This page calibrates three closely related terms in the synthetic rights reading of Shahrur’s project. Confusing them weakens the study, because each term operates in a different domain: the human and dignity, harm and repair, and the civil state and law.
The page’s question
How do we distinguish between human rights, people’s rights, and public rights in the atlas material?
The short answer
Human rights is a comprehensive term for the question of freedom, dignity, rights, and public liberties. People’s rights arise when harm occurs that requires repair or compensation, so individual remorse or forgiveness is not enough. Public rights, on the other hand, belong to the work of the civil state and the law: protecting the public sphere from coercion, discrimination, and the monopolization of religion.
Human rights
Human rights appear in the atlas through freedom, dignity, the civil state, and citizenship. The closest internal support for this is Freedom is the basis of human dignity, then The civil state is based on rights and freedoms and The purposes of the Sharia are rights and freedoms.
The use of this term in the study should remain a reading umbrella, not a direct attribution of a fully formed legal theory to Shahrur.
People’s rights
People’s rights are closer to the sphere of harm and practical responsibility. They appear in the distinction between sin, wrongdoing, and offense: a sin related to God’s right may be forgiven, whereas wrongdoing that affects people needs repair or compensation.
Read here:
- The distinction between sin, wrongdoing, and offense
- Wrongdoings are atoned for through repair
- wrongdoing
Public rights
Public rights appear in the work of the civil state. The state manages the public sphere by law and leaves people’s conscience and religiosity to the sphere of choice.
Read here:
- The civil state is responsible for public rights
- The civil state protects rights
- Concept center: the civil state
The effect of the distinction on the study
- When speaking about freedom, dignity, and citizenship, use human rights as the umbrella term.
- When speaking about harm, repair, and compensation, use people’s rights.
- When speaking about the state, law, and the public sphere, use public rights.
- When comparing with international charters, note that the terms do not match automatically, and that comparison requires an editorial intermediary.