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At a time of terrorist actions, the civil wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq as well as the caricatures of the Prophet and Pope XVI’s speech about violence in Islam, it is urgent for the Islamic academic community to speak about a major issue: the notions of peace and war in Islam.<br /> This paper will explore and analyze these notions, putting an emphasize on Islam as a religion of peace promoting human rights and humanitarian values; the author will of course approaches and presents the explanations as to why Islam is a religion of violence, only to dismiss these arguments. There are indeed authors presenting Islam as a religion of violence that carries deep inside the seeds of hatred, racism and many other values that are against human rights. These authors are usually Orientalists. This paper will explain who and why these theories are wrong. Then there are extremist groups presenting distorted interpretations of Islam as to justify massive killings (terrorism, WMD, suicide attacks); the author of the paper will take few examples as to explain how these movements rely on distorted and nihilist views of Islam.

The guiding question of this paper is “How can, if at all, the universality of human rights survive critical examinations within the prevailing multiculturalist frame of reference?” This paper examines the possibility conditions of critically reasoning for the universality of human rights. The discussions in this paper runs at two levels of analysis. At the conceptual level, a theoretical monist-pluralist frame of reference will be developed to reformulate the problematic of the universality of human rights in a form more compatible methodologically with multiculturalist approaches in the humanities, social sciences and current discourses of cultural studies. Demonstrating the weaknesses of the alternative solutions, the main hypothesis of this study suggests to refer to a reconstructed version of the “golden rule of reciprocal fairness.” At the practical level, this paper will set forth three “why”, “which”, and “how” questions regarding those principles which can bolster a universal reception of the human rights as fairness.  

Localization of sustainable development goals could reasonably provide a framework to how local and regional governments meet their requirements in respective jurisdictions. Due to the importance of the environment protection in the process of the “sustainable development”, it is crucial for the states to include sustainable development goals in their regulations, laws and policies. In this perspective, presenting new approaches is utterly requested to protect the maritime environment of the Persian Gulf from destruction and degradation. Undoubtedly, there are a number of challenges and obstacles regarding the localization of SDGs in this region that the present paper will examine the strategies for addressing them. In fact, if environmental rules are internalized as a part of the domestic legal system, they will become more prominent and will be more respected. For this reason, one of the fundamental goals of this paper is to elaborate a suitable methodology to explain and design localized indicators of development sustainability at the regional level of the Persian Gulf. The main goals of sustainable development are to attain durable development in maritime areas in which efforts are made to provide a balance between economy, community and the marine environment.

Human rights are commonly portrayed as a narrative that passes through several chapters before reaching its inevitable conclusion. This narrative begins with the horror of Nazism, moves to the centrality of human rights in the UN Charter, eulogizes the Universal Declaration, celebrates the achievements of standard setting as set out in the major covenants, offers detailed analysis of methods of monitoring and, finally, speculates on the future of compliance. This narrative is sustained, firstly, by ‘naturalist’ foundationalism and, secondly, by a widely held assumptions about the move towards ‘settled norms’ in the contemporary world order. Although some pessimism is voiced over continued reports of torture, genocide, structural economic deprivation, disappearances, ethnic cleansing, political prisoners, the suppression of trade union rights, gender inequality, religious persecution, and many other violations of internationally agreed human rights, most commentators and activists tacitly adopt an optimistic stance that envisages a future rights based international order. The still prevalent naturalist account of human rights, together with a narrative that boasts ‘settled norms’, suggests that the human rights regime represents a final ‘truth’ about the essential nature of all humankind; a common identity that describes the individual in an increasingly globalized world. <br />This paper interrogates the ‘naturalist-settled norm’ account of human rights from the perspective of power and knowledge. It begins by distinguishing between the international human rights regime and the global discourse of human rights. The former adopts a legal approach, where the neutral, value-free, unbiased and impartial nature of the law is tacitly accepted. The latter refers to human rights as social, political and economic practice, and must therefore include an account of power. From this perspective, the discourse of human rights might be said to ascribe a particular identity to human beings as agents of a particular type and kind, which serves the interests of some groups over others. While the human rights regime is presented by world leaders, commentators and the majority of academics as the legitimate articulation of norms founded upon timeless ‘truths’ about human nature, the argument presented in this paper suggests that the norms associated with the discourse of rights offer a more cogent insight into the status of human rights in the current world order. Thus, complex questions arise about power/knowledge, foundationalism, the status of international human rights law, and the politics of rights. <br />The paper begins with an account of discourse as a meeting place for power and knowledge. A second section discusses ‘discipline’ as a mode of social organization that imbues the individual’s identity with particular ways of thinking, knowing and behaving, thereby instilling a particular social consciousness. A further section looks at the global development of ‘market disciplinary’ norms (as opposed to legal norms) that act as a guide for action. The paper concludes with a discussion on issues of human rights and identity in the age of globalization.

The legitimacy debate between ‘universal’ human rights and its apparent conflict with the Islamic value system (broadly characterized as the ‘relativist’ challenge to ‘universal’ human rights) is still far from settled. My paper will reflect on this debate in terms of the current international treaty law. <br />The paper will consider this conflict in the light of the interaction of Islamic states with multilateral human rights regimes, starting from United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the two covenants (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and the stream of other international and regional human rights regimes. It will analyze through the ‘reservations’ clause of human rights regimes, the interaction between ‘universal’ human rights and Islamic law. <br />In particular, it will focus on how Islamic states have put forward what has come to be known as the “Islamic reservations”, and it will attempt to outline to what extent these reservations are contradictory to universal human rights, as noted in the objections to these reservations by various states parties to the treaties. An assessment will also be made of the extent to which the human rights to which the ‘Islamic reservations’ have been made, may actually be incorporated into the legal systems of the reserving Islamic countries. <br /><strong> </strong>