International Human Rights Law and Religious and Cultural Law: Breaking the Impasse

Abstract

The international human rights movement is facing an existential crisis-- a crisis created in part by its continuing failure to adequately address strong criticism that international human rights law (IHRL) is a form of cultural imperialism designed to destroy local religion and culture. While the debate underlying the crisis is not new, the strength of its threat to IHRL and the liberal democratic order is. One of the primary points of friction is over IHRL's seeming rejection of a group right to be governed by religious or cultural law--a right IHRL proponents fear would open the doors to discrimination against women, the LGBT community and nonconformists. Already, populist leaders like President Erdogan of Turkey have been able to capitalize on a combination of demands for a role for religion in governance and frustration with economic inequality to claw back on human rights and democratic guarantees. The debates surrounding group rights have reached an impasse that will do little to promote either human rights or greater respect for religion and culture. This Article seeks to break that impasse. First, it relies on progressive Muslim and African scholarship to tear down the assumptions shared by both IHRL and group rights proponents that make the impasse seemingly intractable: (1) that religious and cultural law are determined from the top down; and (2) that they demand total submission of their followers. Having debunked those assumptions, it then challenges both groups to consider whether a theory of substantive human rights could allow countries to guarantee individuals the right to feely and equally choose whether to be governed by religious or cultural law without risking that this choice will become a ruse for favoring the majority group or for subjugating women and vulnerable groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]