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Eric Gilston

5/29/12

Islamic and Western Human Rights

Many critical scholars have asserted that the threat to human rights from Islam is

overstated. Support and/or refute this assertion.

I would argue in support of this notion, and in order to back this claim, it would

be ideal to start off with the Savage-victim-savior metaphor that have historically

constructed false assumptions and ideas between the East and West, with regards to

Islam as threat to HR. So in principle, the SVS metaphor prescribes all non-western (non-

white) liberal states and cultures are inherently inferior, as Hegel so dubiously put it, and

these inferiors are framed as victims- who need to be civilized/saved by western liberal

states and institution who are deemed the savior. This principle is, in part, due to HR

inherently western foundations, based upon Eurocentric universalism, Christian religious

zealously, and has provided European power the ability to operate from a position of

authority, and some hold a divinely ordained rule over the Savage. These fundamental

principles have played a significant role in framing Islam as the antagonistic other, as

human rights laws continue to hold fast to notions of universalist Eurocentric that aims to

civilize the savage.

This further helps to uncover overstated and false assumptions ofeast and west

incompatibility, in regards to Islam and HR, for the west continues to interpret Islam in

an Orientalist framework that views Islam as a monolith, static nature, that it operates in a

vacuum. And when western powers use HR to promote their own interests and foreign

policy, they do so in a way that desensitizes and de-contextualizes the fluid and dynamicnature of Islam and thus paints eastern cultures as backwards. So Islam is deemed, in a

manner, which is cultural relativistic and thus a threat to international Human Rights

framework. While there are some aspects of Islam that are culturally relativist, the

emphasis on Islam operating in such a manner, obscures more pressing ailments of

current social reality. Anthony chase argues that religious dogma is entirely

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overemphasized, and thus if he break away the East/West dichotomy, we can see that

Human Rights fits perfectly well within Islam, and that in this clash reconciliation is

needed, however HR and Islam operate within separate religious-cultural and political

legal frames, and this incessant notions of this clash further obscure more pressing

issues.

Discuss Islamists various responses to and interactions with the human rights

project over time.

Originally Islamist responded to HR with austerity and apprehension, for HR

existed in a historical sense, as a colonialist tool to divide and conquer the Arab world.

However Islamists and Muslims, by and large, have been engaging in HR discourse forsome time now. Although recent developments suggest and point to a very interesting

future between Islamism and HR project. The Palestinian case, as Anthony chase

postulates is invariably the most interesting case for it is emblematic of a larger cultural

and social shift from abrogating HR project to actively embracing HR discourse.

Ostensibly, Palestinians constant interaction with Israeli occupation provided the context

to open up the discussion of HR project, as developments within the solidification of

international HR bodies/law. This is notion holds that as self-determination was brought

to the forefront after WWI, Palestinians embraced a nationalist ideology, and out of their

struggle for self-determination, a narrative that was constantly shaped and molded by

Israeli occupation, they found more and more common ground with HR fundamental goal

of resistance against state violence.

As the HR project gained prominence, the Palestinian islamist have used this

framework to garner international support against Israelis HR violations and further

advanced their political agenda for self-determination. It was only two months ago the

PA president Abbas made a speech in the UN to advance a two-state solution. Now what

really altered Islamist position on HR project was the consequence of U.S. led invasion of

Iraq, and specifically Abu Ghraib prison, which cast the U.S. champion ofHR as a

hypocritical and imperialist state. So as US pressured Arab states to crackdown on

islamist, they began to recognize the nature of resistance within their own religious-

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political ideology, as they were indiscriminately jailed and detained, who did they turn to,

but NGOs. And in so doing, they opened a new avenue with which to invoke HR

discourse within their political, economic and social goals. Thus, global resonance for

HR became a vehicle of liberation and gained significant ground as an opposition to

states violence and HR abuses particularly in the way Islamist used HR discourse as the

Achilles heel of Western Hegemony.

Describe the politics of human rights in the Muslim world. Consider both domestic

and international political dynamics.

Some of the main consequences of the Arab Spring are profoundly aligned with a

more constructive idea about HR universality, and overall a transnational exchange of

ideas vis a vis social media, collective memory, HR bodies/organizations, and growing

global consciousness has contributed to a drastic change in political dynamics of HR as

the universality of HR is proven by its fluid and malleability from external and internal

actors/conditions. Furthermore, the re-defining of HR was brought about through a

East/West geography, an interaction that has gained support of the masses. Instead of a

top-bottom approach which has always been the HR modus operandi.

We see that the protest/revolutions in the Middle East have struck a cord with

people in the west, as Occupy movement has gained considerable prominence. It is out of

this narrative, the struggle of the oppressed, which HR has given a new direction to

incorporate grass roots organization and ground-up social movements that has been so

unprecedented, and truly challenges the existing hierarchy of international political

dynamics. One that the west has enjoyed considerable sway, but what truly holds the

most momentous implications from the Arab spring with regards to the future of HR, is

that people everywhere are challenging the status quo that states and international power

dynamics of endured. And despite race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation,

people from all walks of life are gathering to stand up from human dignity through

solidarity.