The Turkish Constitutional Court in 1998 questioned whether values such as human rights and democracy are consistent with values raised and supported by the Shari'a. The Court's implicit assumption is that it is impossible to find a concept in Islamic law that respects human rights. With regard to the Shari'a, there are different positions concerning democracy and human rights depending on the legal corpus included in the definition of the Shari'a. The thesis of incompatibility is based on the classical definition of the Shari'a as invariable and unchanging. But once other perceptions of the Shari'a are incorporated, some of these conceptions are compatible with human rights and democracy.