The politics of social justice: religion versus human rights?

Heiner Bielefeldt: I would like to start by referring to Samuel Huntington’s well-known, even notorious, thesis on the ‘Clash of Civilizations’. According to Huntington, civilisations are more or less enclosed entities based on specific values. For instance, what he calls ‘Western civilisation’ – encompassing North America and large parts of Europe – is based on Christian values, whereas Islamic civilisation, not surprisingly, epitomises Islamic values.

Even many who are opposed to this global map often subscribe to its main contours. They then often articulate a concept of justice using its key terms, leading to the assumption that there is something like a ‘Western’ or ‘European’ concept of justice, and an ‘Islamic’ concept of justice, and that those two concepts are essentially opposed.

What is missing in this ‘Huntingtonian’ view of justice is an account of history and politics. By history, I mean the experience that society, social orders, convictions and values – including the meaning of justice – can and do change over time. They are not fixed, eternal entities. By politics, I mean the awareness that human beings bear a fundamental responsibility for shaping the social order, for debating the terms on which to organise their co-existence, and for creating and improving a ‘just society’.

What I want to propose in today’s discussion is: let’s take politics into account! Otherwise debates about different cultures, and culturally different norms or concepts, are in danger of becoming abstract and indeed, ideological.

An important point flows from this approach. If we accept that the meaning of justice is indeed a matter for political debate and controversy, we lose the possibility of taking the meaning of a just social order for granted. Thus, we can no longer refer to something like ‘natural justice’ as an eternal human nature (as used to be the case in the European ‘natural law’ tradition). Nor can we directly invoke religious authority to define clearly what a just order is supposed to be.

My point is not that religion has nothing to say in questions of social justice. Rather, my claim is that an immediate reference to religious authority, to divine commandments, to divine law, cannot replace an open political debate. Divine orders, after all, are put forward and take shape in diverse human interpretations. When we leave human interpretation out of consideration, we actually destroy the space for politics, for pluralism, for political debate, ending up with some sort of religious authoritarianism.

The political guarantee of social justice

What are the consequences of my emphasis on politics? Does it mean that everything is debatable – that anything goes? Does it lead to complete relativism in the understanding of social justice? Indeed, modern democratic societies have often been described in such negative terms – of relativism, scepticism, and the loss of values. There may be some truth in that; but it is definitely not the full picture. For, in losing the possibility of a natural or divine order of justice, we have gained an increased awareness of human responsibility. Hence, respect for human responsibility has more and more become the core principle of modern democracy.

Respect, more precisely, is due to every human as a responsible agent. This gives a clue to understanding the modern interpretation of human dignity. Human dignity is an old idea. It can be found in the Bible and the Koran. But what is new is that the respect due to the dignity of all human beings is supposed to manifest itself politically in terms of human rights: enforceable rights to which every human being is equally entitled. Respect for human dignity is the fundamental normative principle on which all possible orders of justice are based. In all the controversies over what social justice might mean, the basic requirement of respecting human responsibility is always presupposed.

I don’t say that democratic societies actually live up to this standard. There is no reason for complacency or smug self-sufficiency. But we can see that the demand for respect actually pervades all parts of our societies, and that it has, for example, changed the function of married life, so that the modern concept of marriage is of a respectful partnership. This shows the impact of the idea of the respect for human responsibility as, in fact, a new understanding of an old idea: the idea of human dignity.

Religion and social justice

What, then, is the role of religion – of Christianity and Islam – in all this? Religious traditions have incorporated a deep yearning for social justice that can inspire the debates of today. Religious traditions also embrace the idea of human dignity; in the biblical idea of the creation of all human beings in the image of God, or the Koranic idea of all human beings as called upon to act as khalifa (God’s deputies on Earth, as some translate this concept).

In practice, of course, religious communities have not always supported democracy and human rights. My own church, the Roman Catholic Church, was long opposed to human rights in general and religious liberty in particular. In official documents of the nineteenth century, religious liberty was condemned as leading to everything from indifference over questions of religious truth, to an erosion of authority and even the destruction of the moral fabric of society. It was only in the 1960s that the Catholic Church officially endorsed human rights and religious liberty. This shows that religious communities are part of society and have to undergo the same learning processes that society as a whole has to tackle.

