Liberal Islam and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights

The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) is a declaration of the member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference adopted in Cairo, Egypt, in 1990,[1] which provides an overview on the Islamic perspective on human rights, and affirms Islamic Shari'ah as its sole source. CDHRI declares its purpose to be "general guidance for Member States [of the OIC] in the field of human rights".

This declaration is widely acknowledged as an Islamic response to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948. It guarantees many of the same rights as the UDHR (cf. Liberal Islam), while at the same time reaffirming the inequalities inherent in Islamic law and tradition in terms of religion, gender, sexuality, political rights, and other aspects of contemporary society at odds with Islamic law and traditions.

In other words, it would seem that this is as good as Islam gets without being watered downunorthodox amounts of creative interpretation. The question being: is it good enough for the XXI-st century? It's certainly an improvement over how things are currently; in that sense, it's ahead of its time.

See what I mean?

Then again, so is the 1948 UN UDHR; even in the West, there's lots of Rights that people don't get, especially if they're underprivileged.

Let's have a look at some of those articles:

As you can see, it is very openly theocentric.

I don't get why the State should be involved, though; isn't that what unions and syndicates are for?

That's an interesting one...

I like article (d) (although the antisemites and other sectarians probably wouldn't), but otherwise you can see the problem here.

In other words, Mutually Assured Destruction is a forbidden policy. :D

This smells too narrow to make a good topic. I don't know why Islam needs its own declaration of rights that proclaims it to be the One True Religion, but I foresee nothing good coming of it. We'll let the thread run to see what happens, but I caution that it will be locked at the first sign of a flame war.

Right, no flame war.

Actually, I am going to disagree with Fighteer, and opine that, although this declarations has some issues, overall I think it represents a step in the right direction. At least someone is trying, and any flaws in the resulting declaration can be dealt with in open public debate. But someone has to start that debate first.

Obviously, the main issue here is the enshrinement of Shari'ah, and the failure to guarantee freedom of religion. As far as I am aware, there is no single concrete definition of Shari'ah that is broadly accepted by Muslum states, which opens up the opportunity to interpretations based on politics and the resulting abuse.

By way of comparison, I think the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a lot less ambiguous.

So- good effort, still needs work.

This is more or less my opinion.

You can't have humans rights and still be persecuting people for their beliefs, whatever they may be, with out it coming off as hypocritical.

edited 11th Sep '14 7:42:25 AM by joesolo

@demarquis, joesolo: That's because the very strong consensus of Islamic scholars worldwide is that Muslims do not have the right to choose their religion. The Islamic definition of "human rights" does not mean freedom of religion as the West understands it.

As Handle says, the Cairo Declaration is about as far as they can go without rejecting a core element of the mainstream Islamic religion (the hadith). Some Muslims are willing to do that, and for them it's likely that they'll agree with the UDHR anyway. The Cairo Declaration doesn't talk much about freedom of religion because it's written by and for people who agree with the mainstream view of sharia law within Islamic states; the people who can't accept the Western definition.

I think this can best be seen as enshrining the points of agreement between the Islamic states and the rest of the world, and rejecting the fundamentalist position.

Even as a joke, that's not helpful.

edited 13th Sep '14 2:03:23 PM by Ramidel

I don't see how that changes anything when other religions are condemened for thier views on controversial subjects, when this is almost universally considered a fundemental human right.

It's a step toward greater harmony and easier coexistence; more cynically, it means that the West has fewer things to sweep under the rug in the name of realpolitik.

We can state our disagreement with the sharia view of apostasy, but unless we're willing to depose Islamic governments and military forces for imposing that penalty, wagging our fingers is pointless.

Hardly.things can change without military campaigns.

Not even then. You may remove such people from power, but regular citizens can form NGO and influence governments anyway. Having higher birth rates doesn't help either.

In other words you would have to change the popular culture. I wonder how much of the prevalent attitude is the result of a sense of defensiveness with regard to the economically and politically more influential West?

As or that question, this really depend on the state. In Malaysia, this is partly true. The other part that leads to this is to reverse the local cultural and religious degeneration that is currently happening to the youth.

At the same time, it is not only economic and political. Cultural and values from the west are also gaining heavier influence than local ones.

edited 15th Sep '14 6:35:31 PM by murazrai

Could you explain in a little more detail?

