Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World 9781626370777

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Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World

Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World Anthony Tirado Chase

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2012 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2012 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chase, Anthony Tirado. Human rights, revolution, and reform in the Muslim world / Anthony Tirado Chase. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-801-3 (alk. paper) 1. Human rights—Islamic countries. 2. Islamic countries—Politics and government—21st century. I. Title. JC599.I67C47 2012 323.0917'67—dc23 2011044715 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

To the students who keep this fun and challenging

Contents

1

Human Rights and the Muslim World

2

A Selective History

23

3

The Transnational Context

47

4

Human Rights: From Abstraction to Reality

71

5

An Antifoundational Understanding of Human Rights

93

6

Political Rights: Democracy and Free Expression

119

7

Social Rights: Sexual Orientation

151

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173

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191 193 211 225

List of Acronyms Bibliography Index About the Book

vii

We are now seeing the end of the postindependence dictatorships in the Arab world. What we see now is the end of this era. Western analysts are totally confused, but it goes far beyond Mr. Mubarak. The political analysts in the West are going to have to throw away their old books. —Alaa al-Aswany, 2011

1 Human Rights and the Muslim World

Do human rights matter? That is, do they have an impact to some degree on how key issues are understood and acted upon in diverse locales, including in the Muslim world? If so, then through what processes does this impact take form? In other words, are human rights a dynamic-enough force to inform controversial debates and, in turn, affect how important events unfold? These are crucial questions globally, with human rights increasingly becoming a sort of lingua franca informing claims for political and social justice. And they are particularly crucial questions in the transnational Muslim world, where human rights are being contested in an especially vigorous manner. This book’s animating argument is that the international human rights regime is an important prism through which to understand issues that are pivotal to the future of the transnational Muslim world. While a wide array of variables shape complex issues in disparate locales, I seek to show the recurring importance of human rights to intellectual, political, and social life in the Muslim world. As an example, the 2010–2011 events that became known as the Arab Spring have upset many assumptions about what constitutes legitimate governance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Indeed, seemingly well-informed analysts continue to express surprise and skepticism that democracy and human rights were among the demands of many Arab Spring protesters. The Arab Spring was not hierarchically organized such that it had a clear platform. Nonetheless, one of the most famous Egyptian organizers of the Tahrir Square protests, Wael Ghonim, 1

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Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World

expressed the outlook of many protesters in Egypt and other countries when he bluntly declared: “These are our rights and we’re asking for our rights. That’s it.”1 Such claims, echoed time and again in the streets of Cairo, Tunis, Sana’a, Taiz, and elsewhere, unsettle assertions in media and academic writings that politics in the predominantly Muslim Arab world has been a choice between indigenous authoritarianism and Islamism, with the essentialized notion of a monolithic “Arab Street” (most often an instrumentally created tool of governments that have repressed any truly representative civil society) 2 supposedly focused only on external enemies and not caring about its own rights. The Arab Spring’s participants came from diverse age groups and varied political, social, and economic backgrounds and, just as importantly, also did not represent important political sectors (Islamists, in particular, were at best underrepresented among those on the Arab Spring’s front lines). Demands were as distinct as participants, but as Middle East scholar Rashid Khalidi notes: “What we have seen in every single Arab country where there have been demonstrations, or the beginnings of regime changes, are expressions of the same universal values that we’ve seen from East Asia to Latin America: democracy, social justice, rule of law, constitutions.”3 My hope is that by the end of this book readers will agree that events such as the Arab Spring are not so surprising after all. Although conceptualized before the Arab Spring had begun, what the book demonstrates about the place of human rights in the Muslim world directly contradicts claims that the Arab Spring could not have been anticipated. One must maintain humility regarding our ability to divine precisely what went into the protests and what will be their eventual result. It is certainly predictable that there will be ferocious backlash from forces threatened by the Arab Spring’s democratic uprisings, which are far from promising any sort of revolutionary utopia. Indeed, even in countries that have seen the successful overthrow of dictators, these have been revolutionary only in the sense that they have set into motion processes that have revolutionary potential. Such movements also, however, have the potential to be contained or subverted. Nonetheless, the notion bandied about that both the protests and the form they have taken—largely focused on demands for political and economic rights—came out of the blue is problematic.4 Certainly there was no way to predict the scale of the mass movements that would raise the prospect of regime change in favor of democracy and the broader implementation of human rights in so many Arab countries. But the particular demographic currents (especially the “youth bulge”) and normative currents (including human rights expectations) running

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through the Arab world meant that no one should have been caught off guard by the challenges to government authority that have taken place. I suggest that these currents have long demanded more attention than they have received in the media or academe. More generally, I do not propose to only focus on applying a human rights frame in order to better understand the broad range of debates and events in the Muslim world on which this book will touch. Just as importantly, I also argue that such debates and events provide insight into the nature of human rights and, in so doing, are a necessary corrective to many of the dominant narratives explaining human rights. To explore this mutual interplay requires an in-depth conceptualization of the human rights regime. Thus, examining human rights in the context of the Muslim world requires a further step: that we think about human rights in a way that takes into account all of their dimensions, including how human rights are influenced by intersections with the Muslim world. The dynamics of these intersections as described in this book directly challenge one of the most common mischaracterizations regarding human rights: that they can only be understood as either unabashedly universalist or narrowly particularist (i.e., Western). This is a false binary that disregards human rights’ capacity to be rearticulated on an ongoing basis under the force of influences from around the world. International law is at its most dynamic when it is part of a mutually constitutive relationship between global and local politics.5 Stubbornly embedded notions about a mutually exclusive relationship between the global and the local risk blinding us to the tangible ways in which international law—especially international human rights law—intersects with daily political realities around the globe. Recognizing human rights as something that is constituted in good measure by local political practices provides the basis for understanding how it is that human rights matter to politics in the Muslim world. We can appreciate how they matter only if we reject pervasive assumptions about human rights having one eternal legal or philosophical foundation that must, therefore, be applied to the Muslim world. To the contrary, I argue that human rights can be and often are given impetus from the ground up, including from practices in diverse parts of the Muslim world. International human rights law is an essential grounding that gives solidity to human rights. That should not, however, lead to the illusion that the meaning of human rights can be permanently fixed via legal agreements between states. Rights are continuously reshaped in fields of contestation around the globe, including the Muslim world. This is neither

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a simplistically universalist process, in which the global is imposed upon the local, nor one strictly limited by preexisting cultural units that are separate from transnational normative flows. To the contrary, political, social, and cultural understandings are impacted by modernity’s transnational flows. Importantly, multiple political, social, and cultural locations contribute to such flows, making the relationship mutual rather than solely a hierarchical imposition, though there are certainly hierarchies as well. Indeed, the Arab Spring is an example of this: demands made in Tahrir Square and elsewhere were neither simplistically local nor universal, but rather were informed by complex interactions at many different levels. The key is that new rights and new definitions of rights are constantly being generated in ways that reflect shifting political, social, and normative configurations. Without this impetus from the ground up, human rights would only translate into dead letter law. What matters, therefore, is both the degree to which human rights are relevant to and inform debates around the globe and, equally, the degree to which debates around the globe are relevant to and inform human rights. It is only through such ongoing interactions that the human rights regime can continue to grow as the primary vessel for movements toward political, economic, and social justice. Before going further, I would like to provide a caveat concerning the use of terms such as “the Muslim world” and “the transnational Muslim world.” As the book continues, references to specific cases within the region (a region in a conceptual sense, not a geographic sense) will recur. Because of my own training and experiences, perhaps a disproportionate number of my references will be to the Arab world or to the Middle East. References will also be made, however, to other parts of the predominantly Muslim world (from parts of Africa to parts of Southeast Asia) and to places where Muslims are a minority (from Europe and the United States to China). I make such references both because they are relevant to my central arguments and because the Muslim world should not be conflated with either the Middle East or the Arab world. The Muslim world is referred to, in other words, with full appreciation for its diversity; hence the insistence on alluding to its transnational dimensions. Indeed, this book is meant, in part, to contribute to undermining the notion that the Muslim world is a monolithic bloc. So the phrase “the Muslim world,” even as I may use it at times as shorthand, is problematic insofar as it could imply the existence of such a monolithic bloc. There are, in fact, many different Muslim worlds that

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are considerably more complicated and fractured than any single term for it might suggest. The phrase is also problematic insofar as it could imply that Islam is necessarily the most relevant variable determining how issues are perceived by those who, to one degree or another, may identify with a Muslim heritage. To the contrary, many variables from multiple sources—religious, secular, ethnic, ideological, and so forth— inform people’s perceptions and therefore impact how such issues and debates are framed. Islam may be relevant to one degree or another, or may not be relevant at all. In the end, under a “Muslim world” rubric it cannot be forgotten that we are talking about a range of states and societies with diverse political, economic, and social situations, and with their own internal differentiations. No book can be exhaustive or allinclusive regarding a subject as uncomfortably broad as the Muslim world, and I ask readers to bear in mind the inevitable limitations of this book’s examples in that respect.

What This Book Does and Does Not Claim About Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform This book does not claim that human rights have somehow become uncontested in the Muslim world or anywhere else. This is far from the case. In fact, the controversies on which I will focus embody political, ideological, and normative points of resistance to human rights—some specific to the Muslim world, but many common to other parts of the world as well. These controversies indicate that human rights are being actively contested, not that they are triumphant. This book does make the case, however, that human rights inform the primary non-Islamist language of opposition to what has been an authoritarian status quo in some parts of the Muslim world. Despite claims by government, media, and academic elites that human rights are irrelevant to Muslim societies, human rights in different forms continue to impact upon how people think and act. The so-called Arab Spring, including the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, gives three illustrative lessons in this respect. First, it explodes some common myths about what informs political activity in the Muslim world in that it shows how important human rights have become to political thought and action; the Muslim world is not informed solely by nationalists, be they ethnic or Islamic. Second, it also calls attention to the embedded

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political and economic structures of power that remain in place despite the overthrows of some leaders; such structures are an obstacle to true revolutions in which democracy and human rights are actually integrated into governance. Third, despite powerful reasons for pessimism in the short and medium term, the political spaces the Arab Spring has opened also give at least some reason for long-term optimism. Such space is a necessary precursor to the possibility of moving beyond transitory reforms to secure truly revolutionary change based in agency and the empowerment of peoples. These three lessons are relevant not just to the Arab Spring but also to the Muslim world more generally. It is certainly possible (and perhaps likely) that the demands for greater respect for human rights in the political and economic spheres that were part of the turmoil of the Arab Spring will even in the long term be frustrated by those with an interest in maintaining some variation on the authoritarian status quo. But whatever the future in those countries, the Arab Spring demonstrates that my underlying thesis is, in fact, on point: human rights have come to inform, in part and in interesting ways, how significant issues in some parts of the transnational Muslim world are contemplated, debated, and acted upon. This has had real impacts upon political practices in ways that are both reformist and revolutionary. Reformist in that the challenge of human rights to embedded power structures has become part of reform processes in many domains, only rarely with the immediate aim of overthrowing a regime. Revolutionary in that the foundation of these reform processes—what makes them about human rights rather than some other variable—is that they express the desire of people to be subjects of politics rather than objects of politics.6 This has the potential to transform demands for specific human rights into something far more radical: a call for the sort of bottom-up democracy and fluid, inclusive notions of identity that are necessary prerequisites for human rights’ broad implementation, and that would be truly revolutionary.

How This Book Is Organized and Argued Chapters 2 and 3: Historical Memory and Transnational Context Following this introductory chapter’s general overview, Chapters 2 and 3 make three arguments supporting the assertion that human rights are

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a relevant frame for many debates in the Muslim world. The first of these arguments, presented in Chapter 2, is that human rights are a much discussed topic in transnational Muslim world politics and that this currency is sustained in part by a history of engagement with the human rights regime from within the Muslim world. In short, references to human rights in contemporary debates do not come out of the blue. Nor is there any reason to think that they can be externally imposed, as some proposed could be the case following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.7 To the contrary, human rights have strong historical roots in the region and resonate with current political, social, and economic realities. The true debate, thus, is not over whether the Muslim world is allergic to democracy and human rights, whether nihilistic violence is due to economic marginalization unique to Muslims, or whether social discriminations are particularly endemic in the Muslim world. Debates over such issues are not the exclusive monopoly of any part of the world, and a human rights frame is useful in moving us beyond the false binaries that too commonly degrade discussions of contentious issues. For all the criticism one can direct at the human rights regime, its globalization has had the merit of making clear that in all parts of the world, the state—the primary object of the rights regime8—is at the center of contention over precisely these sorts of issues. The history of the Muslim world shows interesting sites of such contention. Chapter 2 makes this point by weaving together several disparate contemporary and historical strands. It begins by observing how Palestinians have consistently grounded their claims in the language of international law and international human rights law. Perhaps more surprising to some will be the subsequent example of how Islamist exchanges with generally more secular-oriented human rights activists have led at times to human rights language being integrated into Islamist demands. Further demonstrating how human rights have been part of politics in the Muslim world is a historical survey of the Muslim world’s engagement with human rights at the state level, specifically focusing on the central role of Muslim states in the mid-twentiethcentury construction of the human rights regime’s early stages. Last, a history of nonstate actors’ engagement with the human rights regime highlights Arab nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the ways in which, over the course of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first, they have connected their concerns to human rights, even in states where this entailed considerable danger.

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Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World

The second of my arguments, explained in Chapter 3, is that debates of global interest are increasingly defined in a transnational space in which human rights have an important presence and that the Muslim world is very much a part of this transnational space. The common inclination to conceptualize the Muslim world as an insular backwater should be resisted; this was never remotely the case. Its connections to transnational currents explain the intensification of rights discourse in various parts of the region and will impact each of the debates discussed in this book. Recognizing transnational dimensions of politics in the Muslim world is essential to understanding how human rights have become a common reference point in a diverse number of struggles. Networks that allow for communication that is neither local (i.e., bordered by the state) nor international (i.e., bounded by state-to-state interactions) inform politics around the world, including in the Muslim world. This has set the stage for human rights to permeate the language and demands of those throughout the region, just as transnational structures also impact how Islamist politics have developed. Chapter 3 concludes that a combination of historical memory, new media, and engagement in transnational conversations has resulted in human rights norms becoming a part of contemporary debates in the Muslim world, and therefore becoming increasingly integrated into peoples’ normative consciousness. It is thus that human rights have come to inform identifiable issues in ways that can be empirically documented. Ignoring this history and the potential dynamism that flows out of transnational structures is to risk misunderstanding human rights, the Muslim world, and their intersections. Chapters 4 and 5: Human Rights Defined In order to transition from the general context through which human rights have impacted the politics of the Muslim world to the specifics of those impacts, it is important to understand what human rights are and are not. This is too often left unasked in favor of sweeping statements about human rights that lack any sense of their actual specifics and dynamics. Chapter 4 begins to unpack human rights as something much different from the vague mantras that too often mar their invocation. To move beyond such essentialized caricatures of human rights, the chapter explains how political and structural factors that emerged following World War II impelled the establishment of the modern in-

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ternational human rights regime. It was not the product of a moral crusade, but rather came out of the globalization of the modern state system, state-societies’ self-interested reaction to the devastation of two world wars, and the acceleration of transnational interactions that allowed connections to be made among populations engaged in struggles around the world that shared a human rights dimension. In turn, these struggles have often informed the human rights regime’s ongoing process of redefinition. This brings up, of course, the eternal question regarding human rights: are they real or mere “nonsense on stilts”? It is certainly true that international law—especially human rights law—lacks a centralized enforcement apparatus and is enforced only in part and to degrees. As under any legal system, powerful actors are somewhat insulated from human rights enforcement mechanisms, while some lawbreakers openly disdain the system itself. Nonetheless, implementation procedures are evolving and have considerable bite; they are one element in what makes human rights a very real part of global politics. After examining the translation of human rights into positive law and the emergence of the “respect, protect, fulfill” enforcement paradigm, Chapter 4 concludes with a survey of these implementation apparatuses. The argument is not that human rights are anywhere close to being systematically enforced in the Muslim world or elsewhere. Instead, I propose that something more modest has been accomplished: varying degrees of substantive implementation of human rights at multiple levels (domestic, international, and transnational) and through various categories of action (legal, political, normative, and institutional). This is important, despite obvious gaps, because solely aspirational human rights cannot be taken seriously. Having some sort of patchwork of real implementation, limited though it may be, is key to human rights resonating as something that actually matters. I next turn to the groundings and foundations of human rights, the focus of Chapter 5. To understand human rights, it is essential to grapple with their groundings in law, politics, institutions, and norms—the intersection of both bottom-up and top-down elements. The multiplicity and interplay of these groundings have been essential to human rights’ stubborn presence in global politics. In terms of law, a regime of human rights declarations and treaties now formally binds states, structures the mandates and programming of international organizations, and informs the work of domestic and transnational civil society networks. In terms of politics, human rights

