In 1980, campaigns for political office from town councils to the White House were enlivened, if not always enlightened, by the vocal and sometimes strident participation of members of the clergy. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, emerged as a significant figure in the 1980 campaign, not only as the spokesman of the Moral Majority, but as the symbolic leader of the conservative forces dubbed by Martin E. Marty as the “Religious New Right.” Falwell took more credit than was perhaps his due for the election of Ronald Reagan. He also took credit for the defeat of several United States Senators, such as Birch Bayh, Frank Church, John Culver, and George McGovern, who seemed to Falwell unworthy of continued public service because their voting record was not sufficiently “pro-family.”

The last generation of Lockean scholarship has witnessed a radical reappraisal of the traditional interpretation of Locke as a secular political thinker, a defender of individualism, and a champion of the natural right of private property. The new picture of Locke which has emerged through these more recent studies is the result of an attempt to interpret his various writings in their historical context. The appearance of John Dunn's The Political Thought of John Locke in 1969 marked a critical turning-point in the evolution of the historical approach to Lockean studies. Building upon the work of Von Leyden, Laslett, and Abrams, Dunn sought to interpret Locke in terms of the latter's own intentions and self-understanding. The single most important key to a recovery of Locke's own intentionality, Dunn argued, was a recognition of the “centrality” of his underlying religious commitments to his thought as a whole.

Since the appearance of Dunn's essay, the fundamental significance of Locke's religious beliefs for his moral and political thought has been generally acknowledged. Assuming the validity of this hypothesis, Locke's rationalism must now be seen within the framework of his religious convictions. Locke attempted to resolve the tension between the two in terms of the law of nature; but, for him, moral obligation remained ultimately dependent upon religious faith in God as Creator and upon an understanding of humanity as God's workmanship.

This paper explores the ethical and legal pedagogy of the current debates on “reforming” Muslim societies, whether they claim to reform social and legal systems, reform educational institutions, or liberate Muslim women. Since these debates claim to achieve balance in global or domestic conflicts, I address the foundations of these debates by answering three questions:

1. Are the rationales for American and/or European governments' interventions justified?;

2. Can the discipline of civil law help in rethinking Islam for Muslims; and

3. Are Muslims themselves ready to critically address the use and misuse of Islam's primary sources (the Qur'an and particularly the Hadith) in their rethinking of Islam?

I argue that rather than seeking to “reform others,” in this case Muslims with an elitist attitude and sometimes violent interventions, we scholars of law and religion, scholars of Islam, policy-makers, and social justice researchers would be better off if:

1. we thought of Islam as a religio-moral rational worldview, rather than a set of laws,

2. we recognized Muslims as subject to historical transformation, like any other religious groups, and understood how they developed their present views of Islam, and

3. we considered our own real responsibilities to address the forms of global injustices as powerful shapers of world politics, particularly the politics of difference—the view that the “other” is inferior, and women's role as mostly complementary to men.

In this paper I want to present some background material about the interplay of religious concepts and rights theories during the Christian middle ages. We may note at the outset that there always were elements in the Judeo-Christian tradition that could be conducive to the growth of a doctrine of rights, especially the fundamental command to respect the person and property of our neighbor. Ronald Dworkin pointed out that the necessary basis of all other rights is an “abstract right to concern and respect taken to be fundamental and axiomatic.” The axiom entered the mainstream of medieval jurisprudence in the first words of Gratian's Decretum, the foundation of the whole subsequent structure of Western canon law. “The human race is ruled by two means, namely by natural law and usages. The law of nature is what is contained in the Law and the Gospel, by which each is ordered to do to another what he wants done to himself and is forbidden to do to another what he does not want done to himself.” Or in modern language, one might say, “Show concern and respect.”