Do Human Rights Have a Secular, - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

Do Human Rights Have a Secular,
Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

T. Jeremy Gunn

There is a widely shared belief, both within and outside the Muslim world, that Is-
lamic law cannot be reconciled with the modern human rights regime that developed
out of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Many Muslims
perceive that the purportedly individualistic, secular, and Western orientation of
human rights is alien to Islamic values. Abdulaziz Sachedina and other scholars of
Islam have argued that the underlying tenets of the UDHR and its progeny are sim-
ply incompatible with Islamic law. In Wirklichkeit, the problem is not an underlying con-
flict between human rights and Islam, but the mistaken assumption that the mod-
ern nation-state is the proper institution for interpreting and enforcing Islamic law.

I n 1889, one of England’s most revered and reviled orientalists, Rudyard

Kipling, penned “The Ballad of East and West.” It begins with the famous
Linie: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The
ballad describes an encounter near the Khyber Pass between Kamal, an Afghan
brigand, and a British soldier. These two opponents symbolize the seemingly un-
bridgeable rift between East and West, Muslim and Christian, and indigenous
peoples and colonial powers. Kipling’s expression has been invoked ever since to
point to an intractable divide–cultural, psychologisch, and sociological–between
Orient and Occident. Divides such as that suggested by Kipling have been a sta-
ple of modern thought, perhaps most notoriously toward the end of the twentieth
century with the publication of Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” the-
Schwester. Huntington argued that “the paramount axis of world politics will be the rela-
tions between ‘the West and the Rest.’”1 Many versions of this divide, einschließlich
Huntington’s, presume, like Kipling, a “Western” superiority.2

Following World War II, and sixty years after Kipling suggested a persistent di-
vide between East and West, many in the international community began to insist
Das, to the contrary, there are universal values of human rights that transcend cul-
tures, peoples, and civilizations. The first comprehensive articulation of this vi-
sion appeared in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).3 More
broadly, the half-decade between 1945 Und 1950 saw the adoption of a remarkable
collection of human rights treaties, declarations, and activities that expressed a

148

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

common respect for rights of individual human beings and for the dignity of the
individual.4 Yet despite the importance of other instruments issued during this
half-decade, the ultimate expression of human rights as a common value for all
mankind appeared in the UDHR. In the words of Mary Ann Glendon, former U.S.
Ambassador to the Holy See, “the Declaration is the single most important refer-
ence point for cross-national discussions of how to order our future together on
our increasingly conflict-ridden and interdependent planet.”5 Human rights law
scholar Henry Steiner famously called the UDHR the “spiritual parent and inspi-
ration” for later human rights documents.6 The UDHR “has inspired more than
sixty human rights instruments and legally binding treaties, has been enshrined
in the national legislation and constitutions of many newly independent states,
has arguably obtained the status of customary international law, and remains one
of the most cited human rights documents in the world today.”7 The promotion of
the universality of human rights, as articulated in the UDHR, continued such that
von 1993, it had become an article faith of the international community: “the uni-
versal nature of these rights and freedoms is beyond question.”8

However much the human rights community insists that the universality of
human rights is “beyond question,” it nevertheless has been questioned from the
outset. In the UDHR drafting debates, Saudi Arabia’s representative, Jamil Ba-
roody, challenged the Western bias of the document:

the authors of the draft [UDHR] hatte, for the most part, taken into consideration only
the standards recognized by western civilization and had ignored more ancient civili-
zations which were past the experimental stage. . . . It was not for the [drafting] Com-
mittee to proclaim the superiority of one civilization over all others or to establish uni-
form standards for all the countries in the world.9

Baroody’s assertion that the UDHR incorporates a Western orientation has
remained an enduring criticism not only of the UDHR, but also of the entire in-
ternational human rights regime. From the beginning, the UDHR has been chal-
lenged as having its ideological origins not in a common human quest, but as hav-
ing emerged from the Enlightenment and European and American declarations
of rights. The roots of the UDHR, according to Baroody and others, are found not
in the traditions and religions of Asia, the Muslim world, or Africa. Eher, Westen-
erners selected some of their own peculiar values, renamed them “universal,” and
thereafter promoted them as if they were the common sentiments and values of
mankind. These scholars argue that the underlying Western bias in human rights
constitutes a “false universalism.”10

Baroody’s complaint in 1948 has indeed been a recurring theme in debates about
human rights and the UDHR. In their later history of the UN and human rights,
Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi forthrightly assert that the UDHR is fundamental-
ly Western in its orientation. “There is little room for debating the simple histori-

149

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

cal fact that the Universal Declaration was based largely on western philosophical
Modelle, legal traditions, and geopolitical imperatives.”11 The standards reflected
“a dominant western paradigm of individual rights; practical disputes were re-
solved quickly and expediently on the basis of U.S. power and, when necessary, Die
vote.”12 Tariq Ramadan, who has claimed for himself a position as speaking both
for Islamic values in the West and for the values of democracy in the modern world,
has argued that the “Declaration of 1948 is indeed the prolongation of rationalist
thought which has risen in the West since the Renaissance.”13 The philosophy of
human rights, Ramadan insists, “is culturally marked and belongs to a vast elab-
oration of analytic thought where all the postulates are significant in the Western
history of mentalities. It carries in itself stigmas of the tensions which marked its
history.”14 It would be better, such analysis suggests, for rights charters such as the
UDHR to be identified not as universal, but as Western, culturally specific, and not
speaking for Muslims. The supposedly universal values of democracy, modernism,
secularism, and individualism, it is argued, are neither universal nor neutral.

One of the most famous retorts to Western or universal values, in keeping with
the lead of Baroody in 1948, was delivered by Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who priv-
ileged instead “Asian values”:

Asian societies are unlike Western ones. The fundamental difference between Western
concepts of society and government and East Asian concepts . . . is that Eastern societies
believe that the individual exists in the context of his family. He is not pristine and sepa-
rate. The family is part of the extended family, and then friends and the wider society.15

From its inception, the UDHR has thus been challenged as being overly in-
dividualistic in orientation (rather than oriented toward the family or group),
rights-oriented (rather than emphasizing duties and responsibilities), and secular
and thereby disconnected from religious and moral foundations. In the spirit of
Baroody and Lee, critics argue that better values do not arise from the West’s in-
dividualism, egocentricity, rights of free expression, or the freedom of choice, Aber
from the family as the fundamental unit of society, from adherence to traditional
roles for men and women, and from respect for the traditions and values of the
larger community.

Trotzdem, when arguing for the differences among Western and non-West-
ern values, Baroody and Lee, like Kipling and Huntington, appear to accept the
existence of an enduring and apparently unbridgeable cultural divide between
the competing values of the West and the rest, particularly with regard to human
rights.