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have become part of the common language of political debate, invoked in everyday discussions and listed in surveys as among the most widespread demands of people around the globe. This political context is not separate from law, but rather is closely linked to how human rights law has evolved. Too often law is seen as utopian while politics is seen as realistic. To the contrary, political calculations by states about what is in their best interest and what best satisfies their constituents define what laws will be promulgated. Thus, multiple political forces define both the limits and the expanse of international human rights law. In terms of norms, the flow of human rights–related ideas and information through transnational networks of various sorts—including media, diaspora, and economic and political networks—has had a dramatic effect on how issues are conceptualized.9 The normative and the political closely intersect: the expectations that inform the political consciousness of peoples around the globe are evidenced in everything from Arab Spring demands for democracy and human rights to global disgust over the US torture in Abu Ghraib prison. The point is that shifts in these normative expectations lead to shifting political impacts. Expectations of democracy and rights lead to people dying in protests against violations of democracy and rights, just as repellant photos of torture led to a biting political backlash against US policies in the Middle East. In other times and places, different normative expectations meant that rights violations such as torture would not have caused a backlash (or, indeed, would have been something about which to boast). Last among these groundings, among the various institutionalizations of human rights are the agencies and arms of the United Nations that make human rights part-and-parcel of proposed solutions to thorny issues. Whether in peace plans, postconflict reconstruction, or everyday economic development, implementation of human rights is often conceptualized as a fundamental underpinning to long-term policy success. The United Nations is the key institution of note here, but not the only one—human rights are part of the work of other organizations, including national human rights monitoring organizations. Moving on to the foundations of human rights, it is really an “antifoundational” argument that I make. From the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights onward, human rights principles have shown themselves to be more than just the legal playthings of great power states or rules that can be applied from the top down by some sort of authoritative source. I argue in Chapter 5 that both proponents and opponents too often approach human rights from a flawed

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starting point—one that frames human rights narrowly in terms of historical or moral foundations, as if their meaning has been fixed for the ages. This belief that foundations are the key to understanding a static body of human rights with permanently agreed-upon implications informs both cultural relativist and structuralist critiques of human rights as well as legal and philosophic justifications of human rights. I critique the skeptics in an extended section on relativism and structuralism that sees their views on non-Western engagement with human rights as problematically essentialist. Nonetheless, I also accept much of the critique of the unthinking universalism that is the too-easy justification for human rights. The antifoundationalist alternative that I propose sees the essence of human rights as manifest in how the rights regime continues to dynamically evolve in a global context, rather than residing in some singular or eternal quality that explains its impacts. To the degree that human rights are seen as pertinent in diverse local contexts, this is because of the dialectic between anchoring human rights in law and institutions and allowing the human rights regime to change in response to all manner of political and normative inputs. These groundings are not in a hierarchical relationship in which one of them is the ultimate foundation. They are, instead, in a circular relationship in which the rights regime is vibrant (or not) to the degree that these groundings mutually inform and permeate each other. Here, the source of the continued resonance of human rights—the closest thing to a real foundation—is their role in dynamic transnational conversations, such as those initiated by movements that make claims for rights, often in ways that freshly articulate those rights or extend into new rights. These circular connections among the elements in which human rights are grounded are essential to the maintenance and expansion of human rights’ global resonance. Not to acknowledge these synergistic connections is to leave human rights in the straitjacket of a singular foundation. If human rights are to sustain the surge in global importance we have seen in recent decades, they must continue to expand through this sort of give-and-take beyond legal texts monitored by Geneva-based treaty bodies. The definition and implementation of human rights are dependent on a dynamic interaction between the global and the local and on political and normative movements that are shifting and pluralistic rather than “foundational.” Transnational dialogues have been key to such processes, allowing human rights to be continuously

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rethought in ways that have been essential to increasing their local resonance. In other words, the transnational highway runs in two directions. While in Chapter 3 we see that a transnational environment affects various parts of the Muslim world by embedding its controversies in frames at least partly defined by human rights, in Chapter 5 we see that expanding the global vibrancy of human rights depends equally on transnational dialogues about how to define and implement rights. Contestation is at the heart of putting human rights on the political map. Human rights are not a bequest from on high, but rather emerge in new forms out of struggles around the world. Chapters 6 and 7: Political and Social Debates Informed by Human Rights Once we have considered the meaning and nature of human rights in Chapters 4 and 5, we will be better prepared to use a human rights lens to move us beyond simplistic binaries and give insight into complex issues affecting different parts of the Muslim world. Chapters 6 and 7 aim to show how prominent political and social debates are framed and informed by human rights, and how movements informed by human rights represent important shifts from status quo approaches to key issues. Chapter 6’s focus is on the political sphere, including the broad area of democracy and its close relationship with controversies over free expression. Two of the most famous controversies are Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s fatwa on Salman Rushdie that made The Satanic Verses a global issue, and the more recent and similarly transnational Danish cartoon crisis of 2006 (interestingly, the starting point to the global reactions in each case began among the Muslim diaspora in Europe). There have been numerous other efforts to silence voices of dissent throughout the transnational Muslim world. In the Arab world, for example, this has included everything from attacks on independent intellectuals such as Muslim theologian-philosopher Nasr Hamid abu Zeid (who died in exile) to the brutal repression of Syrians, Yemenis, Bahrainis, and others who protest against the political status quo. Such controversies are part of a debate over two closely related questions: whether democracy is possible in Muslim-majority but inherently pluralistic states, and whether Muslim minorities can coexist with predominantly non-Muslim societies in Europe and North America. This debate over democracy has exploded with particular

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ferocity around Iran’s 2009 elections. The widespread protests that erupted over claims of government fraud in that election embody many of the themes this book addresses. Human rights not only implicitly framed normative expectations going into that election but also went beyond that to explicitly undergird nonviolent resistance against the Iranian government’s repression in its wake. There has clearly been, in other words, resonance for rights in Iran in a way that translates into political action. This is not exclusive to Iran, of course; indeed, Iran’s turmoil presaged in some ways the Arab Spring. More broadly, Chapter 6 makes the argument that freedom of expression and democracy are intricately linked. Violations of the right to free expression have little to do with cultural sensitivities and everything to do with repressing dissent against the political status quo. Free expression is essential to democracy and to realizing a broad range of rights. Limiting free expression by deference to cultural sensitivities is a very dangerous game—one with fixed results that will reinforce status quo power structures and stifle voices of dissent in the political sphere as well as in the economic and social spheres. In Chapter 7, the focus moves to the social sphere on the assumption that the social and the political are deeply intertwined. I take up the controversial question of how rights pertain to sexual orientation and gender identity, with a focus on discrimination against gay men in the Arab world. Cases like the 2001 Queen Boat arrests in Cairo show how even the mildest assertion of a countervailing sexual identity on the margins of the public sphere can provoke a brutal clampdown by authorities. The accompanying campaign by Joseph Massad and other cultural nationalist elites to demonize those who dare challenge dominant expressions of sexual identity as Western fellow-travelers is telling. It speaks to the power of patriarchal structures to deploy simplistic binaries in the attempt to discredit the new ideas and ways of being that flow out of social ferment. Given sensitivities over sexuality, negative responses to claims of nontraditional sexual identities and gender identities are not a shock. But, as I show in Chapter 7, explosions of violence against homosexuals (especially though not exclusively focused on gay males) in some parts of the Arab world are about much more than sensitivity. They are part of an authoritarian discourse that sees assertions of difference in any sphere as a challenge to status quo power structures. Thus the ruptures represented in movements for rights regarding sexual orientation are not a marginal matter but are integrally related to how rights have come to

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inform political-social movements that push for change at the local and global levels. These movements express repressed demands for a more fluid, open public sphere. Chapters 6 and 7 thus vividly illustrate the book’s themes about how the international human rights regime, transnational norms, and local movements intersect with each other, with momentous consequences for both the Muslim world and the human rights regime itself. Rights are not fixed moral principles that need to be protected by powerful actors like a baby needs to be protected by a parent. Instead, in all parts of the world, human rights are objects of struggle. They rely for their relevance on their capacity to be (re)constituted by those making claims in the emancipatory language of a rights regime that is evolving and multisourced rather than static and singular. Movements for rights regarding sexual orientation, like prior movements for women’s rights, demonstrate this. Such movements show the limits of the current rights regime to the degree that such rights remain on its margins. They also show the rights regime’s potential to be rearticulated in ways that are legitimized by neither a preexisting universal foundation nor the particularities of a singular social-politicalcultural construct, but that dynamically shift in response to impulses from previously marginalized groups. When the global women’s movement engaged with the human rights regime, it did so by fundamentally transforming that regime. It remains to be seen if the push to include rights regarding sexual orientation within the human rights regime will be similarly globalized such that it can have the same dramatic effect, though it does carry that potential. Chapter 8: Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World Earlier in this chapter, I introduced my perspective on how human rights relate to processes of reform and revolution, using lessons from the Arab Spring to explore this issue. This book ends by considering in more depth the dynamics of human rights, revolution, and reform. Human rights have opened up new possibilities for the disenfranchised and marginalized, raising hope for lasting systemic reform in many countries. Indeed, at their heart, human rights are reformist in that they seek as a matter of principle not to overthrow governments but rather to work within the system to make governments more equitable and just in the self-interest of both those governments and their peoples.

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This reformism, however, has revolutionary potential. Its challenge to closed structures of power, if unmet, can bring about the de-legitimization of authoritarian rulers and governments. Such a process is quite distinct from either coups or classic top-down revolutions that seek to impose a predefined ideological blueprint in the previous system’s place. Rather than imposing a blueprint, human rights are about giving agency to peoples to define their political structures from the ground up in ways that reflect the fluidity and multiplicity of ideology and identity. This refusal to offer the certainty of one mode of absolutist truth is what makes human rights revolutionary in a unique way. This reformist and potentially revolutionary challenge means, unsurprisingly, that human rights have been subject to severe backlashes in many parts of the world. Governments increasingly have been forced to take human rights seriously and are fighting back by aggressively subverting rights at the domestic, international, and transnational levels. In an earlier era, the predominant strategy for rebuffing human rights claims was a passive defense, with governments making tortoiselike assertions that the shell of domestic sovereignty protected them from international human rights obligations. Governments are now often cannily playing offense by engaging with human rights in a purposefully destructive manner. The battle, in short, has been joined by governments that are counterattacking in response to human rights being transformed from seemingly idealistic rhetoric into a very real factor in global politics. The Arab Spring exemplifies how human rights can inform movements that challenge deep-rooted political, economic, and social structures, as well as how such a challenge is susceptible to severe backlash. Chapter 8 describes ways in which the Arab Spring illustrates the pattern shown in this book of human rights having an impact on both normative expectations and political action. It also describes how the overthrow of dictators in the Arab world does not in itself constitute a revolution. At best, these are revolutionary moments with revolutionary potential that remains to be fulfilled. Unfortunately, the Arab Spring’s aspirations are more likely to be contained and countered by power structures that preserve their power by maintaining some variant on the status quo. Worse, as is being seen in Yemen and Syria, the Arab Spring may unleash destructive chaos as anarchic, decentralized protesters confront forces with perhaps greater organizational discipline that are focused on either maintaining or gaining power by virtually any means necessary.

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In any case, whatever the future course of the Arab Spring’s uprisings, to the point of this book it has put the lie to the notion that either the Arab world or the larger Muslim world is a monolith defined by singular identities and ideologies. The Arab Spring has been, if nothing else, an expression of the diversity of political, social, and economic aspirations of peoples. This raises the hope that, whatever the backlash and whatever the chaos in the near term, space has been created for more fluid and engaged forms of grassroots politics. The key variable in this regard, I argue, is the struggle for agency. Human rights’ revolutionary potential lies in their capacity to harness the desires of peoples to engage in defining their political and social lives, rather than being mere objects of political meta-narratives.

Reasons for Pessimism and Optimism It is important to assess the place of human rights in the Muslim world from a perspective unclouded by simplistic assumptions about the nature of that world and the nature of Islam and Islamists. Numerous areas of scholarship are affected by stereotypical characterizations of Islam and Islamism as monolithic forces. I would note, simply, the two currents of this book that undercut this notion of singularity. First, Islam— just like the Muslim world and the human rights regime—is transnationally defined. And second, normative currents associated with both Islam and Islamism intersect with human rights in significant ways. I explore the relevance of human rights to the Muslim world with full awareness of the ideological centrality of political Islam in many Muslim societies over recent years, and of how this has sometimes been problematic from a human rights perspective. In short, many Islamist movements have directly challenged human rights and have been implicated in practices that violate such rights. It is understandable, therefore, to see pessimism expressed in this regard. I would suggest, however, that matters are more complex than constructs of Islam being inevitably oppositional to human rights. As with human rights, the question regarding Islam is not so much if but when, how, and why it has mattered to the debates the book addresses. Islam is not a static theological entity. To the contrary, the relevance of Islamic constructs— reformist, reactionary, and endless other variations—is a result of transnational interaction and hybridized integration with any number of other discourses.10

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Indeed, a fascinating trend in the contemporary Muslim world is the increasing interplay between human rights and Islamic discourses. A shared transnational space makes it inevitable that various normative currents will brush against one another. This phenomenon is manifesting itself in two striking ways. First, some intellectuals associated with the human rights movement in the Muslim world are increasingly trying to justify themselves in Islamic terms. From various articulations of Islamic feminisms to the more full-bodied theories of Abdullahi anNaim and others, the basic idea is that human rights can and should be expressed in Islamic language in order to be legitimate.11 I am somewhat skeptical about this claim, but there is no doubt that it is changing how human rights are conceptualized in the Muslim world and, therefore, globally.12 Second, Islamist movements have at times joined with liberal and human rights movements in on-the-ground political coalitions. In Egypt, for example, this took place to some degree during 2011’s Tahrir Square protests, as well as in the mid-2000s when the Kifaya movement drew in both Islamist and liberal elements. In Yemen in 2005 the Islamist party Islah entered into an electoral coalition with the Yemeni socialist party, and this cooperation continued to some degree in 2011 in the street protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Similar interactions have taken place in other parts of the Muslim world. This underlying theme, important in itself, is also indicative of how human rights have become an inescapable part of the region’s political fabric.13 These intersections represent a mutual recognition that, since both human rights and Islamism have decided limits in terms of popular resonance, co-opting the language of the other can be mutually advantageous. Human rights–oriented activists may perceive benefit from Islamicizing their language in an attempt to counteract the claim that rights are inauthentic to local traditions. Islamists, for their part, may seek to capitalize on the normative resonance of human rights and democracy as a means to extend their popularity, which in many cases is derived more from opposition to the prevailing or previous status quo than from any widespread commitment to a deep application of Islamic law (indicators of support for the actual Islamicization of society have been generally low).14 This is further evidence of the Muslim world’s ideological dynamism in relation to the debates this book addresses. Intersections of varied theories and practices of human rights and Islam belie monolithic conceptualizations of their relationship as necessarily conflictual or, for that matter, as necessarily complementary.

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These intersections buttress the book’s argument that, both currently and historically, human rights have had an important place in the Muslim world, a prominent place in transnational dialogues in which the Muslim world has been an active participant, and a definable impact on how specific issues are conceptualized in the region. This makes human rights a relevant frame for looking at debates of global importance in the Muslim world. It also necessitates understanding the sources of the global impacts of human rights. This leads to the book’s complementary argument: that such an understanding must emphasize the dependency of human rights on local and transnational normative currents if it is to thrive. Impulses from these disparate sources can inform change in the human rights regime that keeps it relevant to political, economic, and social struggles around the world. If the rights regime evolves in response to such currents, rather than conceptualizing itself as bound by foundational documents, it can maintain and further its impacts. The question of whether the human rights regime is indeed maintaining and furthering its impacts is, of course, a matter of intense debate. Skepticism abounds, with all manner of human rights violations being cited as evidence of the supposed failure of the system or movement as a whole. I respond to such skepticism by emphasizing that I am no optimist when it comes to the implementation of human rights. I am merely suggesting that human rights have increasingly defined how and why certain issues are discussed, and have sometimes informed what political actions are taken regarding those issues. Even in light of the overthrow of rulers like Ben Ali and Mubarak, I certainly would not contend that human rights are an unstoppably powerful political or normative force. In fact, this is an extremely precarious time for human rights, both globally and in the Muslim world (and especially in the Arab world). That said, blanket pessimism about the future of human rights globally or in the transnational Muslim world also warrants skepticism. It is a mistake to see the Muslim world as historically determined, any more than any other part of the world. It is worth recalling that most academics look back on the era of modernization theory with unrestrained scorn for its naive historical determinism. The notion that all parts of the world, including the Muslim world, were incrementally setting aside “primordial” loyalties based in religion or ethnicity and “progressing” along the same path as Western countries is indeed somewhat silly. Many of those who would scoff at modernization theory, however,

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partake of a similar sort of historical determinism when they sneer at the notion that human rights can be relevant to the Muslim world. This speaks to the temptation to see the world in simplistic, culturally determined binaries. This temptation is all too common not only in popular discourse but also in academic work, ranging from Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations? to Joseph Massad’s Desiring Arabs.15 For all of their differences, Huntington and Massad are comparable in that each posits a seemingly natural order that divides the Muslim world or Arab world from the West, be it regarding civilizational identity or sexual identity. These static, deeply conservative conceptualizations are a barrier to understanding the processes that give rise to locally impelled and transnationally informed human rights movements. It is essential to show how, in a world constituted by multiple currents, such simplistic conceptualizations result in a distorted vision of the world. Such constructs as “the Arab world,” “the Muslim world,” and “the West” are each overly generic.16 Within such generic constructs are a diversity of political and social trends, including grassroots-level human rights movements influenced by global norms and laws. While this book offers no optimistic prognosis, it is worth remembering that our global societies will likely develop in ways that will seem as shocking a few decades hence as current events would seem to a modernization theorist in 1960. If nothing else, therefore, I suggest maintaining the humility to recognize that we really have little idea how the politics, economics, and societies of the transnational Muslim world will change. For all the uncertainty about how the Arab Spring will play out, it has nonetheless dramatically demonstrated that changes in all of these realms are inevitable. Such changes, when they occur, need not seem as perplexing as they do to some. By paying more attention to human rights dynamics globally and in the Muslim world, we can come to appreciate their role in the course of events, even when the deep implementation of rights is far from imminent. Human rights are both an implicit and an explicit part of the political identities of many in the transnational Muslim world— they inform both agendas for reform and the possibility of a more farreaching revolution in power structures. This book contents itself with exploring how human rights factor into some crucial contemporary debates and political events, both reformist and revolutionary. As for the worlds of possibilities that may flow out of that, I steadfastly refuse to claim seerlike knowledge regarding how events will play out. I do, however, insist that human agency

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is a powerful force in its ability to overturn seemingly fixed constructs relating to politics and identity and truth and to reimagine them in revolutionary ways. And it is a force we must reckon with, as the rise of human rights shows.

