The Legal Concept of Human Rights in Islam

El-Ghirani, Muhammad M (1986) The Legal Concept of Human Rights in Islam. LL.M(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Throughout the world, people other than Muslims always take a negative attitude whenever they try to give a fair statement about Islam or whether there are human rights in Islam. Because of lack of knowledge and strong influence from the media, which is well organised and controlled to reveal just all the distorted sides, the people, in the West in particular, could not have a clear view of Islam or its law, the law which is supposed to be the Mercy of Allah (God). Having said that, the main objective of this framework was to make the Islamic attitude towards issues relating to human rights as clear as possible. Thus away from the contemporary practices in the Muslim world which have, in my opinion, nothing to do with Islam, I have tried to tackle the issues in accordance with the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah (the Shariah). However, beside the theoretical attitude of the Shariah, practices held in the golden age of Islam, in other words, practices of the Orthodox Caliphs, were highly considered. The study, therefore, investigated issues such as the fundamental human rights, right to life, property, the individual's freedom and the legal status and rights of women. For its importance, freedom of religion was tackled in some detail. The Islamic state with its sovereignty and democracy was discussed, where the legal and political rights of the citizens were shown. In the ultimate part of the work, the Islamic humanitarian law was examined whereby issues relating to the subject of this study such as the civilians' immunity at the time of conflict and treatment of prisoners of war were clearly discussed. As a result, what was emphasised in this work is that all that has recently been promulgated by the United Nations concerning human rights was recognized by Islam fourteen centuries ago. However, Islam has reserved itself the right to be entitled to its own interpretation of some conceptions, freedom of religion for example. As every issue needs study of its own, this work is only just a modest start.

• Item Type: Thesis (LL.M(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Law, Islamic studies
• Date of Award: 1986
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1986-77401
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 14 Jan 2020 11:53
• Last Modified: 14 Jan 2020 11:53
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/77401