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Islamic Rights or Human Rights: An Iranian Dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Ann Elizabeth Mayer
Ann Elizabeth Mayer*
Affiliation:
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Human rights issues loom large in the contemporary history of Iran. Under the reign of the late shah, Iranians were deprived of basic rights and freedoms and suffered from pervasive violations of human rights, many at the hands of the regime's notorious security forces. Ironically, in official representations to the international community, the shah's government posed as a champion of human rights. In the 1960s and 1970s Iranians took a leadership role at the United Nations in promoting international human rights law, and Tehran was selected as the venue for the important 1968 UN International Conference on Human Rights. Under the shah Iran ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States failed to ratify until 1992 (and then only conditionally). Individual Iranians also contributed to the development of human rights principles.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3-4 , Summer Fall 1996 , pp. 269 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1996

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References

1. Aspects of post-revolutionary Iran's approach to international law are discussed later in this article and in Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “War and Peace in the Islamic Tradition and International Law,” in Kelsay, John and Johnson, James Turner, eds., Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 201–202Google Scholar, 206–208.

2. The statement is reported in FBIS-NES-88–004, 7 January 1988, 50.

3. For U.S. reluctance to ratify human rights conventions and refusal to integrate modern human rights norms in its domestic legal system, with particular attention to the problems of acceptance of the equality of women, see Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “Reflections on the Proposed United States Reservations to CEDAW: Should the Constitution Be An Obstacle to Human Rights?” Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 23 (1996): 727–824Google Scholar.

4. For a critical assessment of some Islamic reservations entered into the Women's Convention see Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “Rhetorical Strategies and Official Policies on Women's Rights: The Merits and Drawbacks of the New World Hypocrisy,” in Afkhami, Mahnaz, ed., Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim World (London: I. B. Tauris, 1995), 105–19Google Scholar.

5. UN Doc. A/C.3/39/SR.65, para. 95.

6. Ibid.

7. Similar confusion has appeared in the remarks of official Saudi spokesmen—and “spokesmen” is used advisedly here—who have alternately appealed to Islam to justify their government's resistance to calls for democratization and rights and extolled Islamic rights principles as affording perfect protection for rights.

8. This is a throwback to European ideas in the era of nineteenth-century imperialism. Western legal scholars of the period held that international law protected the rights of European citizens in Muslim territory, but it did not protect Muslim subjects of Middle Eastern sovereigns. For a discussion of the imperialist position see Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “Current Muslim Thinking on Human Rights,” in An-Naᶜim Frances Deng and Abdullahi, , eds., Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1990), 151–54Google Scholar.

9. The hybrid character is signaled in the title of the document, qānūn-e asāsī-ye jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī-ye Īrān. Qānūn is a word of Greek origin, and jomhūrī is an Arabic neologism designating a government's republican character, republicanism being a European institution. Only the adjective Eslāmī connects the constitution directly to religion. Had Iran chosen to, it could have avoided words and concepts from outside the Islamic tradition altogether. Saudi Arabia, for example, calls its basic law al-niẓam al-asāsī and shuns any reference to imported Western institutions, instead confirming the absolute monarchy of the Saudi family—a familiar model of government in traditional Islamic civilization.

10. This is not to suggest that long-established interpretations of Islamic law and ethics do not foreshadow modern concepts of human rights, merely that the term “human rights” iself was not in use among the foqahā.

11. For comparisons and a critical assessment of these see Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics, 2d ed. (Boulder: Westview, 1995)Google Scholar.

12. See ibid., 74. Certain principles of international human rights—such as the right to freedom of religion—allow of no derogations under any circumstances. See ibid., 73–76, and sources cited therein. See generally also Buergenthal, Thomas, “To Respect and to Ensure: State Obligations and Permissible Derogations,” in Henkin, Louis, ed., The International Bill of Human Rights: The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 72–86Google Scholar

13. See Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, 73.

14. Article 12 establishes Twelver Shiᶜism as the state religion of Iran. Thus, “Islamic” criteria would actually consist of Twelver Shiᶜi standards—these being interpreted, of course, by Iran's ruling clerics.

