Human Rights and Reformist Islam

Mohsen Kadivar is Research Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University. One of the most original and prolific figures of the Iranian reform movement, he is a versatile theologian, philosopher and intellectual historian who has written ground-breaking books on human rights and Islam, Islamic political thought, and Islamic philosophy and theology. His forthcoming 'Islamic Theocracy in the Secular Age' will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2021. Kadivar has been a vocal critic of Iran’s doctrine of clerical rule and a strong advocate of democratic and liberal reforms in Iran as well as constructional reform in shari'a and Shi'a theology. He has served time in prison in Iran for his political activism and beliefs; his writings have been banned in Iran since 2009. Mirjam Kuenkler is Research Professor at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include Female Religious Authority in Shiʿi Islam: Past and Present, Edinburgh University Press, 2021; A Secular Age Beyond the West, Cambridge University Press, 2018; Democracy and Islam in Indonesia, Columbia University Press, 2013; and the forthcoming The Rule of Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Power, Institutions, and Prospects for Reform, Cambridge University Press, among others. She is a PI of the Iran Data Portal, co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Law and Religion, co-editor of the Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and Politics, and a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Islam in Asia (Brill), the Digest of Middle East Studies (Wiley), the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Wiley), and Iranian Studies (Cambridge). In 2023, Künkler was elected President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS). Niki Akhavan is Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Media and Communication Studies at The Catholic University of America and author of Electronic Iran (Rutgers University Press, 2013). She has been a Persian-English translator for over 20 years.

In this pathbreaking work, Mohsen Kadivar, a leading Muslim theologian and religious scholar, presents an authoritative and systematic methodology for interpreting, reforming, and applying Islam’s sacred teachings and juridical rulings in ways that would make them compatible with universally accepted norms of human rights. By including freedom of thought, civil and minority rights, religious tolerance, and gender equality, as well as human security and economic rights, Kadivar offers a progressive vision of Islam that could serve as a basis—not for political power and state governance—but as a spiritual and ethical guide for believers and a foundation for a secular, pluralistic and egalitarian civil society.

• Foreword: Revising Shariʿa in the light of the Universal Declaration of Human RightsMirjam KünklerPreface to the English TranslationMohsen KadivarIntroductionSection I: The Bases for Discussions on Islam and Human Rights1. From Traditional Islam to End-Oriented Islam2. The Principles of Compatibility between Islam and Modernity3. An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islamic CultureSection II: Islam and Human Rights4. Imam Sajjad and the Rights of Mankind5. Human Rights and Reformist Islam6. Questions and Answers about Human Rights and Reformist Islam7. Human Rights, Secularism, and ReligionSection III: Freedoms of Belief, Religion, and Politics8. The Freedom of Belief and Religion in Islam and Human Rights Documents9. The Rights of the Political Opposition in an Islamic SocietySection IV: Women’s Rights10. Reformist Islam and Women’s Rights11. Women’s Rights in the Hereafter (A Theological Reading of the Qurʾan)Section V: Other Debates in Human Rights12. The Issue of Slavery in Contemporary Islam13. The Rights of Non-Muslims in Contemporary Islam14. Social Security in Islamic TeachingsBibliography and Sources; Glossary; Index