Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics (review)

Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, by Ann Elizabeth Mayer (Westview Press: Boulder, 3d ed. 1999).

During the past two decades, we have witnessed a renewed sense of commitment to human rights in many parts of the world. At the same time, in Muslim countries we have often listened to the uproar of the current Islamic resurgence, alternatively expressing the ecstasies of the faithful and the pains and sufferings associated with human rights violations of their victims. These two contradictory trends indicate the unpleasant reality that the Islamic countries are lagging behind much of the world in creating institutional and legal foundations for implementing universal human rights law.

However, in Islam and Human Rights Ann Elizabeth Mayer shows that even the strident Islamization process could not remain immune from the influence of the contemporary human rights culture that has permeated the world's porous cultural boundaries. Mayer's book, now in its third, revised edition, highlights this influence better than any other study of which I am aware. Let me preface my comments by explaining that the bulk of the book deals with at least two significant and sometimes interconnected phenomena relating to the Islamization process, as they affect human rights.

First, Mayer pays considerable attention to the Islamization of the state and society by the authoritarian rulers in Iran, Pakistan, and Sudan, strengthening her analysis by a brief examination of the disastrous activities of the fundamentalist quasi-state in Afghanistan. She presents a comparative analysis of the Islamization policies pursued by Sudan's President Ja'far Nimeiri, who seized power in 1969, and Pakistan's President Zia ul-Haq, who declared martial law to protect Islam after shooting his way to the top in 1977. Nimeiri proclaimed a state of emergency in 1984 and suspended all legal protections. Like the Islamist rulers of Iran, he discovered a useful political justification claiming that his repressive policies were intended to defend Islam against foreign-hatched plots and "the tampering of Satan." ¹ President Zia ul-Haq "used his commitment to pursue Islamization as the justification for his retention of dictatorial powers and the suspension of constitutional rights." ² Each ruler managed to attract enough religious scholars to his side to give the claim a veneer of legitimacy. Even if we were to grant them sincerity of intentions, the sordid nature of the state politics divests the Islamization projects of all legitimacy.

Notwithstanding the cultural relativist justifications, the Islamic states have behaved in a remarkably similar way to the other secular states in the region in violating the rights of their citizens. Mayer's accounts of the 1970s leave the reader with a clear impression that the patterns that linked Islamization and the state policies have discredited both the authoritarian rulers and the Islamization agendas.

Second, Mayer offers an insightful and critical evaluation of various Islamic human rights schemes that the conservative Islamists and governmental or semi-governmental institutions have authored, including the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, endorsed by the foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in 1990. While the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) grew out of the immediate concerns with the specific violations that had been taking place within the modern nation states prior to 1945, the Islamic human rights schemes are mostly abstract exercises intended to counter the growing demands for human rights protection in the region. "The authors [of the Islamic instruments] apparently have no concern for determining what rights and freedoms need protection in light of the patterns of human rights abuses prevalent in contemporary Middle Eastern societies or for working out practical rules that deter rights violations." ³

Especially informative to this reviewer are the chapters that analyze how openly-and more significantly, underhandedly-- these Islamic human rights schemes curtail the internationally recognized rights of women and religious minorities. One such Islamic scheme that attracts Mayer's attention is the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of...