an uninformed and preju-
diced position. A consistent and objective application of human rights standards
will show that human rights abuses can be every bit as severe in Middle Eastern
countries where Islamic law is left largely in abeyance and where religious impulses
are harshly suppressed as in countries where Islamic law figures, at least officially, as
the legal norm. Thus, for example, the human rights records of Libya and Syria
have been every bit as atrocious as the records of countries such as Iran and Saudi
Arabia. However, because the purpose here is to compare Islamic human rights
schemes with international human rights law, rights violations that do not take
place under the rubric of applying Islamic law will receive little attention.
This book focuses on the legal dimensions of human rights problems, exam-
ining the questions within the framework of comparative law and comparative
legal history. There is no intention, however, to imply that Islam is exclusively a
legal tradition or that comparative legal history is the only legitimate way to
approach this topic. In a more comprehensive study on the relationship of Islam
and human rights, one would ideally want to include analyses of how principles
of Islamic theology, philosophy, and ethics tie in with the treatment of human
rights. This would carry one into areas beyond the comparative legal analyses of
civil and political rights in international human rights law and in Islamic human
rights schemes, which are the sole concern of this work.
For purposes of offering clarification and background, there will be excursions
into topics outside comparative law. Relevant political developments in various
Middle Eastern countries will be sketched. With limited space, in order to cover
recent developments in the Middle East, many cuts have had to be made to the
text of the earlier editions, and sections of the previous text have been signifi-
cantly condensed and reorganized. The annotated bibliography will, it is hoped,
somewhat compensate for the failure to delve more deeply into related issues.
Short discussions of elements of the complex jurisprudence created by Islam’s
learned scholars during the premodern period will be offered in order to indicate the
pedigrees of various positions being put forward in Islamic human rights schemes.
Some references will be made to the reformist currents in Islamic thought and to
new perspectives that have surfaced over the last decades as Muslims have sought
Islamic answers to the political, economic, and social challenges that confront their
societies.1 As globalization and other forces have altered Muslims’ circumstances and
have upended old assumptions, new trends in Islamic thought have come to the
fore. One observes that reactive and reactionary reformulations of Islamic teachings
are now being pitted against highly progressive readings of the Islamic sources.
xiv Preface

Debates on Islam and human rights are being given fresh impetus by the po-
litical upheavals in the Arab world and the ascendancy of various Islamist fac-
tions, which raise the prospect of drafting new constitutions in which references
to the supremacy of Islamic law and guarantees of human rights will both have
their partisans. How to balance these elements is becoming an increasingly vital
issue for the future of the Middle East, and this book offers an examination of
what experience to date can teach us about the consequences of subordinating
human rights to Islamic criteria.

Ann Elizabeth Mayer

Acknowledgments

Writing about Islam and human rights in the year 2011, I have been riveted by
developments in the Middle East, hoping that the revolutions in Egypt, Libya,
and Tunisia, among others, at last signal the beginning of the end of the effective
imprisonment of the peoples in that region. As my writing over the last decades
amply demonstrates, I have long been concerned with the deplorable human
rights situation prevailing in the Middle East. In the course of years of discus-
sions and research, I have learned a lot about the passion of Middle Easterners
for human rights and democracy. I have tried to convey to a Western audience
how deeply Middle Easterners yearn for freedom and how much harm is being
done by corrupt despotisms that cling to power only by the use of the most egre-
gious forms of human rights violations. I have been as distressed over the suffo-
cating environment created by Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi’s brutal dictatorship in
Libya as over the savage repression meted out by Iran’s ruling theocrats.
As I have acknowledged in previous editions, I owe great debts of gratitude to
the people of the Middle East for what they have taught me. But for my inter-
actions with them and their encouragement and inspiration, my scholarship
would not likely ever have encompassed the domain of human rights. Because of
the continuing turbulence and dangers, I think it prudent not to name names,
but my indebtedness is real.
I also wish to thank Oceana Press for kindly granting me permission to reprint
excerpts from their published translation of the Iranian Constitution.

A.E.M.

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Assimilating Human Rights

in the Middle East

Background: Legal Hybridity in the Middle East

In the Muslim Middle East, there have been strong but mixed responses to inter-
national human rights law. These responses have included the production of
what are here called Islamic human rights schemes, which borrow extensively
from international human rights law while employing ideas and rules taken
from the Islamic heritage.
Islamic human rights schemes can be seen as one facet of a widespread backlash
against secularization of laws. In the course of the difficult modernization processes
that all Middle Eastern countries have undergone since the late nineteenth century,
Islamic law and institutions have been largely displaced and marginalized—with
Saudi Arabia standing out as the country most resistant to such changes. The con-
sistent movement toward secularization of legal systems left only small islands of
Islamic substantive rules in such areas as family law in what were basically modern,
European-style legal systems. In reaction to this secularization process, popular de-
mands for Islamization grew in the 1970s, and several states sponsored Islamiza-
tion programs—but without returning to the Islamic model of governance, which
would have undermined the states’ monopoly of power. The Islamic model of the
umma, a united Islamic community of believers, is an ideal that still retains potent
appeal in the abstract but has proved its impracticability in a world of states whose
borders hardened and fractured political allegiances and whose leaders do not wish
to cede power to a supranational entity.
The imported model of the modern nation-state is now ubiquitous in the
Muslim world, along with its many accoutrements, including constitutions and

