Humanity as the Ground for Universal Human Rights in Islamic Law

Abstract

AbstractA legal maxim in Islamic law states that “The right to inviolability (‘iṣma) is due for humanity (ādamiyya)”. The right to inviolability includes inviolability of the right to (1) life, (2) property, (3) religion, (4) mind (expression), (5) family and progeny, as well as (6) honor and dignity. Universalist Muslim jurists share this view from different schools of Islamic law. In particular, all jurists from the Ḥanafī school subscribe to this view. From this perspective being human is sufficient to have human rights regardless of innate, inherited and gained attributes such as sex, religion, race and nationality. This article explores the thought of Muslim jurists who took humanity as the sufficient ground for human rights and the arguments they used to justify it by deriving from classical Islamic law books. It will also provide a historical survey about how this view was implemented in Islamic history from India to the Balkans under Islamic law. Following it will discuss the reforms in Islamic law during the late Ottoman period (1839–1918). It will conclude by proposing how the present Muslim legal and political discourse can be re-connected to this universalist human rights tradition to overcome the challenges for human rights in the Muslim world today.