| Summary: |
Since the events of September 11, 2001 the notion of a clash between
the West and the Muslim world has taken increasing hold, both explicitly
in bellicose statements from many sides and implicitly in assumptions
in academia and the media. Declarations of jihad1 have been met
by declarations of war against absolute evil, confirming stereotypes of an
essentialist clash. What has been lost in such mobilizations on the basis
of ideological abstractions is precisely what extremists of various stripes
hope will be lost: the articulation from within the Arab (and, more
broadly, Muslim) world of a politic that directly responds to the particulars
of economic, political, civil, social, and cultural rights consistently
denied in the region.
Human Rights in the Arab World draws attention to the status of human
rights as a key barometer of the Arab world’s political health. How is
human rights’ relevance defined by the Arab world’s political, social,
and economic context? What are the theoretical considerations that
must be taken into account regarding human rights’ implementation or,
more commonly, lack thereof? This is the first English language text to
collect writings of intellectuals at the forefront of debating these key
issues. It is telling—and regrettable—that until now there has not been
an empirical or theoretical focus on those who work within a human
rights framework, or who struggle to understand the historic and contemporary
place of human rights in Arab politics. The Arab world’s discourse
on human rights cumulatively contradicts the assumption by
many—in both the West and the Arab world—that human rights have
little relevance to the region. This assumption accounts, at least in part,
for the relative lack of attention paid to discourse on this subject and has limited a robust internal, regional, and transnational dialogue around
human rights in the region to a very narrow audience.
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