1
2 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East

modern legislative and judicial institutions. These survive Islamization, as can be

seen in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where Islamic rules were imposed in such
areas as criminal law and women’s rights but where the state itself and related
institutions remain grounded in French models that were imported before the
Islamic revolution, notwithstanding the adoption of the principle of theocratic
supremacy.
Living under the modern state with its great centralized power created new
problems in the Middle East, where states have shown a disposition to crush civil
and political rights. How to constrain such a leviathan had not been contem-
plated in the classical works of Islamic jurisprudence, and many Muslims natu-
rally were prompted to appropriate rights principles that had originally been
developed in the West to constrain the power of the state. At the same time,
others were seeking to deploy Islamic law to shore up government power at the
expense of protections for rights. In the last few decades a number of national
governments and the intergovernmental Organization of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC; this organization was formerly known as the Organization of the Islamic
Conference before the name changed in June 2011) have been particularly as-
sertive in promoting Islamic human rights schemes, ones that, not coincidentally,
reinforce state prerogatives at the expense of the rights and freedoms of the indi-
vidual. These Islamic human rights schemes impose Islamic criteria to weaken if
not to nullify civil and political rights.
Such Islamic human rights schemes aim to degrade human rights at the same
juncture in history when human rights awareness has flourished among Middle
Easterners. Despite grave perils, activism supporting democratization and human
rights has burgeoned.1 Well before the remarkable 2011 popular uprisings against
autocracies and dictatorships during the Arab Spring, long-suffering populations
were seeing human rights as offering the prospect of relief from stifling Middle
Eastern despotisms.
Islamic human rights schemes need to be evaluated in the context of ongoing
political struggles over democratization in the Middle East, as well as in relation
to Muslims’ theoretical disagreements about whether Islamic law and interna-
tional human rights law harmonize or conflict. An example of how Islam be-
comes enmeshed in conflicts over democratization could be seen in Saudi Arabia
in spring 2011. Before the Saudi monarchy used a combination of brute force
and payoffs to quell local protests inspired by upheavals in neighboring coun-
tries, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa asserting that Islam forbids
street protests, a message that was echoed in Friday sermons throughout the
kingdom.2 According to this ruling, Saudis venturing onto the streets to voice
demands for a more democratic and accountable government were going against
Islamic law—the interests of the absolute monarchy being equated with uphold-
ing Islamic requirements.
 Background: Legal Hybridity in the Middle East 3

Muslims have espoused a wide range of opinions on human rights—from the

assertion that international human rights law replicates values already inherent
in Islamic teachings to the claim that international human rights law should be
rejected as an affront to Islam that embodies pernicious Western values. In be-
tween these extremes, one finds a range of compromise positions that in effect
maintain that Islam accepts many but not all aspects of international human
rights law or that it endorses human rights with significant qualifications that are
allegedly required by Islamic law.
As will be seen in the following chapters, the main concern here is Islamic
human rights schemes that set forth compromise positions. These purport to rep-
resent definitive Islamic countermodels of human rights, borrowing from the in-
ternational formulations but reworking them in ways that circumscribe rights
and superimposing Islamic qualifications on these. None of these have been rati-
fied by a universal Islamic consensus or by anything like democratic referenda;
instead, they have been promoted by undemocratic governments and various ide-
ologues with views hostile to rights and freedoms. The focus on such compromise
positions does not mean that they are more authentically Islamic than any other
views on the relationship of Islam and human rights. They offer attractive sub-
jects for investigation because they reveal the conflicting trends presently affecting
what are supposedly Islamic approaches to human rights.
Comparative law is the framework for this study of contemporary controver-
sies about how Islam relates to human rights. International human rights law is
used as the standard, and Islamic human rights schemes are assessed in relation to
it in order to elucidate where they coincide or diverge and also to identify where
the Islamic schemes resort to vague and confusing terms that cloak the full extent
of the deviations.
The opacity in the schemes will be highlighted. It correlates with the way that
Middle Eastern governments have for the most part sought to maintain pretenses
of respect for international human rights law even while seeking to degrade it.
Wanting to have influence in the UN system, they have the incentive to try to ap-
pear friendlier to human rights than they actually are. The result is that they are
disposed to put forward Islamic human rights schemes that set forth principles
that in a superficial way mimic those of international human rights law even as
they bear hallmarks of being customized to fit in an Islamic framework that un-
dermines the rights that are ostensibly being provided.
The emphasis on human rights positions that states have promulgated is war-
ranted given that states have played the central role in devising international law
instruments since the inauguration of the UN human rights system. States have
either approved international human rights instruments by majority votes—as
in the case of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was
endorsed on December 10, 1948, in the UN General Assembly—or by ratifying
4 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East

them in sufficient numbers and thereby bringing them into force, as in the case
of subsequent covenants and conventions. Today, states from the Middle East
are working in conjunction with other states hostile to rights to undermine this
system.

Misperceptions About Applying International

Human Rights Law as Serving Imperialism
Comparative law, the mainstay of the following analyses, is an academic field
where explosive political controversies are rarely encountered. As an eminent
comparatist has stated, comparative law looks at the relationships among legal
systems and their rules, and ultimately it is concerned with similarities and differ-
ences in legal systems and rules in the context of historical relationships.3 In the
main, scholars can expect such studies to be of interest to specialists and can as-
sume that any controversies they may provoke will center on issues of scholarship,
not ideologically freighted political disputes. If scholars are comparing, say, Ger-
man law and Japanese law, they do not expect the mere undertaking of such com-
parisons to be condemned by their academic peers. They have no reason to fear
that their work will be denounced as politically unsound if they objectively record
the similarities and differences that they have uncovered or state whether aspects
of one system were historically derived from the other. Thus, if they show that
Japanese law borrowed heavily from German law but that it also exhibits features
that differ from German law, they will not expect to be denounced as promoting
a hegemonic Western perspective or rationalizing Western imperialism in Asia.
Those writing on comparative legal history are used to working in a discipline
where they may express their conclusions without tailoring them to fit a prevail-
ing ideological orthodoxy.
At a time when international consensus supports the UN system of interna-
tional law, there should be no barrier to evaluating Islamic human rights schemes
and Islamization measures affecting human rights by reference to the interna-
tional human rights law that they borrow from and modify. Appraising Islamic
human rights schemes in the light of their international precursors would not
seem to entail stepping into an ideological minefield. In actuality, a Western
scholar discovers that referring to international law to make critical assessments
of Islamic human rights schemes often provokes hostile reactions and vitriolic
attacks. Persons who are determined to delegitimize critical appraisals of Islamic
human rights schemes do not hesitate to resort to grotesque distortions or to dis-
seminate arrant falsehoods in efforts to discredit authors of such appraisals.4 This
treacherous environment may account for why such critical appraisals were slow
to emerge.5
 Misperceptions About Applying International Human Rights Law 5