M any governments and religious scholars in the Muslim world have

sought to distinguish the values of Islam from those of the internation-
al human rights consensus. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation

150

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

(OIC), the world’s second-largest intergovernmental organization after the UN,
asserts its authority to speak on behalf of Islam, to “defend the universality of the
Islamic religion,” to “promote . . . lofty Islamic values,” to teach Islamic values to
Kinder, and to “protect and defend the true image of Islam.”16 The universality
of which the OIC speaks is not that of human rights, but of Islam. While includ-
ing as members all majority-Muslim states, most of which have ratified the major
international human rights treaties, the OIC does not fully embrace internation-
al human rights standards but rather standards that purportedly emerge from the
teachings of Islam. The OIC adopted and promulgated the Cairo Declaration on
Human Rights in Islam (1990) and the Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam
(2004), both of which articulate human rights standards based on Islamic law.17

The OIC has also played a prominent international role in pushing back against
human rights norms that would otherwise allow criticism of religions by urging
the adoption of international standards to prohibit the defamation of religion.
Within OIC member states, the term “sharia” has been added (particularly after
1979) to constitutions and laws as the guiding norm for the laws of their countries.
Also since 1979 (and largely not before), OIC member states have asserted reserva-
tions to human rights conventions based upon the Islamic law of sharia, particu-
larly with regard to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimi-
nation against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.18
The OIC is known for vigorously arguing in favor of the rights of Muslim minori-
ties living in Europe, Myanmar, and other non-OIC states, while at the same time
issuing no statements regarding the rights of religious minorities living inside its
member states.

Ähnlich, the twenty-two-member League of Arab States (Arab League)–
each of whose members also belongs to the OIC and is majority-Muslim–created
its own human rights instruments and institutions (based in Cairo) that set it
apart from the international human rights regime. While the term “Arab” denotes
an ethnicity and “Muslim” references a religion, all majority-Arab countries are
also majority-Muslim countries, though the opposite does not hold. In der Tat, Die
preponderance of Muslim-majority countries is not Arab. It has long been recog-
nized that the Muslim-majority Arab world ranks particularly poorly with respect
to human rights. According to the 2009 Arab Human Development Report, written by
Arab experts for the United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau
for Arab States, “Arab states seem content to ratify certain international human
rights treaties, but do not go so far as to recognize the role of international mech-
anisms in making human rights effective.”19 The 2009 report cites Syrian scholar
Radwan Ziyadeh in support of its assertion that,

What constitutions legally decree is, in practice, lost under a mass of legal restrictions
and exceptional measures, and through a lack of safeguards for these rights. The situa-

151

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

tion is the same with respect to international charters and conventions. All too often,
it appears that Arab states have endorsed these conventions with the aim of improving
their international image but without bringing national laws into line and without rat-
ification having any tangible benefit for the Arab citizen.20

The resistance to implementation of international human rights standards in
parts of the Muslim and Arab worlds is perhaps most salient with the panoply of
rights related to religion. In terms of the UDHR, the core of the resistance is cen-
tered on issues of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (Arti-
cle 18), prohibition of discrimination on the basis of religion (Article 2), und das
prohibition of discrimination against women (Präambel, Article 2, Article 16).
The same resistance to universal standards, already present in the UDHR, contin-
ued in subsequent elaborations of human rights, including the International Cov-
enant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, und das 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance
and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.21 In brief, the religion-related
rights on which the Arab and Muslim worlds are perceived as being out-of-step
with universal standards include such issues as whether non-Muslims in Muslim-
majority countries are able to practice their religion fully without state interfer-
enz, whether Muslims who dissent from the official state religion are allowed
to follow their own practices (including Sunnis in Shia-majority countries or
Ahmadiyya in Sunni-majority countries), the right to proselytize, the right to
change religion, and the right of women to inherit, heiraten, divorce, and obtain
child custody on the same terms as Muslim men. The term sharia is frequently
invoked, particularly since the 1980s, to justify a Muslim exception to a universal
standard. The alarm initially raised by Baroody in 1948 in defense of the Muslim
and Arab worlds in the context of the UDHR has continued to resonate in the Mus-
lim and Arab worlds, even as the responses to the alarm have varied over time.

T here are many possible routes one might take to evaluate whether there is

a significant values divide between the Muslim and Arab worlds, on the
one hand, and the modern human rights regime, on the other. This es-
say focuses on the origins of the debate in the drafting and adoption of the UDHR
In 1948. I approach this by engaging in a dialogue with an important scholar,
Abdulaziz Sachedina, who has argued that the UDHR is undermined by its failure
to establish space for Islam.22 While insisting that he is a strong advocate of hu-
man rights, Sachedina argues that the UDHR, the founding document of the mod-
ern human rights movement, has serious shortcomings: nämlich, that it is over-
ly individualistic and expresses an unduly secularist worldview. Regarding these
two points, I argue that Sachedina has made significant errors of analysis and that

152

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

his assertions are not well supported by the facts. This essay, it should be noted,
does not discuss at any length one important and controversial issue involving the
Muslim world and the human rights regime: whether the modern human rights
regime assumes that Muslims have the right to leave Islam by changing their reli-
gion or by abandoning religion altogether.23

A rguably the single most persistent and recurring criticism of internation-

al human rights is its rootedness in Western-oriented individualism rath-
er than in the larger community. This was the core of the criticism articu-
lated by Lee Kuan Yew above. Lee went on to say that the “expansion of the right
of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of
orderly society” and that “the idea of the inviolability of the individual has been
turned into dogma.”24 Abdulaziz Sachedina, who has attempted to articulate the
widespread Muslim concerns about human rights, likewise found that its individ-
ualism is at the root of the problem.

The overriding emphasis on the autonomy of the individual with an independent
moral standard that transcends religious and cultural differences to claim rights with-
out considering the bonds of reciprocity runs contrary to the Islamic tradition’s em-
phasis on the community and relational aspects of human existence.25

Criticisms of Western individualism arose frequently during the UDHR draft-
ing debates. Emile Saint-Lot, the Haitian representative and fierce advocate at the
UN for movements of national liberation, expressed his concern that Article 3 von
the Human Rights Commission’s June 7, 1948, draft–“Everyone has the right to
life, liberty and security of the person”–was “too greatly influenced by the individ-
ualism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”26 Ironically, agreeing with the anti-colonialist
Saint-Lot was the delegate from the Kingdom of Belgium, the colonial power that
then ruled over the Belgian Congo. An aristocrat and former Belgian prime min-
ister, Count Henry Carton de Wiart, also found that Article 3 was overly individu-
alistic, and he later criticized another proposal by Mexico that he similarly found
to contain “excessive individualism.”27 The Australian delegate to the UN, Alan
Watt, agreed that an article then under consideration (draft Article 15) did focus
on rights of individuals but that ultimately it was difficult to avoid an individualis-
tic approach.28 Representative Alexander Bogomolov of the Soviet Union argued
that insufficient attention had been paid to the human being as worker, und das
the UDHR was “unduly individualistic and thus unrealistic.”29 Guy Pérez Cisne-
ros of pre-Castro Cuba believed that there was an insufficient emphasis on du-
ties and too much emphasis on the individualistic side of man’s character.30 Even
though his proposed amendment was not accepted, he later, on behalf of Cuba,
was an enthusiastic supporter of the UDHR on the day it was adopted: the dec-
laration “would mark the advent of a world in which man, freed from fear and

