Religious Approach towards the Relationship between Human Dignity and Human Rights

Human dignity has been widely considered both in religious thought and in international documents, and efforts have been made to recognize many legal effects, particularly in the field of basic human rights. This article seeks to answer this important question as to what is the basis for dignity in the Qur'anic approach and whether the human can claim his basic rights such as equality and freedom based on it. International human rights documents have underscored dignity as the basis of human rights, however it do not dwell on the basis and the meaning of dignity which require serious contemplations. The findings of the paper show that human dignity in the Qur'an is due to his "reason and nature" and God honored man by the virtue of these two blessings. In such a case, the necessity of linking human rights with dignity is to make a link between the rights and the reason and nature, while no one among the human rights advocates has bound himself to it. On the other hand, assuming that human dignity has legal effects, the fundamental difference is the relation between human and dignity in a non-religious approach with the relation between humanity and dignity in the religious approach which separates the paths of these two.