15. See, for example, “Final Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran” by the special representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Reynaldo Galindo Pohl, pursuant to Commission resolution 1992/67 of 4 March 1992, UN Doc. E/CN.4/1993/41, 28 January 1993, 54–55, and the sections on Iran in the annual reports of Amnesty International and Middle East Watch/Human Rights Watch.

16. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” In the ICCPR, Article 18.1 begins: “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

17. See, for example, Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia, Religious Intolerance: The Arrest, Detention and Torture of Christian Worshippers and Shiᶜi Muslims (1993). Seen as heretics by many Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, Shiᶜis are exposed to persecution. A young Saudi Shiᶜi was even executed for apostasy in September of 1992. See Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia: An Upsurge in Public Executions (1993), 6.

18. See, for example, “Bishop's Killing Puts Focus on Persecution in Iran,” New York Times, 6 February 1994, 20; Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, 178–80.

19. An English translation of the declaration is included in a UN General Assembly publication: Status of Preparation of Publications, Studies and Documents for the World Conference; Note by the Secretariat. Addendum. Contribution of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, at 3–10, A/CONF.157/PC/62/ Add. 18 (1993).

20. See “Meeting on Human Rights in Islam Ends,” Xinhua General News Service, 28 December 1989, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

21. See ibid. In actuality, Iran's relations with a number of fellow OIC members were seriously troubled, and, without official explanation, the meeting took place in the absence of twenty member countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey.

22. For discussion of these conflicts see Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “Universal versus Islamic Human Rights: A Clash of Cultures or a Clash with a Construct?” Michigan Journal of International Law 15 (1994): 348–50Google Scholar.

23. For example, there were no provisions whatsoever in the Cairo declaration that would support democratic government. Although Iran's practice was less than democratic, the constitution did provide for elements of democracy.

24. The “Islamic” rights provisions set forth in the Saudi Arabian Basic Law of 1992 differ from those in the declaration, and the latter in turn differ from the “Islamic” rights in the Iranian constitution. See Mayer, “Universal versus Islamic Human Rights,” 348–49, 363–64. As a state following a secular Baathist ideology, Iraq's views on the public role of Islam differed greatly from those of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

25. See Vichniac, Isabelle, “La Commission internationale de juristes dénonce un projet de ‘déclaration des droits de l'homme en Islam,'” Le Monde, 13 February 1992, 6Google Scholar.

26. Ibid.

27. As a scholar who has carefully examined possible counterparts of modern human rights in traditional cultures has concluded, “dignity” may be a concomitant of one's ascribed status and is granted to the adult “who adheres to his or her society's values, customs, and norms,” “who accepts normative cultural constraints on his or her particular behavior.” See Howard, Rhoda, “Dignity, Community, and Human Rights,” in Abdullahi An-Naᶜim, ed., Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 83Google Scholar.

28. Ibid., 84.

29. That is, women are recognized by the law as persons—unlike slaves. (For example, a woman has rights vis-à-vis her husband, whereas a slave has no rights vis-à-vis her master, being effectively treated like a commodity.)

30. See Mayer, Islam and Human Rights, 163–87. Examples of the Muslim minorities affected by official discrimination and persecution are the Ahmadis of Pakistan, the Shiᶜis of Saudi Arabia, and the Republicans of the Sudan.

31. At the time the Cairo declaration was drawn up the issue had already been raised by the Rushdie affair and the execution in the Sudan of Mahmud Muhammad Taha as an apostate in 1985, in addition to other less famous cases. See Mayer, Ann Elizabeth, “The Fundamentalist Impact on Law, Politics, and Constitutions in Iran, Pakistan, and the Sudan,” in Marty, Martin E. and Appleby Scott, R., eds., Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies and Militance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 117Google Scholar, 125, 137. Since then, the problem has only grown worse. Among recent targets of persecution is the Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen, who was attacked as an apostate in 1994 and who remains threatened by extremists. The influential Egyptian secularist Farag Fuda was assassinated after being condemned by fundamentalists as an apostate in 1992, and the eminent Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, denounced as an apostate by fundamentalists, narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1994. The Egyptian professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid was forced to take refuge in the Netherlands after being condemned in 1995 by a court as an apostate by reason of his scholarship. The case of Professor ᶜAbd al-Karim Sorush, discussed below, is another example.