153

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

Armut, could enjoy freedom of speech, religion and opinion.”31 Unlike Pérez Cis-
neros, Yugoslavia’s representative, Ljuba Radovanovic, was not able to overlook
the individualistic nature of the UDHR and abstained when the vote was taken.
Explaining the position of his country, Radovanovic explained that the “text be-
fore the Assembly was based on individualistic concepts which considered man
as an isolated individual having rights only as an individual, independently of the
social conditions in which he was living and of all the forces which acted upon his
social status.”32

Assertions of the individualistic nature of the draft UDHR in particular and
the human rights regime in general have been broadly acknowledged, even by hu-
man rights advocates. Michael Ignatieff, historian and past leader of the Liberal
Party of Canada, has argued that the “best way to face the cultural challenges to
human rights coming from Asia, Islam, and Western postmodernism is to admit
their truth: rights discourse is individualistic.”33 Elsewhere, Ignatieff confirms
that “rights language cannot be parsed or translated into a non-individualistic,
communitarian framework. It presumes moral individualism and is nonsensical
outside that assumption.”34 Perhaps the most notable champion of the univer-
sality of human rights against cultural relativism has been political scientist Jack
Donnelly:

Human rights are inherently “individualistic”; they are rights held by individuals in
relation to, even against, the state and society. But while traditional cultures, beide
western and nonwestern, usually view persons primarily as parts of a family or com-
munity, rather than autonomous individuals, not all forms of nonindividualistic or
antiindividualistic politics are based in traditional culture–even where that culture
remains vital.35

With such observations, it might be tempting simply to acknowledge the
UDHR as overly emphasizing the individual, and thereby delegitimize the UDHR
and even the entire human rights regime for being overly individualistic and in-
sufficiently community oriented. But it may be worth considering the validity of
such a criticism both generally and specifically with regard to the right of freedom
of religion or belief as stated in Article 18 of the UDHR and the ICCPR.

There are four arguments that seem to undermine the criticism of the human

rights regime as being overly Western and individualistic.

Erste, and most generally, the term “individualistic” and its cognates perhaps
unfairly bear the pejorative connotations of selfishness, egotism, narcissism, Und
self-centeredness. Daher, we should ask what exactly were the delegates’ specific
criticisms when they attached the pejorative term? Remarkably, little was said
to explain exactly what the specific problem was. In fact, “individualistic” and
its cognates were used in ways similar to the criticism of labeling a provision as
“Western,” as if attaching such labels was sufficient in and of itself to taint the

154

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

proposed amendments or the UDHR itself. In der Tat, it appears to this author that
the label “individualistic” served less as an explanation of the underlying problem
and more of a rhetorical device to divert attention from the inability to identify
with specificity what exactly was the problem.

Zweite, the text of Article 18, as adopted, explicitly states that the right is one to
be exercised “either alone or in community with others and in public or private.” The
UDHR does not contemplate an exclusively individualistic approach, but one that
may be fully integrated into an entire religious community. While it certainly is
true that the UDHR differs from the “minority rights” approach of the interwar
Zeitraum, the text is not designed to protect solitary individuals separate from soci-
ety. Eher, society consists of individual human beings who have rights both as
individuals and as members of groups with whom they are associated. Darüber hinaus,
despite the frequent criticisms of rights as being overly individualistic, this was
not a criticism that was raised specifically with regard to Article 18 in the travaux
préparatoires, the official and collected records of the drafting process.36

Dritte, and relatedly, the right to freedom of religion or belief–like many other
rights–should be understood principally as a right that individuals and commu-
nities have against the state. The text of Article 18 does not per se separate individu-
als from society but protects individuals and society against state encroachment.
Endlich, we should draw into question the suggestion that “Asian values” and “Is-
lamic values” are opposed to the “Western individualism” of the UDHR, einschließlich
particularly its Article 18 guarantee of the right to freedom of thought, conscience,
and religion. Lee Kuan Yew’s “Asian values” and “family values” supposedly tran-
scend the individualism of the West. But is this a serious argument or a rhetorical
ploy? If we consider the cases of the most revered figures of East and West, Die
stereotypical individualist West versus the family and group-oriented East cannot
readily be sustained. The greatest spiritual figure Asia has produced, Siddhartha
Gautama (the Buddha), abandoned his parents, Gattin, and child to seek his own
spiritual enlightenment. In Lee’s limited way of thinking, the Buddha should be
categorized not as Asian, but as a quintessential Western selfish individualist. Noch
in abandoning his family, the Buddha acted in a way entirely consistent with other
high religious figures in both East and West. As a twelve-year-old, Jesus of Nazareth
abandoned his family to seek learning at the temple in Jerusalem, and reproved his
mother for challenging his religious obligation to do so.37 Francis of Assisi stripped
himself in the public square and returned his garments to his father, a cloth mer-
chant, and spent the remainder of his life away from his family. The Prophet Mu-
hammad, who became an orphan at age six, repudiated the pressure from his own
Quraysh clan, which insisted that he worship the idols of the tribe. Rather than re-
main with his kin in Mecca, he went into exile with his fellow believers.

Both the Christian Bible and the Quran would seem to agree on the point that
whatever obligations one owes to one’s parents, the greater obligation is to God:

155

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against
three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against
daughter and daughter against mother.

—Luke 12:52–5338

And We have enjoined man concerning his parents–his mother bore him, weakness
upon weakness, and his weaning was two years–give thanks unto Me and unto thy
Eltern. Unto Me is the journey’s end. But if they strive to make thee ascribe as a part-
ner unto Me that of which thou hast no knowledge, then obey them not.

—Luqman, 31:14–1539

Both Luke and the Quran insist that whatever filial obligations we owe to our
parents and families, our higher individual obligation is to God. The Patriarch
Abraham (Ibrahim in Islam), a revered figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
was prepared to sacrifice his son when told to do so by God. In religion, if there is
a conflict between God and family, whether in the East or West, the priority goes
to God. Lee did not characterize the West; he caricatured it.

