Are religion and human rights compatible?

A number of Baha’i bloggers have noted this extract from an article on The Guardian newspaper’s Comment is Free blog by Alex Bigham of the Foreign Policy Centre:

As a liberal, wishy-washy kind of Anglican, I find myself deeply disturbed by the way in which religious followers have used manifold cruelty and propaganda to abuse the rights of the individual through history. We should remember though, that bigots exist in all walks of life - and as a liberal it is possible to (intellectually, if not literally) resolve these seemingly intractable conflicts, with liberal tools.

The example of the Baha’i faith is one way to discredit the idea that universal human rights are in fundamental conflict with the belief in a supreme being. Baha’is have actively used the tools of the United Nations to try to protect their followers from being persecuted for their beliefs. Bahai’s have not only benefited from the machinery of human rights, but advocate universal human rights as a point of religious principle. The principle could be extended to other faiths. After all if you believe that a supreme being created the universe, then surely the universal cannot be in conflict with its creator?

This is a wonderful testimony to the commitment of the Baha’i Faith to universal human rights from an interesting quarter.

Dan Wheatley, Government Relations Officer in the UK Baha’i National Spiritual Assembly’s Office of External Affairs, contributed an excellent essay to the Foreign Policy Centre’s Having Faith in Foreign Policy collection, which you can download here.

You might also like to download my paper on the Baha’i Faith and human rights, A More Constructive Encounter. I presented this at a conference entitled Does God Believe in Human Rights in February 2005.

Technorati Tags: Baha’i, faith, foreign policy, human rights, United Nations

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