By Dr. Christine Schirrmacher

When Christians are persecuted for their faith in Muslim countries, or when Muslims convert to Christianity and are threatened with the death penalty, the Western press accuses the Islamic state of human rights violations. At the same time, most Islamic states have ratified declarations such as the United Nations l948 General Declaration of Human Rights. How can they justify this contradiction?

In the last decades, various Islamic organisations have themselves formulated declarations of human rights. They have one basic difference to those of Western statements, however. Because that they give priority to the Koran and to the Shari'a (Islamic law), human rights can only be guaranteed in these countries under the conditions imposed by these two authorities and their regulations. Article 24 of the l990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, for example, states that "All rights and freedoms mentioned in this statement are subject to the Islamic Shari'a," and Article 25 adds, "The Islamic Shari'a is the only source for the interpretation or explanation of each individual article of this statement." This emphasizes the "historic role of the Islamic Umma,  which was created by God as the best nation, which has brought humanity a universal and well-balanced civilisation, in which harmony between life here on earth and the hereafter exists, and in which knowledge accompanies faith".

What does the priority of the Koran and the Shari'a mean for human rights iscussions? These two authorities insure that in Islamic states, human rights only exist within the limitation set by the religious values of Islamic revelation and are guaranteed only within the framework determined by the Koran and Islamic law. The secularized Westerner, molded by the Enlightenment and accustomed to separation of Church and State, has difficulties understanding that a country could determine its standards for political, social life, for private and public affairs, by the standards of religion.

Human Rights or Duties?

For this reason, Islamic apologists (defenders of the faith) are generally convinced that, while God has rights in regard to man, man has only duties towards God. Man must, for example, submit to God's will and fulfill the Five Pillars of Islam whereas God has no duties towards man.

Civil Rights for Moslems and Non-Moslems

Islamic culture has never known any sort of separation of religion and cstate , or of politics and religion, while, in the Old Testament, a certain division of authority between the king and the high priest did exist. In Islam, Muhammad had unified both aspects in his own person, being simultaneously religious and political leader of the first Islamic community. His immediate successors, the Caliphs, also carried out both offices.

In the Islamic states, Islam is the state religion, to which all citizens  are assumed to belong, and which is considered to be the "principle on which the State is built. The State is bearer of a religious idea and is, therefore, itself a religious institution … It is responsible for the worship of God, for religious training and for the spreading of the faith." For this reason, the law must distinguish between the civil rights of Moslems, who can fully enjoy legal protection because they prove their loyalty to the state by their adherence to its religion, and the rights of non-Moslems, who, as traitors, forfeit their right to state protection because of their 'unbelief'. In these countries, Moslems always have more rights than non-Moslems. A non-Moslem can usually not inherit from a Moslem, for example.

Change of Religion is High Treason

To be a Moslem means to be a citizen imbued with all legal rights, whereas to become an unbeliever is to commit high treason, for Islam is an "essential element of the basic order of the State".

When a Moslem repudiates his faith, he rebels against that order and endangers the security and the "stability of the society to which he belongs".  Martin Forstner concludes, "Only he who believes in God and the divinely revealed Koran, and who obeys the Shari'a, is able to become a competent citizen, whereas the ungodly are enemies of society. The repeated duty to confess the faith – by fulfilling the five daily prayers, by fasting during Ramadan… is the medium by which the citizen's morale is conveyed, so that the Islamic State links full civil rights to the confession of the true faith" .

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