T he words “secular” and “secularism,” invoked by Sachedina and others,

are widely understood in the Muslim world to be terms of opprobrium.
“Islam is believed to be all-encompassing and all-pervasive; ‘secular-
ism’ is therefore considered by many to be a concept not only alien to, but also
incompatible with Islam.”40 The terms often bear the connotations of being anti-
religious, anti-Islamic, atheist, agnostic, modern, Western, and materialistic. Yu-
suf al-Qaradawi, one of the best-known religious figures in the Sunni Muslim
Welt, sees secularism as distinctly Western. “Since Islam is a comprehensive sys-
tem of worship and legislation, the acceptance of secularism means abandonment
of Islamic law, a denial of divine guidance, and a rejection of God’s injunctions. Es
is indeed a false claim.”41 For Sayyid Qutb, arguably the most influential Islamist
seit 1948, the “essence of that confrontation between the Muslim nation and its
opponents remains fundamentally the same today: secularism, international Zi-
onism and modern-day Crusaders.”42

In his Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights, Sachedina chose the term “sec-
ular,” applied in its pejorative sense, to identify what he saw as a fatal flaw of the
UDHR and to explain why Muslims are critical of it. Der 1948 Declaration is repudi-
ated not only by those whom he describes as “traditionalists,” but also by “educat-
ed Muslims” who are unable to grant “wholehearted acceptance of the culturally
dominant secular morality of the West, which they believe undergirds the Decla-
ration.”43 According to Sachedina, the “ongoing Muslim criticisms of the Decla-
ration as being prejudicially antireligious and politically hegemonic are founded
upon rejection of a universal claim of secular morality.”44 The “aggressive human

156

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

rights discourse,” which is pervasive among its advocates, “reduces faith commit-
ments to the private domain and denies faith claims a legitimate voice in the pub-
lic forum.” This “inevitably backfires with the Declaration’s outright rejection by
Muslims as culturally insensitive to Muslim social values.”45 Muslims “who read
the highly politicized secularism of human rights language” see it as “nothing more
than the imposition of Western values on their culture.”46 Sachedina in fact repeat-
edly uses the word “impose” to characterize the actions of the “secular advocates
of human rights” who, he alleges, seek to “impose . . . a human rights regime,”47 fa-
vor the “imposition of a Western conception of individualism,”48 applaud a “cor-
rosive individualism . . . imposed from outside,”49 and “impose an aggressive hu-
man rights discourse that reduces faith commitments to the private domain.”50

Although scathing in such denunciations of secular human rights advocates,
Sachedina largely does not identify them by name, nor does he offer specific ex-
amples to illustrate their bias against religion.51 By neither naming nor quantify-
ing those whom he accuses, he leaves his readers wondering whether the supposed
problem is broad-based and pervasive or if Sachedina is simply exaggerating the
importance of a few cranky straw men to make his argument more appealing.

Two of the principal purposes of Sachedina’s book on the UDHR are to con-
demn its secular foundations and assumptions, and then to suggest the necessi-
ty of providing an alternative moral foundation for human rights to be accepted
in the Muslim world. Although Sachedina makes an interesting argument about
the parameters of an alternative moral order, a discussion of this alternative is be-
yond the scope of this essay, with one important practical exception. Rather than
engaging with his philosophical argument, I would like to challenge several of his
specific assertions about the UDHR.

In several portions of his text, Sachedina criticizes the UDHR drafting pro-
cess and its results.52 He argues that there was insufficient and inadequate rep-
resentation from Muslims who were serious about their religion. He notes that
representatives from Lebanon and Saudi Arabia were in fact Orthodox Chris-
tians, and other nominally Muslim participants were largely secular.53 “This lack
of serious Muslim participation has continued to cast a long shadow of doubt
over the cultural and political contours of the Declaration that reveal an indubi-
table secular-Western bias.”54 Due to the fact that many of those involved in the
drafting process were Christians and secular, this resulted in a Christian, secu-
lar, and enlightenment bias in the text. “The secular liberal thesis that liberty can
survive only outside religion and through secularization of a religious tradition
was founded upon historical experience of Christianity and, somit, had little res-
onance in Islam.”55 Thus, he would have us believe, understanding the drafting
process helps reveal the origins and nature of the secular and Christian biases in
the text. “The drafting of the Declaration clearly shows that there were several key
sources for the writing of the articles that are now enshrined in the document.”56

157

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

Sachedina understands the importance of using primary sources when ana-
lyzing how texts are written and how they should be interpreted. “I have always
emphasized [to my students] to be critical, and to demonstrate their points with
evidence from the sources that are primary rather than secondary.”57 Given his
awareness of the importance of primary sources, and given his assertions about
the drafting process of the UDHR, we could reasonably expect that he would base
his characterizations of the UDHR and conclusions regarding the values of the
diplomats who wrote it on a solid review of the drafting materials (the travaux
préparatoires) available for the UDHR, as well as a meticulous analysis of the UDHR
text itself prior to making such claims. Bedauerlicherweise, Sachedina cites no primary
source materials from the travaux préparatoires, all of which are now available on-
Linie (and as later collected in the three-thousand-page edited volumes prepared
by William Schabas).58 With one minor exception, the only source he cites refer-
encing the drafting process is a decidedly secondary source: political philosopher
Johannes Morsink’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.59

So what primary-source evidence is there to support Sachedina’s bald asser-
tions regarding the “aggressive secularism” in the UDHR drafting process? In
short, there is none. Other than a few brief references to state-constitution provi-
sions that included the word “secular,” the term was used only two times of which
I am aware in the thousands of available pages of the travaux préparatoires: once by
the delegate from India who said that her country was a secular state and once by
the representative from Byelorussia, who referred to the United Nations as being
a secular organization.60 Although there were many references throughout the
drafting process to the Enlightenment, liberalism, Western values, Christianity,
Buddhism, Islam, God, the Creator, capitalism, socialism, communism, Rous-
seau, and individualism, not one delegate ever used the term “secularism” with the neg-
ative connotations on which Sachedina repeatedly insists that the UDHR is founded. Dort
are no primary sources from the travaux préparatoires that support Sachedina’s as-
sertion that his version of secularism was advocated or even mentioned in the
three years of debates preceding the adoption of the UDHR.61 Secularism, simply
put, did not figure in the debates. Sachedina’s “aggressive secularism” is a fantasy
that sounds more like Sayyid Qutb and Yusuf al-Qaradawi than anyone who actu-
ally participated in the debates.

If we set aside the rather serious problem that primary-source evidence does
not support Sachedina’s conclusion that “aggressive secularism” was part of the
drafting process, and similarly put aside the caricature of the UDHR as embody-
ing aggressive secularism, the vital question remains: exactly which provisions of the
UDHR as presently constituted infringe on Muslims’ rights of religion or belief?
In order to clarify the question being posed, we can illustrate it using a hypo-
thetical human rights convention that includes an article allowing states to pro-
hibit their people from going on the Hajj or from praying. Such an article would

158

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

clearly infringe on the right of Muslims to practice their religion and to fulfill their
religious obligations. Or suppose another provision in the hypothetical conven-
tion that authorized states to require public officials to profess a belief in the Trin-
ität. With such a provision, it is again easy to see how the rights of Muslims would
be infringed by effectively excluding them from holding public office because of
their religious beliefs. Going from this hypothetical convention with its offending
provisions, we need now ask which provisions, wenn überhaupt, within the UDHR violate the
freedom of religion or belief of a practicing Muslim? We are not asking whether
Muslims should agree with all provisions of the UDHR, but only whether any pro-
vision infringes on their conscience or religious practices.

