HUMAN RIGHTS IN SELECTED MINANG PROVERBS

Discourses on human rights are considered new in Malaysia. In fact, there are extreme views that reject human rights as something that comes from the West and has nothing to do with Islam or the Orientals. Cultural relativism has been argued as reason for not implementing human rights. Among the efforts to dismiss Western human rights framework is to highlight discourse on Islamic human rights. This paper however aims to provide a middle ground for controversies surrounding the discourse of human rights; by digging local wisdom. As a framework of operation, Civilizational Dialogue propose by George F. Mclean are integrated with a method underline by Syed Hussein Alatas to select relevant proverbs. This double method are used here to link Western human rights discourse with Minang proverbs. Apparently, there are a lot of Minang proverbs that similar to human rights articles as presented in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. This proves the Malays have ideas, discourses and views on human rights as set forth by the West.