Human Rights Critique of Islam and Sharia

The Center for Human Equality in Southern Oregon, founded by Russell McAlmond, advances Ethical Individualism: the principle that every human being possesses equal inherent dignity and unique value, to be judged solely by individual character and actions rather than by group identity, hierarchy, or collective status. This stands in direct opposition to any system that ranks people by religious affiliation, sex, or belief, imposing secondary status, coercion, or lethal penalties.

In numerous Muslim-majority countries where Sharia (Islamic law derived from the Quran, Hadith, and classical jurisprudence) shapes or constitutes civic and criminal law—even outside formal theocracies—such hierarchies are foundational and operational.

These practices systematically devalue non-Muslims, women, LGBT individuals, dissenters, and apostates, conflicting with modern human rights standards that reject force, coercion, and secondary status in matters of belief and personal autonomy. Classical Islamic doctrine establishes a clear supremacy of Muslims over non-Muslims (“infidels” or kuffar).

The Quran and prophetic traditions distinguish believers from unbelievers, with historical applications including the dhimmi system: protected but subordinate status for Jews, Christians, and certain others, involving the jizya poll tax, restrictions on public worship, testimony in court, and social equality.

Non-Muslims were often barred from full citizenship-equivalent rights, military command, or equal legal standing. In modern practice, where Sharia informs law, this plays out through blasphemy statutes that criminalize criticism of Islam or Muhammad (often with death penalties or mob violence), discriminatory personal status laws, and barriers to religious freedom for minorities.

In Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, Christian, Hindu, Ahmadi, or Baha’i communities face legal and social inferiority; church construction is restricted, conversion out of Islam is perilous, and non-Muslims encounter unequal blood-money valuations or inheritance rules in some jurisdictions. Even secular-leaning states retain elements of this hierarchy when family or criminal codes draw on Sharia.

This group-based ranking treats human beings not as equal individuals but as members of superior or inferior religious categories. Parallel to this is the doctrinal and legal supremacy of Muslim men over women. Quranic verses and classical rulings assign men authority (qiwama), allow polygyny for men while prohibiting polyandry, grant sons double the inheritance of daughters, value a woman’s courtroom testimony as half that of a man in financial matters, and permit husbands disciplinary measures including striking (Quran 4:34).

Male guardianship systems (wilaya) historically and in contemporary application require male approval for a woman’s marriage, travel, or certain contracts. In countries applying Sharia personal status codes—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, parts of Nigeria, Yemen, and others—women face restricted mobility, compulsory dress codes enforced by morality police, unequal divorce and custody rights, and barriers to education or employment in extreme cases.

While some reforms have occurred (e.g., limited driving rights in Saudi Arabia), the underlying framework subordinates women as a group rather than recognizing equal individual agency.

This is incompatible with human equality that rejects sex-based hierarchies.

Consensual same-sex relations and gender nonconformity face severe criminalization under traditional Sharia interpretations of liwat (sodomy) and related offenses. In approximately ten jurisdictions that justify capital punishment via official Sharia readings—Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Mauritania, northern Nigerian states, Somalia, parts of the UAE and Qatar, Brunei, and sometimes Pakistan—death by stoning, hanging, or other means remains legally available for male same-sex acts; lesser penalties or lashes apply in others, with women also targeted under broader morality laws.

Iran has carried out executions; elsewhere, the threat, imprisonment, flogging, and societal violence enforce the prohibition. These laws treat private adult relationships as capital crimes based on religious classification rather than harm to others, denying individuals equal respect for personal autonomy.

Islam as practiced under Sharia frameworks exhibits profound intolerance for dissent and restricts freedom of speech. Blasphemy, insult to the Prophet, or questioning core doctrines are frequently capital or severe offenses. Media, academia, and public discourse in countries from Iran and Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and Afghanistan operate under censorship that prohibits criticism of Islamic tenets or rulers claiming religious legitimacy.

Apostasy (riddah)—leaving Islam—is punishable by death for adult males in classical jurisprudence across the major schools, with imprisonment or other penalties for women in some views. This remains law in roughly a dozen countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Yemen, Maldives, Qatar, UAE, and Brunei; executions are rare but documented historically and the legal threat, combined with family and social coercion, enforces conformity.

Pew surveys have shown substantial popular support for such penalties in several Muslim-majority societies that favor Sharia as official law.

These features—group supremacy of believers over non-believers, men over women, the lethal criminalization of sexual minorities and apostates, and the suppression of speech and exit—stand in sharp contrast to the advances of modern human rights and humanism.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related instruments affirm equality of dignity without distinction of religion or sex, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion (including the right to change belief), freedom of expression, and protection from cruel or degrading punishment. Humanism and secular ethical frameworks reject any religion or ideology that employs force, coercion, secondary legal status, or the death penalty to compel adherence or punish departure.

Treating human beings as members of ranked collectives rather than unique individuals dehumanizes them: non-Muslims as lesser, women as dependents, LGBT persons as criminals, and apostates as traitors worthy of death.

From a consistent human-rights perspective that prioritizes individual equality of respect—the core of the Center for Human Equality’s Ethical Individualism—systems that embed these Sharia-derived inequalities in civic law fail the test of modernity and universal dignity. They prioritize doctrinal group hierarchies over the equal worth of every person.

While individual Muslims and reformist interpretations exist, and while practices vary in severity across countries, the persistence of these rules wherever classical Sharia governs personal status, criminal sanctions, or public order demonstrates a structural incompatibility with the principle that no human being should be devalued, coerced, or killed for their beliefs, sex, orientation, or decision to leave a religion.

True equality demands the rejection of such hierarchies in favor of respect for every unique individual. The Center for Human Equaity rejects Sharia law that elevates Muslims above others or dehumanizes anyone who is not Muslim.