Notes 1. “Talk with Wael Ghonim,” interview by Dream TV Egypt, February 8, 2011, http://alive.in/egypt/blog/2011/02/08/dream-tv-interview-with-wael -ghonim-part-2-with-english-subtitles. 2. The term “Arab Street” is problematic in that it makes the Orientalist assumption that Arabs are a monolith with unified opinions on any number of issues. The working assumption in this book is that both Arabs and Muslims have subjectivities that are defined out of a variety of geographic, demographic, social, and political positions. The assumption of an essentialized monolith has been an ongoing problem with too much governmental and academic work on the Arab and Muslim worlds. It has led too many to ignore more complex on-the-ground political and social dynamics. 3. “The Arab Reawakening: An Interview with Rashid Khalidi,” Columbia Magazine, Spring 2011, http://magazine.columbia.edu/features/spring -2011/arab-reawakening. 4. Ibid. Khalidi is appropriately scathing on this point, writing: “Everything we have been told systematically by talking heads, by pseudo-experts, by self-appointed gurus on the Arab world has been proven to be completely false. These people should be on their knees in sackcloth and ashes as far as I’m concerned.” For an even more cutting take, see Hassan, “Ideas Can Also Kill.” In particular, note what he calls the “racism” of the many observers who dismissed (and continue to dismiss) rights claims by Arabs for a variety of clichéd reasons. 5. My thinking on this issue, as will be indirectly reflected throughout this book, is influenced less by the literature on the Muslim world(s) and more by some of the following authors and their works. Though these works come out of different academic fields and preoccupations, they share an emphasis on the importance of situating our understanding of the intersection of international law, global politics, and transnational norms in the day-to-day political practices of different localities and subjectivities. See Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad; Lefort, Writing; Bayat, Life as Politics; Rajagopal, International Law from Below; Appiah, Cosmopolitanism; and Delanty, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination.” 6. A conversation with Faisal Devji on March 14, 2010, prompted by a post in the “Duck of Minerva” blog led me to this formulation. See http://duckof minerva.blogspot.com. 7. In the felicitous phrasing of Richard Falk: “There is a difference between liberation Bush-style and liberation Tahrir Square–style.” Falk, “Revolution on the Nile.”

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8. Clapham, Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors. Andrew Clapham reminds us that while human rights are no longer solely about the state, this shift does not negate the centrality of state obligations. 9. Regarding media, for example, contemporary media are in the hands of vastly larger groups of peoples through new communication technologies. This means both much broader access to news, information, and opinion and the ability to create and transmit news through blogs as well as Facebook and Twitter accounts. This has its resonances at a normative level. 10. A group such as al-Qaeda, for example, is a prototypical transnational, nonstate normative actor that thus embodies many of the same currents that inform our discussion of human rights. The issue with al-Qaeda is not that it represents some unchanging essence of Islam or that it represents the mainstream of the Muslim world. To the contrary, it represents an example of how intersections between Islamic norms and transnational structures result in novel ideas of what is “Islamic.” A transnational context is very much a part of informing diverse and dynamic constructs of what Islam is, from those of al-Qaeda to those with opposing ideologies. On this topic, specifically, see Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad; and Roy, Globalized Islam. More broadly, this understanding of the dynamics of transnational normative currents is influenced by constructivist international relations theory. On constructivism’s founding literature, see Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics; Onuf, World of Our Making; and Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together.” 11. Hassan, “Rights of Women Within Islamic Communities.” On articulations of Islamic feminisms, see, for example, Shah, “Women’s Human Rights in the Koran.” On the theories of an-Naim, see his book Toward an Islamic Reformation. 12. Chase, “Liberal Islam and ‘Islam and Human Rights.’” 13. See Schwedler, Faith in Moderation; and Hamzawy, “Globalization Human Rights.” 14. Schwedler, Faith in Moderation. There clearly is more than a little opportunism on all sides in such coalitions. Nonetheless, this phenomenon shouldn’t be discounted, either. As Jillian Schwedler demonstrates, Jordanian Islamists have reoriented themselves to a worldview that is more pluralistic and democratic in the context of a more open public sphere. 15. Massad’s work is discussed at length in Chapter 7. 16. As should be clear, I am as uncomfortable with the broadness of the term “the West” as I am with the broadness of the term “the Muslim world”—both need to be disaggregated rather than taken as a holistic entity. Is “the West” that of Hitler or Stalin or Churchill? That of Plato or Aristotle or Foucault? Of British colonialism, US power, or Canadian peacekeeping forces? With the most powerful representative of the West—the United States—constituted by a polyglot mixture of peoples, languages, and cultural impacts, does “the West” really tell us anything important as a term, or does it hide more than it reveals? My sense is the latter.

2 A Selective History

When I mention my work on human rights in the Muslim world, a common response—in tones that vary from wonderment to sarcasm— is something along the lines of, “But . . . do they even care about rights?” I wish I could explain away that response by saying that it comes from only the most intolerant quarters. In fact, it’s the sort of thing I hear from friends, from academic colleagues, and even from those with deep roots within the Muslim world. On some level it is a legitimate question. While I disagree with its premise, exploring it can help us clarify some important issues. Headlines around the globe have subtexts touching on the question of the relevance of human rights in the Muslim world. Consider, for example, issues such as the Arab Spring and the question of whether human rights–based demands are part of popular movements across the Arab world. The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the question of whether human rights can be imposed by force. Al-Qaeda and the aftermath of 9/11 and the question of whether human rights violations are “root causes” of terrorism. Europe’s Muslim minorities and the question of whether structural racism and discrimination cause disaffection and riots, or vice versa. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the question of whether the right to self-determination is possible when there are competing ethno-religious claims to the same piece of land. Post-2009 election strife in Iran and the question of whether democracy is possible in the Muslim world.

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Rumbling under the surface of these and other issues is the persistent question of whether the Muslim world is fundamentally at odds with international norms, including those of human rights. Or, like the rest of the world, is it riven with different power structures, interests, values, and ideologies such that, depending on the particular situations of individual Muslims, they may have very different perspectives on the relevance of human rights? To put it another way, does Islam define a Muslim’s stance toward human rights, or is religion just one of many potential factors affecting how individuals and groups might see such a set of international norms? Which brings us back, in a sense, to the question that I find so irksome: Do they even care? As may be guessed by the emphasis on “they,” I tend to think that conceptualizing the world as “us” and “them” is part of the problem. The idea that “they” have a position on human rights, one way or the other, is a flawed assumption in too many discussions of human rights (and other issues as well). The evidence is really quite obvious. Throughout the centuries there have been many competing ideological movements in different parts of the Muslim world. Why is it strange to hear that communists, ethnic nationalists, socialists, liberals, monarchists, and Islamists—with many internal variations—have, at different times, shared political and intellectual preeminence in various parts of the region? Indeed, these movements have fought on figurative and literal battlefields. The Muslim world, in short, is diverse and divided. It has different ethnic groups, ideological movements, and gender and class distinctions, with endless other internal variations and external connections informing this diversity and various power structures. Consequently, the political outlooks of individual Muslims can be expected to differ greatly and yield a vast range of attitudes toward any issue, including human rights. There is no collective “Muslim” stance on human rights, and it’s rather simplistic to think there could be. Whether “they” care, therefore, is an irrelevant question. The question is: Do some Muslims care? This question has two elements. First, does some significant subsection of Muslims explicitly find human rights relevant to their political stances or to the political context in which they function? Second, do human rights implicitly impact some significant subsection of Muslims—whatever their stated beliefs about human rights—in terms of their political expectations or their understandings of the political currents that swirl around them?

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Despite all the ink and emotion spilled over this question, the answer is actually rather straightforward. It doesn’t require quranic exegesis examining different schools of Islamic law for a definitive statement on the compatibility or incompatibility of Islamic and human rights law: Islamic sources are elusive and conflicting on this front. Some read Islamic sources as contradictory to human rights law, others as complementary, and yet others as supportive or essentially irrelevant. Nor would a definitive survey of all Muslim societies by cultural anthropologists help us understand whether Muslims collectively find human rights norms to be relevant. Again, the evidence would be ambiguous and contradictory. Some Muslims passionately argue that human rights are absolutely necessary, while others argue the opposite, and both positions are put forth for very different reasons (and, of course, other Muslims won’t much care one way or the other, or will only care sometimes and in some contexts). This is likewise the case in all parts of the world, among all peoples. We cannot, therefore, impose a notion of incompatibility from the outside, as has too often been done. With that as a prelude, the purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the Muslim world’s current and historical engagement with human rights. What follows should not be regarded as a comprehensive overview of this vast topic. It is instead an attempt to illustrate how the contemporary resonance of human rights in the Muslim world does not come out of the blue but rather has historical underpinnings. Throughout, I selectively highlight evidence that human rights concepts have ongoing currency in the Muslim world. The chapter begins by describing examples of the Muslim world’s contemporary engagement with human rights. This includes, in particular, Palestinian engagement with human rights and various episodes of the interplay between Islamists and human rights activists. Such episodes include exchanges between Islamists and future human rights activists in Hosni Mubarak’s Egyptian prisons and, decades later, in Tahrir Square in cooperating in Mubarak’s overthrow. Their shared experiences informed shared demands for human rights and a determination that other political preferences could be resolved democratically. Next, in a more explicitly historical approach, the chapter identifies how states in the Muslim world have acted in ways that contradict the stereotype of the human rights regime being a creation of Western states. From early on, Muslim states played an important role in helping draft the UN’s early treaties that are integral to the contemporary

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human rights regime.1 Granted, these states have never been very enthusiastic about actually implementing rights, but in this they are simply kin to all other states (human rights may or may not be universal, but government resistance to respecting human rights is absolutely universal!). The chapter also presents a history of human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Arab world—the nonstate actors that have kept human rights alive over the past century despite massive repression, rhetorical association with a politically radioactive West (perhaps an unfair characterization, but an effective tactic for human rights opponents), and a certain disdain from some intellectuals and academics who have felt human rights to be inappropriate in the Arab or Muslim worlds.2 Arab human rights NGOs epitomize the centrality of human rights in civil societies in the Muslim world and around the globe. The unfortunate stereotypes that underlie dismissals of human rights as somehow unrepresentative of “real” Arabs have arguably been exposed by the Arab Spring’s claims for rights that found resonance with swathes of the Arab public. Beyond the Arab world, similar stereotypes about other parts of the Muslim world also ignore the connection of human rights to on-the-ground political, economic, and social realities.

Engagement with Human Rights: From Palestinians to Islamists Among the examples of the Muslim world’s engagement with human rights, the Palestinian case is the most obvious. It is a case for both being pessimistic and being positive. Pessimism in the sense that Palestinians are still denied the most basic collective and individual rights by Israel in a way that has not found an effective response at the local, regional, or international level. What is worse is that even if a solution were to be found to Palestinian dispossession, there would still be little reason for optimism. Palestinian internal governance, starting with Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian National Authority and continuing to the current split between Fatah rule in the West Bank and Hamas rule in Gaza, has replicated many of the governing pathologies that exist in other parts of the Arab world. From the patriarchal model that Arafat followed to the Islamist model that Hamas follows, each shows how far human rights are from being implemented. It is perhaps the case that the pathologies of Israeli

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occupation are part of what has stimulated both the pathologies we see in Palestinian governance as well as the violations of humanitarian law (such as suicide bombings) by Palestinians. Be that as it may, the realities on the ground regarding human rights for Palestinians are dismal on all fronts. So what, then, is positive in the Palestinian context? Simply put, despite dismal realities, human rights have also shown their tangible reality as a refuge for the dispossessed. Palestinians have asserted their claim to statehood in the human rights language of self-determination (which came to be embedded in the first article of each of the two most fundamental human rights treaties due, in good part, to the Palestinian case), worked with international institutions to further embed their claims and arguments in international law, and used normative sympathy garnered due to Israeli human rights violations to further advance their political claims. Asserting such claims in this language would have been faintly ludicrous in previous eras. Now, however, human rights violations are widely seen as issues of abstract concern that can lead to practical consequences. From the language of self-determination to global activism around breaking Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip (and the resulting diplomatic crises between Israel and its long-standing strategic-military ally Turkey), human rights inform the resonance of the Palestinian issue as a global issue. Previously, the dispossession of a people would have been a matter of course, rather than a matter of centrality to global politics. (Forget about Hitler’s “Who remembers the Armenians?” Rather, to paraphrase Hitler, how many even noticed the Armenian genocide or took action at the time it was under way?)3 This is no longer the case. Human rights are now part of the language that defines global politics, in the Muslim world and elsewhere. In this vein, Shadi Mokhtari makes a convincing argument that US human rights violations in the 2000s had an unexpected silver lining. As the United States became the target of criticism, this ironically gave human rights greater legitimacy in the Middle East. Mokhtari cites field research in Yemen and Jordan to make her case and also quotes from an article in the newspaper Asharq al-Awsaat regarding the Arab world more generally: “Since the Abu Ghraib prison crime was exposed, the biggest discussion group in the Arab world has been human rights, and this is a fine thing. The subject of human rights, freedom, and the state of the prison has taken over every conversation (in the Arab world).”4 Mokhtari goes into considerable detail to explain that the viewpoint expressed in the article is not anomalous but reflects dominant gov-

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ernmental, media, nongovernmental, and popular discourse. Mokhtari summarizes in her own words: “These developments provide a glimpse into an important emerging trend and shift in subjectivity in the region. Whereas previously dominant anti-imperialist discourses provided limited space of legitimacy to human rights, as the September 11th era progressed, increasingly human rights were invoked and understood as essentially emancipatory.”5 Mokhtari’s work is among the first to give a glimpse of some of the trends that exploded both in Iran and during the Arab Spring, trends that many scholars of the Middle East and the Muslim world claim could not have been anticipated. Islamists are the more surprising example of the resonance of the supposedly taboo language of human rights. In Islamist political and ideological platforms there are sometimes demands for human rights and affirmations that human rights do not conflict with Islam (just as, of course, there are also sometimes denunciations of human rights— there is no argument for uniformity here). For example, Kamal Kharazi—a former foreign minister of Iran, the Muslim world’s only long-standing Islamist regime—affirmed that human rights are “a universal concept independent of any conditions” and called for the “strengthening of civil society and encouragement of toleration.”6 In this, Kharazi was following the line of Iran’s then–prime minister, Mohammad Khatami, who was a vocal exponent of civil society and often spoke publicly about the validity of human rights. However, it is also worth noting that well before Khatami’s term in office, Kharazi had served as ambassador to the United Nations; he can effectively be called a man of the Iranian establishment who represents one particular strand within the larger universe of political Islam. Aside from this rhetoric, in political practice Islamist groups also sometimes enlist the aid of human rights lawyers (particularly when those lawyers can help Islamists who are in jail, unsurprisingly) and collaborate with human rights institutions to oppose the status quo. Bahey el-Din Hassan, for example, tells of being in a group of Nasserist (leftist Arab nationalist) political prisoners held in the same Egyptian jail as groups of Islamists.7 In the hierarchy of political prisoners, authorities favored Nasserists over Islamists, but the Nasserists insisted on using this marginal level of privilege to make common cause with Islamists and represent their demands to the prison administration (for example, for access to prayer rugs). The Islamists were happy to go along with this and yet, when an opportune moment came following the release of some Nasserists, which gave the Islamists a numerical advantage among