In the case of Islam, many Muslims have found ways to reconcile the requirements of religion with a commitment to democracy and human rights. The fact that such a reconciliation is, thus, a reality as well as a possibility alone counters Huntington’s thesis that democracy and human rights are essentially and exclusively a heritage of the West. But on the other hand, Muslim reformers emphasise that there are many serious questions that have not yet been solved satisfactorily.

These questions include whether and how the Islamic sharia and the modern programme of human rights fit together, and how equal rights for women and men can be fostered, within the framework of Islamic thinking. Does religious liberty encompass the right also to change one’s religion and to convert from Islam to another religion? There has been debate on these questions between Muslims themselves, as well as between Muslims and non-Muslims.

I hope this discussion gives us the opportunity to tackle the question of how to cope with the pluralism of different concepts, on the basis of mutual respect. Let me conclude these initial remarks by saying that there is no clear idea of social justice in Europe – but there are some basic requirements that allow us to cope with the pluralism of various ideas of what social justice is. Human rights epitomise these basic, normative principles.

Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour: Somewhere, I have read that Islam puts paramount emphasis on social justice, equivalent to the stress that Christianity puts on love and peace; but that in the past century, Islamic societies have seen very little social justice, and Christian communities have had nothing but world wars and carnage! If, then, I talk about the concept of social justice in Islam, don’t immediately jump up to ask me why some countries act differently from what they profess – that also is universal.

The difficulties of the question of social justice are shared across religions: Judaism and Christianity, for example, as well as Islam. Christian societies have in a sense put aside their Christianity to emerge with a new idea of secular society. It is argued that there is no contradiction between this secular society and Christian values; but if we go to the root of Christianity, there are many difficult points and questions arising from this argument. For Muslims who do not wish to put their Islamic beliefs aside, no one should expect to have overnight answers to these difficult questions.

There is a verse in the Koran, ‘God orders you to justice and magnanimity.’ The prophet of Islam had a friend before he was given his mission, who admitted that when the Prophet started claiming to have his revelations from God he did not really believe in them. It took two or three years, until the Prophet told him this message, which he had also received as a revelation from God. The moment his friend heard those words, he knew that the Prophet spoke the truth, because the words contained all the values that had ever mattered to his friend, and subsequent disciple.

There is no definition of justice in Islam. You are simply told that you have to be just in your actions. Even in relation to your enemies, some verses in the Koran urge you to do justice. Justice is deemed to be a universal value, a kind of intrinsic calling in the human conscience, which cannot be defined. It certainly cannot be defined by one religion against another. So, how do we approach principles of human rights that create contradictions and disagreements? Why will two different courts in two different societies pass different rulings? How do these disagreements come about? Having accepted the idea of universal values, the main cause of disagreement in our judgements is that we come from different backgrounds, with different perspectives.

Secular Christians, Muslim Muslims

If we are to answer Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’, we will each have to try to extend our understanding of justice to encompass different societies. Perhaps we, as intellectuals and as people who want to make decisions over great issues such as peace and war, have to use our imaginations to understand and empathise with different ways of thinking.

But it is dangerous and evasive to say to others, ‘Whatever your opinion is, keep it to yourself. This is the only way of justice and you must follow it.’ The arguments between Muslim and secular societies – I don’t say Christian, because I think Christian values have been scrapped in your secular societies – stem from the Muslim unwillingness to put aside Islamic values. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but for the time being, Muslims do not wish to put aside religious values to create a secular society.

The West talks about the existence of social justice in Britain and the United States, but denies that such justice exists in Iran or Saudi Arabia. But look at the system of nation states in international relations. There, it is recognised that every nation is seeking its own interest, against those of others. Seeking one’s own interest is surely always in contradiction with a wider social justice. Yet this is the foundation of the international system.

It is not just in Islam that you find injustice, bribery, authoritarian rule. In order to create and promote justice, especially in poorer countries, we need resources, institutions, and expertise. But if there is an unjust international system, how can poor countries ever attain the resources for good political institutions, the right courts of justice, an effective police force? Not all the blame for a country’s shortcomings can be other’s responsibility. But in this international system, it is very difficult for nations that have dropped behind in their development to progress without the help and encouragement, and above all the understanding, of more developed ones.

The United States and comparable countries make this mistake when they look at Muslim lands. Their attitude is: ‘Leave everything behind that you once believed in and jump on board this bandwagon.’ Most people can’t or won’t do that. Americans satisfy themselves with statistical evidence that many young people in Islamic countries look up to America and its secular values. Of course, young people might envy the standard of living and want nice things. But the West should think about what happens when you violate the values of societies that cannot provide their young people with these goodies. In its own way, isn’t it precisely this violation of values, this ignoring of a different concept of justice, which has created hatred and animosity over recent years, and even the terrorism and the events of 11 September?