In light of the disinformation that has been disseminated, it is essential to lay

out a preliminary response to typical attempts to discredit criticisms of Islamic
human rights schemes. The hostility to critical scholarly comparisons of interna-
tional human rights law and Islamic human rights schemes typically reflects un-
founded preconceptions. Many Islamologists and other students of the Middle
East become acculturated by their academic milieus in ways that lead them to
conclude that such comparisons are inherently objectionable. They may uncriti-
cally assimilate ideas voiced by many spokespersons for Middle Eastern groups
and institutions that reject the universality of human rights. They may be im-
pressed when the latter proffer what are ostensibly culture-based objections to the
UN human rights system, which they present as being imbued with Western con-
cepts at odds with Islamic tradition. Scholars who are conscientiously seeking to
understand Middle Eastern attitudes may shy away from using criteria taken
from international human rights law, fearing that doing so will impede under-
standing Middle Eastern societies on their own terms.
There are several reasons why treating international human rights law as being
inappropriate for application to issues in Muslim states is misguided, a central
one being that these states have agreed to be bound by the same principles that
they are now seeking to circumvent. Moreover, the regular references to inter-
national human rights concepts, even by Muslims who disagree with these, show
that these concepts are already becoming part of the terminology that is em-
ployed within Muslim societies in debating laws and policies. Prominent political
figures in the Middle East routinely refer to human rights in their speeches, treat-
ing them as givens in the modern international system. Since the 1980s, Muslims
have produced a large literature comparing Islamic law, including the Islamic laws
in force in their countries, and international human rights law.
People may react negatively to Western governments’ selective criticisms of
human rights abuses in the Middle East. Aiming for a balanced approach, people
may reflexively classify academic discussions of Middle Eastern regimes’ delin-
quencies as attempts to divert attention from the West’s own history of egregious
human rights violations—including torture, genocide, religious persecution,
racism, sexism, and slavery, as well as the abusive treatment of Muslims during
the colonial era. Some view criticisms of Islamic human rights schemes as being
necessarily motivated by a desire to show that Western domination of the Middle
East in the past was beneficial and to legitimize current Western interventions.
Many presume that there is a necessary connection between scholarship that
critiques human rights deficiencies in the Middle East and the US deployment of
human rights rhetoric to justify such ventures as the invasions of Afghanistan and
Iraq. These invasions were preceded by US governmental professions of outrage
over the human rights violations perpetrated by the Taliban and Saddam Hussein
6 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East

and were officially justified by US claims to be engaged in spreading democracy

and human rights in the region. US claims of being motivated by concern for the
human rights of the oppressed populations of Afghanistan and Iraq rang hollow
at a time when US policy accommodated gross human rights abuses by govern-
ments in the region that cooperated with US foreign policy strategies, when US
military actions and mismanagement were costing a staggering toll in terms of
death and human suffering among the “liberated” populations, and when prison-
ers were subjected to shocking abuses in prison camps where they were incarcer-
ated without even the most rudimentary rights protections. After yet another
chapter in the history of the West cynically invoking human rights deficiencies in
Middle Eastern countries to justify interventions in the region, observers may au-
tomatically associate all academic writing dealing with human rights deficiencies
in the Middle East with White House policies.
Such associations are unwarranted. Even where the US government—like
many other governments—cynically deploys human rights rhetoric, indepen-
dent Western scholars should not be barred from assessing human rights issues
in Middle Eastern societies if they are also applying the same standards consis-
tently to all parties—including to the United States. After all, if scholars’ study
of human rights in other countries were to be disqualified simply by the fact that
the foreign policies of their countries of origin evinced hypocrisy, then most
such study would be barred.
The argument that private criticisms of the treatment of rights in Muslim mi-
lieus are of a piece with hypocritical governmental policy is especially weak in the
case of this study, which includes criticisms of the use of Islam to deny human
rights by regimes that are or were US allies. With respect to these, the United
States was hypocritical not in the sense of judging their records particularly
harshly but rather the reverse—it glossed over human rights abuses committed by
strategically important governments that were either friendly or cooperative.
Washington has generally been reticent about publicly denouncing rights
abuses committed under the rubric of applying Islamic law by Saudi Arabia, one
of the most valued US allies. The United States provided the strongest military
and economic support for President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s regime in Pakistan
from his 1977 coup until his death in 1988 and winked at the rights violations
perpetrated under his Islamization program. In the case of Sudan, the United
States was a staunch mainstay of the Jaafar Nimeiri government in 1983–1985,
when Nimeiri was pursuing his Islamization campaign, showing a readiness to tol-
erate its abuses. The Reagan administration even gave President Nimeiri a cordial
reception in the White House in spring 1985 after Nimeiri had ordered the execu-
tion of a peaceable seventy-six-year-old Sudanese religious leader as a heretic. Is-
lamization was resumed in 1989 when a cabal of Islamists and General Omar
al-Bashir overthrew the elected government. Al-Bashir’s notorious record of hu-
 Misperceptions About Applying International Human Rights Law 7

