Universality or Relativism: A Critique of Religious Intellectual Approach to Human Rights in the Light of Islamic Approach

This article contains a critique of the religious intellectual approach to human rights from the perspective of universality or relativism and organizes this critique in the light of Islamic principles. The intellectual-religious approach to human rights begins with the ideological assumptions of this movement and is defined between Islamic and Western approaches. The Western approach claims the universality and transcendence of human rights. The Islamic approach, while emphasizing on the Human Nature, believes too in universality of human rights; but first, it disagrees with western approach on the nature of the Rights and secondly, it takes into account some sort of relativism as a subsidiary approach to the issue. Meanwhile, Religious Intellectualism, in spite of basically relying on the philosophical foundations of relativism, admires Western universality of human rights. The authors, using Descriptive–Analitical Method, try to provide a critique to this duality under the dialectic between Islam and western human rights and answer to the question that what are the criticisms on the Religious Intellectuals approach to human rifgts in the light of Islamic principles and between the two approaches of universality and relativism?