The Dogmatism of Human Rights Schemes: As Fanatic as Religious Extremism?
In the most complete report to date on religious freedom, co-editors Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen conclude that the inclinations of religions to view themselves as the sole guardians of truth can tempt them to intolerance and “to fight against whatever [each] defines as deviant, either within [their] own faith or at [the] boundaries.”

Would such interreligious fighting include economic sanctions and “coalitions of the willing”? Do the human rights activists and lawyers see themselves as “the sole guardians of truth” and that is why they invoke the largest armies in the name of human rights?

The human rights movement seems to answer many of the essential questions about human’s existence and yet, of course, at no time has it claimed to be a religion or even an ideology. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that no one can claim that human rights has some kind of physical or undeniable proofs for its foundations. Instead, the belief in the human rights paradigm is no different—or even weaker—than the belief in any other religion or ideology. The propagators of the human rights paradigm are, in reality, no different from any other missionary who believes that his way of life, philosophy or religion is the best for all of humankind.

Donnelly has an interesting passage in which states in no uncertain terms—but without stating this word—that human rights activists must be dogmatic and not allow the presence of any other view on issues that they have determined to be non-negotiable.


Donnelly writes,
Consider, for example, slavery. Most people today would agree that no matter how ancient and well established the practice may be, to turn one’s back on the enslavement of human beings in the name of cultural relativity would reflect moral obtuseness, not sensitivity. Human sacrifice, trial by ordeal, extrajudicial execution, and female infanticide are other cultural practices that are (in my view rightly) condemned by almost all external observers today.

Underlying such judgments is the inherent universality of basic moral precepts, at least as we understand morality in the West. We simply do not believe that our moral precepts are for us and us alone. This is most evident in Kant’s deontological universalism. But it is no less true of the principle of utility. And, of course, human rights are also inherently universal.

In any case, our moral precepts are our moral precepts. As such, they demand our obedience. To abandon them simply because others reject them is to fail to give proper weight to our own moral beliefs (at least where they involve central moral precepts such as the equality of all human beings and the protection of innocents).

Finally, no matter how firmly someone else, or even a whole culture, believes differently, at some point—slavery and untouchability come to mind— we simply must say that those contrary beliefs are wrong. Negative external judgments may be problematic. In some cases, however, they are not merely permissible but demanded.

Note that although one may argue that Donnelly’s examples in the passage above are acceptable, the premise of his claim against others, even in those obvious cases, is still not acceptable—and that is the important point. Donnelly, like other human rights supporters, has no basis upon which to claim the right to remove such “evils.” If there are people who are still practicing such “evils,” then it moves that there is not a unanimous consensus on their “evilness.” One must ask the proverbial question: Who has died and made the human rights activists and lawyers the kings of the world?

Donnelly and his likes argue that they deem such acts to be so evil that even if others accept them, they must be eradicated. The next question must arise: When does this self-righteous claim to police the remainder of humanity come to an end? Where do the human rights activists stop and say, “Now we can no longer render judgment even we, for ourselves, consider acts X, Y and Z evil”? There are a few voices writing on human rights who can understand the dilemma here.


Thus, Orentlicher states,
But however appealing, this account cannot by itself offer a complete response to the relativist challenge. Like any version of substantive accommodation, Ignatieff’'s account raises—and, if it is to persuade, must be able to answer—the question, By whose lights does one determine which rights are, in Donnelly’s terms, ‘’prima facie universal” and what local variations in interpretation are permissible? If adherents to Islam in a particular culture believe that amputations undertaken pursuant to judicial determination do not constitute torture, does their claim fall within Donnelly’s zone of permissible local variation in the interpretation of norms that are universal (in this case, the prohibition of torture)? Or do such amputations violate a norm that is not subject to local exceptions or variations in interpretation? Who decides?


