Islam and Human Rights: A Growing Rapprochement?

• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Date: 01 January 2015
• Author: David L. Johnston
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12085

Islam and Human Rights:

A Growing Rapprochement?

By DAVID L. JOHNSTON

ABSTRACT. Can Islamic thought provide a basis for a fully developed

theory of human rights? This article begins with an examination of the

tensions between religion in general and the secular framing of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). From a historical

perspective, it then delves into the history of the relationship between

Muslim political and religious leaders and the UDHR. With that

background in mind, the author analyzes the positions of three

inf‌luential Muslim scholars on human rights: Khaled Abou El Fadl’s

emphasis on ethics and law; Abdulaziz Sachedina’s recent book Islam

and the Challenge of Human Rights (2009), in which he urges the

traditionalists to develop a “public theology”; and f‌inally, Abdullahi

An-Na’im’s focus on shari’a and the secular state. He concludes that

the majority of Muslims worldwide remain more conservative than

these authors, and yet they overwhelmingly support the notion of

human rights. This bodes well for the growing inf‌luence of such

reformist thinking and, as a result, for the retooling of traditional

Islamic jurisprudence in addressing human rights.

***

As I begin to write on Islam and human rights once again, the news

media remind me of how pressing it is. (see Johnston 2007, 2009,

2014b.) The Nigerian Islamic militant group Boko Haram (“Western

Education is forbidden”) were all over social media of late because of

their abduction of over 200 school girls, threatening to sell them into

slavery or forced marriages if they were not exchanged for their own

members locked up in Nigerian jails. Just this morning I read about

two car bombs that exploded in Jos, the capital of the central Plateau

State where Christians and Muslims are most intermingled. The death

toll was 118 and all the evidence points to Boko Haram.

Then, in an op ed piece in the New York Times (Sethi 2014), I read

how Junaid Hafeez, a young poet, Fulbright scholar, and English

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12085

© 2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

professor, was arrested on the charge of blasphemy against Islam, and

how Rashid Rehman, the special coordinator of Pakistan’s Human

Rights Commission, had courageously undertaken to defend him in

court. Rehman was soon gunned down in front of his colleagues and

the attackers have still not been apprehended.

It is no wonder that, with such headlines in the daily news, the

average Westerner assumes there is a basic incompatibility between

“Islam” and human rights norms. In this article I will problematize that

notion in several ways. First, I will look into the tensions between

religion in general and the secular framing of the Universal Declara-

tion of Human Rights (UDHR); then I will delve into the history of the

relationship between Muslim political and religious leaders and the

UDHR; f‌inally, I will examine the positions of three inf‌luential Muslim

scholars on this question—Khaled Abou El Fadl’s emphasis on ethics

and law; Abdulaziz Sachedina’s recent book Islam and the Challenge

of Human Rights (2009), in which he urges the traditionalists to

develop a “public theology”; and Abdullahi An-Na’im’s focus on

shari’a and the secular state.

Religion and Human Rights Discourse

Sociologist Lester R. Kurtz (2007: 189) is one of many scholars taking

note of the recent resurgence of religion around the world:

Along with the creation of new religious forms, we are now witnessing

some dramatic revitalizations of traditional forms of religious life. The

growing interdependence of the various human cultures, along with the

economic and social webs woven across thousands of former boundaries,

is creating an unprecedented series of changes in the nature of human

theology.

In the 1960s, Peter Berger helped to frame the secularization theory

in terms of traditional societies becoming more secularized as they

Westernize, urbanize, and industrialize. In more recent years, Berger

(1999: 64) has recanted: “The world today, with some exceptions . . .

is as furiously religious as ever.” This phenomenon, in fact, was

already so pronounced in the 1980s that the Fundamentalism

Project (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/FP.html)

was launched under the leadership of Martin E. Marty and R. Scott

114 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Appleby. By 2004, f‌ive large edited volumes had been published,

covering this multifaceted movement of “strong religion” across the

religious spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, scholars from several disciplines have also turned

their attention to the intersection of religion and human rights norms

(Ghanea et al. 2007; Van der Ven 2010; Van der Ven and Ziebertz 2012;

Bucar and Barnett 2005).

Banchoff and Wuthnow (2011) offer in this regard a useful summary

of views. They see two opposing narratives, the second appearing

more recently than its counterpart. The f‌irst is still the dominant one:

religion opposes human rights. This secularist perspective highlights

the toxic role of religion, whether in inf‌laming wars against the

religious “other” or in giving dictators an excuse to better exploit their

people. The modern paradigm of human rights triumphed, as the

traditional religious authorities waned. This is the attitude that is

perhaps best exemplif‌ied in France where the public sphere is zeal-

ously policed in order to eliminate all religious symbols. Women

in headscarves seem to be the f‌irst victims of this kind of secularist

zeal.

The alternative narrative is one that sees religion “engaging” human

rights. The historical record is far more nuanced than the advocates of

the f‌irst narrative would have us believe. No doubt, religious intoler-

ance and exclusivism have wreaked havoc in the past and still do

today. But the emerging idea of natural rights before and after the

Enlightenment came about largely through debates within religious

circles and in conversation between various religious and non-

religious actors. As modernity was taking shape and unrestrained

capitalism gave rise to aggressive colonial policies, slavery, and the

exploitation of workers, including children, it was often people of

faith who spoke out against these injustices in the name of human

dignity. The problem is not so much religion, but religious extremists.

In fact, many of the ills and suffering visited on humanity in the 20th

century can be attributed to secular ideologies like nationalism, com-

munism, and Nazism.

Let us be clear. Religious fanaticism and militancy still pose a

tangible threat today.1But as Banchoff and Wuthnow (2011: 6) see it,

religion has much to offer the cause of freedom and human dignity:

Islam and Human Rights: A Growing Rapprochement? 115