How should I put this...I don't exactly know how to explain this, but here's my observation:

• The culture of individualism and freedom that is commonly associated with the West starts to erode the idea of community and social order among locals, especially the youth, but this is subverted by the rising prominence of religious youth organizations.
• We used to wear clothes which covers lots of skin, but the number of people who wear clothes which shows some skin does increase. Headscarves are less commonly worn by local Muslims compared to like 5 years ago, but it also give rise to what locals called "hijabster" where they wear hijab and be proud and fashionable with it.
• Back in my parents time a married family is expected to live with either side's parents. Nowadays, not so much. This isn't exactly a western-styled phenomenon, though.
• The idea of leveling the playing field so that the weak can have the chance to attain success is considered racist by the western minded individuals, but is considered a necessity by some hardline locals.
• LGBTQ rights started to gain some liberal minded Muslim support.
• Some Muslims started to take a position of "I won't do this, but I won't stop others" when dealing with apostasy, which is taken as a form of support by conservatives. The latter even claims that religious freedom does not mean one can change religion "as if changing clothes", which is a form of disrespect towards religion in general, or worse, treason.

In Civilization-speak, the West is doing a very good job of culture bombing Malaysia with Great Artists, Musicians and Writers, and the Powers That Be no likey.

To be accurate, the Powers That Be in Malaysia are doing a lot of pandering to religion/"rule of law"/social conservatism/family values in a bid to counter the various social ills on the rise (if they hadn't already been that bad to begin with) here, such as drug abuse, street racing, alcoholism, petty theft, gangsterism, prostitution, teen pregnancies (and its uniquely Malaysian complement, baby dumping) and the likes. All this is blamed on the decadent West, whether or not there are any grounds for it - Kelantan is the most conservative Islamic state, yet it has the highest amount of single mothers, drug abusers and rape cases in Malaysia.

As to the more progressive elements in society, they can and often are labeled as "un-Islamic", "pawns of the West" and the likes, and with yet some more pandering to the Chaotic Stupid elements of society by the government, some have been arrested under the Sedition Act.

And that's why I'm cynical about the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights. It's, nice, idealistic and so many other things, but how much can it possibly achieve when the rot is in the pervading culture if not its value system?

edited 15th Sep '14 10:04:58 PM by Krieger22

Racist? I could have understood "communist", but "racist" is pretty much the opposite of what pops in my mind when I see such idea. In fact, I'd expect the racists to be against it to flaunt their white superiority.

That quote was from a Troper in Malaysia, by the way. But the same logic applies.

Considering that the people who benefited from said policy is only members of one race, it is racist, much to the chargin of poor people from other races.

I agree with you, but I would say the real rot is not in the values system itself, but the people who execute it.

edited 16th Sep '14 1:37:47 AM by murazrai

So it's the actual execution of the idea itself that was racist, and in people's mind the whole idea became it? Sick.

This is within the context of Malaysia and nowhere else, though. The original idea, to be precise is to help the weak race so that they can rise up to the level of other races, which I found racist for implying that there are no weak members in other races who need the same help. At the same time, I wondered how the Islamisation of politics and national administration occur in Muslim majority nations.

Indeed. If anything, I'll take this topic to the race thread.

edited 16th Sep '14 5:20:00 AM by murazrai

I'd be more concerned with the fact that they consider people to be "weak" in the first place. That's some nasty objectivist thinking, though I suppose that would be off-topic.

As for the topic itself, I'd say it's a step in the right direction. Hardly the giant leap forward that we'd like (as in, just have them accept UN declaration of Human Rights already), but that would basically be the same as forcing our ideals on a people that do not share them. I'm sure that, within the context of Islamic culture and the current political climate, this will be sufficient for now, and that there will be a steady shift towards liberalism as long as people will let it happen naturally. Probably thanks to this Declaration of Human Rights.

edited 16th Sep '14 4:54:14 AM by Kayeka

Two words: Hamza Kashgari. The laws for people like him, atheists and apostates, need to change. The culture needs to change too: in 13 days, the Facebook group calling for his execution had over 26,000 members. I'm sorry, that's a lot of work to do and I don't know if this declaration does it.

I suspect it's going to take something on the scale of the Christian Reformation to change things — in other words, you're looking at least over two generations, if not a century or more.

And most importantly, so much bloodshed that everyone except the absolute lunatic fringe signs on to "Sunni, Shi'ite, Christian, Pastafarian, whatever, at least it'll be better than another thirty years of this horror."

That's what really got the idea of religious freedom rolling in Europe. First France, then Germany, and to a lesser extent England ("lesser" mostly because England had much less stomach for religious violence), were all drowned in blood over a conflict that Jonathan Swift would later satirize as "which end of the egg do I break?" After that, most of the rulers in Europe came to the consensus that it was time to leave people of "the wrong religion" alone.

Until that happens, I don't expect the Islamic mainstream to break with hadith. Instead, they'll continue to develop their own definition of human rights within their own separate understanding.