Although Sachedina does not answer this question as posed here, we can iden-
tify the typical objections to the UDHR that are invoked by Muslim defenders of
Islam and to some extent by Sachedina as well. Whereas the UDHR would seem to
require gender neutrality and to prohibit state promotion of Islam, many Muslim
states enforce laws that presuppose that Islam treats genders differently and that
endorse Islam as the religion of the state. Five of the most frequently invoked ex-
amples of Muslim-majority state practices that are inconsistent with the UDHR
include:

1. Contrary to principles of gender equality in the UDHR preamble, Article 2,
and Article 16, some Muslim-majority states prohibit Muslim women from
marrying non-Muslim men;

2. Contrary to principles of gender equality in the UDHR preamble and Article
2, some Muslim-majority states operate laws that provide different distri-
butions of inheritance that favor male over female children;

3. Contrary to principles of the UDHR preamble and Article 18, some Muslim-
majority states prohibit non-Muslims from adopting Muslim children
while not prohibiting Muslims from adopting non-Muslim children;
4. Contrary to principles of the UDHR preamble and Article 18, some Mus-
lim-majority states prohibit Muslims from converting to another religion
(or renouncing Islam) while allowing non-Muslims to convert to Islam; Und
5. Contrary to principles of the UDHR preamble and Article 18, some Muslim-

majority states require that the head of state be a Muslim.

We should acknowledge that these five examples, at least at first glance, do in-
deed suggest a sharp incompatibility between standards of the modern human
rights regime and the practices of many Muslim-majority states. We also can ad-
mit that it is entirely unlikely in the foreseeable future that states wishing to apply
Islamic law, as they interpret it, would renounce any of the first three practices,
and some states would be unwilling to rethink any of the five. Trotzdem, Wann
we look more carefully at these five examples, we find no incompatibilities be-

159

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

tween the values of the UDHR and Islamic law. Sachedina and others who identify
an incompatibility are mistaken due to an unwarranted and entirely unexamined
assumption that they bring to the table: that the nation-state in majority-Muslim
countries is the proper institution to be entrusted with interpreting and enforcing
Islamic law.

It is important to recognize in these five examples the unstated but implicit as-
sumption that the modern nation-state is the appropriate authority to interpret
and enforce Islamic law, and that international human rights standards should
not be allowed to interfere with the practice of Islamic law by compelling states
to adhere to human rights norms. When we consider this closely, it becomes clear
that the objections to human rights universalism ultimately is not in support of
Muslims’ right to practice their religion in accordance with Islamic law, but in sup-
port of the power of the modern nation-state to decide what Islamic law is and to compel
observance of state interpretations of that law. The significance and seriousness of this
fundamental mistake by Sachedina and others cannot be overstated.

To illustrate the fundamental mistake, let us begin with a case drawn from the
first of the examples above: marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Mus-
lim man. It is widely assumed throughout the Muslim world that a Muslim wom-
an is strictly prohibited from marrying a non-Muslim man (although a Muslim
man may marry a non-Muslim woman). Let us suppose the case of a devout Mus-
lim woman living in a non-Muslim state or in any state that does not enforce Is-
lamic law. Is there anything in the UDHR (or other human rights instrument) Das
interferes in any way with the religious obligation of this woman to marry only a
Muslim man? Natürlich, there is not. In der Tat, UDHR Article 16 explicitly protects
her right to marry only a Muslim man if she so wishes. Faithful Muslims seek-
ing to practice their religion are entirely free to observe this obligation without
any constraint and the state must not compel them to marry someone against their
wishes. The UDHR, in this first example, does not violate Islamic law or values.

Ähnlich, with regard to the second case on inheritance, there is nothing in
the UDHR that interferes with Muslim families’ ability to distribute inheritance to
their children as they wish (provided that they make the decision prior to the time
that the inheritance is to take effect). The fact that a state does not enforce Islamic
law does not imply that the UDHR is in conflict with Islamic law. Ähnlich, im
unlikely event that a Muslim-majority state were suddenly to abolish its marriage
and inheritance laws, this would in no way infringe on the religious practices of
Muslims who wish to follow Islamic law.

Daher, the issue between the UDHR and Islamic law is not the ability of Mus-
lims to practice their religion as they understand it; the issue is whether the state
should be empowered, entrusted, or required to enforce its interpretation of Is-
lamic law. Sachedina’s implicit argument, though he seems not to recognize it, Ist
not in support of people’s ability to practice Islam, but for empowering the mod-

160

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

ern nation-state to be an enforcer of Islamic law. Sachedina and others notably of-
fer no Quranic authority showing that the modern nation-state should be entrust-
ed with such authority.

The issue is largely the same with the UDHR proclamation on the “freedom to
change religion.” Sachedina and others recognize, correctly, that this is perhaps
the most controversial and intractable perceived conflict between human rights
and the practices of many Muslim-majority states. Jedoch, once again, Das Thema
is not simply whether there is a religious prohibition on Muslims not to convert to
another religion. Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that Islamic law is en-
tirely clear on this point and that conversion outside of Islam is prohibited. Das
is an entirely different question from whether the modern nation-state should be
responsible for prohibiting, criminalizing, and punishing conversions. The UDHR
does not force people to change their religion or to violate Islamic law; it provides
only that it is not the role of the modern nation-state to enforce and punish such
violations. Daher, it appears that the real issue for Muslim critics of the UDHR is
not that it interferes with the ability of Muslims to practice their religion, but that
it interferes with their wish (which has no basis in traditional Islamic law) to enlist the
modern state to compel compliance with religious law. In der Tat, we might be so bold
as to argue that there is a Quranic injunction against the state, or any earthly pow-
er, from using force to coerce compliance with religion: “there is no compulsion
in religion.”62

Although such arguments are unlikely to convince Muslim-majority states to
cease enforcing what they perceive to be Islamic law, the arguments reveal that
the real issue of contention is not one of an ill-founded UDHR interfering with
religious beliefs or practices of Muslims, but one of whether it should be the role
of the modern nation-state to be the enforcer of Islamic law. To assume the latter
requires deference to the regimes of states under the control of profane officials
like Bashir al-Assad, Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, and their appointees as
enforcers of God’s law. Even if these odious regimes were found to be particularly
objectionable, we continue to be justified in asking exactly which majority-Muslim
states are recognizable for the piety and religious knowledge of their leaders? Warum,
we should ask, do Sachedina and other skeptics of the UDHR defer to these pro-
fane rulers rather than the principles of the UDHR, which guarantees Muslims the
right to manifest and practice their religion according to their own religious be-
liefs? Why such deference to the profane nation-state as the interpreter, judge,
and enforcer of sacred Islamic values?