Two kinds of secularism

HB: In response, I would like to take up two points, one about secularism, and the other about the idea of ‘Islamic human rights’. First, I think we have to distinguish between two concepts of secularism: ideological and political. This is a huge difference, of principle and not only of degree.

Your comments on secularism seemed to assume that it is a sort of post-religious creed, a belief system in itself, maybe based on science. There is no doubt that such a form of secularism used to exist. It was very typical of nineteenth century European intellectuals such as George Holyoake, who in England formed the Secular Society. This society was a perfect example of a secular creed, because it had its own form of religious slogan: ‘science is the providence of man’. It had its own dogma, places of worship, liturgy and rituals. One could add more examples of secularism as a post-religious creed, made and intended to replace religions. Of course, religions could never espouse this sort of secularism.

But, when we speak about secularism today, we mostly refer to an institutional device to safeguard religious liberty as a human right. Because, if you take religious liberty systematically, it means that everybody in a country should be entitled to equal respect for religious beliefs. The state is not permitted to identify with one particular religion at the expense of others, because that would lead to a discrimination against those who differ from the dominant creed. And in order to implement religious liberty as a universal human right, European societies have in many different forms established what I call political secularism. This can in some cases even be combined with the preservation of symbolic traditions such as the Church of England. But the consequence must be that the legal status of the citizen is independent of religious adherence.

We tend to mix the two secularisms. But even the Christian churches have, after a long time and bitter resistance, espoused the principles of political secularism. It took generations for them to realise that this is not a manifestation of an ideological, post-religious creed. So my question to you is whether you think it is possible that this form of secularism, which I have termed ‘political’, can be subscribed to from an Islamic standpoint.

There has of course been a debate about political secularism in Arab countries since the beginning of the twentieth century. A famous Egyptian author, Ali Abd al-Raziq, wrote a book, Islam and the Basis of Power, in 1925, in which he sketched an Islamic appreciation of political secularism. He was banned from his chair in the University of Cairo, but his book was nevertheless printed over and over again.

An Islamic concept of human rights?

The second point I would like to raise is about your reference to an Islamic concept of human rights. What might that be? Such an idea is embodied in documents such as the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in June 1990. But this is a problematic document because it puts all human rights under the proviso that they should comply with Islamic sharia. So, it reads like this:

‘The right to life is safeguarded, provided it is in the framework of the sharia. The right to physical security is guaranteed unless it contravenes the sharia. Freedom of opinion – in the framework of sharia.’

Religious liberty does not appear in the document, equality of women and men is confined to a vague equality of dignity – there is no sense of their ‘equal rights’.

So my question to you is: what do you mean by Islamic human rights? Do you refer to these ideological constructs whose purpose – in my opinion – is to undermine the existing standards adopted by the United Nations; or to efforts to make sense, from an Islamic standpoint, of those international standards? I would support the latter usage. It must be possible for people from various religious standpoints to reconcile universal human rights with their practices and beliefs. But such documents as the Cairo Declaration get us no further forward, because they tend to undermine the very validity of universal rights.

MSB: To take up both points in one answer, I think Islamic countries have been able to adjust to the norms of democracy to some extent. So, it is possible that they could also adjust in the future to the norms of political secularism.

It is, though, very important to emphasise that such a step – if it were to occur – should emerge out of their natural development, rather than being enforced from outside by foreign influences employing boycotts and other coercive methods. To add a comparative element, many African societies seem incapable of establishing the Western model of democracy, because of their internal or tribal divisions. Forcing the pace of change would end up with systems that would benefit no one.

I have seen the Cairo document, and I disagree with many of its articles. But why should it be impossible to include many Islamic standards and ideas in our version of universal human rights – which may, in any case, overlap with those of other theologies?

Take, for example, the controversy over cutting off the hands of thieves. This practice was designed to stop robbery. If it does not in fact stop robbery, then it may be concluded that while it may once have been useful, it no longer works. This is not an article of faith.

A more difficult example might be homosexuality. This practice is very offensive to Muslims, and I cannot imagine rights for homosexuals being included in any Islamic definition of human rights. Homosexuality is punished by death in Muslim societies. But suppose that there are as many as 80,000 homosexuals in Iran. How then is society going to address the phenomenon? Perhaps its attitude will begin to shift; while homosexuality will still be regarded as a social disease, it will cease to be a legal offence.

