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How do Arab Muslims view individual rights and justice?

Updated: 8/18/2019
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7y ago

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Arab Muslims view individual rights and justice fairly in most countries. Most Arabian or Muslim countries allow other religions to come. In some Muslim or Arabian countries, you will face persecution if you are not Muslim. They would either make you leave or do something else.

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7y ago
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8y ago

As this question asks about "rights and justice", which are two distinct things, this answer will be split between discussing "rights" and discussing "justice".

Concerning Rights:
The first thing we need to do is separate purely political freedoms from social freedoms. (Note that I am using definitions of these things that are distinct from those in typical Human Rights discourse.) What I mean by this is that there are some freedoms like the right to vote, the right to protest, the right to be free from random property seizures, etc. which are rights that concern how the government interacts with the citizens and what abilities the citizens have to challenge the government. These are political freedoms. Then there are things like, women's rights (dating, marriage, divorce, prostitution), blasphemy rights (insensitive or intolerant speech directed at Islam), freedoms concerning dress, drug access etc. These are about how the citizens behave together in society and interact with each other. These are social freedoms.

As concerns political freedoms, there is really no debate in the Arab World about this. Most Arabs want the right to vote, want the right to protest, want property protections, want fair and equitable trials, etc. Only really hardcore Islamists oppose the right to vote because they hold that the Sharia is not up for democratic scrutiny or approval, but this is a minority. The only thing I would note here is that Arabs generally do not support counter-majoritarianism, which is crucial in most liberal democracies. This is the idea that the rights of the minority supersede the desires/will of the majority. Arabs are generally of the opinion that if you are the majority, you get to dictate terms to the losers.

As concerns social freedoms, it becomes a lot murkier. There are a number of different things operating in tandem when we talk about social freedoms. Probably the most important to note at the outset is the concept of family honor. In the West, a person is responsible for his own choices. For example, if your sister chooses to do drugs, any negativity or shame that may be associated with that choice falls squarely on her. Nobody will treat you, your parents, or your family any worse because of your sister's actions, even if they treat her worse. She is seen to be her own person with her own choices. The Arab World does not function this way; each person is a representative of the family. If we take the drug-user example, her parents would lose face in the community for her actions. Her decision would be seen as reflective of their failure to properly raise her as a child. Her brothers would lose face as well because they did not prevent her from humiliating herself. As a result, parents implore and guilt-trip their children into preserving the family honor, which has profound implications on desiring social freedoms.

Many in the younger generation (30 and under) want increased social freedoms, even though their elders would refuse. They do not want things like legalized prostitution, but, for example, many girls want the right to openly date a boyfriend, many boys would like to have increased freedoms to pursue "Non-Islamic" interests - like music or sports - instead of being expected to be molded into the next patriarch of the family. However, if they openly advocated for these types of views, contrary to their parents' will and contrary to current societal norms, they would dishonor the family. Therefore, much of this goes on underground or only comes to light in countries where secret ballots can actually be cast. The countries that actually have more social freedoms (like Tunisia and Morocco) can get away with it by blatantly get away with it by claiming that they are less Arab. (In Tunisia, they usually refer to "Non-Islamic" things they do as "a la tunisienne". Lebanon also has more social freedoms since the country was founded by Maronite Christians and Christians still make up >40% of the population, providing an excuse for all of the socially dishonorable activities.

On the flip side we also have a rising number of people (but still a relative minority) in the younger generation who see Islamism and Jihadism as the only ways to achieve a long term solution from the Imperialist Humiliation and are actively becoming more conservative than their parents' generation. This has the effect of enforcing the honor shaming of those who do want to pursue more social freedoms. In fact, it has become much more culturally toxic to push for increased social freedoms in the Arab World ever since the 1970s when a number of regimes began to cater to Islamism and Jihadism, promoting their popularity and setting a new standard for honorable/shameful behavior.

Concerning Justice
The word "justice" is itself relatively nebulous and open to much interpretation. The issue is that justice is wholly dependent on what a group of people believe is the proper set of consequences for a particular action. Since these beliefs are different in different places, we should be careful when asking whether or not someone believes in justice, but rather we should ask whether or not the legal consequences that they believe are merited are those that we would believe are merited.

In most interactions, Western concepts of justice, such as honesty (both in interpersonal relations and business transactions), hospitality, equality of people, and accountability for past actions are adhered to and believed in by most Arab Muslims. The divergence between Western concepts of justice and Arab Muslim concepts of justice goes back to questions of social rights and the penal code. The majority of Arab Muslims are in support of Shari'a penalties, such as punishments (up to and including death) for apostasy, homosexuality, and blasphemy. The majority also sees corporal punishment for theft as desirable (or at least acceptable). In the Western perception, these are unjust specifically because Westerners do not believe that these are the appropriate consequences for those particular actions.

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