Abstract
Human rights is currently a very relevant but also very controversial issue in international politics in the aftermath of some of the events that occurred during the twentieth century. In this article, the author puts the present issues in perspective by initiating the discussion with a look at aspects of the historical development of the concept of human rights. He then moves on to take a closer look at how the concept of human rights feature and function in the Christian religion and follows that up with an overview of how human rights are perceived and are operative in the religion of Islam. The article concludes with a focus on inter-cultural discourse.
Highlights
The controversial universality of individual human rights Human rights is currently a very relevant and very controversial issue in international politics in the aftermath of some of the events that occurred during the twentieth century
The United Nations still lacks a comparable legal institution which could provide the citizens of UN member states with the unconditional protection of human rights
In the interests of basic human rights, their critics, consider such interference in the domestic affairs of foreign countries to be morally imperative as well as permissible under international law. They expect the United Nations to offer far greater support than they have in the past to international organisations, such as Amnesty International, which publicise the infringement of human rights in numerous countries throughout the world and seek to support those who suffer from political or religious persecution or other forms of degradation
Summary
In 1948, in response to the crimes committed by national-socialist Germany and the devastating consequences of the Second World War, the United Nations set itself the goal of safeguarding world peace and promoting “universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms of all without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language or religion”. Marxist theoreticians declared the classical-liberal concentration on the freedom of the individual a bourgeois ideology, designed only to protect the anarchic competition of the capitalistic market and to safeguard the privileges of the propertied middle classes This critical insight into the cultural relativity of the conception of human rights formulated by the European and American ‘Enlighteners’ has been consolidated in the international debates of the past two decades. The proclamation of universal human rights in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was tied to the endeavours of the new bourgeois groups to enforce their political claims to power and social interests This indisputable historical and cultural determinedness of western ideas on human rights does not yet say anything about the question of its possible validity. We seek to elucidate the conflicts that result from ‘relativistic’ interpretations with two examples: the controversial interpretation of human rights in Christianity and the current debates on human rights in Islam
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