Portal: Islam and Human Rights

While some modern Islamic scholars have struggled to reconcile Islam and modern, largely Western notions of human rights, the majority of traditional Islamic scholars today have generally defied what they perceive as a attempt at intellectual colonialism. The conflict between modern human rights doctrine and Islamic law can, for the most part, be understood as a product of their extreme historical and contextual distance. Whereas Islamic law was formulated in the harsh, unpredictable, and austere environment of 7th-9th century Arabia, modern Human rights doctrine is generally traced back to the European Enlightenment, starting especially with the English philosopher John Locke's ideas of natural rights in the 17th century.