Susan Waltz University of Michigan, USA A. Introduction Much has been written (and more has been said) about the compatibility of Islam and human rights. Discussions are often impassioned and tangled. In both ordinary conversation and political discourse, speakers readily conflate Arabo-Muslim culture with Muslim religious beliefs, and as a result, the meaning of Islam is confused. Similarly, the concept ...
Lena Larsen The Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway. A. Introduction The interplay of Islam and Shari’ah, freedom of religion or belief (FORB), and equality between men and women is complicated. Specific conflicts between these entities are often turned into an abstract antagonism at the normative level. ...
Jeroen Temperman Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands A. Introduction Does the phenomenon of ‘extreme speech about religion’ warrant legal restrictions on free speech so as to protect religious practitioners? This chapter ventures into the timely question where international law draws the limits––if any––to freedom of expression when challenging, verbally ‘attacking’ or insulting a religion, religious believers, or things held sacred ...
Zainal Abidin Bagir Gajah Mada University, Jogyakarta – Indonesia A. Introduction In 2011 the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 16/18 on “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence, and Violence against Persons Based on Religion or Belief”. The resolution was then adopted by the UN General Assembly later that year and repeated in the ...
Brett G. Scharffs International Center for Law and Religion Studies J. Reuben Clark Law Schoolof Brigham Young University, USA A. Introduction This chapter is an introduction to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other human rights institutions and provisions that bear directly upon freedom of religion and belief. This chapter should be read in conjunction ...
Haidar Bagir Harvard University, Universitas Indonesia A. Introduction In both academic circles and general perception, Islam had always garnered a reputation as an exoterically law-oriented religion demanding human obedience, even fear, to a dictatorial god instead of a traditional religion catering to the psychological and spiritual needs of human being based on a love relationship between god and his subjects. ...
Syamsul Arifin and Nafik Muthohirin Center for Religion and Multiculturalism Study, University of Muhammadiyah Malang A. Introduction This article intends to examine the intersections in the discourse of Shari’ah and human rights in Indonesia. Considering the fact that these two contexts are often seen as contradictory, either as a concept or an instrument, while both actually share humanist dimensions, a ...
Ahmad Nur Fuad Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN), Sunan Ampel Surabaya, Indonesia A. Introduction The issue of Shari‘ah and human rights has long been a subject of debates among Muslim jurists and scholars. They have developed understandings of Shari‘ah as revealed law from God in relation to human rights discourse from different perspectives and proposed different opinions. Although almost all Muslim ...
Khaled Abou El Fadl UCLA School of Law USA A. Introduction Of all the moral challenges confronting Islam in the modern age, the problem of human rights is the most formidable. This is not because Islam, as compared to other religious traditions, is more prone to causing or inducing behavior that disregards or violates the rights of human beings. In ...
Heiner Bielefeldt University of Erlangen A. Human rights as a precondition of lasting societal peace Human rights contribute to strengthening the preconditions of sustainable societal peace. This purpose comes out very clearly in the first sentence of the preamble of the first international human rights document, i.e. the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It proclaims that the “recognition ...