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Universal human rights suffer from a lack of consensus on the question: what kind of internal state organisation can actually take these fundamental rights adequately into account? The main intent of this article is to present a critical assessment of various modes of state–religion affiliation and their effects on the state’s scope for human rights compliance. A special focus will be on the right to freedom of religion or belief since this fundamental right is within this context most profoundly at stake. It will be contended that states which are organised in accordance with the principle of state neutrality can in principle fully comply with human rights norms; while states which identify themselves either positively with a single religious denomination or excessively negatively with religion have to be considered poorly equipped for both democratisation as well as optimal human rights compliance. The crucial issue of ‘multivocality’ of religions will be addressed as a contribution to the reform debate. Ultimately a case will be made for ‘the right to neutral governance’.

The Enlightenment's distinction between positive and natural religion furnishes a useful point of departure for thinking about the relationship, in today's world, between religion and human rights.  According to eighteenth century rationalism, natural religion consists in the simplest form of those beliefs that reason can admit to without contradiction, such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul (Voltaire); whereas positive religions are merely the multitude of diverging institutions, dogmas, ceremonies and beliefs that human beings have created for themselves during the course of history.  In natural religion, consciousness finds divinity within itself, and thus is co-responsible for the laws that it constructs and obeys; in positive religion, God imposes His commands from without.  Despite their differences, however, both forms of religion rely on the same conception of temporality to make their claims understood:  they conceive of time as a pure linear sequence (t1, t2, t3, etc.) that is divided into the tripartite form of past, present, and future.  For positive religion, this structure supports the existence of a well-formed past-time during which sacred grounds for respecting human rights were first revealed to a privileged founder; the record of this past-time, in the form of holy writ, then becomes a stable meaning which is thought to ground (and require) any subsequent action that aspires to be righteous.  And while natural religion, for its part, attempts to avoid dogmatism by permitting practical reason to deduce right action from the God-given moral law within, the very concept of deduction in general entails the same tripartite structure of time:  that is, rational people can lay down the law for themselves only in a past-time which, even if it is very recent, must always precede (and hence pre-authorize) the rightness of all right action. According to positive religion, God gives people moral laws; according to natural religion, God gives them a faculty (reason) that allows them to produce valid moral laws for themselves.  Just like the conventional idea of positive law in general, both forms of religion display a kind of pre-rational "faith," so to speak, in what can and should happen after the moral law comes into being.  That is, law, natural religion, and positive religion all adhere to the proposition that the past in general—and appropriately sanctioned human rights norms, in particular—can provide a secure foundation for right action, both in the present and in the future. <br />But of course philosophers are hardly ever univocal when it comes to this or any other topic.  Against the foregoing conventional interpretation of time, Western thought has also delivered us an altogether different concept of temporality, one that supplants sequential time's staid historiography of dates, laws and eras with the notion of "historical" time (Heidegger).  The latter is characterized by the sheer persistence of a unitary spatial-temporal milieu that ceaselessly reproduces itself.  Although this unity supports all modes of becoming, it provides no stable pause, or platform, on which a secure foundation for action could ever be established definitively, once and for all (Nietzsche).  To paraphrase Walter Benjamin, the concept of this sort of temporality holds that the true site of history is not homogeneous, empty time, but rather time filled by the presence of the now (Die Jetztzeit).  From this point of view, time does not "pass"; rather, human beings are seen as living their entire lives in (or as) a now-time in which they are caught, inescapably, between the warring forces of past and future.  Franz Kafka's extraordinary parable, He, paints an image that vividly illustrates this concept of time: <br />  <br />He has two antagonists:  the first presses him from behind, from the origin.  The second blocks the road ahead.  He gives battle to both.  To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back.  But it is only theoretically so.  For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions?  His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded momentCand this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yetChe will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other. <br />Kafka's man is a figure for human freedom:  the fateful "place," as it were, where the struggle between past and future eternally transpires.  But this human freedom should not be confused with the kind in which reason lays down or acknowledges universal laws that then warrant the rightness of future actions (Kant), or even with the kind of Hegelian freedom that permits the individual to recognize and identify with the rational universal that is immanent within the institutions of his time and place.  Nor is this a non-rational, religious, sort of freedom, founded on grace or revelation, by means of which one can let oneself become a vehicle for accomplishing God's will (Meister Eckhart).  Rather, the kind of freedom that besets the man in Kafka's parable is tragic, in the precise Greek sense that it betrays itself as un-free and self-defeating whatever it does.  This is why the man dreams, impossibly, of escaping from the fighting line, for having to constantly experience oneself as the living site of a tragic confrontation between past and future is far less comforting than resting on the self-certain knowledge that one's actions are grounded on an absolute and indubitable foundation. <br />The difference between historiographical time and historical time corresponds to the differences between subservience and freedom, thought and action, and determinacy and indeterminacy.  Linear time attempts to reconcile reason and history by giving human rights a proper ground; but as Goethe says, in the beginning was the deed, not the word.  Unitary time is history by providing a site for the inherently groundless enactment of human rights; but as Kant says, intuitions without concepts are blind.  This essay elucidates the rich contrast between these two modes of temporality, and meditates on their significance for the task of thinking about the relationship between religion and human rights.

