نشریه حقوق بشر
پیاپی 10 (پاییز و زمستان 1389)

The contemporary debates, among religious thinkers, over the relationship between religion and politics necessarily involve the relationship between right and obligation. Mohammed Ghazali is among those thinkers who believe in the priority of right over obligation, contributing authenticity to the Islamic rather than western interpretations of Human rights. His failure in the mission is clear. He is much more concerned with showing the compatibility Islamic teachings with human rights principles than with the relationship of these principles with Islamic teachings. Apparently he tries to show the “authenticity”, of Islamic vis-àvis Western readings of human rights, however in practice he bases his arguments on the “authenticity” of the western reading of human rights putting his perceived Islam inferior to Western principles of human rights.

Our everyday morality puts constraint on 'allowing harm that is merely foreseen as an unintended side-effect,' provided that it does not impose a disproportionate burden on the agent. However, few of us act in accordance with our everyday moderate morality. Nowadays, and of course in the past, human is indifferent toward harms and violating the rights of human’s who are not her near and dear and usually does nothing to stop them. Meanwhile, based on our considered moral judgments in theory, 'allowing harm that is merely foreseen as an unintended sideeffect,' is immoral in many cases. Regardless of the advantages of our everyday moderate morality, this paper tries to show the contrast between theory and practice in human’s behavior on a global scale.

Primitive human being because of the lack of knowledge about phenomena believed in the belief and ritual system with the purpose of keeping his worldly economic life. The priority of belief to existence was the nature of this belief system (mythical ideology) in which the existence of human being and observing his rights was subject to governing belief system. Religions were coincident to the time of human social life, when he came to understand causation rule and to know that his economic life was not related to will of the various Gods and the aim of religions is not to govern the world but to develope human being. Religions accepted the governing of wisdom for managing of society. To understand the real causes of phenomena instead of spirits and Gods, caused human freedom and his control of his destiny and paved the way for the priority of existence to belief. In fact, for this reason and also for superior position of morality in religions, religions must be regard as a supporter of human rights.

Freedom of expression is a human right. Some experts agree with absolute freedom of expression. For them, the freedom of expression makes all options to be heard; the extent of people’s participation to increase, democracy to be protected and dogmatic rituals to be challenged. Some experts have opposed absolute freedom of expression. Comparing to poisonous food they believe that those who are aware oftoxic thoughts, should prevent their circulation in the society. Does Islam accept relative or absolute freedom of expression? This paper is trying to answer this question through dealing with the Islamic and Western foundations of freedom of expression.

“Human rights” issue and its relationship with religious teachings is one of the controversial debates among thinkers. The aim of present study is to deal with the amount of urban educated Iranians orientation to human rights on the one hand and the relationship of their religiosity with this orientation on the other hand. The nature of this study is exploratory, and a sample of 214 respondents was selected in the city of Shiraz. For data collection, interview schedule is main tool. The data in the present study clearly shows that all our respondents are favorably inclined toward human rights; however women are more inclined than men. It also shows that a very large proportion of the sample is quite religious. Further, the data reveals that the relationshipbetween the tendency to gender justice and Islamic values were statistically significant, and there is a significant difference among gender of the respondents and their suggestions for increasing human rights in social life.