Are universal human rights and Islamic law reconcilable?

Abstract

Muslim societies have been experiencing significant social, economic and cultural changes since the last century. These changes were the effect of modernization, that is to say of the modern economy and the modern nation-state. Modernization in Muslim societies has gradually destroyed the traditional social and religious institutions, which served to protect individuals against pressures of the state and poverty, and it has created new threats to human dignity. This situation can be compared to the transition period from feudalism to commercial and industrial capitalism in the west. During this period western societies developed universal human rights doctrines to provide better protection for individuals against the threats of the modern state. Today, Muslim societies need to develop similar institutions to protect human dignity against these new threats. However, the universal human rights approach has been widely rejected by Muslim scholars until recently, on the ground that it represents a western value and is therefore inapplicable to Islam. The aim of this article is to examine Islamic and universal approaches to human rights and evaluate the suggestions for the reconciliation of the two approaches.