Peaceful co-existence is a universal but elusive aspiration. Despite the search for tools to create a peaceful world, conflict remains between nations and within nations. The fostering of peace is a question to which scholars, religious leaders and politicians put their minds, but despite this attention the paradox remains that there is little evidence that local and global conflict have subsided. Ideally the key to providing solutions can be found in the tenets of the world’s major religions and cultural traditions and in the musing of some of the great philosophy voices of past and modern times. Regrettably these tenets are often absent in education systems where there are limited endeavours to encourage young people to think locally and globally about social justice, peace and human rights. Many of the current ways of imparting knowledge of human rights and peace are limited, with the emphasis on the legal aspect alone and on international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Although the UDHR is an inspiring document given that its creation stemmed from a commitment to all humanity, its uncritical acceptance negates the critiques about western dominance. Arguably, unless humankind can find a way to grapple with the tension between universal and relativist approaches to human rights by acknowledging diversity, the search for peace and social justice will be limited. This paper contemplates the creation of human rights understandings beyond legal constructs to explore how human rights concepts can be invoked through education to reduce ignorance, prejudice, religious intolerance and fear that detracts from the goal of peaceful co-existence. It explores the question of responsibility to ‘the other’, a form of responsibility that is not apparent in the clash of cultures and the conflict between nations. The paper suggests a schema for human rights understandings based on philosophical, political, historical, anthropological, legal and practical approaches to human rights. This includes forging the connection between theory and practice; engaging in critical pedagogy through a process of collaborative dialogue and inquiry; being familiar with the historical origins of human rights and their application; and understanding that concepts of human rights are found in every cultural and religious tradition.  In advocating such a schema it draws on examples that present barriers and prospects and in so doing outlines the endeavours that take place in the inter-disciplinary Master of Human Rights program at Curtin University in Australia as a model that may be adaptable to other contexts. The paper concludes by suggesting practical ways in which the schema could be enacted including through a lifetime educational commitment to human rights through historical and philosophical understandings, inter-faith dialogue and cultural exchanges.

Contemporary Europe is undoubtedly a largely secular region where the notion that secularism and ‘progress’ are intertwined has long held sway. Religion in the public sphere is, for many Europeans, associated with emergent or conservative societies, whereas secularism is equated with modernism and seen as an indispensable component of modern governance. Recently, both domestic and European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case-law has highlighted the obvious tensions that arise in the manifestation of religion in the European public sphere. While Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights affords everyone the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (while allowing for certain limitations as imposed by domestic authorities), in matters related to religion, ECtHR has adopted a deferential attitude towards domestic authorities in the determination of the parameters of this right. This is reflected in the fact that it was not until 1993, some thirty-five years after the Court commenced operating, that a violation of Article 9 of the Convention was found. The Court’s jurisprudence on the Article is therefore somewhat troubling and nowhere is this more aptly illustrated than in the jurisprudence relating to the wearing of the Islamic headscarf. Recent case-law in fact suggests that in that the wearing of the headscarf is viewed both as being incompatible with the principle of gender equality and in direct opposition to the principle of secularism. Through the lens of recent Article 9 jurisprudence, this paper will assess the trends emerging in the European Court’s consideration of Islam. Discussion of relevant cases will include Dahlab v. Switzerland, Karaduman v. Turkey, Leyla Şahin v. Turkey, Refah Partisi (The Welfare Party) and Others v. Turkey as well as analysis of cases occurring at the domestic level, most notably the Teacher Headscarf Case of the German Constitutional Court and the English decision of R (on the application of Begum (by her litigation friend, Rahman)) v. Headteacher and Governors of Denbigh High School. This paper also seeks to challenge the ECtHR reasoning in the area of expression of religion (and particularly where that religion is Islam) by analysing the question of religion in the public sphere in the broader European context. There is in fact increasing evidence to suggest that Europe is undergoing a period of de-secularisation, a reality routinely ignored by the European Court of Human Rights.

Selective adaptation describes the process by which international legal rules are contextualized to local conditions. The institutional and cultural contexts for selective adaptation involve a process by which non-local institutional practices and organizational forms are mediated by local norms. This process can be illustrated by reference to the local implementation of international human rights regimes.<br /> Selective adaptation is made possible by ways in which governments, elites, and other interpretive communities express their own normative preferences in the course of interpretation and application of practice rules. Selective adaptation depends on a number of factors, including perception, complementarity, and legitimacy. Perception influences understanding about foreign and local norms and practices. Originally a principle of nuclear physics, complementarity describes a circumstance by which apparently contradictory phenomena can be combined in ways that preserve essential characteristics of each component and yet allow for them to operate together in a mutually reinforcing and effective manner.

As Human Rights are supposed to be equal for all human beings leaving any social differences away there must be ways found to educate the population in Human Rights matters. One of the ways for Human Rights education is Religion. Religion is the link between the people of one society that does not care for social and educational differences. There is no need for high education to believe and to confess to a religion. But also in times of insecurity, e.g. wars or catastrophes, people tend to be more religious than in times of peace and are seeking help and moral advice from their religious leaders. <br />By attending religious ceremonies people get informed not only about religious matters but also about political ones as religious institutions are also a place for exchanging knowledge. An important role plays the religious leader as he can have a great influence esp. on the masses with lower education. By using effective methods he can contribute to implementing Human Rights in society. As there are already different methods of intercultural training on Human Rights affairs existing I would like to explain how, in analogy to that, an inter-religious training on Human Rights Affairs, esp. anti-discrimination, could work. The basis is the anti-bias concept which was originally developed in South Africa and which aims at the general removal of discrimination like sexism, racism, north-south-hierarchy, etc. The focus is on the sensibilization of oneself and starting a life-long-learning process of living aware of existing prejudices and developing tolerance in society. The anti-bias concept starts working directly at the mechanism of discrimination and is therefore useful and appropriate for the pedagogical fields which include religious institutions. The religious leader is enabled by this training to work with groups, e.g. children and adults or men and women, and lead those people to their emotional self-experience. Developing on this, non-discriminating conducts for the personal life- and the working situation is produced. Religion that works together with the anti-bias method shows how many chances a society has with less discrimination for all and helps finally to implement Human Rights.