The Right to Privacy

Abstract

To be able to judge the extent to which the individuals in a given society enjoy a good measure of privacy, one has to thoroughly analyze many aspects of social life in that society. One may choose to confine oneself to an inquiry into the extent to which the law governing that society protects the privacy of its individuals. In this case, one must deal with laws governing property, contracts, crime, and other aspects of public and private life in that society. But this should not be limited to an analysis of legal writings directly concerned with the concept of “privacy” if such a concept is part of the legal jargon used by lawyers and jurists in the society. Even total lack of such a concept in the legal jargon does not indicate the absence of law’s protection of privacy. This is hardly a peculiarity in Muslim societies or the Arabic language. The language of ancient Egyptians, whom Herodotus noted were the most religious of poeples, did not posses an equivalent for our word religion.