Human Rights

Human being is the most perfect fruit of the tree of creation which
possesses all of the rights granted by the Exalted God to every member of the human
family without any exception equally and justly. It is very important for the sake
of the honor of humanity that the human being should have struggled and are even
struggling for these rights which are a natural result of creation. The concept
of human rights is worth to investigate as it expresses the superiority of the right,
truth, goodness and virtue against the dominant physical power.

In the framework of the human rights doctrine, human being is perceived as an
independent being from time and place he lives in and recognized as the holder of
those rights which we can define as "the general term for the rights which are recognized
for men due to his/her humanity regardless of his/her language, religion, race,
gender, nationality, social status and color." Law presumes fundamental rights for
human being after his/her birth. These rights belong to each of us and are inalienable
rights. Men possess those rights from his birth on due to his nature. In spite of
this fact, the idea of human rights has been contrasting to the current beliefs,
systems of law and political power and can not be reconciled with those often. This
position should be clarified.

Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms has given
clearly defined principles which come into our agenda due to the violation and ignorance
of those principles like: "right for life, right against the torture, non-human
treatment or punishment, right against involuntary work, right for being tried in
front of a just and impartial court in a reasonable time, principle for the impossibility
of the definition of a crime without law, principle of innocence of a person until
his crime will be proven, freedom of thought and religion, right for the freedom
of expression, etc…" The reasons for the violations of those principles should
be studied and answered clearly.

Humanity is looking for the fifth cycle of the humane cycles, which has been
classified by Bediüzzaman in terms of "humanity has five cycles". This epoch, which
is according to the words of Bediüzzaman, "an epoch of ownership and liberty" will
enable people to enjoy rights and freedoms and taking steps for this aim. In this
issue, he gives some hints of a more liberal world with his views bringing reason,
virtue, justice and law in the foreground.

Considering all of the above mentioned issue, we determined the dossier titel
of our 96th issus as "Human Rights". We try to study this subject around the concepts
of "human rights, human being, right, law, justice, oppression, equality, freedom,
public, ethics, conscience, virtue, zımmis, politics, and state" and looked for
answers to following questions:

What are "human rights" and where does the effectiveness of this concept stem
from? What is the originating point of this concept? What is the significance of
the honor of man for the sake of human rights? How can we analyze the concept of
human rights from the point of view of natural law/divine law? How should it be
protected? What is the role of the principle of rule of law in the protection of
human rights? How can we assess the views of Bediüzzaman from the framework of human
rights? What kind of a relationship could be established between democracy and human
rights? What kind of a connection does exist between justice and human rights? How
can we interpret the stress of the dominion of justice over all the levels of private
and social life? What kind of reason can we detect behind the contrast of the idea
of human rights to the common beliefs, systems of law and political power? What
are the role of reason and conscience in the implementation of human rights? What
are the contributions of religious beliefs in this issue? How do we need to comment
the freedom of religion and conscience from the human rights dimension? What kind
of emphasis does Islam attach to human rights? How was the issue of human rights
discussed in Qur'an? How can we compare the various conventions of human rights
constituted in Western societies with Farewell Speech of Prophet? What is the correlation
between freedom and human rights? How can we make a comparison between the conception
of liberty in the Universal Convention of Human Rights as 'being capable of performing
everything which don't disturb somebody else' with the Bediüzzaman's conception
of freedom?

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We hope to meet you again in our next issue with the dossier subject of 'conservatism'
while introducing you to our journal.