Universalism Versus Cultural Relativism: The Place of Islamic Shari’ah in the Maldivian Legal System

Western scholars have profoundly advocated the universal nature of international human rights law. They claim that international human rights law, as provided in various treaties, universally applies to every nation equally. However, this argument has been the subject of robust opposition by the ‘cultural relativism’ theory, which advocates that human rights cannot be universal as they cannot be imposed on or against those states which follow a different culture and where such human rights (as showcased by the West) are alien to them. This article focuses on the Maldives, which has an almost total Muslim population, and the constitution upholds Islamic Shari’ah law. On the one hand, the Maldives is a state party to 15 out of the 18 human rights treaties of the United Nations. Hence, it has a state responsibility under international law to enforce the human rights guaranteed in those treaties. On the other hand, it has made reservations to those treaties to give effect to Islamic Shari’ah, on which its legal system has developed. This article examines “how the Maldives can maintain the dual standard of discharging state responsibility under international law on the one hand and respecting the Islamic Shari’ah on the other?”