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Advancing Human Rights
The Rights of God: Islam, Human Rights, and Comparative Ethics
Promoting Islam as a defender of human rights is laden with difficulties. Advocates of human rights will readily point out numerous humanitarian failures carried out in the name of Islam. In The Rights of God , Irene Oh looks at human rights and Islam as a religious issue rather than a political or legal one and draws on three revered Islamic scholars to offer a broad range of perspectives that challenge our assumptions about the role of religion in human rights.
The theoretical shift from the conception of morality based in natural duty and law to one of rights has created tensions that hinder a fruitful exchange between human rights theorists and religious thinkers. Does the static identification of human rights with lists of specific rights, such as those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, make sense given the cultural, historical, and religious diversity of the societies in which these rights are to be respected and implemented? In examining human rights issues of the contemporary Islamic world, Oh illustrates how the value of religious scholarship cannot be overestimated.
Oh analyzes the commentaries of Abul A'la Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, and Abdolkarim Soroush―all prominent and often controversial Islamic thinkers―on the topics of political participation, religious toleration, and freedom of conscience. While Maududi and Qutb represent traditional Islam, and Soroush a more reform and Western-friendly approach, all three contend that Islam is indeed capable of accommodating and advocating human rights.
Whereas disentangling politics and culture from religion is never easy, Oh shows that the attempt must be made in order to understand and overcome the historical obstacles that prevent genuine dialogue from taking place across religious and cultural boundaries.
The theoretical shift from the conception of morality based in natural duty and law to one of rights has created tensions that hinder a fruitful exchange between human rights theorists and religious thinkers. Does the static identification of human rights with lists of specific rights, such as those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, make sense given the cultural, historical, and religious diversity of the societies in which these rights are to be respected and implemented? In examining human rights issues of the contemporary Islamic world, Oh illustrates how the value of religious scholarship cannot be overestimated.
Oh analyzes the commentaries of Abul A'la Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, and Abdolkarim Soroush―all prominent and often controversial Islamic thinkers―on the topics of political participation, religious toleration, and freedom of conscience. While Maududi and Qutb represent traditional Islam, and Soroush a more reform and Western-friendly approach, all three contend that Islam is indeed capable of accommodating and advocating human rights.
Whereas disentangling politics and culture from religion is never easy, Oh shows that the attempt must be made in order to understand and overcome the historical obstacles that prevent genuine dialogue from taking place across religious and cultural boundaries.
- GenresIslam
168 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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November 15, 2019
I picked up this book for a more thorough understanding of comparative human rights ethics and I was not disappointed.
Irene Oh employs the Hermeneutical models for cross cultural agreements on the human rights question specifically the Gadamerian Fusion of Horizons (which states that since humans are situated historically and each individual in a conversation stands at a certain vantage point we are to listen with respect for an understanding of the subject matter isolated from the individual) and the Habermasian resolution of Systematically Distorted Communication (as a supplement to Gadamer that since the latter does not account for imbalances in a conversation, a neutral Freudian psychoanalysis is required to reach an ideal speech situation and establish a general symmetry between the conversationists who might or might not be aware of these power imbalances) in the modern international forum where western domination has nearly blocked the intervention of religion as a major obstacle to a unanimous human rights formula.
While also giving examples of western theorists such as Marshall Hodgson, Martha Nussbaum, Irene Oh focuses on the three pivotal human rights theorists in Islam Qutb (during Sunni Islamic revival of Egypt), Maududi (towards the end of the British colonial rule in the subcontinent), and Soroush (the last one having a dominant role in Iran and greater Shiite community), and draws upon their writings on common issues such as social justice, political rights, democracy and government to align them with the West for a potential unity.
However, though she attempts to be as neutral as possible, she still neglects the crucial take of Muslim thought on the universalism and eternalism of Quranic injunction and the concept of a Muslim government and shura elected Caliph standing antithetical to the concept of a democratic government where every citizen regardless of his intellectual soundness and educational background is allowed to vote for a leader who might or might not be of a sound moral character.
Her take is that these theorists might have at some point employed jurisprudence to further their ideologies in an environment which could have been goaded to their advantage.
Since Maududi was in a tumultuous mid partition subcontinent his works indicate an inclination initially against a pro-Pakistan movement for he believed national borders and citizenship are antithetical to Islamic injunctions of a United ummah and that Islam does not encourage temporal segregation.
Qutb was is a a poscolonial Egypt and had joined the Ikhwan or the Muslim Brotherhood which apparently favoured revolutionary violence and thus in the regime of Gomal Abdul Nasir he was executed.
(The above two jurists have been thus cited by terrorists, though Irene Oh says it was a calling of the times)
The relatively younger Soroush of the Shiite tradition was in Iran where political thought had already been revived prior to the Tobacco Rebellion by Afghani who also helped initiate it.
