Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights

Thomas Banchoff, Robert Wuthnow

2011

In Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights, editors Thomas Banchoff and Robert Wuthnow bring together leading scholars to explore the religious politics of human rights across the world's major regions, political systems, and faith traditions. Contributors like Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Alfred Stepan, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, and Robert W. Hefner probe whether human rights are universal or culturally bound, the role of democracy in protecting human rights, and whether it might be legitimate for external actors to impose their understandings of human rights upon particular countries. The book also focuses on controversial topics like human rights in Islam, Falun Gong in China, and religion in the former Soviet Union, offering policymakers advice for dealing with the challenging interaction of human rights and religion in practice.

Table of Contents

    1. Introduction
         Thomas Banchoff and Robert Wuthnow
    2. The International Human Rights Regime
         Thomas Banchoff
Part I: Islam and the Global Politics of Human Rights
    3. Human Rights and Democracy in Islam: The Indonesian Case in Global          Perspective
         Robert W. Hefner
    4. Muslims, Human Rights and Women's Rights
        Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
    5. Rituals of Respect: Sufis and Secularists in Senegal
         Alfred Stepan
Part II: Three Regions: Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia
    6. Religious Pluralism, Democracy and Human Rights in Latin America
         Paul Freston
    7. Gender Justice and Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa
         Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf
    8. Buddhism, Human Rights, and Non-Buddhist Minorities
         Charles Keyes
Part III: Four Key Countries: India, China, Russia and the US
    9. Hinduism and the Politics of Rights in India
         Pratap Bhanu Mehta
    10. Religion, State Power, and Human Rights in China
         David Ownby
    11. Religious Communities and Rights in the Russian Federation
         Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer
    12. Human Rights, the Catholic Church, and the Death Penalty in the United          States
         Thomas Banchoff

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