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prisoners, the Islamists still savagely beat their erstwhile Nasserist allies. So much for cooperation, it would seem at first glance. Hassan’s story does not end there, however. Once released from prison, one segment of the Nasserists began to advocate for human rights and became founding members of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), which became a key nexus in connecting national and regional human rights activism to transnational networks. The group immediately faced a strategic conundrum: would it advocate the rights of Islamists, even though its members had firsthand experience of Islamists abandoning cooperation and common ground and resorting to violence at the first opportunity? The EOHR under Hassan’s leadership—he became the organization’s secretary-general in 1988— made the ethical and strategic choice to represent claims on behalf of Islamists just as it represented the claims of other political and social groups (by the same token, the EOHR has also critiqued Islamist actions in accordance with the same human right standards to which it holds other groups accountable). The EOHR’s decision has resulted in further alliances of convenience between human rights groups and Islamists. These are, in some sense, short-term alliances, given the ideological divide—rhetorical and substantive—between such groups.8 Regardless, this type of principled representation has opened the door for the EOHR and other human rights groups to interact with Egyptian Islamists, and has given Islamists the opportunity to use the language of human rights to their own benefit. This takes place despite the obvious irony that, in general, Islamists and human rights activists have different (if not opposing) political agendas. And yet, all the same, the relevance of human rights to Islamists is clarified in this process: usually Islamists exist on the political margins of society (the exception being in the few states, such as Iran, in which Islamists are in power), subject to brutal rights violations and struggling (some violently and some nonviolently) for political space and even democracy—human rights principles are beneficial to those in that position. This is part of the foundation for the crossfertilization that has taken place between Islamism and human rights language.9 Hassan’s implicit lesson is that evenhanded, nonideological representation is not only a matter of principle by which human rights groups maintain their bona fides but also a step toward signaling the relevance of human rights to Islamists. It may not co-opt them, but it can indicate the potential for cooperation to lead to a productive intermin-

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gling. This can ultimately help break apart an overly stark opposition between human rights and Islamism. Indeed, Hassan’s story encapsulates three intersecting lines in the history of human rights in the region. First, the increasing contemporary relevance of human rights. Second, the importance of transnational networks and norms in framing and informing this sort of cross-fertilization. And third, the way this resulted in the possibility of at least short-term cooperation among secular and Islamist Egyptians in the Tahrir Square protests to overthrow Mubarak (which is not to overlook the fundamental disagreements that had always existed and soon resurfaced as a contentious issue in postMubarak Egypt). So, yes, many Muslims in many different sectors find human rights relevant. No one can (or should want to) deny the reality that human rights have a poor record of implementation in some parts of the Muslim world, particularly in the Arab region. But while the realities of human rights violations are harsh, this makes the resilience of a human rights discourse in various parts of the Muslim world all the more remarkable. This stubborn presence indicates the relevance of human rights both to individual Muslims and to political and social groups within the Muslim world, both historically and currently. This is enough to justify saying that some significant numbers of Muslims care about rights, and also enough to justify beginning our exploration into how rights have come to frame many issues in the Muslim world. Again, the real question is not whether Muslims care about human rights. Rather, which populations care? Why? In what ways? With what consequences? These are the important questions. Important not just in a normative sense—more rights protections would be good for people in the region (though, in my opinion, they would be positive in many ways)—but also because rights frame so many issues under debate globally and it is significant if they do the same in the Muslim world. The assumption that human rights are a useful frame for understanding a broad range of issues defining politics in the Muslim world may be a startling point of departure, though a less optimistic one than may seem the case at first blush. It is not to say that human rights have been widely implemented or are even on the verge of being widely implemented in many locales. But it is to say that human rights inform political thought and movements in important ways. The resulting engagements between human rights and political action include some that are less surprising, such as the ways in which Palestinians have

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engaged human rights on multiple levels. Islamist engagements are perhaps both more surprising and less wholehearted. Nonetheless, attention to these sorts of engagements would have made the centrality of human rights in Iran following the 2009 elections and during the Arab Spring’s surge across the region in 2011 much easier to anticipate, as they indicate the broader normative inroads of human rights discourse. As I will explain later, I cannot help but tend toward the pessimistic regarding long-term human rights implementation. As an academic observer, however, I also cannot help but note the resonance of human rights and their relevance as a variable in diverse political situations, including in the contemporary Muslim world.

Muslim States and Human Rights The historical touchstone for the assumption that the Muslim world has always been on the outside of the international human rights regime is twofold. First, given that decolonization had only just begun when the rights regime was first elaborated during the initial phase of the United Nations, it is widely taken for granted that many Muslim states simply did not have a seat at the table. Those who are skeptical about what Muslim states contributed point out that the UN’s General Assembly (as well as the committees in which human rights declarations and treaties were drafted) was dominated to a much greater degree by Western states than it would be a few decades later. Second, a prominent Muslim state that was at the table during that era, Saudi Arabia, notably abstained when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was approved by the General Assembly in 1948. It is assumed that this set the pattern for Muslim abstention from the negotiations that took place in the following decades to convert the principles of the UDHR into binding hard law treaties on human rights.10 This assumption ignores two historical facts. First, human rights did not ascend to become a tangible part of the global realpolitik until the 1960s and 1970s—well after the early decolonization period. The Western states’ domination had to some extent waned by the time the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) were adopted by the General Assembly and put forward for signature in 1966, and even more so by the time those treaties came into force in 1976. The developing world’s nonaligned movements had

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come to drive the General Assembly’s agenda, as demonstrated by how it overcame Western objections to put in place the UN’s New International Economic Order, albeit with less lasting effect compared to the human rights regime (the Security Council, of course, remained the redoubt of more powerful states and had little role in constructing the human rights regime). Treaties such as the ICESCR and ICCPR were at the heart of this era’s transformation of human rights from irrelevant abstraction to a tangible part of global politics.11 Much of the global acceptance of human rights—and in particular the degree to which the developing world came to take ownership of the human rights regime—was galvanized by the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The South African struggle was essential in stimulating international consensus behind human rights. It also legitimized international oversight of a state’s domestic actions, a concept that the UDHR and early human rights treaties helped to establish and that has continued to be elaborated in later decades. Leaving aside for the moment this later history, scholars have shown how even for the UN’s early years, the standard account of Muslim noninvolvement in the construction of the international human rights regime is misleading. Susan Waltz, for example, documents the substantial contributions of Muslim state diplomats from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, while also suggesting that Western accounts have systematically overstated the roles of Eleanor Roosevelt, Rene Cassin, and other representatives of Western states. In essence, there has been an inadvertent conspiracy of assumptions about the primacy of Westerners in constructing the human rights regime that does not stand up to scrutiny.12 Waltz’s work, in addition to describing the lead taken on many issues by the countries of the nonaligned movement as a whole,13 shows how the engagement of Muslim states like Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and in fact even Saudi Arabia significantly impacted how the international rights regime was constructed. Some of this was in line with the priorities of the nonaligned movement in general. An example can be found in the right to self-determination, which is not mentioned in the UDHR. Egypt had proposed such an article, in essence calling for the right to self-rule within formerly colonized territories, and was vigorously supported in this by Lebanon’s Charles Malik. The matter was debated in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, with Egypt’s Mahmoud Azmy serving as the committee’s rapporteur, in one aspect of his extensive engagement with human rights at both the state and

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nonstate levels.14 In the end, the Western colonial powers beat back attempts to include such a right for the colonized in the UDHR. But the matter was not settled. In Third Committee considerations of drafts of the ICCPR and ICESCR, “Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt led and shaped the debate” regarding the right to self-determination, following the lead of Malik and Azmy.15 This was key to the eventual inclusion of a common first article in the ICCPR and ICESCR affirming the right to self-determination of peoples. It should be noted, for those who argue that the rights regime is simply a Western-imposed template, that both the United Kingdom and France were fiercely opposed to the inclusion of this right to self-determination in the treaties but were defeated. This is a right that has been particularly instrumental for grounding South African and Palestinian struggles for self-determination in international law and, more broadly, indicates how human rights have been subject to debates impacted by a kaleidoscope of politics and norms that are not defined by geography or culture. Many other historically significant debates reflect the presence of Muslim state delegations at a figurative negotiating table (in fact, these treaties were drafted over decades in drawn-out processes). Let me share two additional examples, the first because it contradicts, in a particularly interesting way, common expectations and the second because it had no immediate impact and yet presaged eventual changes in the human rights regime. The first example relates to the articles in the ICCPR and ICESCR that affirm equality between men and women. Given widespread misconceptions, some may be a bit startled to learn that the proposal for these articles came from a Muslim state delegation. Concerned by the covenants’ silence on equality between men and women, it was the Iraqi delegate who insisted on this insertion when the Human Rights Commission’s draft treaties were sent to the Third Committee. With the support of countries including Pakistan (and despite the opposition of other predominantly Muslim states—again, there is no argument here for uniformity), this resulted in the creation of what is now Article 3 in both the ICCPR and the ICESCR, which instructs states parties to ensure the equal right of men and women to the rights set forth in both covenants.16 This is a remarkable example—one of a number that could be cited—of the substantial impact of Muslim state delegations participating in the treatynegotiating process. Equality between men and women is now one of the animating themes of many international organizations and transnational advocacy groups, due in part to this process.

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My second example of the involvement of Muslim state delegations during the formative years of the international human rights regime relates to the controversial decision to elaborate the 1948 UDHR in two binding treaties, one focused on civil and political rights (the ICCPR) and the other on social and economic rights (the ICESCR). Interestingly, Muslim states led the opposition to the separation of rights into two covenants, with the following statement from the Saudi Arabian delegate expressing this position: “We still maintain that human rights and freedoms, whether civil and political on the one hand or economic, social and cultural, on the other hand, are so interconnected and interdependent that their separation into two documents would be artificial and arbitrary.”17 This battle was lost in the short term, as the UDHR’s recognition of the indivisibility of rights was abandoned. Eventually, however, advocates of indivisibility would win the day. Over the decades, as the global spread of the rights regime accelerated, the division of human rights into separate categories came under increasingly widespread criticism. To a remarkable degree, the language of the criticism echoed that of the Muslim state delegations so many years ago. Indeed, the Saudi Arabian statement would not have seemed out of place if it had been plagiarized verbatim by a delegate to one of the series of global conferences at which the debate about the indivisibility of rights came to a head in the 1980s and 1990s. By the 1993 human rights conference in Vienna, the notion of separate categories of rights had been firmly rejected and replaced with the notion of rights as indivisible and interdependent.18 This conceptualization of human rights now dominates the field, indicating the relevance of the arguments first made in the 1950s by Muslim and nonaligned state delegations to the UN. This continuity shows more than just the historical sinews of human rights in the Muslim world. It also demonstrates how human rights as dynamic voices from a globalized constituency compel the international regime to continue redefining itself. Muslim world delegations were at the tables at which the human rights regime was constructed and reconstructed and were far from passive—to the contrary, they helped shape outcomes in significant ways.19 The two examples elaborated earlier are not isolated. A key moment in the evolution of the human rights regime, for example, was the establishment of the so-called special procedures. These helped to establish that there could be real monitoring by the international community and that individuals within states have the right of complaint to authorities

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beyond the state if they believe their rights have been violated. The SubCommission on Protection and Promotion of Human Rights initiative to draft what came to be known as the 1503 Procedure (after it was adopted in 1970 by the UN’s Economic and Social Council [ECOSOC])20 came from a trio of delegates from Pakistan, the United States, and Egypt (the Egyptian delegate who took a lead in the drafting was Amr Moussa, who would later become Egypt’s foreign minister and then the head of the Arab League, and a future possibility for the Egyptian presidency in the post-Mubarak era).21 One can continue with examples, but the point is that this history connects to the current presence of human rights in the discourses of the Muslim world. These foundations and continuity in the region help make human rights a relevant frame for contemporary debates.

Arab Civil Society and Human Rights The following discussion of Arab civil society focuses on human rights NGOs. In doing so, it illustrates trends that are also present in the broader Muslim world and globally of local civil societies intersecting with the construction of the international human rights regime. Most Arab human rights NGOs cite the UN-based human rights regime as the foundation for their work. In seeking to advance human rights, they have cooperated with UN agencies, transnational NGOs, and, to a lesser degree, NGOs in other Arab states. Their means of pursuing their goals include monitoring on-the-ground conditions, lobbying for human rights legislation, providing legal counsel to victims of rights violations, and publishing reports on specific cases as well as the power structures that are behind human rights violations. They also disseminate human rights knowledge via educational programs, serve as policy think tanks, conduct field research on the implementation of human rights, engage with opposition political movements—including Islamists—to seek common ground, and participate in domestic, regional, and international human rights meetings. A series of regional conference declarations—including the Casablanca and Beirut Declarations, as will be discussed—most firmly demarcated the common principles of Arab human rights NGOs. So, while not directly engaged in constructing the hard and soft law state-based human rights regime, these groups have been instrumental in creating an environment in which states have compelling political and normative incentives to participate in this regime.

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Arab civil society has faced many of the same political and normative challenges that exist for civil societies around the world. They have been the targets of repression by authoritarian states and have been attacked by state and nonstate actors for their willingness to oppose status quo political, economic, and social structures. At the heart of the controversies that swirl around them, however, is that they differ from both governments and many opposition groups regarding their stand on the proper foundations for legitimate governance. Democratic processes, checks on governmental authority, freedom of religion, minority protections, and women’s rights are among the demands at issue. Such demands for reform have a history that goes back to intellectuals beginning in the Ottoman period. As the Arab world loosened its bonds with the Ottoman Empire, calls for reform increased. In Egypt under Muhammad Ali during the first part of the nineteenth century, Rifa’a Badawi Rafi’ al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) wrote about the importance of ordinary citizens’ participation in government processes and the responsibility of rulers to their subjects. Al-Tahtawi found it hard to balance adherence to Islamic traditions with impulses for change, and the Tunisian Khayr al-Din Pasha (1822–1890) tried to answer this challenge by suggesting that the Muslim world would become stronger by selecting from among ideas and institutions that originated from both within and outside its borders. Khayr al-Din argued that allowing greater individual freedoms and placing limits on the power of rulers would restore glory to the Muslim world, observing that both of these principles were rooted in the halcyon days of the Muslim umma.22 This selective borrowing (or picking and choosing—reminiscent of tafliq in Islamic law) remains resonant in contemporary Arab and Muslim world civil societies and their human rights NGOs, as seen in a distinct pattern that can be observed in many of their reports and publications. The reports often buttress claims for human rights with justifications based in some combination of indigenous traditions and the contemporary relevance of human rights to a changing Muslim world impacted by many different political and normative currents. Farah Antoun (1874–1922) was another in the line of Arab scholars sympathetic to ideas fundamental to human rights. Antoun argued for secular Arab states in which people of all religions had the same economic and political opportunities simply by virtue of being human. He also proposed a democratic vision of states that were accountable to their citizens and to the law. This secularism presaged later debates about whether human rights could be integrated into religious-political

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sources of authority or inherently required a separation of religious and political authority. Such debates continue unabated in the contemporary Arab world and in the Muslim world more broadly. Indeed, a vibrant civil society and intellectual discourse revolves around precisely this issue in Iran. Even some former members of the Islamic Republic’s ruling elite are migrating toward secular positions to one degree or another,23 although some members of the elite remain loyal—in either a reformist or a conservative mode—to the Iranian revolution’s original ideal of the melding of religion and politics. Returning to how ideas fundamental to human rights were a persistent theme in the Arab civil society’s intellectual history, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872–1963) specifically blamed despotism for a range of woes, including the average Egyptian’s miserable economic situation, in ways that anticipated how the Arab Human Development Reports issued in the 2000s would look to human rights as part of a paradigm shift to address political and economic stagnation in the Arab world.24 Lutfi al-Sayyid, known as the “Teacher of His Generation,” mentored, among others, Taha Hussain (1889–1973), twentieth-century Egypt’s foremost intellectual. Hussain was the epitome of a scholar confident enough to approach other intellectual traditions as an equal, rather than fearing the interchange and borrowing of ideas. Lutfi al-Sayyid, Hussain, and the others discussed here engaged with issues still debated in Arab human rights circles; they represent but a smattering from the tradition of Arab cosmopolitanism that continues to inform Arab civil society’s intellectual discourse.25 The twentieth century brought with it anti-Zionist and anticolonialist movements in the Arab world, some currents of which looked to human rights as a basis of support. The rise of fascism and Zionism, for example, impelled Lebanon’s Raif Khoury (1912–1967) to write Human Rights: From Where and to Where? (1937) as a critique of those movements from a Marxist perspective—this foretold later linkages between Marxist and liberal intellectuals who came to support human rights. In terms of on-the-ground politics, one leader in Morocco’s independence movement, Mehdi Ben Baraka (1920–1965), stressed involving citizens in demanding social equality and democratic processes. Ben Baraka highlighted abuses suffered under French colonialism and under the regime that followed as well (in fact, his assassination is rumored to have been jointly planned by the Moroccan monarchy and the French secret service). This typified how at least some anticolonial currents fed off norms derived from the not-coincidental rise of the international human

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rights regime during the post–World War II period—the debates over self-determination mentioned earlier point to precisely that dynamic. In the postcolonial Arab world, the crushing defeat suffered by a coalition of Arab states during the 1967 war with Israel catalyzed the efforts of human rights NGOs to move beyond simply the right to selfdetermination and toward the implementation of a broader panoply of rights. The naksa (setback), as the defeat came to be known, was a politically shattering event that gave momentum to trends questioning the certainties of Arab nationalism and the dictatorial rulers who used ethnic nationalism to ideologically justify their power. Political Islam is foremost among such trends, but the naksa also opened the way toward increased interaction between and among, on the one hand, disillusioned nationalists, liberals, and socialists (some of whom would become part of the core of Arab human rights NGOs) and, on the other hand, international organizations and transnational networks that based their work on the human rights regime as it had come to be elaborated through the United Nations after World War II. It was in this context that a small number of Arab human rights NGOs were founded in the 1960s and 1970s as these general currents began to crystallize under the rubric of the international human rights regime. In 1983 the Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR) was established as the first pan-regional human rights grouping. However, as was typical of regional human rights activities, its founding meeting took place in Cyprus, since no Arab state would allow such a meeting within its borders. In 1989 the AOHR was awarded consultative status with ECOSOC over the opposition of a wide array of Arab states. This led the way for other Arab human rights NGOs to participate in numerous UN human rights forums and to collaborate with regional and transnational human rights NGOs. The EOHR was first formed as a branch of the AOHR, in 1985. Its attempts to gain legal status for its work typify some of the constraints under which Arab human rights NGOs work; these attempts began in 1987 but were denied by the Egyptian government until 2003. The EOHR nonetheless established a domestic base and transnational linkages, using support from UN agencies and transnational networks to further campaigns in Egypt on torture, prison conditions, freedom of thought, prisoners of war, and the security state.26 More recently, Palestinian NGOs have stood prominently at this same intersection of human rights and anticolonialism. Expanding on initial demands for implementation of the right to Palestinian self-