With all these references Irene, naturally from her own vantage point (pun intended) does not admit to the dogmatism of Islamic system since the Qur'an does not have a legislative ruling on government. But it's a truth she acknowledges in the introduction that though she studies Islam, she is not Muslim.
Another thing she cites is that the concept of imago dei, like Christianity is a feature in Islam. That is not so, except certain Sufi sects, Muslims do not agree that man has been made in the image of God. The evidence she claims for this is a clause in Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights 1981 which states that the 'rights of man are the privilege of God'.
This simple point does not hold to putting imago dei in Islam. It's not a pagan droit du seigneur by which man keeps a portion of God's energy within him. Islam is both literal and figurative and this clause could simply have been written to emphasise the value of the rights of man.
However, her aim to encourage international political theorists to expand their communication base and allow greater role to religion for a more effective formula of Human Rights with a wider reach is commendable. Simply isolating religion in the prejudice that any religious intervention is likely to lean more towards dissent than agreement is likely to cause problems. Nor would attributing a stoic inactivity to religious dogma do. A balance ought to be set.
Overall, it's a great book for comparative ethics on the human rights issue, but one ought to have some background on Islam prior to reading it.
Irene Oh employs the Hermeneutical models for cross cultural agreements on the human rights question specifically the Gadamerian Fusion of Horizons (which states that since humans are situated historically and each individual in a conversation stands at a certain vantage point we are to listen with respect for an understanding of the subject matter isolated from the individual) and the Habermasian resolution of Systematically Distorted Communication (as a supplement to Gadamer that since the latter does not account for imbalances in a conversation, a neutral Freudian psychoanalysis is required to reach an ideal speech situation and establish a general symmetry between the conversationists who might or might not be aware of these power imbalances) in the modern international forum where western domination has nearly blocked the intervention of religion as a major obstacle to a unanimous human rights formula.
While also giving examples of western theorists such as Marshall Hodgson, Martha Nussbaum, Irene Oh focuses on the three pivotal human rights theorists in Islam Qutb (during Sunni Islamic revival of Egypt), Maududi (towards the end of the British colonial rule in the subcontinent), and Soroush (the last one having a dominant role in Iran and greater Shiite community), and draws upon their writings on common issues such as social justice, political rights, democracy and government to align them with the West for a potential unity.
However, though she attempts to be as neutral as possible, she still neglects the crucial take of Muslim thought on the universalism and eternalism of Quranic injunction and the concept of a Muslim government and shura elected Caliph standing antithetical to the concept of a democratic government where every citizen regardless of his intellectual soundness and educational background is allowed to vote for a leader who might or might not be of a sound moral character.
Her take is that these theorists might have at some point employed jurisprudence to further their ideologies in an environment which could have been goaded to their advantage.
Since Maududi was in a tumultuous mid partition subcontinent his works indicate an inclination initially against a pro-Pakistan movement for he believed national borders and citizenship are antithetical to Islamic injunctions of a United ummah and that Islam does not encourage temporal segregation.
Qutb was is a a poscolonial Egypt and had joined the Ikhwan or the Muslim Brotherhood which apparently favoured revolutionary violence and thus in the regime of Gomal Abdul Nasir he was executed.
(The above two jurists have been thus cited by terrorists, though Irene Oh says it was a calling of the times)
The relatively younger Soroush of the Shiite tradition was in Iran where political thought had already been revived prior to the Tobacco Rebellion by Afghani who also helped initiate it.
With all these references Irene, naturally from her own vantage point (pun intended) does not admit to the dogmatism of Islamic system since the Qur'an does not have a legislative ruling on government. But it's a truth she acknowledges in the introduction that though she studies Islam, she is not Muslim.
Another thing she cites is that the concept of imago dei, like Christianity is a feature in Islam. That is not so, except certain Sufi sects, Muslims do not agree that man has been made in the image of God. The evidence she claims for this is a clause in Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights 1981 which states that the 'rights of man are the privilege of God'.
This simple point does not hold to putting imago dei in Islam. It's not a pagan droit du seigneur by which man keeps a portion of God's energy within him. Islam is both literal and figurative and this clause could simply have been written to emphasise the value of the rights of man.
However, her aim to encourage international political theorists to expand their communication base and allow greater role to religion for a more effective formula of Human Rights with a wider reach is commendable. Simply isolating religion in the prejudice that any religious intervention is likely to lean more towards dissent than agreement is likely to cause problems. Nor would attributing a stoic inactivity to religious dogma do. A balance ought to be set.
Overall, it's a great book for comparative ethics on the human rights issue, but one ought to have some background on Islam prior to reading it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review