A Re-Analysis of Price's “Islam and Human Rights: A Case of Deceptive First Appearances”

Daniel Price in his analysis of Islamic Political Culture and Human Rights concluded that “… government rooted in Islam does not facilitate the abuse of human rights.” A re-analysis of his data for 23 Islamic governments demonstrates otherwise. There is a significant trend (p < .03), despite the low statistical power available in only 23 cases, for an inverted quadratic relationship between Islamic Political Culture and Human Rights. Among the nations scoring low on Islamic Political Culture, the correlation between the two variables is –.01 (ns); among those scoring high on Islamic Political Culture, the correlation shifts to –.78 (p < .02). At lower scores for Islamic Political Culture, there may indeed be little relationship between Political Culture and Human Rights; however, at higher scores there appears to be a significant relationship between increasing Islamic Political Culture and a decline in Human Rights. The data suggest that extreme applications of Sharia law (if not any secular or religious legal system) may have serious implications for human rights—or at least, Western Euro-American conceptualizations of human rights. At the same time, support for human rights may increase as Islamic governments shift from mostly secular to moderate applications of Islamic law.