A Human Rights Framework for Defining and Understanding Intra-Religious Persecution in Muslim Countries

Abstract

Religious persecution is a worldwide phenomenon. Practices of intolerance and discrimination based on religion or beliefs are reported almost every day. In his report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance concluded from the information he had collected:

It is apparent that intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief is a common phenomenon throughout the world.²

The term ‘Muslim countries’ is used here in a broader sense. It refers to both Islamic countries, where the laws are derived from Islamic law (Shari’a), and to those countries where the majority of the population are Muslims, but Islam is neither the state religion nor the formal source of law. Some scholars, like Donna E. Arzt, have used the term ‘Islamic states’ to refer to the countries which have officially proclaimed Islam to be the state religion or for which Islamic law is a formal source of legislation. It is the contention of this author that a distinction has to be drawn between countries that have only proclaimed Islam as state religion or the primary source of legislation within the framework of a secularized legal system, and those countries where the legal system has been Islamized and the laws are derived from Islamic law (Shari’a). The term ‘Islamic states’ has to refer to the latter rather than the former. See D.E. Arzt, ‘The Treatment of Religious Dissidents under Classical and Contemporary Islamic Law’ in J. Witte and J.D. van der Vyver (eds.), Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives pp. 392-393 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996).