Who decides is the question, indeed.
Perhaps if this dogmatic attitude were put in an another perspective, the human rights proponents could understand the issue better. From an Islamic perspective, the most despicable is associating partners with God. In fact, it is this despicable act that leads people to commit so many of the other evils of the world. Thus, from an Islamic perspective, bowing down to an idol is completely unacceptable. Suppose a Muslim scholar would write a passage similar to Donnelly’s passage and say, “Finally, no matter how firmly someone else, or even a whole culture, believes differently, at some point—worshipping idols come to mind— we simply must say that those contrary beliefs are wrong.” Would this approach not be considered extreme and dogmatic? But this is exactly what human rights activists and lawyers do on a daily basis. And they do not do it with respect to the clear-cut cases that Donnelly chose to mention. Instead, they do it on a myriad of issues ranging from the rights of homosexuals to the right of marriage to anyone one wishes to marriage to even the rights of a child within a household—and all based on nothing but a dogmatic and blind faith in their human rights paradigm and ideology.

This dogmatism, of course, has real ramifications to it. Once the human rights people determine that human rights have been violated, they then demand a response. In the words of Howland, for example, who is speaking in reference to rather specific laws related to women and marriage, “All enforcement mechanisms at the community's disposal should be used to coerce these pariah states to cease violating articles 55 and 56. It is time for the international community to live up to the standards of the Charter and the Universal Declaration.”

Oh echoes the same kind of feeling when speaking about interreligious marriage, that has somehow become a universal human right in her eyes.


She states,
[G]overnments should not dismiss certain human rights because of the fear that such rights would invite scrutiny or because of the belief that interventions taken to protect that right would be interpreted as imperialistic. Given the situation where a Muslim nation denies, for example, interreligious marriage, this nation might argue that such unions do not constitute a universal human right but is simply a form of Western imperialism. Other nations may fear being labeled imperialist if they intervene to protect interreligious marriage as a human right. If governments by and large agree, even with few detractors, that interreligious marriage is a genuinely universal human right, that is, a condition necessary for human dignity that others can and should protect, then intervention—though not necessarily a military one—would be justified and cannot rightly be labeled imperialist.


In the footnote to this passage, Oh interestingly writes,
This example raises the question of whether a majority agreement among nations would constitute a “universal” human right. Although majority rule has never guaranteed the unquestionable morality of a policy, it is arguably the best of our flawed options. Unfortunately, this profound philosophical problem of how humans can come to recognize the perfect form of goodness or justice lies beyond the scope of this book.


This is an eye-opening passage:
The “best of our flawed options” are sufficient for possible military intervention and demands that Muslims change their religious beliefs about interreligious marriage. In other words, it is dogmatism based on an admittedly flawed system.  Of course, the “profound philosophical problem” is beyond the scope of her work on human rights because, in reality, that problem is beyond the scope of the human rights paradigm.

Rousseau was famous for speaking about forcing people to be free. This is where one group of people determine what it means to be free and then they force upon others their wonderful understanding of what it means to be free, regardless of whether others actually want this “freedom.”Although Donnelly claims that he thinks Rousseau went to far when he made such a statement admits that, in essence, he is in agreement with Rousseau.


Here are the words of the human rights theorist himself:
When Rousseau speaks of forcing people to be free, however, he seems to me (as a liberal) to go too far. But he nonetheless points toward an important insight. Some forms of behavior cannot be tolerated in a rights-protective society. Some interests must be excluded from the calculation of the public interest, no matter how deeply their proponents are attached to them.

The approach of the human rights proponents, especially those who have written about Islam and demand changes in this widely accepted religion, is the same kind of dogmatism that led people to speak of the “end of history”  and to make statements like “There is no intellectual ground remaining for any regime other than democracy.”  There is no other worldview left or acceptable save for the human rights paradigm. Given, though, the fundamental questions surrounding human rights and the fact that human rights theorists themselves are forced to admit that there are no sound responses to these fundamental questions, this belligerent attitude towards all other ways smacks of nothing but arrogance and bigotry.