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determination, they have more recently pressured Israel to abide by a range of specific obligations under human rights and humanitarian law. These Palestinian human rights NGOs also constituted a substantial force in the Palestinian Authority during its initial—and sadly abrogated—period of self-rule. During that time they pushed for democracy, constitutionalism, and human rights, while also serving as a counterweight to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s authoritarianism. Eventually, though, amid the cross fire of attacks by Arafat’s Fatah, Hamas, and Israel, their importance faded.27 The rich tradition of Arab intellectual work that underpins later engagement with specific aspects of the international human rights regime has only been hinted at here, and one other key element remains to be mentioned: women’s rights, probably the most essential element driving the rights regime forward. In 1899, Qasim Amin (1865–1908) began arguing for women’s rights; ever since, debates around women and patriarchy have been a staple of Arab intellectual life and of the work of Arab human rights NGOs, just as they have been in the broader Muslim world and globally. Amin argued in his Liberation of Women for women’s rights on the basis of a liberal interpretation of shari‘a but later, in The New Woman, he despaired of using Islam as a foundation for women’s rights and proposed a secular foundation instead. These contrasting periods in Amin’s work mirror contemporary debates regarding the basis on which to justify human rights. Huda Shaarawi (1879– 1947), Malak Hinfi Nassaf (1886–1918), and Nabawiyya Musa (1890– 1951) were among the pioneers in Egyptian (and Arab and Muslim world) feminism, arguing that differences between genders are part of a social construct rather than a cultural essence.28 While their emphases and justifications varied, they shared a stress on women’s rights to education, work, and participation in the public sphere, and all argued that women’s rights were part of the broader anticolonial nationalist project. Over the second half of the twentieth century, similar feminisms in countries across the Arab and Muslim worlds have attempted to change gender norms while working within the context of populist nationalisms. There has nonetheless been tension between these nationalisms and women’s rights (as well as human rights more broadly). This tension has escalated with the rise of religious nationalist (Islamist) movements that have had some rhetorical success in associating patriarchal family and social structures with a putatively “authentic” anticolonialism. This culturally essentialist project has had some popular resonance, but at the

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same time there has also been increasing activity in the sphere of Islamic feminisms that seek to merge Islamic and human rights norms in novel ways.29 This may raise more general questions about secularism in the Muslim world, as there is a body of Orientalist literature—Huntingtonian on the one side, poststructuralist on the other—that takes issue with notions of secularism in the Muslim world.30 As I have emphasized, there are important intersections among human rights, secularism, and Islamic norms, but this should not lead one to the too-common mistake of, on the one hand, identifying human rights with secularism. Nor, on the other hand, should we dismiss secularism as such, as Abdullahi anNaim’s masterful work on the history of secularism in the Muslim world shows.31 “Secular” and “religious” politics are overly monolithic categories that need to take into account their intersections.32 The continued relevance of secularisms that refuse to privilege religion as a political foundation is obvious both in feminisms and in other political movements in the Muslim world. In Iran, as mentioned and as demonstrated in its vast mid-2009 street protests, opposition to its Islamist regime has stimulated a vibrant intellectual movement that looks to both Islamic and secular sources as an alternative to the Islamist status quo.33 In that context, many argue that it is secularism that makes possible both religious dynamism as well as democracy and human rights.34 This was demonstrated again in 2011’s Arab Spring. Demands from the Arab Street that can be termed “secular” in orientation were at the core of protests that swept the region. This is not to say that religious constructs are not part of politics in the Arab world or elsewhere, but it is to say that a driving force of popular political movements has been secular demands for agency, representation, democracy, and other elements of the international human rights regime. Of course, engagement with the international human rights regime has not necessarily led to substantive human rights implementation by Arab states (or non-Arab states, per the example of Iran). Human rights have been on the margins of the Arab region’s repressive status quo and it remains to be seen if the changes in power ushered in by the Arab Spring will lead to a true change in power structures or a simple change in the faces of those who have power. Leaving that to the future, it is nonetheless worth pointing out the long history that laid the groundwork of human rights language that constituted the demands made during the Arab Spring. The pro forma ratification of human rights treaties and development of halfhearted regionally specific frameworks such as

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the Arab Charter on Human Rights have been (rightly) criticized by some Arab human rights NGOs as more of an evasion than an embrace of human rights by these states. Nonetheless, the extent of Arab (and Muslim) states’ participation in the process that led to the contemporary human rights regime gave human rights NGOs a basis on which to bring human rights into the region’s political conversation. Moreover, even if these treaties and institutions were entered into under false pretenses and their implementation has been haphazard, at best, they nonetheless led to interaction among the UN human rights apparatus, Arab states, and, most importantly, those Arab NGOs that came to see human rights as directly relevant to their grassroots priorities.35 This coincided with the increasing prominence of transnational human rights groups such as Amnesty International, further contributing to the normative environment in which Arab human rights NGOs formed and entrenched themselves. These domestic, international, and transnational currents informed the establishment of Arab human rights NGOs as an on-the-ground presence, albeit one that does not necessarily have a mass following or the ability to dramatically curtail rights abuses by states. The international human rights movement held a series of conferences in the 1980s and 1990s—most importantly, the aforementioned 1993 human rights conference in Vienna—that succeeded in receiving affirmation from states of the existence of an international consensus behind human rights, as defined in the context of a global discourse in which Western and nonWestern states, transnational networks, and civil society NGOs from around the globe (including many from the Arab and Muslim world) participated. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Arab human rights NGOs engaged in an analogous series of regional meetings that delineated their principles in relation both to international politics and to the politics of the Arab world. Doing so marked an explicit shift away from working with regional governmental organizations such as the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. It also marked a shift toward attempting to foster a greater degree of NGO cooperation and consensus across disparate parts of the Arab and Muslim worlds, where a lack of formalized networks had historically limited NGOs’ interactions with each other. There have been both formal outcomes and dramatic political results that have flowed out from this history. The formal outcomes include the Casablanca and Beirut Declarations; perhaps most important among them was the Casablanca Declaration, which came out of the First International Conference of the Arab Human Rights Move-

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ment.36 Co-organized by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and the Moroccan Organization for Human Rights, this 1999 conference (originally scheduled to be held in Cairo until permission was denied by Egyptian authorities) is a concrete example of the presence of Arab human rights NGOs and their organizing principles. Conferences such as the one held in Casablanca, and the declarations that result, have given a normative framework to the varying foundations of Arab human rights groups and are a definitive landmark in their history. Beyond a historical landmark, they are what laid the groundwork for how human rights language came to constitute much of what was substantively demanded in countries around the Arab world during the Arab Spring. Those demands had historical roots.

Why This History Matters As we have seen, the work of Arab (and Muslim world) human rights organizations has flowed out of an intellectual tradition with deep roots. But that tradition has remained intensely contested both by states and by competing normative movements, ranging from the secular ethnonationalists who have dominated many postcolonial states to the religious nationalists who have increased their visibility over the past two decades. Is the history of human rights in the Muslim world as outlined here a mere surface layer of no importance? States—particularly those that systemically violate human rights as a means to maintain their monopoly on power—use several strategies to keep the work of human rights NGOs from undermining their authority. These strategies have included co-opting human rights by posing as their true representative or, more simply, repressing the ability of human rights defenders to act through means as diverse as intimidation, legal constraints, and state violence. More broadly, states have sought to de-legitimize human rights as alien to the Muslim world’s politics and culture; in this they adopt the language of the Western academic cultural relativist critique of human rights. Engaging with ideas that can be tagged as “Western,” such as human rights, clearly has opened thinkers in this tradition to the charge of cultural inauthenticity.37 Further complicating the situation is the rise of Islamist movements that share with human rights NGOs an oppositional political position. While this has led to some fertile interchanges between Islamist and human rights activists, the former also often

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frame themselves in ideological opposition to human rights, thus reinforcing attempts to de-legitimize human rights as culturally alien. Another complicating factor is the co-optation of human rights rhetoric by Western states as part of foreign policy agendas. This has also contributed, ironically, to de-legitimizing the long tradition of internal discourse in the Arab world on human rights and to negating arguments that it is the modern state that has made human rights relevant, not a “Western” philosophical tradition. The counterproductivity of a US invasion of Iraq that invoked human rights as one of its justifications— albeit in passing and artificially—is the obvious example here. It is perhaps understandable that some are so quick to ask the question with which we started this chapter: Do they even care about rights? I have already expressed my objections to this question, suggesting that it is more reasonable to ask if some Muslims explicitly take positions on or are implicitly impacted by human rights. As this chapter has shown, a history of contestation over and engagement with human rights—inclusive of even the most anti-Western forces—emphatically rebukes the notion that rights are irrelevant to non-Western societies, even while some non-Western states wield sufficient power to largely disregard the international rights regime. The Muslim world is not an insular, disconnected region. Portraying it as such does violence both to its history and to its contemporary dynamism. The human rights regime’s rise in importance stems from the fact that it is a response to the modern state’s excesses in targeting those under its jurisdiction. Hence the attempts by many to use rights as a shield from state power. This relevance is the fundamental basis of the history of human rights in the Muslim world. It is this history of a variety of individuals and groups finding human rights relevant that is the ultimate retort to attempts to impose cultural relativism from the outside. This chapter is not intended as some sort of definitive history of human rights in the Muslim world. Rather its point is that if human rights are germane to everyday political, economic, and social issues in the Muslim world and are therefore invoked by many, including Islamists, it is in part because the historical background—state and nonstate—outlined here has sinews that connect to present-day human rights discourse. While knowledge of this history explicitly contests monolithic conceptualizations of human rights as property of “the West,” human rights as a frame relevant to Muslim world politics is about far more than just historical antecedents. In fact, despite the emphasis on history in this chapter, to my mind history is just the

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beginning of the story. History is key to understanding human rights, but only in the sense of a dynamic history of political events, struggle, and normative change, not history in the sense of fixed events and determined meanings defining what comes later. That idea frames this chapter and this book. Human rights are continuously redefined in the context of transnational interactions and bottom-up impacts, not just top-down Geneva-based definitions. And, simply put, the Muslim world has been a part of these interactions. So we have hopefully started to answer the “Do they care?” question posed at the start of this chapter: yes, there is a deep history of human rights informing the Muslim world’s intellectual and political life. But how is it that some Muslims come to care about human rights? In what ways are such rights cared about? How has this been affected by contemporary transnational structures? And beyond that, when we talk about the human rights regime, what is its substance beyond a much-invoked phrase? These questions remain to be discussed in the chapters that follow.

Notes 1. Waltz, “Universal Human Rights.” 2. Pratt, “Human Rights NGOs and the ‘Foreign Funding Debate’ in Egypt.” 3. Persecution of a minority group such as Kurds in Turkey, for example, is another relevant example. It receives attention that, in another era, didn’t exist for a group like Armenians under the Ottoman Empire (and, continuing this circularity, impacts on the contemporary political benchmarks for Turkish entrance into the European Union). 4. Mokhtari, After Abu Ghraib, p. 157. 5. Ibid., p. 160. 6. “Iranian Foreign Minister Kharazi: Interview with al-Hayat,” al-Hayat, October 3, 1998, translated by Anthony Tirado Chase. 7. Hassan, “A Question of Human Rights Ethics.” 8. For a sharp, critical take on this cooperation, see MacQueen, “The Reluctant Partnership Between the Muslim Brotherhood and Human Rights NGOs in Egypt.” 9. Hassan, “Muslim Brothers Party’s Platform in Egypt from a Human Rights Perspective.” Hassan gives a more pessimistic take on such forms of cooperation. 10. There are some who argue that this declaration, long regarded as nonbinding soft law, now has the status of binding customary law, but that is

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another issue. For a full discussion, see Alfredsson and Eide, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 11. United Nations, General Assembly, Resolution 2200 (XXI). 12. Standard accounts include Nowak, Introduction to the International Human Rights Regime; and Glendon, A World Made New. 13. See Waltz, “Universalizing Human Rights” and “Reclaiming and Rebuilding the History of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” 14. Neseera, Mahmoud Azmy. 15. Waltz, “Universal Human Rights,” p. 831. 16. Ibid., pp. 822–823. 17. Ibid., p. 827. 18. See United Nations, General Assembly, Resolution A/CONF.157/23. Article 5 was much debated in light of cultural relativist arguments advanced by some governments (as discussed later in this chapter). Ultimately adopted by consensus, Article 5, regarding both universality and indivisibility, reads as follows: All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms. 19. Of course these states were far from democratic but, at the same time, Eleanor Roosevelt represented a United States with apartheid-like Jim Crow still in effect several decades after blacks had been freed from slavery, and Rene Cassin represented a France still determined to hold on to its colonial possessions, even at the cost of brutal human rights violations in states like Algeria. 20. United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Resolution 1503 (XLVIII). 21. John Carey, interview with author, June 25, 2009. 22. For the classic overview of this period, see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. See also Shirabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West. 23. See Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam. 24. United Nations Development Programme, “The Arab Human Development Report” (2002–2005). See Chapter 5 for a fuller discussion of these annual reports. 25. Hatina, “Arab Liberal Discourse.” 26. For a general background on many issues relevant to the human rights movement in the Arab world, see Manna, Al-im’aan fi-huquuq al-insaan. 27. Brown, Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords.

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28. For a broad overview of women in the Middle East, see Keddie, Women in the Middle East; and Pratt, “The Queen Boat Case in Egypt.” 29. See Mir-Hosseini, “The Politics and Hermeneutics of Hijab in Iran”; and Fazaeli, “Contemporary Iranian Feminism.” 30. See Reinbold, “Radical Islam and Human Rights Values.” 31. For a masterful work on this topic, see an-Naim, Islam and the Secular State. 32. See Mahmood, Politics of Piety. Saba Mahmood’s influential work is an example of work that is overly broad in its contempt for constructs of secularism and its conflation of secularism and human rights. Mahmood’s ethnographic studies are important in bringing attention to one dimension of Islamist piety, but as with much work based in anthropological cultural relativism, Mahmood comes close to exoticizing her subjects and neglects to note the dynamic transnational currents that inform contemporary subjectivities. Some of Mahmood’s readers were, no doubt, shocked by how events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square showed far more complex political demands than one would imagine from reading Mahmood’s dismissals of secularism. 33. For a specific example of this in terms of feminisms, see Fazaeli, “Contemporary Iranian Feminism.” More generally, see Postel, Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran. In particular, note Danny Postel’s interview with Ramin Jahanbegloo reprinted in the aforementioned volume. For samples of work that ranges from moderate to more radically reformist, see also Mir-Hosseini and Tapper, Islam and Democracy; or Soroush, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam. 34. This is, in a general sense, the argument of Abdolkarim Soroush. See also an-Naim, Islam and the Secular State. 35. For two accounts that have set the standard in the international relations literature on explaining the global spread of international human rights norms, see Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights; and Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 36. See “Casablanca Declaration of the Arab Human Rights Movement”; and Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, “Beirut Declaration on the Regional Protection of Human Rights.” Each is also reprinted in Chase and Hamzawy, Human Rights in the Arab World. 37. See, in particular, the works of Reza Afshari and Rhoda E. Howard on this topic: Afshari, Human Rights in Iran; Afshari, “An Essay on Scholarship, Human Rights, and State Legitimacy”; Howard, Human Rights and the Search for Community; and Howard-Hassmann, “The Second Great Transformation.”

3 The Transnational Context

History alone does not account for the relevance of human rights in the Muslim world. Another essential factor is how they are debated and discussed in what can be called a transnational space—a realm of political, economic, social, and cultural networking and organizing that lies beyond state borders and has the potential to impact global politics in significant ways.1 There is an increasing expansion of grassroots movements from within the transnational Muslim world that make reference to human rights.2 This forms the context for the ways in which human rights have come to frame many issues of concern in the Muslim world. Making explicit the transnational dimensions of politics in the Muslim world is essential. It is part and parcel of moving beyond superficial rhetoric about the Muslim world’s diversity and instead conceptualizing it as a pluralistic, multilocal space that is neither separate from nor coterminous with other parts of the world. There is a perpetually shifting relationship between locales in the Muslim world and regional, international, and transnational currents. Such a relationship is not about shared worldviews within or between societies—contestation and conflict remain fundamental to domestic, international, and transnational politics. What is significant is that shared communication pathways well outside official state-to-state relations (or traditional “international relations”) mutually inform the terms of political debates around the globe, including in the Muslim world. This context is essential to the dynamics of these debates.

