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| Notes for Muslims and Human RightsRobert Traer* 1 See A. David Gurewitsch, Eleanor Roosevelt: Her Day (New York: Interchange Foundation, 1973), 25.2 Ann Elizabeth Mayer, "The Dilemmas of Islamic Identity," in Human Rights and the World's Religions, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 94.3 Human Rights in Islam (Geneva: International Commission of Jurists, 1982), 3.4 Ibid., 9.5 Ibid., 11.6 Ibid., 9.7 Ibid., 11.8 Ibid., 13.9 Ibid., 21.10 Ibid., 25.11 Ibid.12 Ibid.13 Ibid.14 Ibid., 33.15 Rashid Ahmad Jullundhri, "Human Rights and Islam," in Understanding Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary and Interfaith Study, ed. Alan D. Falconer (Dublin: Irish School of Ecumenics, 1980), 34.16 Muhammad al-Thanawi, Kashshaf instilahat al-Funun, (Calcutta: 1864); Sarskhsi, Usul (Cairo: 1954) 2, 332-40. Quoted in Jullundhri, "Human Rights and Islam," 35.17 In fact, these words were spoken by Salman to his companion. Later he informed the Prophet, who endorsed Salman's saying. See Bukhari, Al-Jam'i al-Sahih, ed. Rudolph Krehl (Leiden: 1862), I, 490. Quoted in Jullundhri, "Human Rights and Islam," 35.18 Jullundhri, "Human Rights and Islam," 35.19 Ibid., 42.20 Mohammed Allal Sinaceur, "Islamic Tradition and Human Rights," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights (Paris: UNESCO, 1986), 211. However, James P. Piscatori argues that traditional Islamic beliefs are unlike modern concepts of human rights in that rights are understood as God-given rather than as natural to persons and as subject to governmental control rather than as a check on governmental power. Piscatori, "Human Rights in Islamic Political Culture," in The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights: A World Survey, ed. Kenneth W. Thompson (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980), 142.21 Ibid., 212. (Qur'an 5:32)22 Ibid., 213.23 Ibid.24 Abdul Aziz Said, "Human Rights in Islamic Perspectives," in Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives, ed. Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1979), 86. For instance, unlike the Christian tradition, Islamic law has never had a doctrine of natural law and makes no claim to govern the conscience. Sinaceur, "Islamic Tradition and Human Rights," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, 204-05.25 Ibid. See also Abdul Aziz Said, "The Islamic Context for Human Rights," Breakthrough 10, nos. 2-3 (Winter/Spring 1989):39-41.26 Ibid, 87.27 Ibid.28 Abdul Aziz Said and Jamil Nasser, "The Use and Abuse of Democracy in Islam," in International Human Rights: Contemporary Issues, ed. Jack L. Nelson and Vera M. Green (Stanfordville, N.Y.: Human Rights Publishing Group, Earl M. Coleman, 1980), 76-77. See Mansour Farhang, "Fundamentalism and Civil Rights in Contemporary Middle Eastern Politics," in Human Rights and the World's Religions, 64.29 Basharat Ahmad, "Qur'anic View of Human Freedom," The Islamic Review 5, nos. 1, 2, and 3 (October, November, December 1984):9.30 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "The Concept and Reality of Freedom in Islam and Islamic Civilization," in The Philosophy of Human Rights, ed. Alan S. Rosenbaum (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 96. On 26 November 1982, before the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Zarif of the Islamic Republic of Iran asserted that "the Islamic Revolution in his own country was aimed, inter alia, at the promotion of human rights on a world-wide scale." He maintained that "Defending human rights, whose status was so exalted in the eyes of Islam, was a difficult task, particularly since corruption and absurdity had become common practice in contemporary societies through the gross neglect and compromising of liberties in the name of individual freedom; unfortunately, freedom had become synonymous with decadence. Consequently, all rules regarding human rights must be founded exclusively on principles of divine ethics, and justice must be defined in terms of external moral principles." "Summary Record of the 56th Meeting of the Third Committee," A/C.3/37/SR.56, English, 15.31 Ibid., 97.32 Abul A'la Mawdudi, Human Rights in Islam (Leicester, U.K.: Islamic Foundation, 2nd ed. 1980), 10.33 Ibid., 15. Chaudri Nazir Ahmad Khan asserts that "a fundamental drawback in the whole concept of human rights was the idea that these rights were being granted by man to man, as if they were a gift. We must realize that every