ABSTRACT
The third issue area singled out in the present inquiry on Islam’s predicament with cultural modernity relates to individual human rights. These are understood as law that provides legal entitlements. This understanding is based on a concept of rights that attributes to individuals entitlements that they claim vis-àvis state and society. This is a core issue of cultural modernity. The chapter first argues generally that individual human rights1 expose all religions to a radical challenge. Islam is no exception, despite all Islamic claims to the contrary. It is not only Christian theologians who claim that the roots of these rights are in their own religion; Muslim revivalists similarly believe that the origins of human rights are found in the teachings and doctrines of Islam.2 Both are mistaken. Individual human rights are intrinsically modern, and also secular; they are based on the principle of subjectivity, of the identity of the self. This principle is an embodiment of cultural modernity. In short, individual human rights – in the meaning of secular entitlements –
do not exist in any religion. Period. Given these facts, the question is: what reform do religions need to undergo and in what kind of change do cultures have to engage in order to accommodate the concept of individual rights as an entitlement? These questions pinpoint one of the sources of Islam’s predicament with cultural modernity, hence this third step focuses on this aspect of the predicament. The centrality of the issue of individual human rights is the reason for its selection – after knowledge and law – as the subject of this chapter.
