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Saudi Arabia and the international covenant on civil and political rights 1966: A stalemate situation

Abstract The article addresses the issue that given that Islamic Shari'ah is the supreme law of Saudi Arabia, whether or not it is attainable for Saudi Arabia to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966 (ICCPR) without violating the Shari'ah. If not, is it attainable to reconcile the ICCPR with the Islamic Shari'ah without making reservations incompatible with the object and purpose of the ICCPR? The paper starts by highlighting the status of the Shari'ah within the framework of the Saudi constitution, which states unequivocally that the Islamic Shari'ah is the supreme law of the land. Since the Shari'ah contains rules that are considered to be incompatible with the ICCPR, two approaches are considered in order to resolve the conflict between the two and thereby facilitate the joining of Saudi Arabia to the ICCPR. Firstly, the methods employed by the Muslim modernist movement to ‘adapt’ the Shari'ah to fit modern requirements are examined in terms of their consistency with the Islamic legal theory and their likely effect on eliminating the conflict between the Shari'ah and the ICCPR. Secondly, the permissibility of making reservations on particular Articles of the ICCPR in order to reconcile it with the Shari'ah is also examined.