child wherever born and of whatever color, caste or creed, brings into the world all these rights at the time of his birth, as a direct blessing from Allah—the Creator. They are sacred and inviolable." Khan, "Address," in The International Observance: World Law Day—Human Rights: 1968 (Geneva: World Peace through Law Center, 1968), 8.34 Ibid., 16. See Ihsen Hamid Al-Mafregy, "Islam and Human Rights," in Human Rights Teaching 2, no. 1 (1981), 11-14. Mawdudi's Islamic Party (Jama'at-e Islami) rejected liberal notions of natural law and liberty of conscience and regarded Muhammed Zufrullah Khan as a heretic. John Kelsay, "Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," in Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 49.35 Fouad Zakaria, "Human Rights in the Arab World: the Islamic Context," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, 228.36 Ibid., 230.37 Ibid., 237. Zakaria observes that the Iranian Revolution represents a notable exception.38 Human Rights in Islam, 7-8. Mohammed Allal Sinaceur argues that this conclusion is supported by the Qur'anic affirmation (2:256): "No constraint in religion." Sinaceur, "Islamic Tradition and Human Rights," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, 215-16.39 Abdulahi Ahmed An-Na'im, "Religious Freedom in Egypt: Under the Shadow of the Islamic Dhimma System," in Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and in Religions, ed. Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, Temple University, 1986), 55. See also his article, "Religious Minorities under Islamic Law and the Limits of Cultural Relativism," Human Rights Quarterly 9, no. 1 (February 1987):1-18.40 James P. Piscatori, "Human Rights in Islamic Political Culture," in The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights, 144-46.41 John Kelsay, "Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," in Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures: Western and Islamic Perspectives on Religious Liberty, 43-44.42 Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam (London: Methuen, 1967), 212; quoted in John Kelsay, "Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," in Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures, 45. Wilfred Cantwell Smith acknowledges that The Spirit of Islam was widely circulated among liberal Muslims, but argues that it is superficial. He asserts that Muhammad Iqbal not only "saw through the liberal sham of democracy, to its exploitation," but communicated a revolutionary message to Indian Muslims through his poetry. In Sultanat Iqbal writes: "The West's republicanism is the same old instrument, In its strings there are no tunes but those of Kaiserism. The demon of exploitation dances in republican garb, And you suppose that it is the fairy of liberty. Constitutional bodies, reforms, privileges, rights, Are sweet-tasting western soporifics." Quoted in Smith, Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1946), 110-11.43 David Little asserts: "Presumably genuine submission or surrender to Allah's will, along with the appropriate dispositions of gratitude, devotion, steadfastness, etc., must come from the heart, must involve the deepest and most intimate kind of personal consent and commitment. If that is true, then compulsion and external interference would appear to be the antithesis of Islamic faith." Little, "The Western Tradition," in Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures, 29.44 Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, "Freedom of Conscience and Religion in the Qur'an," in Human Rights and the Conflict of Cultures, 67.45 Ibid.46 Ibid., 56. See James Dudley, "Human Rights Practices in the Arab States: The Modern Impact of Shari'a Values," Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law 12 (1982):55-93.50 Khalid Duran, "Religious Liberty and Human Rights in the Sudan," in Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and Religions, 74.51 Iran and Human Rights: A Brief Account of the Achievements of the Last Few Years (Iran: Compiled under the Auspices of the Iranian Coordinating Committee for the International Year for Human Rights, 1968), 95.52 Riffat Hassan, "On Human Rights and the Qur'anic Perspective," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, ed. Arlene Swidler (New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1982), 63. Nikki R. Keddie notes that those presenting such "modernist" arguments often assert that the Qur'an has many meanings, a traditional position in Islam, and