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Abstract:

“Both Islam and the West promotes fundamental freedom and human rights. When in 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Saudi Arabia abstained from signing it contending that the Shari’ah (Islamic Law) had already set out the rights of all mankind. Thus, signing this instrument was not necessary. This position later culminated into the adoption of The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) in 1990.

Despite this development, the United Nations (UN), and other stakeholders in UDHR project started to engage the Islamic world on the issues of human rights. This engagement has revealed that the differences between the two regimes might not necessarily create tension and misconception. Rather the differences would be better managed if the concept of human rights from the perspective of Islam were also recognized.

Saudi Arabia is the cradle and nerve centre of Islam. It is saddled with protecting multipolar interests. The national interest under the watchful eyes of the Traditional Scholars, the interest of the Muslim World with commitment to preserving the Islamic values and orthodox observance of its norms and the interest of the general international community. How does it maintain an equilibrium in protecting these multipolar interests against the background of the international human rights law forms the focus of analysis of this presentation.”

Dawood Adesola Hamzah is the author of “International Law and Muslim States. Saudi Arabia in Context”. He holds a PhD in International Law and Islamic Law from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Lagos State Unviersity in Nigeria, and was previously Teaching Fellow at the Department of Law, SOAS. Additionally, Hamzah has several years of experience from Saudi Arabia as a lawyer and writer.

Postdoctoral Fellow at UiO, Charlotte Lysa, will comment on Hamzah’s presentation.

Moderator is Senior Researcher at NUPI, Tine Gade.

The seminar is co-hosted with the REF-ARAB project and the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law (IKRS) at the University of Oslo.