ISLAMIC RESERVATIONS’ TO HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES AND UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS WITHIN THE CULTURAL RELATIVIST PARADIGM
Journal Title: The Journal of Human Rights - Year 2018, Vol 12, Issue 2
Abstract
The legitimacy debate between ‘universal’ human rights and its apparent conflict with the Islamic value system (broadly characterized as the ‘relativist’ challenge to ‘universal’ human rights) is still far from settled. My paper will reflect on this debate in terms of the current international treaty law. The paper will consider this conflict in the light of the interaction of Islamic states with multilateral human rights regimes, starting from United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the two covenants (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and the stream of other international and regional human rights regimes. It will analyze through the ‘reservations’ clause of human rights regimes, the interaction between ‘universal’ human rights and Islamic law. In particular, it will focus on how Islamic states have put forward what has come to be known as the “Islamic reservations”, and it will attempt to outline to what extent these reservations are contradictory to universal human rights, as noted in the objections to these reservations by various states parties to the treaties. An assessment will also be made of the extent to which the human rights to which the ‘Islamic reservations’ have been made, may actually be incorporated into the legal systems of the reserving Islamic countries.
Authors and Affiliations
Ahamd Ali Sawad
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP479163
- DOI 10.22096/HR.2018.92844.1068
- Views 129
- Downloads 0
Interreligious Communication: Celebrating Difference, Celebrating Understanding
The topic of interreligious communication is frequently defended as significant if different ethnic and religious groups are to coexist. Any society that consists of different religious groups has to establish some rules...
Natural Rights and Human Rights
Any human rights bereft of philosophical and anthropological foundations are susceptible to weakness and vulnerability. The question as to how from a logical point of view we arrive at the conclusion that the fact of bei...
Ethics and Human Rights in Leibniz’s View
Human rights in the present world is explained and justified on the basis of humanism. This kind of explanation is based less on natural rights. However, some philosophers and thinkers are searching for Divine and natura...
The Boundaries of Religious Persecution: Refugee Law and the Limits of Permissible Restrictions on Religion
The right to freedom of religion or belief has been well-established in human rights instruments since the inception of the modern era of international law. However, while inner freedom of belief has been uncontested, th...
Can Women’s Rights be Human Rights?
Several international human rights documents purport to affirm women’s rights. But can women’s rights really be human rights? The problem is not whether women can possess human rights. Women are human beings and therefor...