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Before turning to the relevance of transnationalism to human rights specifically, this chapter begins by providing a general introduction to transnationalism and the Muslim world. The following section focuses on intersections between Islamists and other groups as an example of the transnational currents that inform the dynamics of Muslim world politics, with specific reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, contemporary Iranian politics, and al-Qaeda.3 The policy implications clearly demonstrate that these points are not abstract but, in fact, have tremendous real-world importance. Through historical memory, current discourse, and their role in transnational conversations, human rights are becoming increasingly integrated into peoples’ normative consciousness, including in the Muslim world. Human rights thus have come to frame identifiable issues in ways that can be empirically documented. The chapter concludes with examples showing how human rights have become part of normative consciousness, albeit a contested one, in the region. More in-depth case studies demonstrating the normative significance of human rights in the Muslim world will be presented in Chapters 6 and 7, after a closer look at the conceptual foundations of human rights in Chapters 4 and 5.

Transnational Structures and the Muslim World How does conceptualizing the Muslim world as transnational do anything beyond simply adding a few more dissonant syllables to our conversation? The Muslim world’s diversity is often invoked by scholars responding to clichéd notions of the Muslim world being a monolithic whole. Nonetheless, after invoking that diversity, we all too often still ignore that diversity and retreat to taking a single variable as the object of study— that is, diverse but really mostly defined by this group or that variable. Focusing on the transnational makes explicit that human rights do not interact with a disconnected, static Muslim world or an unchanging, monolithic religious-cultural entity called Islam. This permits a clearer focus on the human rights of individuals and social groups who cross regional borders and exist within differing political systems; are subject to and participate in shifting power structures, ethnic configurations, and ideological contexts; and are globally connected by a polyglot mixture of networks, technologies, and diasporic links. This isn’t just verbiage—as I hope to convey, many of the same transnational connections make human rights equally relevant to Tunis,

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Tehran, London, and Los Angeles. Each city, in some sense, is engaged in the process of defining (and being partly defined by) a transnational Muslim world. For example, Tehran and Los Angeles (the latter is home to the largest population of Farsi speakers outside Iran) aptly illustrate the transnational context in which the Iranian regime and Iranians as a whole exist; residents of both cities are part of processes that have had major implications for broader Shi‘a, Muslim, and global politics. The Iranian government’s ruling ideology gestated in the diaspora, which led to a change of regime in Tehran, just as many of its current opponents reside in Los Angeles and other parts of the diaspora. Once in power, Iran’s Islamist regime then began sponsoring a well-funded export of its version of Islam’s role in politics. This has had ramifications for how Islam is constructed in many parts of the world, as is especially obvious from its connections to current-day Lebanese, Iraqi, and Palestinian politics. For a Lebanese Shi‘ite, for example, the idea of what it is to be a good Muslim and how to act in the political sphere has changed due to the transnational political-social impact of the Iranian regime’s ideology. By the same token, some former officials of the Iranian regime (such as Abdolkarim Soroush and Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari) have distanced themselves from the state and have instead joined circles that foster a transnational interchange on reformist and secular ideas that directly challenge the official ruling ideology on the role of Islam in governance.4 Such ideas have been diffused (and contested) by official,5 semiofficial, private, and informal “transmitters,” as they might be called. These various transmitters include connections to satellite television stations (some of them headquartered in Los Angeles, even if watched around the world); the Internet (Persian is the world’s fourth most heavily used blogger language);6 familial, personal, and business networks among those living in Iran and various parts of the Iranian diaspora; and transgovernmental and transnational networks dealing with issues as diverse (and intersecting) as sports, human rights, music, and Islam. Ideas flowing through these transmitters manifest themselves daily in Iran and among Iranians, defining their political and social life in a way that is constituted, as the histories of the various Iranian diasporas show, by complex and multisided power relations. Both at the governmental level and in transnational civil society, the increasing significance of transnationalism in defining political-social language and terms of debate is a distinctive characteristic in contemporary politics

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in Iran and elsewhere; indeed, it has redefined what constitutes “Iranian” politics. What is true in Iran and the wider Shi‘a world is also the case for the Muslim world overall. When we recognize that diasporas, hybridities, minorities, and the presumed “margins” of the Muslim world are as essential as any supposed geographic or normative heartland, we can begin to grapple with its complexity in a very tangible sense. This means moving beyond mere obligatory acknowledgments of diversity to take up the intricacies of how power and contestation are at the heart of various forms of political and social identity. Notably, a transnational perspective complicates any notion of insular “domestic” communities contrasted against either other monolithic communities or some sort of international society writ large. The relevance of sites on the map not normally seen as part of the Muslim world is highlighted by attention to transnationalism. The Muslim world is constituted by China’s Muslim population just as it is by Saudi Arabia’s (roughly equal in number, in fact, though estimates of the size of China’s Muslim population vary). No geographical area has a monopoly on defining the Muslim world. Different areas have experienced different forms of internal and external power and domination. The Muslim world writ large is as informed by the struggles facing Muslims in Europe as by the Palestinian-Arab conflict. Myriad political, economic, and social issues impact locales with Muslim populations around the world. In short, the Muslim world, if it is to be a meaningful phrase at all, needs to be seen as constituted by all of its populations and the power dynamics that define their political-social identities—both ideologically and ethnically, and in terms of gender, ideology, and sexual orientation, as well as other overlapping elements of identity. Whether we’re discussing human rights groups or al-Qaeda or, in a different category, Iranians, Palestinians, or Nigerians, we’re talking about transnational communities that reach across borders of different sorts and, in so doing, configure and reconfigure how they are defined.7 They do so via the Internet, satellite television, migrations of rich and poor and the fractured diasporas they create, and various other modes of social, economic, and political exchange. The pulsating dynamism of these communities comes, in part, from the multiplicity of identities and ideologies at their heart.8 This multiplicity is informed, in turn, by the contradictory effects of transnational connections. On the one hand, networks, diasporas, and technology can give rise to new normative

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communities that break apart previous insularities. On the other hand, ironically, this connectedness can also call forth obsessively purer, more homogeneous communities, leading to new forms of insularity.9 Transnationalism can facilitate cosmopolitanism, but it can also facilitate xenophobic identity-building.

Transnationalism and Islamism So, if the Muslim world’s politics must be examined in a transnational context, does this extend to Islamists who present themselves as opposed to nonindigenous political and social forces? Indeed, Islamists are a perhaps surprising example of transnationalism’s impact. Islamists have connected across borders as a way to accentuate and advance a narrowly based identity politic that emphasizes the creation or imposition of homogeneity on their societies. At the same time, “Islamism” is a broad term and can signify a range of ideological dispositions and tactics. There are a variety of transnational Islamisms just as there are a variety of transnational Islams.10 Some of these show evidence of integrating what can be described as human rights–based ideas into their political demands. In Egypt, for example, the Kifaya movement, which flourished in the 2000s, was widely regarded as liberal but included substantial Islamist elements, and worked in tandem with the Muslim Brotherhood during the run-up to the 2005–2006 elections. Similarly, Yemen’s Islamist party Islah cooperated with human rights groups in developing common agendas and entered into an electoral coalition with the Yemeni socialist party as well as a number of smaller parties of differing ideological predispositions.11 Shadi Mokhtari describes how Islamists and secularists closely cooperated to stage human rights conferences and related events in Yemen,12 something that I observed myself while working with the United Nations and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on health and human rights issues in Yemen.13 Amr Hamzawy has discussed this trend in some detail with reference to the Arab world, citing examples that range from Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt in North Africa to Kuwait, Yemen, and Jordan in the mashreq.14 Hamzawy is clear that Islamists have a history of rejectionism and insularity, and that some Islamists continue in this tradition. But he also has documented the dynamism of other Islamist groups, calling attention to how they have incorporated language from other normative traditions:

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Although moderate Islamists continue to call for the establishment of Islamic states across the region, this is increasingly a matter of symbolic language and traditional metaphor. In real politics these ideals are sub-ordinated to the priorities of liberal democratic reforms. A new consensus has emerged within movements such as the Jordanian Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Yemeni Reformist Union, and the Egyptian—not yet legalized—Center Party (Al Wasat) that the ideals reflected in the utopia of the Islamic state can best be realized in the contemporary Arab world by adhering in each country to the principles of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.15

Some of this may have been opportunistic coalition-building, which in a sense is precisely the point: these intersections represent political opportunities leading to normative interchange. Jillian Schwedler’s Faith in Moderation looks at these intersections in the context of Yemeni and Jordanian politics.16 Schwedler notes this normative moderation—in what she calls the “ideational dimensions of public political space”—and how it flows out of political structure and opportunity. Schwedler’s definition of moderation is “movement from a relatively closed and rigid worldview to one more open and tolerant of alternative perspectives.”17 This is obviously a normative definition of moderation, as opposed to one focused on particular structural location or political behavior. While it may strike some as overly broad at first glance, Schwedler is actually defining moderation in the only possible meaningful manner: the key question is not whether a group takes a particular position, influenced by any number of circumstantial forces, but whether the group accepts pluralism rather than insisting that it has a totalizing monopoly on political truth. To the degree that some Islamists have shifted to substantively articulating an ideological worldview that includes a democratic and human rights narrative as fully consonant with Islamism, this is evidence of very real moderation. This underlying theme, important in itself, is also indicative of how human rights have become an inescapable part of the region’s political fabric. In this sense, human rights to some degree influence how views are constructed and reconstructed. The integration of human rights motifs into Islamist politics should not be shocking. Human rights figure into global political dialogues in which Islamists participate, and so naturally some Islamists are inclined to make human rights a part of their political language when it is in their self-interest to do so. This is not as paradoxical as it may sound at first blush. Islamism and human rights float on the same transnational currents, and thus, plugging into

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transnational communication networks, media, and diasporas almost inevitably leads to exposure to a range of views that have the potential to inform even the most insular discourses. Notable parallels exist between Islam and human rights. Asking “if” Islam matters to some of the debates recounted in this book would be problematic for the same reason that a comparable question about human rights would be—it is overly general and generic. Just as with human rights, a far more useful approach is to try to disaggregate Islam’s impact in order to see in which discrete ways and distinct contexts it matters. Islam can be further likened to human rights in that it is not a static entity. Islam’s relevance in the political realm only comes about due to processes that renew its on-the-ground resonance. Increasingly, input into such processes comes at a transnational level, through interaction with any number of other discourses, including human rights. It is, in other words, the transnationalism of contemporary political dialogue that explains instances of overlap and hybridity between human rights and Islamic discourses. This is why we find everyone from human rights NGOs to Islamists on the ground in Egypt and Iranian foreign ministers (as noted in Chapter 2) in some way recognizing human rights.18 This can mean anything from violently demonizing rights as a Western conspiracy to adopting rights language (or both at once). This is not a one-way street. Intellectuals dealing with human rights in the Muslim world increasingly attempt to “Islamicize” human rights language as a way to give it greater political resonance. This is similar to how human rights have impacted Islamists, also contributing to shifts in how human rights are understood.19 This doesn’t mean, of course, that Islamism and human rights will somehow magically merge. To the contrary, there are sharp conflicts and contradictions between them. One can both recognize the intolerance and immoderation of many Islamist groups and also be aware of the possibility (though not inevitability) of their engaging in pluralist coalitionbuilding that moderates their ideology. At the end of the day, I am somewhat pessimistic about the notion of a thriving liberal Islamism, but given the ideological pluralism within Islamism, it is certainly possible. This contradicts the caricature of Islamists as oozing out of the primordial mud. This depiction of Islamists is false; would that life were so easy. In fact, recent examples of Islamism’s dynamism are not novel; Islamism has always been an innovative, modernist movement, whether as established among Sunnis by Hassan al-Banna at the height of

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Egyptian anticolonial tumult in the 1920s or among Shi‘ites by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the midst of diaspora politics and distinctly shaped by strains of French political philosophy in the 1970s.20 Both of these “fundamentalist” movements—and their offshoots and variants— are deeply distorted when they are characterized as projections of an insular, primordial Islamic world. To the contrary, each is an expression of particularly intense transnational moments. Specifically, each was impacted by global political currents (imperialism and third world anticolonialism, most notably), changes in global political structures (the globalization of the modern state), and the transnational movement of ideas that underpinned their novel reconfigurations of the place of Islam in politics. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz describes in his Cairo Trilogy better than any historian how the Muslim Brotherhood emerged in the 1920s at the nexus of ideologies running in contradictory directions during the most dynamic period in Egypt’s anticolonial struggle.21 Interweaving the politics of this era with a family history, Mahfouz relates how liberals were initially ascendant in Egypt’s anticolonial drive and how this changed after World War I, with anticolonialism turning into a populist movement made up of many overlapping elements. Different family members in the Cairo Trilogy represent different political trends, including liberal nationalism, socialism, and the birth of contemporary political Islam in al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood. The three novels beautifully evoke the era’s ideological diversity but also use the metaphor of family to illustrate the common search for a new basis of political community even amid this diversity. This ongoing search (Tahrir Square is just the latest manifestation) continues to inform the politics of Egypt and other postcolonial states in the Muslim world. Moving to the Shi‘a world, Ruhollah Khomeini’s “barefoot Islam” in Iran is an even more obvious example of how globalized “fundamentalist” ideologies have always been. The rationale for the institutionalization of an Islamic republic in Iran came out of a creative ideological mixture of Marxist-influenced philosophy, third worldist rhetoric, and Shi‘a Islamic motifs—much of it brewed by Iranian exiles influenced by French intellectual currents.22 Indeed, just the combination of “Islamic” with “republic” indicates its hybrid origins. The pairing in Iran of Islam with constitutional republicanism, along with talk of Islamic socialism in economics, should put to rest any notion that such an ideology comes from some return to a pure Islam of the past or represents a rejection of modernity. To the contrary, it epitomizes the

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transnationally informed nature of the ideological movements that characterize contemporary global politics.23 Human rights are just one wave among the various currents that have since impacted on such accelerating reconfigurations. This can be seen all the more with today’s Islamists, including groups like al-Qaeda, which is as plugged in and transnationally networked as anyone. Al-Qaeda is intent on using that connectedness as part of its strategy to radically redefine the role of Islam in politics by redefining Muslim identity.24 Indeed, one can say it is Muslims trained in classical methods, steeped in Sufism or more pious and mystical traditions,25 or simply isolated (geographically or otherwise) from transnational ideological currents, who tend to be the most distant from political Islam in theory and in practice. A group like al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is made up of a multiethnic membership without a specific nation-state connection. It is organized transnationally, communicates with members via the Internet,26 and markets its image through dramatically planned manipulations of satellite television.27 Its core comprises the relatively well-educated second- and third-generation diaspora populations who feel disconnected from traditional sources of authority.28 Al-Qaeda advances a strategy that seeks to naturalize an “Islamic” worldview as elemental for all Muslims. It uses this Manichean worldview to justify attacks on the so-called Far Enemy (states of the West, as opposed to the Near Enemy, i.e., states in the Muslim world run by non-Islamists) and, more generally, to make itself the arbiter of what is acceptable in the Muslim world’s normative environment.29 In this it epitomizes the impact of transnational nonstate actors, while also demonstrating their ability to survive and arguably thrive even when under attack by a coalition of the world’s most powerful states. Although states remain central actors, there is no reason to continue to privilege them as the sole structural basis of the international order when transnational currents enable nonstate actors such as alQaeda to have such a defining role in Muslim world and global politics as well. Constructivist international relations theory provides additional insight into the significance of transnationalism, a point that can be illustrated with further reference to al-Qaeda.30 Al-Qaeda is an apt example of the impact of a nonstate actor on shifting definitions of appropriate behavior in international relations. In this case, a movement that proclaims itself to be acting according to religious discourse, while by no means representative of Islam, undoubtedly has used its invocation of

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religion to constitute identity. While deeply contested and generally unpopular, this project has also had some degree of success.31 With al-Qaeda we are well beyond trying to track whether, for example, nonstate actors are able to frame human rights, environmental, labor, or other such issues that have been key to the literature on the impact of transnationalism at an international level.32 It is quite true that human rights and other liberal regimes have had a documented effect on constructions of appropriate behavior by global political actors and so should be a part of any pragmatic accounting of international relations33—indeed, I am extending precisely such an argument in this book with respect to human rights in the Muslim world. Al-Qaeda’s achievements, however, make the impact of nonstate actors much more blatant, leaving little room for skepticism. Al-Qaeda confirms the importance of nonstate actors, ideology, and norm entrepreneurs in international relations, but goes well beyond the domains in which they have usually been located by theorists—and in so doing, should erase the doubts of neorealist skeptics as to their practical impact.34 This makes it clear that, whether in touching on al-Qaeda or on human rights, it is essential to include a focus on nonstate actors and normative networks as well as on the substance of their ideological and normative ways of viewing the world. This helps us understand contemporary global politics from a perspective that is not simply statecentric or West-centric but also acknowledges the crucial importance of currents running through all other parts of the world, including the Muslim world.