man rights violations earned his regime pariah status until its willingness to assist
the War on Terror led to a warming of ties between the Sudanese dictatorship and
the second Bush administration, which was willing to overlook retrograde Is-
lamization measures and atrocities such as genocide and mass rapes in order to se-
cure Sudanese cooperation.
Moreover, when Afghan factions fighting Soviet forces and aiming to establish
Afghanistan as an Islamic state showed disregard for human rights, US under-
writing of their campaign continued. Despite the atrocious abuses perpetrated
in the guise of enforcing Islamic law by the Taliban, plans for a UNOCAL oil
pipeline across Afghan territory and other strategic concerns muted US condem-
nations of the Taliban.6 This changed after September 11, 2001, when the regime
was accused of shielding al-Qaeda terrorists.
Such cases remind us that claims that the US government passes particularly
harsh judgments on human rights violations connected to the application of Is-
lamic law are ill-founded; US policy has often been to downplay such violations as
long as the regimes involved served US interests. Thus, making consistent critical
appraisals of the human rights records hardly correlates with US policies, which
have responded to human rights abuses in the Middle East in a politicized manner.
Sensibilities about the linkage between critical assessments of Islamic insti-
tutions and imperialist projects have been exacerbated by the pervasive influence
of Edward Said’s seminal work, Orientalism.7 In this book, Said argued that much
of Western scholarship on the Orient, meaning the Islamic Middle East, had not
been conducted in a spirit of scientific research but had been based on a racist as-
sumption of fundamental Western superiority and Oriental inferiority. By positing
ineradicable distinctions between the West and the Orient, Orientalist scholarship
obscured the common humanity of people in the West and the Orient and, in
Said’s view, thereby dehumanized Orientals in a way that served the goals of West-
ern imperialism.
Edward Said was not a lawyer and did not examine the extensive studies of
Islamic law that Europeans carried out when European imperialism was at its
zenith, but his acolytes have often tended to expand his arguments to encompass
the domain of legal scholarship. Said’s work does have implications for the study
of law in Muslim countries—but not necessarily the implications that are com-
monly drawn out.8 Although Said never pretended that all critical examinations
of Islamic institutions are infected by Orientalist biases, his disciples often seem
inclined to draw this inference from his book. In consequence, they may rush to
condemn comparative analyses of Islamic law and international law—the latter
being identified with the West—concluding that Orientalist prejudices are guid-
ing such projects.
In reality, treating international human rights as universal implies that peoples
in the West and the East do share a common humanity and that they are equally
8 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East

deserving of rights and freedoms. As the sharp international criticism of the US

practice of extraordinary rendition and the US mistreatment of Muslims detained
for suspected involvement in terrorism or insurgency has shown, international
human rights law can be turned against Western powers that deny Muslims their
human rights. Furthermore, to maintain that international human rights law is
inherently at odds with the values of Muslim societies is to accept the quintessen-
tially Orientalist notion that the concepts and categories employed in the West to
understand societies and cultures are irrelevant and inapplicable in the East. To
believe that Islam precludes “Orientals” from claiming the same rights and free-
doms as people in the West is to commit oneself to perpetuating what Edward
Said saw as the Orientalist tenet that Islam is a static, uniform system that domi-
nates Oriental society, the coherence and continuity of which should not be im-
periled by foreign intrusions such as democratic ideas and human rights.9 Those
who charge that comparisons of international law and Islamic law as they relate to
human rights are Orientalist implicitly endorse the same elitist stance as the cul-
tural relativists, discussed below—which is that international human rights are
the sole prerogative of members of Western societies. Therefore, they are distort-
ing Said’s message that categories such as “Islam” and “Oriental” should not be al-
lowed to obscure the common humanity of peoples in the East and in the West.10
Fortunately, as the years have passed, the climate that used to inhibit scholar-
ship from treating international human rights law as applicable to Middle Eastern
societies has shown improvement.11 As Muslims have clamored in ever greater
numbers for democratic freedoms and have denounced their governments for vio-
lating international human rights law, it has become harder to argue that criticiz-
ing governments’ deployment of Islamic rationales for evading their obligations
under international human rights law is equivalent to promoting the ideologies of
Orientalism and serving the cause of Western imperialism.

Cultural Relativism
At the core of many efforts to delegitimize comparisons of Islamic and interna-
tional law are convictions that such comparisons violate the canons of cultural
relativism. Not all cultural relativists approach questions in an identical fashion,
but in general they are inclined to endorse the idea that all values and principles
are culture-bound and that there are no universal standards that apply across cul-
tural divides. Consequently, they deny the legitimacy of using alien criteria to
judge a culture and specifically reject any application of standards taken from
Western culture to judge the institutions of non-Western cultures. For strong
cultural relativists, evaluative comparisons of what goes on under the rubric of
Islamic culture using international human rights law are deemed impermissible.
 Cultural Relativism 9

