Result of the Summer School published as a book

In an interview with the Gateway Office Melbourne of the University of Bayreuth, Prof. Dr. Kerstin Steiner talks about the results of the Summer School. Steiner has been researching and living in Melbourne for many years, but is originally from Germany, where she also completed her law studies.

"For the summer school in 2019 we had a theme of regional rights approaches. And Bernd was able to collect a group of academics that were basically covering all 5 continents. So we had experts who were covering Europe, South America, Australia, Africa and I was covering Asia. So that is a extremely unique approach and I have to congratulate him and the Bayreuth University for getting us all together and being able to provide on the one hand an extremely broad geographically covered approach but on the other hand, because we were all experts in the continents or regions or countries we were discussing, also providing us to give a fantastic in-depth experience of what human rights issues look like in those continents."

Prof. Steiner explains the theoretical framework of the book and why human rights - although universal - must also be examined in their respective regional contexts. The volume focuses on "one of the greatest challenges of human rights today: are they international or must they be culturally anchored?

"They are on the one hand looking at those international human rights but on the other hand they are also trying to give them arguably a cultural relativistic approach. Because one of the biggest challenge that human rights nowadays are still facing is the big question of: are they international or do they have to be culturally entrenched and being perceived as such? So it was picking up on this one and it was dealing with these are the regions and the regional approaches basically the intermediator between the international human rights arena on the one hand side of the forum and the national forum."

Prof. Dr. Steiner's contribution focuses on Malaysia as a case study for the different roles that religious laws - in the case of Malaysia, Islamic law - mean for human rights approaches.

„We have a massive discourse on the freedom of religion in international human rights. Because on the one hand side we do have our universal declaration of human rights and we have the ICCPR etc. and where you have a certain conceptualization of what freedom of religion should look like. Having said that, that particular provision “Freedom of Religion” has been at the forefront of a debate from the beginning. To put It very plainly the question was: What does freedom of religion mean? Are you free to leave your religion? And that is the crux when it comes to looking at the Islam because under international human rights and at the beginning, they were very vague and I think they were deliberately vague on whether the freedom to leave your religion is encompassed in the freedom of religion. That has changed with more and more extrinsic material being available and particularly special repertoires for freedom of religion making it very clear that this freedom to leave your religion is encompassed in this."

In the interview, Steiner also talks about the problems of trying to leave Islam. Unlike in Germany, where it is quite easy to apply not to belong to any religion, there are various difficulties in Islamic law.

"And the freedom of religion and the freedom to leave Islam is differently conceptualized in each of those states. So in some states you would be able to leave Islam, they might have a bureaucratic process in place where you have to go to the sharia courts or you have to go to another bureaucratic organization and say “I want to leave Islam”. They might say yes or they might say no, you never know, the outcome is never secure. On the other hand we do have states where you are attempting to leave Islam you might be sent off to a rehabilitation center, you might be sent to jail, you might be fined and at some stage there had also been attempts to implement hudud – that is a specific form of Islamic criminal law under which for instance people who want to leave Islam, who want to apostate, are facing the death penalty. I have to say that is not implemented in Malaysia; it cannot be implemented under the current regime, under the current legislative framework etc. But there have always been attempts also in different countries around the world to be implementing this specific type of Islamic criminal law. So as you can see, there’s a massive problem there between the international conceptualization and what is happening on a national scenario and even more on a national if you are been going into a federal system, where each state might go it’s different way. So the question is: can regional approach come in and be a mediator, can they help looking at these things or not."

The results of the International Summer School, have been published by Nomos-Verlag. The book can be purchased regularly with ISBN:978-3-8487-7646-7 or borrowed from the university library.