What Western societies are currently doing in Muslim societies is to control the rate of change, rather than letting that change happen naturally. That is dangerous. If, by contrast, we allow a natural social development to take place, I believe that many of the most seemingly intractable issues between us could come to a reasonable conclusion.

A Christian can easily put Christianity aside and follow secular social rules. But a Muslim cannot say this at the moment. Instead, we have to find a way of finding a peaceful settlement between sharia and social law. And this is not possible as long as countries are prevented from having their own debates in their own time.

The debates going on in Iran at the moment seem to me very fruitful indeed, provided that we don’t politicise them, cheering from the sidelines for one side or the other. Let them take their own time and develop in their own way. Otherwise, people will retreat into their dogmatic certainties, making proper dialogue impossible.

Between ‘authenticity’ and ‘universality’

HB: I would agree that heavy-handed, unilateral intervention in a country’s internal developments and discourses can make that country even more reluctant to deal with matters such as human rights, religious liberty, and equality between men and women. We all know that the ‘human rights’ debate is not just a debate – it has a great deal to do with power politics.

Nevertheless, I am sceptical about your emphasis on the, as it were, ‘natural’ development of countries. What does that mean, after all? Power politics, after all, is not just a feature of the international community; it is also a key determinant inside every national situation. Very often, some elements of a society are silenced.

In such cases, what should an international community do? My understanding, as someone who is very committed to human rights, is that human rights organisations have a responsibility to give a voice to those who are silenced in this way. This does not mean people from outside should take the role of advocates and speak on behalf of others – I agree that societies have to find their own way – but if natural development is not possible, because parts of society are silenced, then at least, people from outside should point to that fact. And international human rights standards give the possibility of monitoring and saying that there is something wrong.

MSB: I agree that we must defend the right to voice one’s ideas in any and every society. But in turn I want to ask you a question. The concept of political secularism has been promoted in a steady way since the nineteenth century, and Islamic countries seemed to accept this idea – among many others – quite smoothly at the beginning of the twentieth century. They changed their style of life considerably, altered their legal systems and abandoned sharia. But in the late twentieth century they returned to sharia (Islamic law), to the idea of an Islamic society, and to hukuma (Islamic governance). Given the steady development of a world order, broad improvements in the standard of living, this is something strange, isn’t it? Why do you think that this happened?

HB: It is a complicated question; it turns out that your questions are no easier than mine to grapple with! I agree with what you seem to indicate, that the pendulum seems to be swinging back. This has to do with the crisis of identity in these societies. I have always had strong reservations about the organisation of politics around issues of identity. ‘Identity politics’, whether defined in religious or national terms, can so easily adopt authoritarian features. So, ‘we’ define ‘our’ identities – sometimes by alighting on invented ‘roots’ – against what is seen as distorting influences from outsiders, threatening us. This guarantees us our sense of authenticity.

The reality of life in all societies has become very complex. There is no possibility any more of ‘authentic cultural identity’ in that sense. We live in a global society in which forces of various cultural origins interpenetrate. The notion of identity can too easily accompany a false notion of cultural purity that generates a highly dangerous form of authoritarianism. Authenticity, identity, purity, are very dangerous concepts when society is viewed, not from a personal or even sociological standpoint – because in those perspectives they are understandable – but from the point of view of its core norms and values.

You say that people feel values are being forced on them from outside. In making sense of human rights, it has been very important to emphasise that they do not constitute a comprehensive value system. Human rights are not collectively a religion, nor a Weltanschauung (world view), nor a closed ideology; nor even a complete set of values – if values are understood as a way to shape one’s life according to ideals of what a good life is.

A person can, for example, become a monk, and understand his life in a very ascetic way. Human rights do not preclude this option or any other particular lifestyle either. Instead, their whole programme is about establishing the conditions which ensure that everyone has basic equal rights, and can make their own choice, independent of any form of domination by others. These are basic principles for peaceful co-existence in public life.

It is also important to emphasise that the programme of human rights is a way of structuring an open debate that can help us explore the possibilities of different ways of living. Sometimes our American friends tell us that they are fighting for human rights, and, in the next breath, for the American way of life. This can lead to absurdities. In considering human rights, we have to make clear distinctions and base our discussions on principle.