Toward an Islamic hermeneutics for human rights

Abstract

The central question addressed in this collection of essays is whether the various , religious views of what it means to be truly human leave room for the acknowledgment of a set of neutrally formulated common human rights (my emphasis). It is not possible, or desirable, in my view to identify a set of neutrally formulated human rights. Any normative regime, which justifies a set of rights and provides or informs their content, must necessarily represent a commitment to I specific value system. This is particularly true, I believe, of a regime which claims to justify and formulate a set of human rights because of the organic relationship between the conception and implementation of such rights on the one hand, and the normative regime which provides or informs perceptions of human dignity, self-identity and personal experience on the other.