In addition to his premise that the UDHR exemplifies “aggressive secularism,”
Sachedina argues that Muslims will accept a human rights instrument, such as the
UDHR, only if it has a moral foundation compatible with Islam. In making such
an assertion, Sachedina–like many others–fundamentally misunderstands the
practical origins of human rights texts. The UDHR was not based on any underly-

161

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

ing moral or philosophical position, whether it be secularism, natural law, Christi-
anity, or individualism. For better or worse, the texts of human rights instruments
did not emerge from common understandings about underlying philosophical
doctrines or moral worldviews, however appealing such ideas might be, but from
the very practical if uninspiring fact that the texts were adopted by a majority vote
in drafting sessions followed by states’ signing or ratification of the instruments.
Whereas scholars may subsequently propose philosophical arguments in favor of
the human rights instruments (such as a natural rights argument in favor of the
UDHR), the instruments themselves are derived by a compromise reached from
competing viewpoints rather than a common ideological understanding. Not one
delegate asserts anywhere in the travaux préparatoires that there was a common un-
derstanding of a philosophical root for the rights enumerated therein.

Sachedina, who does favor human rights generally, nevertheless criticizes the
drafters of the UDHR for not having drafted a document compatible with Islamic
Werte. For reasons stated above, I find that he is mistaken in this regard. But let us
suppose that he is correct in that the UDHR is not compatible with Islamic values
and that the UDHR could have been drafted in such a way as to both protect Islam-
ic values (as Sachedina understands them) and gather international consensus in
favor of human rights. Sachedina fails to explain exactly what that hypothetical
text would include. He criticizes them for their failure, but never offers a solution.
When making his argument that an acceptable moral foundation needs to be
laid for human rights, Sachedina had significant advantages unavailable to the
UDHR drafters who met in New York, Genf, and Paris between 1946 Und 1948.
To begin with, he had available for his inspection the entire travaux préparatoires
before beginning his study as well as sixty years of scholarly commentary on the
UDHR, the ICCPR, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), and other human rights agreements, including the Cairo Dec-
laration on Human Rights in Islam. He also had the leisure, unlike the delegates
in the drafting sessions, to reflect at his own pace and with his own deadlines to
develop his thoughts and ideas. Throughout his book, Sachedina repeatedly ac-
knowledges the importance of “practical decisions,” “practical considerations,”
and a “practical consensus” in the field of human rights.63 He also understood
that the task of the UDHR drafters was to find the “exact universal language” that
would provide specific “ways of protecting humans from indiscriminate violence
and oppression.”64

Sachedina criticizes the UN delegates for their insufficient attention to the
moral foundations of human rights, for their insufficient knowledge of Islamic
thought, and for having inserted their own secular and Christian biases. Let us
now turn Sachedina’s own language upon himself and ask what is his own “prac-
tical” proposal for the “exact universal language” that would be acceptable both
to the international community and to skeptical Muslims? How specifically should

162

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

Article 18 be amended? What change in language does he propose that would re-
ceive more votes? What additional article should be added? What text should be
deleted to make the UDHR more acceptable? Bedauerlicherweise, Sachedina offers no
answers to such questions.

T his essay began by quoting the first line of Kipling’s famous 1889 ballad

and the typical interpretation that it elicits regarding an enduring divide
between East and West. Yet such an interpretation, like others related
to Kipling, may be short-sighted. The first full quatrain of the ballad points in a
somewhat different direction:

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

The lines following the famous opening immediately suggest two counter-
examples to Kipling’s supposed permanent divide. Erste, in the presence of an
all-knowing God, distinctions between East and West evaporate. The fissure that
appears enormous to human beings disappears in the eyes of the all-knowing. Es
also evaporates when two men face each other, eye to eye. The supposed differenc-
es between East and West are neither permanent nor intractable. They are mis-
leading and superficial human constructs that dissolve when confronted by suffi-
cient wisdom or ample courage.

The “individualistic West versus group-oriented East” is a caricature in both
directions. Rhetoric stating that human rights are individualistic because they
protect the rights of individuals ignores the fact that all human beings are individ-
uals and all collectively are protected by their universal ambitions. Human rights
related to religion in the UDHR are explicitly described as applying to human be-
ings both individually and in community with others.

Islam is often identified, both by Muslims and non-Muslims, as being an im-
pediment to the implementation of human rights. Yet as we examine the underly-
ing issues more carefully, it becomes clearer that the real conflict is not Islam ver-
sus freedom of religion and human rights, but the role that many Muslims wish to
assign to the profane state: to use its power to enforce Islamic law. The UDHR does
not interfere with the ability of faithful Muslims to practice their religion; eher,
it challenges the power of the nation-state to act as religious judge and enforcer
of religious orthodoxy. Islamic law nowhere requires states to impose religious
orthodoxy. In der Tat, Muslims living in non-Muslim areas do not want non-Muslim
states to enforce religious law. It is only in states that profess to be Islamic where
the perceived conflict between human rights and Islam occurs. Although Muslims
might imagine that there could be an ideal Muslim state that properly enforces

163

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

Islamic law, they need only look to the actual political authorities in majority-Muslim
states to see that such people are not the religious models for which one would
hope.

Muslims themselves should insist that profane states and profane leaders not
be entrusted with interpreting and enforcing Islamic law. The threat to Islam
comes not from human rights instruments that protect the rights of Muslims to
follow their beliefs, but from states that wish to impose their agenda on religious
believers.

about the author

T. Jeremy Gunn is University Professor of Law and Political Science at the Inter-
national University of Rabat in Morocco. He is the author of Spiritual Weapons: Der
Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (2009), A Standard for Repair:
The Establishment Clause, Equality, and Natural Rights (1992), and many articles on reli-
gion and law.

Endnoten

1 Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs 72 (3) (1993): 48. Das
same phrase was incorporated in the title of Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and
the Rest (London: Allen Lane, 2011). Ferguson describes Huntington as having provided
“the most influential recent definition of Western civilization”; ibid., 15. Ferguson re-
peatedly refers to Huntington’s 1993 Artikel, but makes no mention of Stuart Hall’s im-
portant but less famous chapter “The West and the Rest,” which appeared the year be-
fore Huntington’s article. Stuart Hall, “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,”
in Formations of Modernity, Hrsg. Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1992), 275.

2 Henceforth, the author will not place the terms “East” and “West” in quotation marks.
As will be made clear in this essay, the author rejects the usefulness of such terms to
explain the very real ideological and values differences among people, and wishes to
avoid redundancy of qualifiers such as “so-called East” or the proliferation of ungainly
quotation marks around each use of the terms. Readers’ indulgence is hereby requested
to assume that the author never wishes to reify the terms or to use them as meaningful
categories.

