ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I deal with the basic doctrines of Islam concerning rights and duties, especially in the fields of law and jurisprudence, and elaborate those basic principles that are supportive of the modern concept of human rights, even though the Islamic and Western civilizations may have followed different historical paths in developing these concepts. Given the complexity of the topic, my discussion cannot do justice to the full range of Islamic opinion or to the diverse approaches adopted by different schools of Islamic law. Instead, my aim is to lay out some fundamentals so that the reader can see how it would be possible to find precedents for a contemporary doctrine of rights in the Islamic tradition. It will then not seem far fetched to suggest that Indonesian Islam can embrace a contemporary doctrine of human rights by further developing elements in the Islamic tradition.
