ALARM BELLS went off as I froze and read the frightful sign posted on the columns past the amphitheater: "Human Rights in the Bible and Qur'an." Putting aside my preconceived notions on the subject, I attended the discussion hosted by President of the Theological Education Institute Reverend John Rankin and University professor of Religious Studies Abdulaziz Sachedina that night.
Both participants claimed that religion had a crucial role to play in the advancement of human rights, and used selective quotations from their respective religious texts to justify it. The difference was that while Rankin sought to convince the audience that Genesis was the origin of America as a political system, Sachedina cited specific examples of moral pluralism in the Bible without trying to insert religion into every sphere of life.
Either way, both discussants seemed to miss the main distinction between human rights and religion. Human rights are basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled. They are a necessity for all, while religion is a choice for some. We would do well to stick to secular foundations of political thought that are inclusive rather than religious thinking that is exclusive. This is why, contrary to the talk's theme, human rights should not be based on religion, and, consequently, we should not waste our energies looking for human rights within each particular faith.
We can manipulate religious texts to justify almost anything. Just ask Islamic fundamentalists who use the Qur'an to justify killing infidels, or fringe evangelical terrorists who murder abortion doctors. As Sachedina noted, "It does not matter what the Qur'an or the Bible says on this point or that point, what matters is that both faiths must encourage ethical behavior in their followers." To put it more bluntly, these talks about abstractions and selective quotations are mere exercises in intellectual masturbation and don't really resonate in the practical world.
Additionally, just because we can find examples of moral pluralism within centuries-old religious texts does not automatically translate to the fact that religion should have a role to play in contemporary human rights. Some might argue that religion has had a historical involvement in shaping political theory through Christian thinkers like Aquinas, for instance. But human rights is not about shaping Western political systems. It is about bringing together a spectrum of secular and religious governments, and trying to ascertain what all human beings born into this world are entitled to. To insert religion into this would only increase divisiveness in an effort to get global consensus on an issue.
Religion also has a mixed record in promoting human rights in history. Different faiths pick and choose which rights they agree with at different times in different places. The Catholic Church may have been instrumental in bringing down communism in Poland, but it is also stifling freedom in sexual practice by condemning birth control. While the Dalai Lama may be fighting for the rights of Tibetans, Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka promote religious hatred against the minority Tamils. Christians and Muslims might have fought together against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, but, as Sachedina noted, they massacred and dehumanized each other during the Crusades. Given this mixed record, handing religion a role in human rights is not only exclusive and impractical, it is also dangerous and risky because selective human rights promotion will depend on context.
One could argue, and Rankin did, that politics has devolved into an immoral practice that needs reform with the insertion of religious values. The role of politics in promoting human rights has been equally, if not more riddled with double standards than religion. But even if the assumption that politics is immoral is true, we can rectify this immorality with secular moralism in laws and rights declarations, rather than exclusive religious moralism.. Hence, while Rankin tried to use human rights as a means to fuse religion and politics together to rectify moral decadence, we can resolve the same problem using secular ideals that are more accessible to more people.
Thus, the only role that religion should play in human rights is encouraging followers to behave in a humane manner. Universal, undisputed rights should bekept separate from dissenting, subjective faiths. If the two happen to coincide,, then so be it. If they don't, then we should not feel obligated to try to prove that they do because they serve two different functions anyway.
Prashanth Parameswaran's column appears Wednesday in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at pparameswarn@cavalierdaily.com.
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