32. In setting up such a committee, Iran was acting like other countries that have been eager to improve their images after they were tarnished by criticisms made by independent NGOs. Realizing that NGOs have more credibility in human rights fo rums than do governmental spokespersons, a number of countries have found it expedient to set up human rights organizations that superficially resemble NGOs but that actually function as instruments of government propaganda. As these have proliferated, they have come to be known among authentic human rights advocates as “GONGOs,” an acronym for “governmental non-governmental organizations.”

33. See Roger Thurow, “Human Rights Take a Beating as UN Meets,” Wall Street Journal, 25–26 June 1993, A8.

34. “Islam Guarantees Human Rights, Says Saud,” Riyadh Daily, 17 June 1993, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

35. See, for example, the March 1995 response by Ayatollah Yazdi, cited below, to an unfavorable UN report on the human rights situation in Iran.

36. Dr. H. E. Mohammad-Javad Zarif, deputy foreign minister and head of delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran, “Statement before the World Conference on Human Rights,” 18 June 1993.

37. “Murder of Defectors Shows the Face of Baghdad—Iran,” Reuters, 24 February 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

38. Saudi Arabia—Nov. 15—Iran Reaction, IAC (SM) Newsletter Database (TM) Arab Press Service Diplomat Reporter, 18 November 1995, available in LEXISNEXIS Library.

39. BBC SWB EE/D2451/ME, 2 November 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

40. Its stance on the Cairo declaration has already been noted. Saudi Arabia has consistently upheld the idea that Islamic law is the only law on its territory (other measures having the lower status of regulations or administrative rules), and its 1992 Basic Law affirms in Article 1 that it is an Islamic state, that Islam is the state religion, and that the Qurᵓan and the sunna are its constitution. Article 7 affirms that the latter constitute the supreme law in the country.

41. For example, in 1985, then-President Khamenaᵓi had denounced laxity in the observance of Ḥejāb and called for the prosecution of immorality, indecency, and acts contrary to public chastity. See BBC SWB ME/7934/A/3, 25 April 1985, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. To remind women of the consequences of not wearing the concealing chādor, a circular was published in 1985 saying that women who appeared in public “without wearing a religious veil” would be punished with up to 74 lashes (ibid., A/4). To stop laxity in Islamic dress among government employees, government ministries and departments were told to execute strictly the orders for observance of Islamic dress (ibid., A/6).

42. Thus, in 1996 Ayatollah Khazᶜali professed that he was not happy about standards of dress and called for confronting people who “want to spread the bad use of the hijab with hostile intentions.” See BBC SWB EE/D2666/ME, 17 July 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. As these remarks were made in the context of a denunciation of Iranians who criticized the clerical regime, “bad Ḥejāb” was obviously being associated with other manifestations of political dissent.

43. See “Crackdown on Improperly Dressed Women Is ‘Duty': Rafsanjani,” Agence France Presse, 22 June 1993; “It's the Whip for Breaking Islamic Dress Code,” Agence France Presse, 24 June 1993, both available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

