Human rights in the secular tradition are facing a riposte from the postcolony. Of all the legacies left by colonialism, religion has probably been the most influential and most tenacious. While the European west has come to terms with the religious question by “coming of age” (that is adopting reason before faith) and the non-European west has come to terms with the religious question by enforcing a strict divide between the sacred and the secular, the erstwhile colonies continue either to embrace, believe, and enculturate the religious legacies left by the colonizers or strengthen their own indigenous beliefs, and apply them to the whole of life. The secular based Universal Declaration of Human Rights has consequently never been wholeheartedly embraced by the non-western world. The recognition of the universal need for human rights has foregrounded once more the need to revisit the possibility of a religious basis for a human rights agenda. But religion is still seen in the west as part of the problem and not part of the answer. Human rights activists, scholars, and writers in the west continue to call for a religion free, and apparently culture free, basis of universal human rights, thus alienating a large section of the global population, particularly in the south. This paper will explore some of the tensions that exist in the debate around secular and religious bases for a human rights agenda and in what ways some scholars have attempted to reclaim religious beliefs in the cause of human rights.