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HERBERT HANREICH Despite much rarer occurrences of the term Sharia the new version conspicuously often stresses the importance of national sovereignty, cementing political and religious priority over the individual, since many OIC Member states have introduced Sharia legislation. Subseguently, commentators have concluded that "there appears to be a legal trick behind all this rhetoric which leaves us with a notion that is completely empty...””” Let us go back and have a look at the crucial paragraphs of the CDHR that deal with its foundation. Basically, there is only one paragraph — to be found in the Preamble — that hints at the ‘transcendental’ sources from where those provisions originate; it is what comes closest to a ‘foundation’ of Islamic human rights in that document: “Believing that fundamental rights and freedoms according to Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion and ... they are binding divine commands, which are contained in the Revealed Books of Allah... [as]...divine messages and that safeguarding those fundamental rights and freedoms is an act of worship whereas the neglect or violation thereof is an abominable sin...” (my emphasis). A culture that takes its most fundamental rights of its people as deriving from divine commands, revealed as divine messages that must be worshipped, has the tremendous and unenvious task to explain, first, why anybody else from a different culture should take those rights seriously and, second, what rights would have those who happen to live in that very same culture but do not share such revealed insights. Apparently, those infidels commit abominable sins for which they must be punished accordingly. The CDHR clearly states that faithful Muslims must not consider non-Muslims as equal. There is no wiggle room for other interpretations. Asian values We have a similar problem with so-called ‘Asian values’, a set of principles designed to offer a counter-view to existing human rights purportedly on the basis of Confucianism. The main document containing those principles — The Bangkok Declaration of Human Rights (BDHR) — emerged from regional preparatory meetings for the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, just like the CDHR. The nations that signed the BDHR have been authoritarian states as well". 2 Mozaffari, OIC Declaration, 25. B A very brief but quite useful overview on background and political implications invoking ‘Asian Values’ can be found in: Susan J. Henders, Asian Values, Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Asian-values#ref338316. + 276 +