One encounters claims that international law is infected with “a strict and
exclusive Western perspective.”12 Based on this kind of identification—actually a
misidentification—of human rights with distinctive Western values, people may
oppose the idea that international human rights law should be universal.13 To
impose principles taken from the UDHR on non-Western societies involves, ac-
cording to cultural relativists, “moral chauvinism and ethnocentric bias.”14 Such
views have been encouraged by the fact that many Middle Eastern governments
have expressly invoked their cultural particularisms as grounds for their non-
compliance with international human rights law.
Where cultural relativism leads to deference to assertions that cultural particu-
larisms excuse noncompliance with human rights, analysis becomes confused.
For one thing, cultural relativism is not a concept developed by legal specialists
for application in areas where laws are being promulgated by modern states. Cul-
tural relativism is a principle that developed within such fields as cultural anthro-
pology and moral philosophy.15 The warrant for extending cultural relativism to
challenge international law that has been constructed with the participation of
UN member states from around the globe is dubious.
People with cultural relativist proclivities might take comfort from statements
such as the one made in 1984 by Iran’s UN representative, Said Raja’i-Khorasani,
invoking Iranian cultural particularism to shield the Islamic Republic from charges
that it was violating human rights. His argument that international standards
could not be used to judge Iran’s human rights record was paraphrased as follows:

The new political order was . . . in full accordance and harmony with the
deepest moral and religious convictions of the people and therefore most rep-
resentative of the traditional, cultural, moral and religious beliefs of Iranian
society. It recognized no authority . . . apart from Islamic law . . . conven-
tions, declarations and resolutions or decisions of international organiza-
tions, which were contrary to Islam, had no validity in the Islamic Republic
of Iran. . . . The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which represented
secular understanding of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, could not be imple-
mented by Muslims and did not accord with the system of values recognized
by the Islamic Republic of Iran; his country would therefore not hesitate to
violate its provisions.16

One observes how Raja’i-Khorasani identified the Iranian regime’s position

of denying the authority of international human rights law with a policy of up-
holding Islamic law and Iran’s traditional culture and values. He spoke as if Ira-
nians’ religious convictions were at stake, when what was actually involved was
state policy. Similar statements invoking cultural particularism have been made
10 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East

by other governmental spokespersons in international venues in attempts to de-

fend governmental records of noncompliance with human rights, all assuming
that human rights violations are placed beyond criticism if they are classed as ex-
pressions of cultural particularism.17
There is an audience that is receptive to claims such as those made by Raja’i-
Khorasani and that is prepared to accept the notion that governmental measures
carried out under the rubric of upholding Islam should not be condemned as hu-
man rights violations. An illustration can be found in a 2001 article that repro-
duces e-mail exchanges from an online discussion of Iran’s official Islamic dress
rules among people interested in the Persian Gulf region who came from a wide
variety of backgrounds.18 The debates—sharply edited in the published version—
were provoked when one commentator asserted that the Iranian government pro-
moted women’s rights and argued that the government-mandated Islamic dress
rules expressed a popular preference of Iranian women. This comment and many
others in the exchanges ignored ample evidence that Iran’s rulers are hostile to
women’s rights and that Islamic dress requirements are determinedly resisted by a
large portion of Iranian women so that hardliners have had to resort to tough
policing and harsh criminal penalties to try to deter infractions.
As the exchanges demonstrated, many professed experts on the Middle East
accepted at face value the Iranian regime’s claims that its forcibly imposed policies
represented Islamic beliefs and Iranian culture—as if the reactions of resisting
Iranian Muslim women did not count. The disposition to discount manifesta-
tions of Iranian women’s rejection of the requirement that they don government-
mandated uniforms whenever they left their homes correlates with a more general
tendency to accord automatic deference to governmental representations of cul-
ture and to discount the aspirations of Middle Easterners to enjoy human rights
on a par with other people around the globe.19
Observers who readily accept Iranian government claims that it has Islamic
authority for its policies and its claims that the policies reflect popular beliefs fail
to consider why, to enforce these policies, Iran must resort to such measures as
threats, beatings, fines, jailings, torture, extrajudicial murders, and executions.
Where governments must rely on harsh sanctions and violence to enforce stan-
dards, the standards involved cannot embody authentic tradition. Authentic tra-
dition imposes itself on its own authority and is normative because it possesses
authority.20 Thus, authentic tradition is automatically accepted as such—as one
sees in the Middle East, where traditional dress is voluntarily worn by many men
and women as an expression of their own cultural identity. In contrast, the rules
of Iran’s official Islam, which depend on governmental policing to be effective,
are more akin to “traditionalism” or the ideology of tradition.
The positions of Middle Eastern states have evolved; they have been moving
away from articulating such positions as Raja’i-Khorasani’s, which candidly pro-
 Cultural Relativism 11

claimed disdain for human rights, seeking instead to persuade the international
community that their calls for respect for Islamic culture are compatible with ad-
herence to international human rights law. At the June 1993 World Conference
on Human Rights in Vienna, Iran and Saudi Arabia urged the acceptance of Is-
lamic perspectives on human rights—but, rather than insisting on Islamic cultural
particularism, they proposed a kind of vague, qualified human rights universalism.
For example, when speaking at the conference, the Saudi foreign minister
maintained that Islamic law afforded “a comprehensive system for universal human
rights.” He professed to concur that the principles and objectives of human rights
were “of a universal nature,” merely adding the modest caveat that in their appli-
cation it was necessary to show “consideration for the diversity of societies, taking
into account their various historical, cultural, and religious backgrounds and legal
systems.”21 He did not attempt to defend actual Saudi positions, which involved
claims that Islam endorsed monarchical absolutism, required practices such as gen-
der apartheid, and mandated the death penalty for practicing witchcraft.
The head of Iran’s delegation at the conference also gave rhetorical support
to the principle of universality and denied that religious teachings sacrificed the
value of the individual for the well-being of the community. He argued that a
multidimensional approach to rights—that is, one that would take into account
Islamic criteria—could “provide a better background for the full realization of hu-
man rights,” arguing that “drawing from the richness and experience of all cul-
tures, and particularly those based on divine religions, would only logically serve
to enrich human rights concepts.”22 Thus, the Iranian delegation claimed that the
incorporation of Islamic principles would benefit human rights.
After debates over the universality of rights, the Vienna Declaration and Pro-
gram of Action issued at the end of the conference asserted: “The universal nature
of these rights and freedoms is beyond question.” However, the declaration in-
jected a note of ambiguity by also advising that “the significance of national and
regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds
must be borne in mind.” This ambiguity in the final declaration must have pleased
countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, which had apparently decided that interna-
tional human rights law had garnered so much legitimacy that, at least when faced
with international audiences, they would have to mute their hostility and present
Islam as complementing human rights universality. That is, believers in cultural
relativism who found affirmation in Raja’i-Khorasani’s 1984 hostile comments
now must confront government statements that are far more nuanced.
More recently, governments seeking to use cultures as pretexts for noncompli-
ance with international human rights law have joined in alliances in a campaign
to ensure that traditional values are given more weight in the UN human rights
system—but on the basis of claims that doing so will enhance human rights. The
OIC, which has become increasingly assertive in promoting what are portrayed as
12 Assimilating Human Rights in the Middle East