Transnational Human Rights Norms So far, the current chapter has laid the groundwork for this book’s claim that human rights inform key debates in the Muslim world by explaining how transnational currents can inform normative shifts among disparate Muslim populations, including among Islamists. We will now take this to the next stage by exploring how human rights norms, specifically, have become part of peoples’ consciousness in the Muslim world. This demonstrates how human rights have taken on importance at the normative level even in places where their actual implementation is minimal. I have mentioned economic development, political ideology, and religious belief previously, and, in fact, discussions on all three topics consistently intersect with human rights. Cutting-edge development

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work, for example, increasingly revolves around questions of whether or not equitable development requires the implementation of human rights. Ideologies and belief systems also often justify themselves as advancing human rights, or are de-legitimized by opponents as being antithetical to rights. In the Muslim world, for example, there are constant polemics about whether Islam and human rights conflict or correspond. This indicates how integrated human rights have become in debates over a range of issues and cases. Further, the ability to coexist with human rights is increasingly important to the legitimacy of those from any number of ideological perspectives; the explicit rejection of human rights has become rare. The many ways in which peoples worldwide engage with a broad spectrum of issues illustrate this point. Consider, for example, the right to self-determination for Palestinians, the torture in Abu Ghraib prison, or the lack of legitimacy for authoritarian regimes and authoritarianism more generally, as seen in the 2005 World Values Survey, which shows that, in this regard, Muslims differ very little from those in the rest of the world. Those in Muslim countries believe that democracies perform well (68 percent, the same as in the predominantly non-Muslim “West”) and have a higher approval for democratic ideals than those in other regions (87 percent, a tad higher than the 86 percent in “the West”).35 (These percentages can serve as viable proxy data that indicate general attitudes toward human rights, particularly because I would define “substantive democratization” as the implementation of a broad range of human rights.)36 Even when human rights are still contested and cannot be called mainstream, as in debates about whether Islam contradicts human rights or about whether women or homosexuals belong lower in the social order, these debates rage in ways that indicate how central they are to current intellectual discourse. Most tangibly, Bahey el-Din Hassan’s story of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) and its work with Islamists (Chapter 2) vividly illustrates how the normative relevance of human rights has come to frame politics on the ground. When it can be demonstrated that legal representation based on human rights principles is helpful, the representation is often (not always) welcomed. Furthermore, intersections between Islamists and human rights groups have consequences beyond Islamists. These intersections transform how human rights are conceptualized and applied, in both Egypt and the broader Muslim world. Whether this is a risk or an opportunity, or both, is a key question, but in any case points to how the utility of human rights is essential to their impact.

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This utility is why human rights have become such a part of everyday consciousness—something about which, for example, Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji can say, “For us many of the articles of the Declaration of Human Rights are so self-evidently true that we think they need not be proved” (i.e., the precise definition of a norm).37 When legal representation, political legitimacy, and social justice can all be effectively advanced—out of principle or expediency—by invoking rights, then rights become less abstract and more real. When headlines invoke human rights violations as a reason for condemnation and those suffering such violations as worthy of political support, then rights become less abstract and more real. And when governments, international organizations, nonstate actors, and powerful transnational networks that connect them all speak the language of rights in their programming and demands, then rights become, again, less abstract and more real. These are all elements of the transformation of human rights from natural law and political rhetoric into tangible positive law, policy discussions, and normative expectations. By now, readers should be able to see how I am approaching one of the book’s central questions: how it is that many Muslims come to care about and appeal to human rights. All three arguments I am tracing in Chapters 2 and 3—the history of human rights in the region, their existence in a shared transnational space, and their practical integration into everyday political and normative consciousness—make it unsurprising that Muslims would therefore find it useful to invoke the language of human rights both in their legal defenses and to gain political sympathy. If you or your friends or colleagues were being tortured, wouldn’t you do the same? Such appeals cannot be attributed merely to self-interest, but rather indicate a real change in attitudes and expectations—a normative shift, to use social science jargon. In other eras, it would not have occurred to most people—particularly an Islamist in a Cairo jail—to invoke an expectation that a human right should be respected. Such a change can only occur to the degree that such expectations are based on real positive law obligations with some prospect, however near or remote, of being honored through domestic enforcement or outside political pressure. So the prospective utility and concrete impact of human rights are part of what has led to increasing reference to rights in contemporary global politics, even by those—like Islamists—who pursue aims that contradict rights. If human rights are tangibly relevant to the issues and groups that define politics, this leads directly to their becoming part of

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the mental paradigms through which the political world is conceptualized. While there was a time when human rights were simply irrelevant, that time is long past. This is not to be taken as a claim that human rights have come to be uniformly accepted or that their relevance will lead to the immediate curtailment of the human rights violations that take place in many countries (both within the Muslim world and outside it). Still, such advances in shifting normative frames are important in determining what is seen as self-interested action. In other words, they can lead to shifts in the material calculations that are made, particularly by those who have the brute power to violate or not violate rights and who will make determinations as to whether such violations are in their self-interest. The more people are socialized to accept human rights as legitimate, the more their actions and the actions of those within their political sphere will be constrained by an expectation that violating human rights will result in a loss of political support.38 Clearly, we have not reached a tipping point where the violation of human rights is inconceivable, but they are part of what constitute normative frames and hence inform debate and action in the Muslim world and globally. We can see the greater use of a human rights frame occurring at three levels, the first two of which are paradoxical in that their use of human rights is either oppositional or hypocritical. Credible efforts to defend human rights or to extend the influence of the human rights regime are only found at a third level. But I would suggest that the other two levels, which will be examined first, are important in their own ways for making human rights increasingly relevant throughout the Muslim world. Characterizing what happens at the first level as the greater use of a human rights frame may seem counterintuitive, because it is expressed as a vehement rejection of human rights, democracy, and related concepts. To give an example, during the Danish cartoon crisis in February 2006, a newspaper photograph showed a demonstrator holding a poster that exclaimed “Freedom Go to Hell!” Obviously there is no sympathy toward freedom of expression or other freedoms here, but notably, even in opposition, this protester is acting squarely within a context that is defined by human rights. Some may agree and some may disagree with the protester’s sentiment, but the field of debate within which they are thinking is defined, at least in part, by human rights language. Of course, this protester’s sort of blatant opposition is fairly rare. Islamists, authoritarians, socialists, and liberals across the Muslim

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world usually invoke human rights in a positive way and, in fact, spend more time denouncing the West or the United States for hypocrisy regarding human rights than actually denouncing the human rights regime itself. This distinction is key. Disparaging Western hypocrisy regarding human rights—as Osama bin Laden did in October 2002 in his letter “To the Americans”39—reinforces both the saliency and the legitimacy of human rights. Criticizing failures to implement human rights in Palestine, Guantanamo, and elsewhere makes the point that human rights are legitimate and should be implemented. This leads to the second level at which human rights are often invoked: rhetorically and in contradiction to the actual acts of the speaker. This is obvious in terms of the Islamists to whom we have already referred. They are fond of describing themselves as the true protectors of human rights or arguing that human rights come from Islam, even though their ideologies when put into practice tend to harshly violate rights. Authoritarian leaders in the Muslim world provide an even better example. Rare is such a leader who will attack democracy or human rights per se. To the contrary, often with laughable hypocrisy, even the worst violators of human rights will claim to represent human rights. Hosni Mubarak embodied such hypocrisy as Egypt’s president from 1981 until his overthrow in early 2011. Emergency rule was consistently renewed throughout that time, giving the state the legal authority to routinely violate human rights. And, indeed, rights were routinely violated; in 2008, for example, Human Rights Watch reported that 5,000 people were in Egypt’s jails without having been charged or given a trial.40 This was just the tip of the iceberg. It is fair to say that Mubarak’s government regularly violated every category of rights, be they economic (the state systematically repressed labor unrest, especially in the last few years of Mubarak’s reign), political (torture, for example, was a frequent occurrence), civil (elections were commonly manipulated), social (homosexuals were subjected to state harassment), or cultural (minorities such as Copts had fewer rights).41 In a previous era, if a leader such as Mubarak didn’t simply ignore human rights, he would have likely denounced human rights as a Western bourgeois plot (think of Warsaw Bloc countries during the Cold War denouncing the fraud of the Helsinki agreements)42 or a Western cultural imposition (per cultural relativist claims or the “Asian Values” debate that came to the fore in the 1990s).43 Instead, the political calculus has had to change because of a changing normative atmosphere. As a

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result, we see leaders like Mubarak claiming to represent human rights with the sort of obvious hypocrisy noted here. Hence, for example, the following excerpts from Mubarak’s 2006 statement to the International Institute of Law for the Francophone Countries with an emphasis on development and human rights: [Egypt recognizes the] importance of dialogue among various cultures, enhancing the progress of peace, justice and democracy and respect for human rights and law as pillars of development and civilization. ... You may agree with me [Mubarak] that it is time to codify dimensions of this development and its impact on the peoples’ lives, human rights and states’ economic and social activities. . . . In conclusion . . . [t]he convening and success of this conference makes an important scientific addition to scientific research, the upholding of the rule of law and respect for human rights.44

This is not a particularly remarkable speech by Mubarak, but was of a piece with his public rhetoric and, indeed, with the public rhetoric of many of the world’s prime human rights violators. Their hypocrisy is obvious, but even this hypocrisy reinforces the legitimacy of human rights. Essentially, a human rights normative frame has attained a status that makes it nearly impervious to direct challenge. This is a far cry from making the case that human rights are some sort of uncontested, unstoppable normative force in the Muslim world. As I have said before, such an argument would be silly. Still, the increasing normative relevance of human rights is potentially quite significant in its own regard—a point that can be illustrated with an analogy to al-Qaeda. AlQaeda doesn’t seek to win any military wars, but rather seeks to win an information war in order to change how Muslims conceptualize the frames within which they act and what is recognized as legitimate behavior within those frames. Similarly, the normative salience of human rights is less about governments that act on human rights principles (though that would be a goal, just as al-Qaeda’s goal is to inculcate the normative salience of Islamist states) than it is about inculcating human rights as a frame of reference against which words and actions are defined. At the level of public discourse, then, the question is whether human rights discourse is a powerful participant. In fact, we have seen (and will see in more detail) human rights–influenced normative trends contesting what is legitimate political action. This is not to say that human rights are an equal participant with other normative move-

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ments. They are clearly not as normatively dominant as ethnic nationalism was in the years after decolonization.45 But human rights have become part of the contest. As for the third level at which the increased use of a human rights frame can be observed, this is the level at which credible efforts to advance human rights principles take place. In a sense, examples I have previously noted form the foundation of this third level. I have already mentioned on-the-ground human rights groups that have had real resilience, Islamists who speak the language of human rights and democracy, and Islamic and Muslim reformists and feminists who seek in various ways to meld Islamic and human rights norms. One story of a human rights activist in the Arab world indicates precisely what it means for human rights to begin to resonate in ways that can frame political action at the individual, domestic, and regional levels. Amal Basha is a Yemeni human rights activist who once explained to me that her introduction to human rights did not come until she already had begun work on behalf of the legal rights of female prisoners in Yemen. Basha had first taken up this issue independently and then founded an organization to pursue it more systematically. Basha described how someone argued to her that human rights could be relevant. Basha didn’t know much about human rights, but when she began to explore she found that the rights regime at both the regional and international levels could be a useful anchor. Rather than simply working in a vacuum, she could connect her organization’s priorities to principles to which her government had willingly consented by signing international treaties. This also connected her to a network of regional NGO allies in other Arab states that were also working on human rights. Last, it gave access to support from international organizations that were simultaneously addressing human rights issues through UN channels in Geneva and New York and through efforts on the ground in Yemen. In a sense, this is the ideal of how human rights should work: priorities defined from the bottom up, but giving those working on the ground tools with which to make an impact at the domestic level. But the reverberations may carry much further. Once Basha’s work was framed from within a human rights discourse, she and her organization “naturally” (to use normative language) began working on other human rights issues. Their subsequent activities included leading the partly successful campaign for Arab countries to ratify the statute of the International Criminal Court. This is an example, in short, of how human rights need first to make sense at a grassroots level. Insofar as they do, they take on salience as part of a broader normative frame.

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Hassan’s story of his experiences inside and outside prison with Islamists is similarly illustrative of the integration of human rights into normative frames. More specifically, it is illustrative of the key variables at play here: the impact of the modern state system’s globalization, the increasingly transnational movement of ideas and norms, and how this has led to intersections with human rights in the Muslim world. The Nasserists and Islamists described by Hassan first made common cause in Egypt because both were subject to political persecution. In other words, despite their ideological differences, in jail both faced the modern nation-state’s power to massively violate human rights. This common position made human rights relevant to both groups, as each could use rights as a (thin) shield against the power of the state to dominate. The relevance of rights, in other words, is carried on transnational currents to those who are subject to the modern state’s unprecedented ability to infiltrate all aspects of daily life. This process has had increasingly important implications for how issues are framed and has even caused some degree of substantive change at the policy level. Hassan’s Egyptian Organization for Human Rights was formed in the wake of the Egyptian state’s acknowledgment and acceptance through international treaties of the applicability of human rights. These international treaties spawned the creation of transnational networks—governmental and nongovernmental—dealing with human rights. The rise of human rights concerns in the Arab world, Middle East, and broader Muslim world led to the founding of domestic human rights organizations and regional human rights networks such as those discussed in Chapter 2. These groups and networks didn’t arise out of thin air, but rather reflect particular regional and subregional histories and interactions. They also reflect how the increasing transnationalism of global politics carried the language of human rights from the treaty bodies of Geneva into discussions in dank Egyptian prisons, fledging human rights groups, and the consciousness of those whom these organizations represented, including Muslims and even Islamists.

How Human Rights Have Become a Part of Politics in the Muslim World We now see that human rights have a history in the Muslim world, and that they increasingly frame broad conceptual debates impacting the Muslim world, as well as the normative expectations of its inhabitants.

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NGOs have had a key role both historically and in terms of contemporary debates. The complexity of normative contests in the Muslim world is reflective in part of many forms of participation in an everchanging transnational space in which human rights have become increasingly important in recent years. Norm entrepreneurs feeding off transnational currents have continued to add to the history of human rights in the Muslim world by achieving at least some success in socializing human rights as “appropriate,” in Jeffrey Checkel’s term.46 This chapter has hopefully helped to demonstrate the argument that human rights are part—to varying degrees depending on the particulars— of shaping normative constructs in different parts of the Muslim world. Seeing the Muslim world in a transnational context, thus, is essential to understanding its heterogeneity, power contestations, and continuous change, just as we will see in Chapter 4 that bearing in mind the ongoing reconfigurations and global impacts of human rights is essential to understanding their contemporary global relevance and relevance to the Muslim world. Ignoring these actors, their transnational foundations, and their distinct impacts risks distorting an understanding of the Muslim world, misrepresenting international human rights, and thereby warping any useful sense of how the rights regime intersects with the Muslim world. Transnational networks and normative movements are often seen as merely the extension of Western frames and models to the rest of the world, coterminous with economic globalization. But the reality is different and far more complex. Take post-revolutionary Iran: anti-Western ideologically, with laws enforcing this anti-Westernism, minimal foreign investment, minimal UN agency presence on the ground, no official relations with the US government, a US government ban on US companies trading with Iran, and certainly no Golden Arches. We have seen nonetheless how Iran’s public sphere is remarkably filled with transnational connections and normative contestations. These connections reach in many directions and have many centers rather than just one point of origin. The broadly defined “West” (I have already discussed in Chapter 1 my discomfort with this category) is certainly a nexus of knowledge, technology, and power, and in that sense inevitably contributes to the transnational discourse that helps to define Iranian norms. Iran’s diasporas and ties to networks with roots in the West—such as academic networks and the intellectual ideas they spread—inform its political life

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(Habermas and Kant are, apparently, quite popular in Iran).47 There are, however, many power centers in the world and many forms of power that can lead to transnational impacts. Discourses of Islam that are not Western-centered, for example, have enormous transnational weight and are fought over by well-entrenched and powerful institutions, among them the Iranian government. The Saudi Arabian government may be even more influential in this regard, with its massive funding streams, while at the same time, groups at the margins seek to make their own mark—be they al-Qaeda–style Islamists, reformist organizations such as Women Living Under Muslim Laws,48 or, more broadly, the communication networks among liberal Islamic reformers in Iran and other parts of the world that are not diffused from or centered in the West (though their impact is certainly felt in the West). I am wary of either overstating or understating the importance of human rights in the Muslim world. Human rights fall someplace between being much less than the basis of mass political mobilization and much more than just a discrete issue of interest to an isolated stratum of human rights campaigners. But human rights are an important frame through which peoples increasingly analyze, understand, and act on a range of issues. This is as true, and has as many variations, in the Muslim world as in other parts of the world. The key is to move beyond abstract notions of both the Muslim world and human rights. When I give talks about human rights and the Muslim world, whether to predominantly Muslim or predominantly non-Muslim audiences, the first question usually asked is how we can possibly discuss human rights when they contradict Islam. My stock answer is to pull out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), read out the rights therein, and ask which ones are problematic from an Islamic (religious) or Muslim (cultural) perspective. Questioners often seem surprised that virtually every article in the UDHR is unproblematic from a religious or cultural perspective. The right to life (Article 3), the right to work (Article 23), the right to education (Article 26), and virtually all of the UDHR’s other articles are simply not terribly controversial in principle, no matter how often they are violated in practice. While there is a theoretical “clash of civilizations”–like notion that Islamic and human rights constructs are in conflict, this abstraction does not hold up to scrutiny. This speaks to the normative change we have been exploring. Even practices that religions have deemed acceptable are now normatively unthinkable (slavery, for example, is referred to in the Quran without

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praise but without being deemed illegal, as in the holy texts of the other Abrahamic religions). So, then, do the words of the song ring true in regard to human rights: “The battle’s done, and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?”49 Obviously not—there are plenty of places to go from here. “Kind of won” is right—“won” in the sense that human rights have come to normatively inform numerous debates and how issues are conceptualized, but not much more than that. Human rights writ large may be broadly accepted, and may be more controversial in the abstract than in the specific, but no one is making the claim that this means they are implemented in practice by governments. Further, while there may be increasing normative acceptance of human rights and specific acceptance of many of their elements as “natural,” nonetheless there remain difficult and controversial elements. To engage rather than avoid these controversies is essential. There has been a real dynamism to human rights norms as they have continuously evolved against the backdrop of transnational dialogues about their implementation in diverse contexts. In other words, it is not simply that human rights as defined on-high by Geneva-based treaty bodies are useful, but rather that—as human rights have entered into political discussions through transnational networks and local activists—they have been redefined in ways that make them locally meaningful. Without this flexibility to be remade, the human rights regime would not have acquired nearly as much global resonance in recent years. This is the topic of the next chapter, which examines how the human rights regime is informed by norms and politics from around the world, including the Muslim world—and what it is that makes human rights a shifting and dynamic part of global politics.

