The Right to Privacy under International Law and Islamic Law: A Comparative Legal Analysis

Abstract

Right to privacy is a fundamental human right enjoyed by actual and legal persons. It helps in establishing their dignity. If compromised, privacy can result in exposure of data that was not supposed to come into public knowledge. This paper claims that Islam has always emphasized on the maintenance of privacy of data and declared the privacy of an individual to be sanctified. Specifically, importance of privacy in the Qur’an and Sunnah has been explained. International law too endorses the preservation and protection of the right to privacy. This paper is an effort to comprehend a compact legal analysis of International Law and Islamic law with respect to right to privacy in order to present a comparative legal analysis. For a case study data privacy and cyber security is discussed for more understanding of the phenomenon of the privacy in different international instruments. Moreover, there are instances where right to privacy appears to be in conflict with security. The author has analyzed balancing the public security and private privacy and has stated a number of principles for this purpose. The aim is to explain the manner in which balance can be achieved between privacy and security by the application of the stated principles.