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In Translation: Contemporary Thought in Muslim Contexts

Human Rights and Reformist Islam

By Mohsen Kadivar

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£100.00

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About this book

Published in Association with the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim CivilisationsTranslates the influential collection Haqq al-nas, which argues for the compatibility of human rights and Islam
  • Written by an original and prolific intellectual of the Iranian reform movement
  • Adds an extensive new introduction and annotations throughout the text from Mohsen Kadivar bringing the work up-to-date and placing it in its academic and public contexts
  • Includes a preface by Professor Mirjam Künkler explaining the importance of the translation and the value of its contribution to current scholarly debate
  • Critically compares Mohsen Kadivar’s approach to Islam and human rights with those of five leading contemporary scholars: Mahmoud M. Taha, Abdullahi A. an-Na’im, Ann E. Mayer, Mohammad M. Shabestari and Abdulaziz A. Sachedina
  • Includes a glossary of key terminology

Human Rights and Reformist Islam critiques traditional Islamic approaches to the question of compatibility between human rights and Islam, and argues instead for their reconciliation from the perspective of a reformist Islam. The book focuses on six controversial case studies: religious discrimination; gender discrimination; slavery; freedom of religion; punishment of apostasy; and arbitrary or harsh punishments.

Explaining the strengths of structural ijtihad, Mohsen Kadivar’s approach is based on the rational classification of Islamic teachings as temporal or permanent on the one hand, and four criteria of being Islamic on the other: reasonableness, justice, morality and efficiency. In the book, all of the verses and Hadith that are problematic in relation to human rights are abrogated rationally according to these criteria. The result is a powerful, solutions-based argument based on reformist Islam – providing a scholarly bridge between modernity and Islamic tradition in relation to human rights.

Reviews

In this pathbreaking work, Mohsen Kadivar, a leading Muslim theologian and religious scholar, presents an authoritative and systematic methodology for interpreting, reforming, and applying Islam’s sacred teachings and juridical rulings in ways that would make them compatible with universally accepted norms of human rights. By including freedom of thought, civil and minority rights, religious tolerance, and gender equality, as well as human security and economic rights, Kadivar offers a progressive vision of Islam that could serve as a basis—not for political power and state governance—but as a spiritual and ethical guide for believers and a foundation for a secular, pluralistic and egalitarian civil society.
Table of contents

Foreword: Revising Shariʿa in the light of the Universal Declaration of Human RightsMirjam Künkler

Preface to the English TranslationMohsen Kadivar

Introduction

Section I: The Bases for Discussions on Islam and Human Rights

1. From Traditional Islam to End-Oriented Islam

2. The Principles of Compatibility between Islam and Modernity

3. An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islamic Culture

Section II: Islam and Human Rights

4. Imam Sajjad and the Rights of Mankind

5. Human Rights and Reformist Islam

6. Questions and Answers about Human Rights and Reformist Islam

7. Human Rights, Secularism, and Religion

Section III: Freedoms of Belief, Religion, and Politics

8. The Freedom of Belief and Religion in Islam and Human Rights Documents

9. The Rights of the Political Opposition in an Islamic Society

Section IV: Women’s Rights

10. Reformist Islam and Women’s Rights

11. Women’s Rights in the Hereafter (A Theological Reading of the Qurʾan)

Section V: Other Debates in Human Rights

12. The Issue of Slavery in Contemporary Islam

13. The Rights of Non-Muslims in Contemporary Islam

14. Social Security in Islamic Teachings

Bibliography and Sources; Glossary; Index

About the contributors

Mohsen Kadivar

Mohsen Kadivar is Research Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University. One of the most original and prolific figures of the Iranian reform movement, he is a versatile theologian, philosopher and intellectual historian who has written ground-breaking books on human rights and Islam, Islamic political thought, and Islamic philosophy and theology. His forthcoming 'Islamic Theocracy in the Secular Age' will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2021. Kadivar has been a vocal critic of Iran’s doctrine of clerical rule and a strong advocate of democratic and liberal reforms in Iran as well as constructional reform in shari'a and Shi'a theology. He has served time in prison in Iran for his political activism and beliefs; his writings have been banned in Iran since 2009.

Mirjam Kuenkler

Mirjam Kuenkler is Research Professor at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include Female Religious Authority in Shiʿi Islam: Past and Present, Edinburgh University Press, 2021; A Secular Age Beyond the West, Cambridge University Press, 2018; Democracy and Islam in Indonesia, Columbia University Press, 2013; and the forthcoming The Rule of Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Power, Institutions, and Prospects for Reform, Cambridge University Press, among others. She is a PI of the Iran Data Portal, co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Law and Religion, co-editor of the Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and Politics, and a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Islam in Asia (Brill), the Digest of Middle East Studies (Wiley), the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Wiley), and Iranian Studies (Cambridge). In 2023, Künkler was elected President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS).

Niki Akhavan

Niki Akhavan is Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Media and Communication Studies at The Catholic University of America and author of Electronic Iran (Rutgers University Press, 2013). She has been a Persian-English translator for over 20 years.

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