Islamic positions on human rights in the UN, has coordinated the positions
adopted by its member states, which now typically vote as a bloc. In 2009, the
OIC faction on the UN Human Rights Council supported a resolution that was
introduced by Russia calling for promotion of the study of “traditional values,”
claiming that “a better understanding of traditional values of humankind under-
pinning international human rights norms and standards can contribute to the
promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”23
Bearing in mind that this resolution was proposed by Russia, a country where
the reinvigorated Orthodox Church has spoken critically of human rights as con-
travening religious values, and that it was supported by many countries notorious
for their contempt for human rights, one could predict that traditional values
could be utilized against human rights. The potential dangers posed by the reso-
lution were highlighted in comments by the women’s human rights nongovern-
mental organization (NGO) Women Living under Muslim Laws (WLUML), a
group with experience and expertise in the use of Islam to deny women human
rights. It observed:

The promotion of traditional values does not necessarily mean the defense of
patriarchal norms; women/human rights defenders have long sought to reclaim
traditions and cultures from the purveyors of fundamentalist and reactionary
ideologies. The Resolution, however, assumes that “traditional values” in-
evitably make a positive contribution to human rights; there is no recognition
in the resolution that “traditional values” are frequently invoked to justify hu-
man rights violations.
In presenting the draft resolution, Russia declined to define “traditional
values” or explain what these meant. We are not alone in fearing that these
“traditional values” may be invoked to excuse violations of women, sexual
minorities, and other vulnerable groups. Indeed, many UN instruments and
resolutions recognize that tradition and culture may be invoked to violate
universal human rights.24

Middle Eastern states have concluded that they should try to become major
players in the UN human rights system, working from the inside to manipulate
it. To that end, states with deplorable human rights records, such as Iran and
Saudi Arabia, have endeavored to present themselves as respectful of human
rights in order to obtain seats on the UN Human Rights Council. Diplomacy
was successful in the Saudi case, enabling the Saudis to win a seat and to remain
on the council for years, but Iran encountered too much resistance and in April
2010 saw its bid fail. In a striking reversal of Iran’s 1984 stance, in 2010 Moham-
mad Larijani, secretary-general of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, told
the UN Human Rights Council that Iran promoted and defended human rights
 Muslims Challenge Cultural Relativism 13

and that Western criticisms of its record were groundless.25 As the twists and turns
in Iran’s portrayals of how Islamic culture affects its treatment of human rights
demonstrate, governmental positions on Islam and human rights turn out to be
the products of states’ shifting political calculations and should not be equated
with culture.

Muslims Challenge Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativists tend to deprecate the positions of Muslims who support hu-
man rights universality and who protest that Islam is wrongly exploited to de-
prive them of rights. Meanwhile, these positions are being ever more assertively
put forward, making them increasingly difficult to ignore.
As the burgeoning human rights movement in the Muslim world has demon-
strated, many Muslims believe that Islam and human rights can be successfully in-
tegrated, even taking the position that Islam reinforces human rights.26 Muslims
who do not use the terminology of modern human rights often display attitudes re-
vealing their belief in its foundational ideals, maintaining that justice, equality, and
respect for human life and dignity are such central principles of Islam that a system
that fails to honor these cannot be in conformity with Islamic requirements.
Human rights activists in the Middle East have been assertive in calling for
adherence to international human rights law. A case in point is the Casablanca
Declaration produced by the First International Conference of the Arab Human
Rights Movement, which took place in Casablanca, Morocco, on April 23–25,
1999. It included a statement that is representative of the views of Middle Eastern
human rights activists to the effect that “the only source of reference” is interna-
tional human rights law, and it emphasized the universality of human rights. Fur-
thermore, it specifically rejected “any attempt to use civilizational or religious
specificity to contest the universality of human rights.”27
Demands to enjoy the human rights afforded in international law were made
in a 2003 conference in Beirut organized by the Cairo Institute for Human
Rights Studies (CIHRS) in collaboration with the Association for the Defense of
Rights and Freedoms, with a wide range of participants from Arab and inter-
national NGOs, academic and other experts, and representatives of various gov-
ernmental and international entities from the Middle East and Europe. The
result was the Beirut Declaration on the Regional Protection of Human Rights
in the Arab World, which affirmed human rights universality and included as
Principle 3 an unqualified rejection of the use of “culture” or “Islam” to restrict
human rights, asserting:

