The twentieth century experienced horrific conflicts and loss of life that shook the world. After the Second World War, and drawing from a rich heritage of ideas around the rights of man, an international consensus began to emerge around the basic dignity and rights of human beings with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Article 1 states:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Some have tried to frame an Islamic version of human rights. Others pointed out that human rights have been used by Western nations to speak in a condescending way to the developing world.

Both of these positions miss the essential point of human rights - can we stand back from our different civilisational and cultural positions to come together as human beings; to find the common threads that bind us together and give us dignity? As the Quran tells us, "we bestowed dignity upon the children of Adam" (17:70).

Islam emphasizes the 'rights of man' (huquq al-ibad) as distinct from the 'rights of God'. The horizontal dimension of our lives - how we live with each other in peace and dignity - is what Islamic ethics and law are pre-occupied with. As the world becomes ever smaller, it is more imperative that we learn to respect each other and develop a common framework for living with differences. The notion of a basic set of human rights seems to be an ideal starting point for this.