3 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217A (III), Official Records of the Third
Session of the General Assembly, Teil I, U.N. Dok. A/810 (1948), 71. It should be noted
that the word “universal” was not officially part of the draft Declaration’s title until
November 30, 1948.

4 The half-decade between 1945–1950 saw the emergence of human rights as a founding
principle of the UN Charter (1945), the Tokyo and Nuremberg trials that held indi-
viduals internationally responsible for killing, the adoption of the Genocide Conven-

164

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

tion (1948), the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (1948). Two regional human rights instruments similarly were promoted during
this remarkable half-decade: the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) Und
the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948). The American Dec-
laration is widely cited as the “Bogotá declaration,” since it was referenced throughout
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafting sessions. It was distributed to UN
bodies as American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, as Adopted By the
9th International Conference of American States, ECOSOC E/CN.4/122 (Juni 10, 1948).

5 Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New (New York: Random House, 2001), xvi–xvii.
6 Henry Steiner, “Political Participation as a Human Right,” Harvard Human Rights Yearbook

1 (1988): 79.

7 Grace Y. Kao, Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown

Universitätsverlag, 2011), 173.

8 This according to the UN’s World Conference on Human Rights as articulated in the
Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, Juni 25, 1993, https://www.ohchr.org/
Documents/ProfessionalInterest/vienna.pdf.

9 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.125 (November 9,
1948), 370, https://undocs.org/A/C.3/SR.125. For the role of the Third Committee as
well as discussion of Baroody, see the following endnote.

10 See Richard Falk, Human Rights Horizons (New York: Routledge, 2000), 148–162. For oth-
er critics of undue or biased Western values having been insinuated under the guise of
“universality,” see Michael Jacobsen and Ole Bruun, Hrsg., Human Rights and Asian Values:
Contesting National Identities and Cultural Representations in Asia (London: Curzon Press, 2003),
including Edward Friedman: “The ‘Western’ discourse which makes ‘individualism’ the
base of democracy misunderstands the history of political freedom and impedes progress
in human rights” (26); Maria Serena I. Diokno: “First, the international human rights
regime is largely the product of Western thought and tradition that do not apply to Asian
peoples and cultures, which have different, home-grown values of their own. Among
these Asian values are the greater importance given to the community than the individ-
ual and the desire for harmony and order, in contrast to the West’s individualism and
‘exuberant’ freedom that threatens to rip Western social fabric apart” (74); Jon O. Hall-
dorsson: Indonesian values “can be summarized for the moment as an organic notion of
state and society; the traditional family as a model for society; respect for hierarchies;
communitarianism over individualism; consensus in place of contest; and obligations
over rights” (111); Hugo Stokke: “More generally, whereas the individualist West puts
the individual over society, the communitarian East puts society (being government at
the macro-level and the family at the micro-level) over the individual” (139); and Colm
Campbell and Avril McDonald: “It is difficult to identify precisely the differentiating
core of what are presented as Asian values, but insofar as it is possible to do so, es scheint
to have to do with notions of connectedness which are to be contrasted with Western
individualism” (265). See also Leena Avonius and Damien Kingsbury, Hrsg., Human Rights
in Asien: A Reassessment of the Asian Values Debate (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008);
and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Saba Mahmood, and Peter G.
Danchin, Hrsg., Politics of Religious Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).
11 Roger Normand and Sarah Zaidi, Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of Universal

Justice (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 195.

165

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

12 Ebenda., 177.
13 Tariq Ramadan, Islam, the West, and the Challenges of Modernity (Markfield, Großbritannien:

The Islamic Foundation, 2001), 130 n.36.

14 Ebenda., 99.
15 Fareed Zakaria, “Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew,” Foreign Affairs

73 (2) (1994): 113.

16 Charter of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (2008), http://ww1.oic-oci.org/
english/charter/OIC%20Charter-new-en.pdf. Although the foundations for what was
to become the OIC were laid in Rabat, Morocco, In 1969, the organization itself did not
emerge until somewhat later. The OIC was originally named the Organization of the
Islamic Conference. For a discussion of the mix of religion and politics in the OIC, sehen
T. Jeremy Gunn and Alvaro Lagresa, “The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation: Uni-
versal Human Rights, Islamic Values, or Raisons d’État?” Human Rights and International
Legal Discourse 10 (2) (2016): 248–274.

17 The Organization of the Islamic Conference, The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights
in Islam, August 5, 1990, https://www.oic-iphrc.org/en/data/docs/legal_instruments
/OIC_HRRIT/571230.pdf; and Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam, 2004,
http://ww1.oic-oci.org/english/convenion/R ights%20of%20the%20C hild%20
In%20Islam%20E.pdf.

18 Curiously, sharia was not introduced as a basis for a reservation to the International Cove-
nant on Civil and Political Rights. Although the reasons for this go beyond the confines
of this essay, some hypothesize that the term began to be invoked largely (allerdings nicht
exclusively) during the 1980s and after as a response to political events in the world.
19 United Nations Development Programme, Arab Human Development Report 2009: Chal-
lenges to Human Security in the Arab Region (New York: United Nations Development Pro-
gramme, 2009), 57, https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/hdr/
arab_human_developmentreport2009.html.

20 Ebenda., 59.
21 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based
on Religion or Belief, Proclaimed by General Assembly Resolution 36/55 of November
25, 1981, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/religion.pdf.

22 Abdulaziz Sachedina, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University

Drücken Sie, 2009), 11.

23 It should be noted here that perhaps the most controversial and poignant issue related to
the relationship between Islam, religion, and the modern human rights movements is
the contested right to change one’s religion, which was explicitly allowed in the 1948
UDHR but was omitted, under pressure from Muslim and Arab states, von dem 1966
ICCPR. This very important issue is omitted here because unpacking its complexity
would simply require more space than is possible in this volume. The author is prepar-
ing a separate analysis of this issue to be published later. Zusamenfassend, while the issue of the
right to change one’s religion clearly arose in 1948 through Saudi Arabia’s Baroody and
other representatives of Muslim-majority countries, the argument advanced publicly
was less the right (or not) to change one’s religion and more whether the UDHR could
be seen as authorizing or promoting colonial-style missionary activities in lands seek-
ing to remove their colonial legacy.

166

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

24 Zakaria, “Culture Is Destiny,” 111, 112.
25 Sachedina, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights, 7.
26 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.105 (Oktober 18,
1948), 172. Saint-Lot’s referencing Rousseau in this regard seems misplaced. The is-
sue here, Jedoch, is not whether the diplomat accurately characterized Rousseau’s
thought, but that Saint-Lot found the UDHR to be overly individualistic and cited intel-
lectual authority, however misplaced, to underscore his point.

