PERSPECTIVE: The Spiritual Foundation of Human Rights
Human rights are essentially a codification of mainly spiritual laws which are themselves the cumulative achievement of the world’s religious traditions.
[Editor's note: The following Perspective is adapted from a keynote address delivered by Dr. Suheil Bushrui at the 21st annual conference of the Association for Bahá'í Studies on 15 November 1997. Dr. Bushrui holds the Bahá'í Chair for World Peace at the University of Maryland, USA.]
The recognition of human rights under international law is relatively recent, but the philosophy underlying the concept is ancient. In such texts as the Babylonian code of Hammurabi, the rulings of the ancient Israeli Sanhedrin banning torture and limiting the use of capital punishment, the Islamic legislation on rights of women, the English Magna Carta, the US Declaration of Independence, the nineteenth century conventions outlawing the slave trade, and the post-World War II Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the shape and form of a global moral order has been created.
The questions that human rights address are perennial. What does it mean to be a human being? What is the purpose of life on this earth? What should our intellectual and emotional attitude towards one another be? These very questions are central to religious thought and practice. From this perspective, we can discern that one of the chief drawbacks in our approach to human rights concerns the method of presenting them as a code of civil and moral law, and perhaps as a product of Western civilization, when in fact human rights are essentially a codification of mainly spiritual laws which are themselves the cumulative achievement of the world's religious traditions.
Our moral laws have come to us through the religions that have enriched us as human beings. The source of our morality is God, the unknowable essence. The source of human rights, therefore, lies in the immortal words of all scripture.
Underlying the astounding diversity of traditions that have developed there lies a common foundation manifested in their cosmological, eschatological, and theological teachings - teachings about our origins, our destinies, and the nature of the divine. Again we must emphasize the critical awareness from which human rights spring: the forms are many but the essence is one.
This underlying unity is eloquently articulated in the ethical systems of different faiths, as in the teaching that we should treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated, otherwise known as "The Golden Rule" and found, in different formulations, in the Hindu Mahábhárata, the Jewish Talmud, the Zoroastrian Dádistan-í-Díník, the Buddhist Udana-Varqa, the Christian Gospel of Saint Matthew, the Islamic Hadíth, and in Bahá'u'lláh's Kalimát-i-Firdawsíyyih.
The greatest impediment to unity in the post-Cold War world is not political ideology but rather religious-cultural discord. If a universal system of human rights is to be achieved, men and women of faith need to see each other with the eye of Him who created us all.
The challenge facing us, of course, is to overcome the misunderstandings and prejudices that are the cause of strife between the different religions, and instead build upon the fundamental beliefs that they hold in common. The human race enjoys a shared religious-cultural heritage, for ultimately culture and civilization are built upon religion. When we begin to search out the universal truths that we agree upon, we shall find ourselves collectively manifesting "the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment." In the words of 'Abdu'l-Bahá: "If we investigate the religions to discover the principles underlying their foundation, we will find they agree, for the fundamental reality of them is one and not multiple."
The time has come for us to carefully examine the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and to find the underlying morality in humanity's various spiritual traditions. From such a perspective we can see that religious differences are matters of form, but never of essential principles. For example, what religion does not teach the value of every individual person as a manifestation of God's divine grace? If every religion recognizes the existence of individual souls and the relationship between that soul and its Creator, then every religion agrees on the fundamental basis of human rights: human beings enjoy certain inalienable rights that no worldly authority may capriciously or systematically abrogate.
It is precisely the contention that human rights are universal and may not be infringed upon by governments that makes the concept of such rights so controversial and problematic in the world today. What is important to our discussion of human rights is that state sovereignty and its appurtenance, cultural exclusivity, are major impediments to a system of universal human rights. The idea that certain principles and institutions, such as participatory democracy, are simply alien to particular peoples is encapsulated within the notion of "cultural relativism."
In theory, cultural relativism is the reasonable idea that certain social, economic, cultural, and political practices are inherent to particular groups, and that the abrupt, artificial introduction of alien influences can be disruptive. In practice, however, cultural relativism is often employed by ruling elites as a pretext for opposing homegrown reform movements that threaten their power or status.
The knowledge and practice of human rights must be universalized by means of education and access to relevant information. Crucial to the diffusion of the concept of human rights is Article 18 of the UDHR, which serves as a point upon which the world's religions can cooperate in realizing this goal. Article 18 reads: "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."
Any attempt at achieving a just order in the world will not be possible without a prior transformation of faith through the retrieval of our common spiritual heritage.
The religious systems of the world, evolving as they have at different times and under diverse circumstances, embody numerous and varied responses to humanity's innate sense of the transcendent. Yet they share much in common, including the historical continuum in which the different responses have been produced. Much valuable work has been done to bring diverse religious thought together, including the initiation of religious dialogues, the building of models of tolerance, the cultivation of religious toleration, and the adoption of a common ethic of human rights. Hans Küng tersely but with unchallengeable eloquence captured the importance of inter-religious understanding with this formulation: "There can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions."
The approach of the Bahá'í Faith to the question of the unity of ethics and vision is encapsulated in the concept of progressive revelation. The foundation for the establishment of religious peace and the promotion of human rights is the acceptance of the essential unity of the Founders of all religions. Each is the successor and fulfillment of the One who has preceded Him, and the Herald of the One who is to succeed Him. Through these Messengers, appearing at different historical periods and in various regions of the earth, the one true Creator has communicated His will and purpose to mankind, granting successively greater outpourings of religious truth and affording an ever fuller apprehension of the divine.
But at root and in their inmost essence the messages thus conveyed are one. Only by establishing a universal system of human rights, embodying an understanding of the underlying truth and unity of all religions, can we hope to establish genuine and lasting peace.
