Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights [Paperback]

Are human rights universal or the product of specific cultures? Is democracy a necessary condition for the achievement of human rights in practice? And when, if ever, is it legitimate for external actors to impose their understandings of human rights upon particular countries? In the contemporary context of globalization, these questions have a salient religious dimension. Religion intersects with global human rights agendas in multiple ways, including: whether ''universal'' human rights are in fact an imposition of Christian understandings; whether democracy, the ''rule of the people,'' is compatible with God's law; and whether international efforts to enforce human rights including religious freedom amount to an illicit imperialism. This book brings together leading specialists across disciplines for the first major survey of the religious politics of human rights across the world's major regions, political systems, and faith traditions. The authors take a bottom-up approach and focus particularly on hot-button issues like human rights in Islam, Falun Gong in China, and religion in the former Soviet Union. Each essay examines the interaction of human rights and religion in practice and the challenges they pose for national and international policymakers.

1. Introduction
Thomas Banchoff and Robert Wuthnow

2. The International Human Rights Regime
Thomas Banchoff

PART I : ISLAM AND THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
3. Human Rights and Democracy in Islam: The Indonesian Case in Global Perspective
Robert W. Hefner

4. Muslims, Human Rights, and Women's Rights
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad

PART II : THREE REGIONS: LATIN AMERICA, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
5. Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and Human Rights in
Latin America
Paul Freston

6. Gender Justice and Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa
Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf

7. Buddhism, Human Rights, and Non-Buddhist Minorities
Charles Keyes

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