so call for "reform" in the circumstances of modern society. "An allied argument is to stress the spirit of the Qur'an—to use the book title of the South Asian reformer Ameer Ali—and to say that the Quar'an is egalitarian (largely true) and favors human rights, and that these general principles were meant to be extended to women's rights. There is also extensive reinterpretation of particular verses and passages. The Qur'an in the same chapter says that men can marry up to four wives if they can treat the wives equally, and later that no matter how hard they try men will not be able to treat wives equally. Putting the two together, it is logically held by the modernists that the Qur'an was against polygamy, as the conditions it lays down as requirements for polygamy it then says are impossible to meet. More generally, various passages are interpreted to refer to male-female equality." Nikki R. Keddie, "The Rights of Women in Contemporary Islam," in Human Rights and the World's Religions, 86.53 Ibid., 65. James P. Piscatori argues to the contrary that the Qur'an clearly supports inequitable treatment of men and women. Piscatori, "Human Rights in Islamic Political Culture," in The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights, 144.54 Ibid., 55.55 Quoted in Abdul A'la Mawdudi, Human Rights in Islam, 22.56 Quoted in Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), 340.57 Ibid., 377. 58 Riffat Hassan, "On Human Rights and the Qur'anic Perspective," in Human Rights in Religious Traditions, 54. 59 Richard T. Antoun, "The Islamic Court, The Islamic Judge, and the Declaration of Traditions: A Jordanian Case Study," International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980):455-67. Mohammed Allal Sinaceur suggests that contemporary human rights derive their "mystic sustenance" from their "declaratory character." Sinaceur, "Islamic Tradition and Human Rights," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, 194. 60 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (London: Islamic Foundation, 1981). It is published in Human Rights Sourcebook, ed. Albert P. Blaustein, Roger S. Clark, and Jay A. Sigler (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987), 917-26. Riad Daoudi, Professor of Law at the University of Damascus, notes that this Declaration is an important point of reference in teaching human rights in countries like Saudi Arabia where Muslim law is the only source of national legislation. See Daoudi, "Teaching of Human Rights in Arab Countries," in Frontiers of Human Rights Education, ed. Asbjørn Eide and Marek Thee (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 69-71. 61 Ansar Burney v. Federation of Pakistan (Aftab Hussain, CJ), Feb. 1983, vol. 35, no. 2, The All Pakistan Legal Decisions, Federal Shariat Court, 73-93, Shariat Petition No. K-4 of 1982, decided on 10 August 1982, 93. 62 Comments by Munzer Anabtawi, professor at the University of Jordan, at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France, 21 July 1987, notes by author. 63 Unpublished copy received at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France, July 1987. 64 Quoted in Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, updated edition with a new preface (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 145, from "Jihad is an Individual Duty," Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1998, B9. 65 Ibid. 66 Gilles Kepel, The Revenge of God: The Resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World, translated from the French by Alan Braley (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 36. See also Gilles Kepel, Allah in the West: Islamic Movements in American and Europe, translated from the French by Susan Milner (Sanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 67 Ibid., 38. 68 Ibid., 38-39. 69 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 81. Faraj, pars. 102, 109, and 113 in Jansen, Neglected Duty, 212-213. 70 Abdul Aziz Said, "Human Rights in Islamic Perspectives," in Human Rights: Cultural and Ideological Perspectives, 96. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid., 97. 74 Mohammed Allal Sinaceur, "Islamic Tradition and Human Rights," in Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, 208. 74 Ibid., 220. Revised from a chapter on "Muslims" in Faith in Human Rights: Support in Religious Traditions for a Global Struggle (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1991). |
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