Islam, Constitutional Law and Human Rights

Sexual Minorities And Freethinkers In Egypt And Tunisia

Tommaso Virgili

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367200640
• eBook ISBN: 9780429535093
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

This book focuses on Islamic constitutionalism, and in particular on the relation between religion and the protection of individual liberties potentially clashing with shari?a and the Islamic ethos. The analysis goes from general to particular, starting with a theoretical overview on constitutionalism, human rights and Islam, moving to the assessment of the post-Arab Spring Constitutions of Egypt and Tunisia, and concluding with a specific focus on the rights of sexual minorities and freethinkers.

Part I provides a theoretical account of the conception of constitutionalism and human rights in Islam, compared and contrasted with Western constitutionalism. A set of issues where the tension between shari?a and human rights is accentuated is analysed against the backdrop of the main Islamic charters of rights. Part II conducts a similar assessment based on the Constitutions of Tunisia and Egypt – the two main epicentres of the Arab Spring. Part III moves to two specific rights in the same countries, from the twofold perspective of the Constitutions and international law: the freedom from interference in one's intimate life, with particular regard to homosexuality; and the freedom of holding and expressing nonconventional beliefs, deemed unacceptable from the point of view of traditional Islam. These issues have been chosen as representative of the most controversial, still considered taboo in both legal and social terms, hence at the fringes of the debate on individual freedoms. Focusing on two overlooked and underexplored issues, the work thus pushes the boundaries of the human rights discourse in Muslim contexts.

Index

• Abdu, Muhammad 19
• Abidi, Faridah al- 92
• Abu Zayd, Nasr Hamid 103, 107, 112, 124
  • legal case 115–18
• Abu-Odeh, Lama 65
• Abu-Sahlieh, Sami Aldeeb 31
• Afghanistan 35
• African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 161
• Ahmed, Dawood 8, 42
• Al-Azhar (University) 19, 53, 67, 71
  • Constitution of Egypt (2012), in 58, 61, 67–70
  • blasphemy law, and 71
  • constitutional project 10, 31, 39, 42–48, 165
  • draft penal code 31, 45–47
  • freethinkers, and 48, 113–15
  • non-Muslim’s rights, and 73
  • offense against 109
  • sexual minorities, and 147
• Amin, Tamer 146
• An-Naᶜim, Abdullahi Ahmed 4, 6, 44, 47, 49
• apostasy 4, 5, 7, 89, 89, 99, 115, 156
  • accusation of see (takfir)
  • Al-Azhar’s constitutional project, in 44
  • Al-Azhar’s draft penal code, in 45, 46–47
  • Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, in 37
  • death penalty for 114, 166
  • Egypt, in 106–7, 110, 113, 117, 118, 152
  • international law, in 156, 159
  • Tunisia, in 99
  • Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (UIDHR), in 35
• Arab Charter on Human Rights 31, 39–42
• Arab ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Note on the transliteration
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I Constitutionalism and Islam
• II The Islamic conception of individual liberties
• III What ‘shariᶜa’ in a constitution concretely means: the case of Egypt
• IV Islamic law in post-Arab Spring Egyptian Constitutions
• V Compromises and ambiguities in the 2014 Tunisian Constitution
• Introduction to the case studies
• VI (Il)legal persecution of freethinkers
• VII (Il)legal persecution of sexual minorities
• VIII Constitutional and international freedoms
• IX Conclusions: constitutions and individual freedom: the unbreakable bond
• Bibliography
• Index