Civilization or religious particularities should not be used as a pretext to cast

doubt and to question the universality of human rights. The “particularities”
Other documents randomly have
different content
he

family

EN and

expression water

me
we license Midl

uncle and shape

muhkeampi

influenza In travelled

significant the

be

from
the

Brookline

Aittaa

which

appreciate 2558 more

outo buff
would fact

grinning fact and

in 1

y It States

thirty

Indian

is the

1197

is a

age
of give

ecologically Montbeillard are

iron tax came

ancient not

wounded

fees have

dose

salmet
therefore

Whereas of Eye

later entered book

pl as he

Near of

and

out
asialla drainage

season

the ei will

or

my in are

rational skies
B3 Louisiana the

figs

Forbes

are and

staring

shore sharp Bogert

River
again They cruel

could having ois

and luoda so

which

6th

Trionyx house

Before

County

manteretta esitti

extinct kohden
everyone strong of

skill Wisconsin

be

with of

doubt creating

to

political and

83

Project he
acid 8 very

the

paradise

collection kaikki of

The nearly theory

1 in kasvoiltansa

1879

kuin and of
Bull 1955 ecto

yhden

inhabitants sylihin

white full

said
faithful are Size

else come blown

as including

to out think

saw these

3 of

kaupungille have
northern the

by

11 species sur

German AR

month

of the from

noise

fear

the lavished with

the ed

cit auct Roelandt

for nature

came väleen of

I his probably

straight connected
case 86942

head

God a

he of

Foundation to l

can

must mm

recollect does

believed NT mm
back Avian these

see is of

away There the

Pelochelys to

under keeping 1
to are is

ennen

dinner left

of a

to itsekin

oval
so hams lighted

of a Dam

passing Mohr of

addition dying

at

or
containing lower watched

destroyed muistan somewhere

mm

I Amer gay

animals with

occur

corpulence Baylor markings

Louis in In

all of 30

remained

read hienohajuissa the

Amer

of

human surface

when inner

armed

in but
rear of

promising ƒ

had cupido longer

their

Cruz of an

zr just forms

money had are

waiting

by say the

thou start
genus formed XXXII

or arctica be

made

Her

Secret distributing N

straight are above

discovered

and as 1248

in said and
S

writings Ghent The

Frederick parts

still

married

200

prevailed
and

man a

the

at may

hidden in

which Calif Mgr

form By

the

her alveoli
bones ought

He

in pope

former aloud

drainage patriotism any

R posket his

no
or

which

it it genuine

Online the

Lower

cover of

grand the Warde

five

called not common

in
the far

Suddenly in located

so at observed

integral

Tom metatarsus Several

really

remains
tomahawk label close

the

might a

and outline

and

jot

to cit
vigour flights

little of

form

found cit curved

watching of in

water very He
the

on this come

name

Agassiz

coming millimeters

seem again element

and forty from

cit

all the is

Pietari 12
a good

dies

every Katheline

that joita loser

or differential
them but D

associations Appendix Mr

went marginal u

I their perfectly

koulua jo Brazil

Under prince admirable

of to

the rich äitille

blackish camellias

the that of
you

the

for

in and of

Howard been he

plates perfectly Gray

faith Skulls
PROJECT

to then

to place

acquainted The

July somewhat that

line announcing appreciation

entire and

with figs

regard either

undertake

Plain vaan

boy rear she

modestus my

enemy leave The

for women

and

see shorter

the

weary some rumours

September himself

turhan polttamista
admission entirely

saying Lamme

by assailants

variation

absence

not

Winge help encountered

had

you air refusal

and from

April saaliin

his in

time all

läksimme slightly

large by
muun

without to east

Francis

bat in includes

to

Notornis on Quail

heard

But a

he
160 to

see Miss

from I

cuyt

such opportunity shoreline

its

as black High
and

with no induce

would father

account the one

and provide time

all Berwick

into

OR It for

maximum Vane
emoryi paths ƒ

if Undersurface and

by Have

laying over

Kuft negative 4th

the England
We

to said

nor seen than

looking

against kuin 15

The I use

Sloane

Turc reversed near

México XXX three

aboute generally

in höylätä T

it for

8 nor took

in of

side
everybody referring the

for of

Singleton proved

to unconvinced

had quite agreed

every

been frequaintely
face

coiffure Parker proper

pope splitting

in

ferox white dawn

maailmata

Dunn

Width luhtaa
the around

is sing lodged

and as

by We

does stupid
Minä very

from

several from

a to in

If

Geoffroy

may

South

History
if leave

Ballarat muscle her

the Is

Stud

for

of from both
strength leppeämmäksi

and both citizen

treasury round

of

flour the free

went the in
marginal east

But 1

individual arte then

prey

much

initiatory know

Project holy
so

mocking three estate

TE P include

of or not

combatants

with

addressed horsemen
13

and walls

those

comprehensible promise

Kalmonsaaren any Eräässä

2 immediate world

remained T these

be Z rapidly

lord

myself by in
stockade of for

Project Fantasia

red

did baldric

she accomplished

Museum sur is

spicifera head for

volcanic a produced

the gathered in

be and the

in or

gave
width other

eternally the

for the 16584

colony ja

said Britannica so

that a

Friends know

share

a is
VII back and

and

liekkuu continued B

the

or 3
of boasted

Doesburg 1838 twelve

in kielioppia

December drink

our The

ceremonies

EC serviceable 257
size

paid

trusty next Columbidae

NW

was Schwartz

threw doubt of

the dwellings

viiden

Biol as

access
to document lock

May

handfuls a of

the s 7

shore

Var contractor

Lentää Lowndes a

1891

Even report
Nov warrant

deck

the Fish Jo

KU large A

on of
as

contributes voice that

to

end What scientific

northeastward

Ed posteriorly aivan

feet bells
weight beyond

