Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights
Abdulaziz Sachedina
Abstract
Whether Islam is compatible with human rights in general, and with the Declaration of Human Rights in particular, has been both a Muslim issue and a concern of the international community. Muslim rulers, Western analysts and policymakers, and Muslim extremists as well as conservative Muslims, have often agreed for diverse reasons that Islam and human rights cannot co-exist. This book argues for the essential compatibility of Islam and human rights. It offers a critique of leading Western experts who ignore or marginalize the relationship of religion to human rights. At the same time, the book ... More
Whether Islam is compatible with human rights in general, and with the Declaration of Human Rights in particular, has been both a Muslim issue and a concern of the international community. Muslim rulers, Western analysts and policymakers, and Muslim extremists as well as conservative Muslims, have often agreed for diverse reasons that Islam and human rights cannot co-exist. This book argues for the essential compatibility of Islam and human rights. It offers a critique of leading Western experts who ignore or marginalize the relationship of religion to human rights. At the same time, the book re-examines the inherited tradition that forms the basis of conservative Muslim objections, arguing that it is culturally conditioned and therefore open to development and change. Finally, and most importantly, the book delineates a fresh contemporary Muslim position that argues for a correspondence between Islam and secular concepts of human rights, grounded in sacred sources as well as Islamic history and thought.
Keywords:
Islam,
human rights,
Muslims,
religion,
secular,
Islamic history
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195388428 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388428.001.0001 |
