Islam and Human Rights: A Case of Deceptive First Appearances

Abstract

It is a common belief that Islamic‐based government, when serving as an ideological foundation for government, facilitates the poor protection of human rights. However, most studies of the relationship between Islam and individual rights have been at the theoretical and anecdotal levels. In this article, I test the relationship between Islam and human rights across a sample of 23 predominately Muslim countries and a control group of non‐Muslim developing nations, while controlling for other factors that have been shown to affect human rights practices. I found that the influence of Islamic political culture on government has a statistically insignificant relationship with the protection of human rights.