Heiner Bielefeldt, born in 1958, has academic degrees in philosophy, theology and history. In 2000 he finished his postdoctoral thesis on the philosophy of human rights at the University of Bremen. He currently teaches at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bremen and is the author of numerous books on questions of political ethics, legal philosophy and philosophy of religion.

Recent articles

Islamic and Western governments share a concern to define just behaviour and just government. But the advocacy of universal human rights by secular democracies challenges the idea of basing social order on religious principle. In a discussion co-hosted by the Iranian government and London’s Goethe Institute, two respected scholars debate the tensions between – and within –their different conceptions of social justice.

The discussion at London’s Goethe Institute between Heiner Bielefeldt and Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour on Islam, human rights, and social justice was followed by a vigorous debate. How does Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ argument measure up to the experience of Sudan, Turkey and Iran? Is the application of sharia law in modern states realistic or desirable? And is secularism a lived reality or a social ideal?