44. See Hedges, Chris, “Mobilizing against Pop Music and Other Horrors,” New York Times, 21 July 1993Google Scholar, A4.

45. One needs to be aware of the wide gap separating official ideologized versions of culture and what people actually treat as their own cultural norms. Cultural relativists who unquestioningly defer to official constructs of culture where rights are concerned fail to perceive this gap. A perceptive scholar has noted the general imprudence of allowing governments wide discretion in defining what rights are culturally acceptable: “Relativism clearly has a tremendous capacity to serve as the rhetorical justification for repressive practices by ruling elites. The fact that relativism is most often supported by repressive regimes … is ample grounds for a healthy skepticism regarding vague claims of cultural or ideological necessity for deviations from the specific requirements of human rights norms.” See Donoho, Douglas Lee, “Relativism versus Universalism in Human Rights: The Search for Meaningful Standards,” Stanford Law Review 27 (1991): 380Google Scholar. If skepticism is generally warranted about the good faith of regimes that deny human rights pursuant to official constructs of culture, a very high degree of skepticism is called for where the groups that are being denied rights are ones excluded from the governing elites, as women are in both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

46. For example, this was the tack taken by the Saudi minister of the interior in attempting to discredit the women who participated in the Riyadh driving demonstration in November 1990. See Khalid Nazir, “Women's Demo Was A Stupid Act, Says Naif,” Middle East News Network, 16 November 1990, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. See also the condemnations of the women in the 1990 Riyadh driving protest by Saudi conservatives and the muṭāwwa in Caesar, Judith, “Big Saudi Brother,” Christian Science Monitor, 4 January 1991, 18Google Scholar. For a typical charge that there was a Western conspiracy to corrupt Iranian women by propagating Western culture, put forward by President Rafsanjani, see FBIS-NES-90–004, 7 January 1991, 51. This echoed the militant perspective that President ᶜAli Khamena'i had articulated earlier, before his elevation to the office of faqīh. He had railed against corruption and immorality (meaning in the context of freedom for women) as being propagated by Western colonialist powers as part of a plot against the Islamic revolution. See BBC SWB ME/7934/A/2, 25 April 1985.

47. See “Final Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” 37–38.

48. Commission on Human Rights, Economic and Social Council, 49th session, Agenda Item 12, at 7, E/CN.4/1993/41/Add. 1, at 7–8.

49. Since the revolution, it has been regarded as “un-Islamic” for men to wear ties or unconventional, unduly revealing, eye-catching clothing. Because Iranian men can otherwise dress in Western garb, their freedom to wear what they choose is not substantially curbed.

50. BBC SWB, ME/2126/MED, 14 October 1994, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

51. BBC SWB ME/2141/MED, 1 November 1994, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

52. BBC SWB ME/2126/MED, 14 October 1994, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

53. Thus, for example, the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, External Service, Tehran, condemned a report of his as “a bunch of lies.” See BBC SWB ME/2171/ MED, 6 December 1994, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. An earlier human rights report by Galindo Pohl had been attacked by the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran as “a useless and baseless fiction motivated by ill-intentioned political objectives” and “the direct and uninvestigated reporting of blatant lies of dependent, mercenary and terrorist grouplets.” See “Foreign Ministry Rejects UN Report on Human Rights Violations in Iran,” BBC SWB ME/18 507MED, 19 November 1993, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

54. “UN Report Accuses Iran of Human Rights Violations,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 20 February 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

55. BBC SWB, ME/2222/MED, 8 February 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

56. “Iran Consents to Visit by UN Human Rights Chief,” Xinhua News Agency, 3 December 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

57. BBC SWB EE/D2495/ME, 8 December 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

58. “Idea of Human Rights Unknown in Iran: UN Rapporteur,” Agence France Presse, 30 March 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

59. “Not A Single Political Prisoner in Iran—Says Chief Judge,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 19 April 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

60. The double standards that the United States and other Western countries have used in getting the UN to overlook rights abuses by friendly regimes and to target hostile regimes for condemnation have become notorious and are deeply resented. In March 1996, the outgoing Malaysian chair of the UN Human Rights Commission attacked the West for condemning human rights abuses in some states while letting its allies “literally get away with murder.” He complained: “The biggest obstacle to achieving understanding in the field of human rights is the political factor that is injected into discussions almost every time it arises at the international fora. We see double standards again and again. The word is … that if you want to abuse human rights make sure that you are the best of friends of the big powers that matter, then you can get away with it.” See “UN Rights Chairman Slams Western Hypocrisy,” Reuters, 15 March 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

