In the modern era, the rights of human beings are celebrated, promoted and debated more than ever before. It goes hand in hand with the rise of humanism, a philosophy that crowned human being as an eminent and central reality in this world.
In the West, this elevation of human is position is preceded by two historic phases, the Renaissance and Enlightenment which marked the beginning of an age that affirmed human beings as the main actor and arbitrator of his own life and the one who is able to determine truth and falsehood by himself without being dependant on the transcendent and metaphysical power.
John Locke, the British philosopher and one of the pioneers of humanism declared that all human beings were equal and free to pursue “life, health, liberty, and possession.”
Pursuing further Locke’s philosophy, the General Assembly of The United Nation in December 10, 1948 had proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations. December 10 is also announced as the Human Rights Day to be celebrated annually.
Ironically, the era where human rights are celebrated is also the time where human rights are very much violated. Myriad of mistreatments and discriminations against the weaks took place in many forms – torture, genocide, repression, human trafficking, crackdown.
One of the comments by al-Jazeera’s website on the celebration of Human Rights Day goes “it has been a year more to learn than to celebrate about human right.”
While the effort towards promoting human rights against discriminations and injustices should be lauded, one of the dimensions that need to be critically looked into is the rejection, under the name of human rights, of values coming from different worldviews particularly those coming from religious worldview.
Certain aspects of religious norms and laws such as the codes and punishments of shari’ah law, the way religious followers dress, the prohibition of certain foods by religion, often come under attack and are regarded as limiting the right of the people to choose whatever they deem right.
For this matter, at least two basic principles should be the guiding framework concerning human rights among that involve different worldviews.
First, values that come from different worldviews should be mutually respected and appreciated under the basis of peaceful co-existence. This is because these values follow from the premises based on the sources which are sacrosanct and authoritative to the respective worldviews.
As a matter of fact, the difference in terms of worldviews has implicated even different definition and understanding of some basic terms related to human rights such as the term human itself, freedom, justice, duty and others.
In the case of the worldview of Islam for example, the values uphold by the Muslims are basically spring from the principle of tawhid (the affirmation of the Oneness of God). Human being, in this respect, is defined as the servant of God who is created with the ultimate aim of worshipping God and submitting himself to the one God. He is, therefore, subjected to values that are in line with this role and duty.
Within this framework, the rights of human being are seen not only in terms of the privileges or rights that he would get as human but also in terms of duties that he has to carry out in line with his role as the servant of God. This is in accordance with the meaning of the Arabic term for right, haqq which implies both meanings in a balanced manner; the rights as well as the duties.
Following that, the term freedom from the religious worldview should also be scrutinized not only from the horizontal, social aspect but also from the vertical and theological perspective. The worldview of Islam would describe freedom of man as what is in line with his original nature of being a servant of God.
And to be bound by his duty to submit himself to God would certainly not destroy his freedom as human being, for it is based on the premise that man is originally created by God with the ultimate aim to serve and submit himself to God. On the contrary, he is not considered free when he goes against his own original nature of being the servant of God, for example, by submitting his self rather to his animal nature.
Having said that, the second guiding principle would be that the priority in dealing with the issue of human rights should be to work together on the areas that all worldviews share which are actually larger than those dimensions that they disagree. As a matter of fact, they are many principles and approaches within religious worldview which ultimately go in line with the secular principle of human rights.
For example, religious worldview, just as the secular worldview, is against any form of discrimination and injustice towards other fellow human beings. In the case of the worldview of Islam, apart from emphasizing Tawhid, the absolute Oneness of God, the highest spirit of Islamic laws (shari’ah) is to protect and preserve the well being of all humans which are well defined in the field of Maqasid Shari’ah (the Objectives of Islamic Law). The well being of a man includes his religion, life, intellect, lineage and properties.
Based on above principles, efforts toward rejection of crimes, killing innocent people, genocide, torture, environmental pollution, totalitarian repression, human trafficking a lot of other violation of human rights could be the joint initiatives of the followers of different worldviews in order to guarantee that the rights of human beings in this world are being properly preserved.