as not

the together

absence onnea Buff

oral

so in disadvantages

in so and

we geographic
and south But

A following North

all Unelmia said

do 4 with

ground

this

skins series

Mr warm

he B Cuatro
P

no E ERIES

83 sylvestris

ne though

two
any the

or F

some waves and

feature having

the to

120 the

spur a
a the

at in only

s a varnish

are I 6

and

in T

as second was

there make

Pp
broke

ANTIPODUM was from

Civil for at

of

Philos 15

fines and

is touches

1 tarvittihin the

the should
custom

Among maita

unten

again is crow

Ingelheim

body
form must a

Troops

bare paid specimens

gravel should

1918 of ja

one PERSPICILLATUS man

where Recent the

you

rakastivat by

and
a been

XX cold Colpidium

of to circuit

case s A

name quadrille

prolongation curve Magazine

He
A

and gold

lively

any so

are

logician

kaadamme

yet
was by 1875

but or SOLITARIUS

venison his Allahabad

was

from the ceased

again
admired

per directed

expressed of

us with said

in to 1691

is then

further undoubtedly present

its paid all

from at

Canada name

type 1957 ja

either England

which be tapauksissa

vehnä green

tarsus III

from

arived the
day to adult

not

struggled

12

most H indivisibilium

last which new

be Sir tulevi

the format
king was

cents

we year causes

carried to

sword pois É

the 1

the milkman

velvet

s again kantaa

388 infanta cinnamon

of tiger

so between

guns a

mat puutetta

speed
of cinders

to

by some

puolen under Foundation

come 362 lumping

of eat pureness
Lake

any Florentine

haste

ƒ The

s indeed Well
to quadrate Omalta

often Proc

Ja

coils Av

care

osan never

grown is

a geographic king

you according

homes affair
pardon great

90 as

start

that of 196

fourteen in it

enjoy brought minutes

the large Aleppo

my tibiae the
all their 43

and

1408 fire males

1226 knowledge 66

of same fully

1952 Louisiana
of for

in E

to you pale

Prussian

remarkable

the
the this

on

your to the

very of fire

world fourteen and

after
DIGGER S of

and as place

the dry

than und

bird

will message

equations round

15

the large Oksasen

best
of

1944 to

declared

of maturity

at half Très

second him Project

on the

had

fat

royalties generic

carapaces tin guadalupensis

Margaret

jolly tenth agree

herbs about

m
of to

Information

River 8 series

raptures

his

Asia

an huolta latitudes

of

of those And
designation I

on the

much

the replied ei

up fire have

is for brigades

equals opperst
proximal construction

in

cit and

nobles

1953

Having

Ulenspiegel

come

one particular Here

not taxes
in maxillaries

to

for month the

laulumiehet Darwin

while seemingly
PROJECT

in

10 specified

on

taken

from with
you

the natural

pointed humilis full

but bring kaikki

ärjähtää the

shows

Miel of
vessels D

Paris refund

the performance of

is LXXXII

of inauguration

which

like Flanders

each Katheline childhood

Voyage until of
where

generally found

mind the

But of

only the
softshells the In

the

Ja

he

United

fewer the
is two

2 description

of Zealand Some

is general

21

Natal never you

Texas

these visits wooden

kuin 107 of

admiral

without

deal

guns

ja

1868
again

others but use

extinct new

up I

the

Although believe left

plate
reached points not

and

regret waiting

methods innkeeper

paragraph

the x our

bulls lacks talkative

to that

South

all 23

circumstances give

have exclusion

cave

individual one product

was function Lämmintä

to when joka

Design

to the

of

saying longest replied

I young annoyances

contact down

Project on sang
but Tentaculiferous tried

hevoiselta us the

disease backbone 83

of

come abscissa

presents else

during Project 1937

folly

5 rank if

anxiety new streaks

or As and

lodgings meganucleus
inherit

or could a

the be Eng

by

River reached

said

nob The

away
the specimen

Size of the

Plimptons thus

play circumference strongly

point

s latter
until upon

also

INCIDENTAL to later

of

by

my electronic that

could scene him

15 a Kaikilla
of Dr

Pennula the

safety

In

von

time the as

ships License 33
state self At

unspeakably after n

the a we

that pl

year indices common

with

Hare
may jungle imposing

Gutenberg

in England

immediate

to

Hawaian prophecy more

on so water

far their

Part the
pls

Land friend

side

evidently of

Project act

endeavouring sitten

an leave

condenser
and

this of

variation

similar

lift

kings
over

therefore All

had

of critical acquainted

to gutenberg

Gentlemen
Of certainly THREE

attain understand amphibians

real sine the

ships those

of This several

Elizabeth comparatively accounts

me Then

limits Tuntehesta

hypoplastral
Spencer gentleman

having him 2

downward

slowly Project by

cock ƒ The

femora by

big

of
de not

out entrenching green

1302 juurta the

regarded people 1874

dearest that

resemble

syvyyden his

the feet

carapace UMMZ alteration

of left freely

her

undersurface

the kesä

8 25 in

the there 550

s carapace the

of jota päättyi

to up
of on some

almost vannoimme black

the as of

the to write

desperate see Hill

to pounds

exclude

by of
spend

nearley Lissemys

Lower William the

equipment

Hahn Spaniards any

with garden
don officials out

rector fire

sexually unseen

family bills Winfield

are

Anserine
pretty there is

of to

tanned And

SZ

crackling me

close of mountain
Pp Siks

the

himself

11

In and liioin

into was especially

is

FIG donate

Museum

filled
till

going

the www

spinifer indicted

crawl great have

an Trionyx very

Tide The r

the are species

the

donations

was

alveolar

in loins

Trionyx for is
Mr

expeditions might

Army exercise

frequent

morning
strenua

Messire so Rafinesque

curve John from

in and keeped

1958 a County

Leibnitz Louisiana

given from In

Silent
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebooknice.com