61. BBC SWB EE/D2488/ME, 15 December 1995 (record of an English report by IRNA), available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

62. See “UN Condemns Iran on Human Rights,” Agence France Presse, 8 March 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

63. Ibid.

64. The notion that anyone could be arbitrarily condemned to death without a fair trial and without an opportunity to offer a defense is incompatible with fundamental principles of modern criminal justice, which are also recognized in Iran's constitution in articles 35 and 36. The fact that Ayatollah Khomeini presumed that his interpretation of Islamic criminal law could justify an order to kill a British citizen for conduct outside Iran's territory that was protected by European and international standards of freedom of expression and religious freedom made the death sentence seem an even more flagrant violation of international norms. As there was no criminal law in force defining Rushdie's acts as a crime, imposing any criminal sanction violated the principle that there can be no prosecution in the absence of an applicable criminal statute, one of the protections most central to criminal justice as established in human rights law. This same principle is included in Iran's constitution in Article 169. In addition, the fact that persons were encouraged by a monetary reward to kill Rushdie made the whole arrangement look like the kind of contract murder that is associated with organized crime, something impossible to square with basic notions of legality. That Rezvani nonetheless felt he should try to persuade people that Iran was in compliance with international law suggests that he was either very cynical or very confused about the applicable legal standards.

65. BBC SWB EE/D2488/ME, 15 December 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

66. BBC SWB ME/2244/MED, 6 March 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

67. BBC SWB ME/2176/MED, 12 Dec 1994, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

68. “Rushdie Killing ‘A Muslim Duty,'” The Independent, 12 April 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

69. Decrying efforts of “antifreedom groups that distort the lofty name and good image of this country in the eyes of foreigners and future generations,” Sorush has maintained that “the thing that will guarantee the permanence of our beliefs is freedom, without which nothing can be permanent.” See BBC SWB EE/D2510/ME, 15 January 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

70. BBC SWB EE/D2451/ME, 2 November 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. Ayatollah Abol-Qasem Khazcali, a member of the Council of Guardians, has asserted that anyone who characterizes the system of veldyat-e faqīh as dictatorial is an apostate. See BBC SWB EE/D266/ME, 17 July 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. Ayatollah Jannati asserted that Iran needed unity to confront the United States, so that “bringing up issues of any kind that cause rifts … that are exploited by the enemy, and feed foreign propaganda, this is truly treason.” See “Iran: Waiting for the Big Debate,” Reuter Textline, Middle East Economic Digest, 6 November 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

71. BBC SWB EE/D2510/ME, 15 January 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

72. In a statement made on Iranian television on 10 December 1995, the anniversary of the UDHR, Ayatollah Yazdi proclaimed: “There are no political prisoners in Iran and no one has been detained and imprisoned on account of his or her political beliefs.” See BBC SWB EE/D2484/ME, 12 December 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. The efforts to rehabilitate the regime's image with regard to its treatment of dissident intellectuals may have been prompted in part by the damaging publicity concerning the 1994 arrest and subsequent mysterious death in custody of the eminent man of letters ᶜAli Akbar Saᶜidi-Sirjani, which had occasioned both domestic and international criticism of official repression and brutality. For consideration of aspects of this case in the context of a provocative critique of how scholarship on the Islamic Republic has dealt with human rights issues, see Afshari, Reza, “An Essay on Scholarship, Human Rights, and State Legitimacy: The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Human Rights Quarterly 18 (August 1996): 561–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73. BBC SWB ME/2250/MED, 13 March 1995, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

74. See “World Needs Iranian Oil: Iranian Oil Minister,” Xinhua News Agency, 8 August 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library.

75. “Iran to File Suit against US Covert Action ‘within Days,'” Agence France Presse, 8 August 1996, available in LEXIS-NEXIS Library. *The author wishes to thank professors Najmedin Meshkati and Houchang E. Chehabi for their kind encouragement and insightful comments. He is also thankful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors at Iranian Studies for their substantial contributions to the essay.