International Law, Islam and the Universality of Human Rights Perspective: an Iranian Perspective

From the beginning of human life on earth, human needs have beencrystallized in their relationship and interaction with each other. As a resultof such an inter-relationship and interaction, it has been necessary for abody of law to exist that would specify humans’ duties and obligationstowards each other. Even though different regulations concerning humanrights have been codified, human beings have not taken benefit from theserights on an equal basis. In fact, we see that throughout history, theoppressed have fought oppressors. In these protracted struggles, humanbeings continued to seek transcendental rights; rights they wanted to enjoyregardless of power and wealth, skin color and race. Based on thisargument, if we look at the objectives and activities related to humanrights, we can suggest that monotheistic religions also played a crucial partin promoting human rights. According to the findings of this research,although international law and Islamic international law both believe in theuniversality of human rights, without any doubt their nature andfoundation differ. Nonetheless, there are numerous shared grounds andpoints between the two aforementioned bodies of law for whose studyand utilization international human resources have to be used to forgeunity and to protect world peace and security.

Keywords:

Human rights , International Law , Islam , universality , globalization