Page - 359 - in Menschenrechte und Gerechtigkeit als bleibende Aufgaben - Beiträge aus Religion, Theologie, Ethik, Recht und Wirtschaft

© 2020, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783847111658 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737011655 ManfredNowak(Wien) /Anna-MariaSteiner (Venedig) The impactof religiononuniversalhumanrights inBrunei’s SyariahPenalCode 1. Introduction Inheracademicwork, IngeborgGabrielhasbeenparticularly interested in the relationshipbetweenreligions, aboveall the threemonotheistic religions Juda- ism, Christianity and Islam, and human rights.1Whenwe established an in- ter-disciplinaryresearchplatform,andlaterresearchcentre,attheUniversityof ViennaandstartedaViennaMasterofArts inHumanRights, IngeborgGabriel introduced a theological perspective into our inter-disciplinary discourse.2As scientific director of theViennaMaster and one of the first graduates of this intensive twoyears postgraduate course,we therefore decided to dedicate this contributionto the relationshipbetweenreligionandhumanrights. There are indeedmany parallels between religion and human rights. Both concepts are based on certain universal values, such as human dignity, life, property,marriageandthefamilyasthe“naturalandfundamentalgroupunitof society”,asspecifiedinArticle16of theUniversalDeclarationofHumanRights of 1948.While religionsusually express these values in the formof command- ments (You shall not kill, steal or commit adultery), human rights empower individualswith the rights to life, propertyormarriage.Themutual respect of human rights by all humanbeings also derives from the “GoldenRule”which constitutes a “moral norm found in practically all religions”:3 “Do not do to others, what you do not want to have done unto yourself”. Another parallel between religions andhuman rights is the special status of humans as having 1 See, e.g., IngeborgGabriel,TheRoleofReligions inthePublicSquare:ElementsofaTrans- formationProcess, in:RichardPotz / SabineKroissenbrunner /AstridHafner (eds.), State, LawandReligion inPluralistic Societies: Austrian and IndonesianPerspectives, Göttingen 2010,pp.179–190. 2 See IngeborgGabriel, HumanRights fromaTheological Perspective, in:ManfredNowak / KarolinaM.Januszewski/TinaHofstätter(eds.),AllHumanRightsforAll–ViennaManualon HumanRights,Vienna-Graz2012,pp.33–35. 3 Ibid,p. 34. Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0