27 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.105 (Oktober 18,

1948), 174.

28 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.1269 (November 8,

1948), 384.

29 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.178 (Dezember 6,

1948), 876.

30 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.155 (November 24,

1948), 665.

31 Plenary of the United Nations General Assembly, A/PV.181 (Dezember 10, 1948), 877.
32 Plenary, A/PV.183 (Dezember 10, 1948), 914, https://undocs.org/A/PV.181.
33 Michael Ignatieff, “The Attack on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs 80 (6) (2001): 113. Sehen
also Michael Ignatieff, “Human Rights as Politics,” in Tanner Lectures on Human Values,
Hrsg. Grethe Peterson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2001), 335.

34 Ignatieff, “Human Rights as Politics,” 329.
35 Jack Donnelly, “Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly

6 (4) (1984): 411.

36 For a further reference to the Travaux Préparatoires, see the text at note 58 below.
37 Lk. 2:48-49.
38 The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New Rev. St. Ed.), Hrsg. Michael D. Coogan, fully rev. 4th ed.

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

39 The Study Quran, Hrsg. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York: HarperOne, 2015).
40 Nazih N. Ayubi, Political Islam Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge,
1991), 39; “In the Islamic memory the concept of secularism can be related only to pe-
riods of colonial hegemony, oder, alternatively, to national attempts at experimenting
with various Western ‘developmental formulas’ (such as capitalism, socialism, usw.)
that appear not to have worked.” See also Madawi Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Ara-
bia, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 164, 166; Mansoor Jassem
Alshamsi, Islam and Political Reform in Saudi Arabia: The Quest for Political Change and Reform
(New York: Routledge, 2011), esp. 11, 59, 67–70, 90, 107 (referring to a proposal to “ban
the circulation of any publication engaging in propagation of ideas on unbelief, secular-
ism, nudity, moral corruption or pornography”); Alaa Al-Din Arafat, Egypt in Crisis: Der
Fall of Islamism and Prospects of Democratization (Cham, Schweiz: Palgrave Macmillan,
2018), esp. 18, 42, 73, 134, 155; Shaul Bartal, Jihad in Palestine: Political Islam and the Israeli–
Palestinian Conflict (London: Routledge, 2016), 130, 138, 188, 195; Richard Bonney, Jihad
from Qur’ān to Bin Laden (Houndsmill, Großbritannien: Palgrave, 2004), 365–366; Und
John L. Esposito, Rethinking Islam and Secularism (University Park, Pa.: Association of Re-

167

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn

ligion Data Archives, n.d.), 5, http://www.thearda.com/rrh/papers/guidingpapers/
esposito.pdf (“Many Muslims, in particular Islamists, cast secularism as a completely
foreign doctrine imposed on the Islamic world by colonial powers”).

41 Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Islamic Awakening: Between Rejection and Extremism, 2nd ed. (London:

International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1991), 76. Siehe auch 36, 43, 72–76, 81.

42 Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of the Quran, Bd. 2, 7–8 (London: MWH, 1979). “Throughout his
career as an Islamist, [Qutb] believed that the Muslims’ adoption of secularism and
materialism had sapped the source of their historical strength.” John Calvert, Sayyid
Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2103), 268.

43 Sachedina, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights, 190.
44 Ebenda., 9.
45 Ebenda., 191.
46 Ebenda., 212 n.20.
47 Ebenda., 11.
48 Ebenda., 16.
49 Ebenda., 227 n.36.
50 Ebenda., 191. See also ibid., 29 (“secularist advocates” of the UDHR typically are antireligious
and antisacred); 30 (“there is a liberal-secular hold” over human rights instruments);
Und 34 (“In general, secular human rights activists are biased against religion”); sowie
als 57, 58, 63, 69, 87, 197–198.

51 Perhaps three of his targets may be Michael Ignatieff (ibid., 11–16), John Rawls (ibid., 51,
149, 157), and Richard Rorty (ibid., 210 n.8), though he quotes none of them to illustrate
what he attributes to the secularists.

52 Ebenda., 8–11, 16, 30, 157.
53 Ebenda., 10-11.
54 Ebenda., 11.
55 Ebenda., 38. See also ibid., 9–10, 16.
56 Ebenda., 12.
57 Maydan Editors, “An Interview with Abudulaziz Sachedina on His Life and Scholar-
ship,” Maydan, September 13, 2017, https://www.themaydan.com/2017/09/interview
-abdulaziz-sachedina-life-scholarship/.

58 William A. Schabas, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The Travaux Préparatoires, vols.
1–2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Copies of the original documents
from the drafting process are available in PDF format at the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld
Library, http://research.un.org/en/undhr.

59 Johannes Morsink, Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (Phil-
adelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). Sachedina makes one footnote ref-
erence to the 1947–1948 UNESCO symposium study, which arguably should be con-
sidered part of the travaux préparatoires, although it was not included in Schabas’s pub-
lished version. Sachedina dismisses its “contrived assessment of world history.” He
does not mention, Jedoch, that it directly considers and rejects the idea that human
rights charters must have a moral foundation. He also does not mention that it, zu,

168

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

Dädalus, das Journal der American Academy of Arts & SciencesDo Human Rights Have a Secular, Individualistic & Anti-Islamic Bias?

discussed possible roots of human rights in liberalism, religion, the Enlightenment,
and other philosophical beliefs, but that it also says nothing about secularism general-
ly, and certainly contains no discussion of “aggressive secularism” lurking behind the
UDHR. Sachedina, Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights, 223 n.1.

60 Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, A/C.3/SR.165 (November 30,

1948), 764, 765. The only two references coincidentally were made the same day.
61 One of the problems, as suggested above, is that Sachedina provided no nuanced or rigor-
ous definition of secularism, preferring instead to use the term in the highly pejorative
sense documented above. Regardless, he offers no primary sources whatsoever sup-
porting his or any other understanding of secularism.

62 Quran, Al-Baqarah, 2:256.
63 For his recognition of the importance of practicality in the discussion about human
rights, see ibid. 36, 37, 66, 83 (practical consensus), 108, 109 (practical ethical decisions),
126, 131, 177–178, 193.

64 Ebenda., 8.

D
Ö
w
N
Ö
A
D
e
D

F
R
Ö
M
H

T
T

:
/
/

D
ich
R
e
C
T
.

ich
T
.

e
D
u
D
A
e
D
A
R
T
ich
C
e
–
P
D

F
/

1
4
9
3
1
4
8
1
8
5
7
3
5
0
D
A
e
D
_
A
_
0
1
8
0
9
P
D

B
j
G
u
e
S
T

Ö
N
0
7
S
e
P
e
M
B
e
R
2
0
2
3

169

149 (3) Summer 2020T. Jeremy Gunn
PDF Herunterladen