Notes 1. See, generally, Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism. Transnational political space refers to the forms of political, economic, social, and cultural networking that work beyond the borders of the state and impact upon global politics. This does not mean that there are not significant connections between such politics and the contemporary state—indeed, the state remains the key actor with which transnational political actors intersect and, at times, toward which their ambitions are focused. Sidney Tarrow refers to the triad of states, international organizations, and transnational nonstate actors as “internationalism.” There is, of course, a growing literature on this topic.

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2. Delanty, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination,” p. 36. 3. Halliday, “A Transnational Umma.” Fred Halliday is quite correct, however, to emphasize that such “transnational activities—of a commercial and financial as well as political and religious kind—have been common in the Muslim world for centuries.” He is also correct that it is the modern state that is the novelty (indeed, it is the modern state that impelled human rights relevance). What is particular to our current era is the conflict between the new institution of the modern state and the accelerated and globalized nature of transnational forces. 4. See discussions about this in Chapter 2 and, more extensively, in Chapter 5. 5. “Official,” that is, to at least some degree during the reformist Khatami’s term in office, though obviously not so much during other periods. 6. On the Iranian blogosphere, see generally Kelly and Etling, “Mapping Iran’s Online Public.” 7. See, generally, Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics. See also Lyons and Mandaville, “Think Locally, Act Globally.” 8. Ismail, “Islamism, Re-Islamization, and the Fashioning of Muslim Selves.” Salwa Ismail explores this in the context of Islamism and its impacts, and he illustrates how identity formation takes place in the context of power relations. 9. Al-Qaeda, for example, is a perfect example of this duality. On the one hand, it is a prototypical transnational organization with a multiethnic membership that breaks apart many previous divides within the Muslim world and uses technology to connect internally and spread its message globally. On the other hand, it excludes as impure and subject to takfeeri violence everyone from Jews, Americans, Westerners, and Christians to Muslims from other sects— Shi‘ites, most virulently—as well as Sunnis who are secular, traditionalist, or even from other religious nationalist strands. 10. Mandaville, Transnational Muslim Politics. See also Heffner, Remaking Muslim Politics. 11. Browers, “Origins and Architects of Yemen’s Joint Meeting Parties.” 12. Mokhtari, After Abu Ghraib, p. 183. 13. Chase and Alaug, “Health, Human Rights, and Islam.” 14. In addition to Hamzawy, “Globalization and Human Rights” and “Normative and Political Dimensions of Contemporary Arab Debates on Human Rights,” specifically on such processes in Algeria and Morocco, see Werenfels, “Islamist Parties in the Maghreb.” 15. Hamzawy, “The Key to Arab Reform,” p. 2. 16. Schwedler, Faith in Moderation. 17. Ibid., p. 3. 18. Hamzawy, “The Key to Arab Reform.” For a more academic treatment of this topic, see Hamzawy, “Globalization and Human Rights” and “Normative and Political Dimensions of Contemporary Arab Debates on Human Rights.”

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19. For a critique of this tendency, see Chase, “Liberal Islam and ‘Islam and Human Rights.’” See also, among others, the works of Abdullahi anNaim, such as Toward an Islamic Reformation. 20. See Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown; or Abrahamian, Iran. 21. Mahfouz, The Cairo Trilogy. 22. Among these, see the works of Ali Shariati, for example Marxism and Other Western Fallacies. More generally, on Ali Shariati, see Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian. 23. See Dabashi, Theology of Discontent. 24. See Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public, p. 83. See also Marc Lynch, “Al-Qaeda’s Constructivist Turn.” For a particularly informative take on al-Qaeda, see Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad. 25. Tessler and Robbins, “What Leads Some Ordinary Men and Women in Arab Countries to Approve of Terrorist Acts Against the West.” Indeed, surveys show political Islamists are less religious—in the sense of self-reported piety and mosque attendance—than non-Islamist Muslims. 26. Kohlmann, “The Real Online Terrorist Threat.” 27. Mekhennet, Sautter, and Hanfeld, The Children of Jihad. 28. Alterman, “Made for Television Events.” More generally, see Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public. 29. Gerges, The Far Enemy. 30. See Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics; Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity; Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders; and Barkin, Realist Constructivism. 31. Halliday, “A Transnational Umma.” While I take Fred Halliday’s warnings not to overemphasize the impact of such transnationalism and certainly agree that the Islamist project has not been successful and likely will never be successful in reaching a goal of a “global umma,” the impact has nonetheless been enormous. 32. See, for example, Price, “Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy in World Politics.” See also Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 33. A number of authors have documented such impacts. See, for example, Clark, Diplomacy of Conscience; or Chase, “The State and Human Rights.” 34. Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad. 35. For full details on the World Values Survey, see www.world valuessurvey.com. 36. For an example of this argument, see the chapter “Democracy” in Marks and Clapham, International Human Rights Lexicon. 37. Ganji, The Road to Democracy in Iran. 38. This argument draws broadly off constructivist international relations theory. For a specific connection between constructivism and human rights, see Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights. 39. As stated by Osama bin Laden in his “To the Americans” address of October 6, 2002: “You have claimed to be the vanguard of Human Rights . . .

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[but] what happens in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values.” Quoted in Lawrence, Messages to the World, p. 170. 40. Human Rights Watch, “Egypt: Extending State of Emergency Violates Rights.” 41. Human Rights Watch, “Egypt Country Report 2008.” 42. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect. 43. See Fukuyama, “The Illusion of Exceptionalism”; Mahbubani, “The Pacific Way”; and Bauer and Bell, The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights. 44. President Mubarak’s statement to the inaugural session of the thirtieth Conference of the International Institute of Law for the Francophone Countries, December 16, 2006, www.sis.gov.eg/En/Story.aspx?sid=23964. 45. Within the Arab world, for a magisterial work from a constructivist perspective on the normative dominance of ethnic nationalism, see Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Politics. 46. Checkel, “International Institutions and Socialization in Europe.” 47. See Postel, Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran. 48. See the website of Women Living Under Muslim Laws, www .wluml.org. 49. “Where Do We Go from Here?” is from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode “Once More with Feeling.” It was also reproduced as a header on the old (and missed) “Abu Aardvark” blog, which is more likely why it comes to my mind.

4 Human Rights: From Abstraction to Reality

The previous chapter established the foundation for my central thesis—that human rights have been integrated into the normative consciousness of peoples in the Muslim world, and that this awareness shapes how a wide range of political, social, and economic issues are perceived and addressed. Before I expand on specific ways in which human rights are framing and informing key debates in the Muslim world, it is necessary to first delve more deeply into the nature of human rights. For a conversation on the topic to be worthwhile, it must have a level of specificity about what human rights are, what structures have made them relevant, and why they are more than mere rhetoric. This is much more than perfunctory background information. I have emphasized previously that if we can even refer to a “Muslim world,” it must be conceptualized as dynamic and diverse in order to capture its changeability and contested ideological struggles in transnational spaces. Analogously, the human rights regime is best understood not as an abstract, static entity, but rather as shifting and evolving in accordance with tangible inputs from around the world. Although scholars are fond of warning (quite properly) against viewing Islam as something unchanging, the human rights regime—quite young and under continuous construction—is too often analyzed in precisely those sorts of essentialist terms. This leads to the types of distortions and misunderstandings to which human rights are often subject when invoked in

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media and academic debate—especially when it comes to discussions of human rights in the transnational Muslim world. My goal in this chapter and the next is to present a fuller conceptualization of human rights, ultimately allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how rights intersect with issues of global importance. Thus this chapter looks at the human rights regime’s structural bases and the dimensions through which it has become part of the reality of daily politics around the globe. Chapter 5 examines the groundings of human rights in law, politics, norms, and institutions; it is the dynamism of these contemporary groundings that sustains the stubborn presence of human rights in global politics, not a universalist “foundation.” The present chapter covers four topics. First, what do I mean when I say that human rights are too often caricatured in a barren, abstract manner, and how can we go beyond such abstractions? Second, what have been the structural bases for the emergence of human rights? Third, how have human rights been translated into positive law, and how has the human rights positive law system changed over time? Fourth, what are elements in the decentralized, incomplete human rights apparatus that make human rights at least partially real and enforceable? There will be no claim that human rights have magically come to be enforced across the board. There are, however, modest degrees of impact and enforcement whose bite has moved human rights away from being mere aspirations and toward being a tangible part of global politics.

Beyond Barren Abstractions and Caricatures Human rights are widely misconstrued as a singular abstraction that was invented in a defining moment (historical, religious, philosophical)1 and has retained the same static qualities over time. Ironically, the most right- and left-wing critics of the international human rights regime share this view, a view that moves further into caricature with the notion that this “defining moment” must be a Western phenomenon. This West-centric parochialism prevents understanding how the relatively new human rights regime is carried on shifting transnational currents, rather than eternally moored to an original source. There is a certain Antonin Scalia–like originalism in efforts to keep human rights identified solely with such an original source. Ultimately, though, this is not an effective strategy for understanding what

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human rights are today. Compare the language of modern human rights to such supposed “original” sources as the Code of Hammurabi or France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and one finds texts that vary wildly.2 Human rights have both expanded into categories and areas clearly not envisioned in the French declaration, and simultaneously also narrowed. The only economic right in the French declaration, for example, is a right to property. This right remained in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) but subsequently disappeared from the human rights corpus after much debate. On the other hand, the UDHR, the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and later instruments have pushed economic rights into the forefront of the human rights regime. Something else that does not hold up well to scrutiny is the caricature of human rights as an abstract “Western” philosophical system arising directly from ancient Greek and or other philosophical sources (analogous caricatures are that rights are based on the Bible or the Quran—i.e., rights are given by God, per Syed Abul A’ala Maudoodi’s influential claim among Islamists). 3 Indeed, even the differences between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and more recent human rights instruments show a startling degree of reinterpretation of what human rights are. As an example, nothing indicates that the state drafters of the UDHR considered themselves the forerunners to the nonstate actors who drafted the declaration in the 2006 Yogyakarta Principles that “human beings of all sexual orientations and gender identities are entitled to the full enjoyment of all human rights.”4 One can argue whether or not this still quite controversial (and far from commonly accepted) expansion of human rights to include sexual identities is implicit in the focus of the UDHR (or even of 1966’s two covenants, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] and the ICESCR) on nondiscrimination, but there is little evidence to support that position. The stronger argument is that this—as with many other pushes for the human rights regime to evolve—comes out of the continuous reinterpretations that take place in the context of grassroots normative movements and political processes. As Sofia Gruskin and Laura Ferguson note, “prior to 1994 sexual orientation was not in any way recognised as a protected ‘other status.’”5 The 1994 Toonen case, taken up by the UN’s Human Rights Committee, was the first expansion of rights in this domain, as it rejected an Australian sodomy law.6 Under the impact of lobbying from transnational networks and

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underlying shifts in normative constructs as to what rights are, the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights subsequently issued two unprecedented general comments. In 2000 its General Comment 14 deemed discrimination based on sexual orientation in access to health services unacceptable, and in 2009 its General Comment 20 explicitly denounced discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in all spheres of life.7 In this the committee began to give legal grounding to a reconceptualization that had been bubbling up over previous decades.8 While rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are currently on the cutting edge, they are just among the latest in the steady progression of issues that have expanded the domain of human rights beyond what was envisioned in whichever “original” source one might invoke. Nonetheless, both skeptics and supporters still often caricature human rights as defined by an ancient origin. The skeptics include cultural relativists who decry human rights as an imperialist imposition and conservatives who assert that human rights are grounded solely in the Western political and cultural tradition; both groups are tilting at windmills of their own imagination. The homogenizing human rights regime that they posit is, as has been shown by the examples thus far, quite a bit less homogeneous than they imagine. It is far more likely to serve as a protector of cultural diversity than as any sort of threat. This is evidenced by the invocations of human rights by marginalized groups of various sorts, from threatened Amazonian tribes or discriminatedagainst ethnic minorities like Turkey’s Kurds or a socially repressed group like gay men in many parts of the world. And, increasingly, inputs into the rearticulations of human rights have come from many directions and many sources, quite often from voices traditionally on the margins of global politics. Even human rights supporters, in their enthusiasm, sometimes rhetorically invoke “human rights” as a feel-good phrase largely emptied of substance or obligation. This includes everyone from Jeffrey Sachs (or more popularly, Bono) to Paul Farmer talking about the moral imperative of implementing human rights through economic development or public health. Such approaches, arguably, have little relation to the substance of human rights beyond mere sloganeering.9 Even when well-intentioned, this sort of sloganeering does nothing to advance foreign policy or improve health and development outcomes (more substantive rights-based approaches are discussed in Chapter 7). It only reinforces the idea that human rights are, at worst, rhetorical

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cover for hegemonic policy or, at best, a mere ethical outlook of no substantive import. Human rights in the abstract are meaningless. Rights take on substance not with appeals to their moral righteousness but with the obligations they impose upon states—obligations that are viewed in new ways as rights are continually redefined. Holding states accountable to their very real obligations to respect a panoply of rights, ranging from the right not to be tortured to the right not to be discriminated against the in workplace, is the purpose of the modern international human rights system. To the degree that such rights resonate with the political, economic, and social needs of groups within a state, human rights will be relevant. The focus should be on that relevance: is the rights regime relevant or not to peoples around the world?

The Structural Bases of the Emergence of Human Rights The human rights regime has established as a “natural” assumption something that runs contrary to prior historical practice: that the state does not have carte blanche to do as it will to those under its power. How so? The impetus behind the modern human rights regime should not be sought in natural law or in philosophical explanations—it’s not as if international society, in an “Aha!” moment following World War II, recalled a college text and consequently set aside realpolitik in favor of formulas derived from Locke. Instead, its impetus came from three key structural factors. First, the globalization of the modern state as the dominant mode of political organization made rights relevant to most of the world’s populations—in an unprecedented manner, virtually all humans now have consistent contact with state power. Second, the state system’s self-interest in long-term stability led to recognition of human rights as one potential path to such stability. Third, the increasingly transnational structure of global politics allowed peoples to organize around and capitalize on the protections given by human rights, through which they were able to further pressure states to elaborate upon and at times even implement those rights. Regarding the first of these three factors, it is the overwhelming power of the modern state that has made human rights relevant to virtually all people living in a direct relationship with the state. Whatever one’s geographic location, religion, ideology, or society, the modern state (which in most parts of the world is a postcolonial construct that

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doesn’t date back more than fifty years) has unprecedented means to intrude upon group and individual life—a centralized power unlike any in human history. This is why human rights are theoretically irrelevant to those in tribal societies distant from the modern state—though in practice such tribal societies often aggressively use the cultural rights embedded in human rights treaties to protect themselves from the power of encroaching states, as peoples who are entirely insulated from the modern state are rare. This power, and its abuse, directly fed into the state system’s creation of the human rights regime’s imperfect model of state selfrestraint and mutual restraint. It also stimulated domestic and transnational networks that have focused on pressuring states to elaborate and implement rights. These actors impelled a reformist check to limit—out of self-interest—the modern state bureaucracy’s unprecedented capacity to penetrate every aspect of its citizenry’s life. Abstract antecedents are far less important than these developments; human rights have little to do with the philosophical history of an idea and everything to do with twentieth-century political realities and structures that made state abuse of individual and group rights an omnipresent threat. But if human rights become relevant in the context of state power over society, why have powerful states agreed, counterintuitively, to self-limit their power through human rights treaties? Human rights or something similar to them have long existed as a so-called natural law assertion, the principle being that some sort of higher moral law impels respect for the rights and dignity of humans by those in authority. One can find such an assertion, for example, in the writing of sixteenth-century Spanish theologian Francisco de Vitoria, who argued—against the practice of the Spanish crown—that native peoples in the Americas had rights. This was in some sense a continuation of the just war tradition, though applied in ways that begin to anticipate later human rights principles.10 A cursory historical knowledge of both the premodern state and the modern state (from the French revolutionary terror to US genocide of Native Americans to the holocausts of the twentieth century) makes obvious the lack of a formal or informal system for developing human rights. It simply did not exist. To invoke human rights antecedents from this era is to invoke philosophical musings and thin air—“nonsense on stilts,” in the famous phrase. This speaks to the interplay between socalled natural law and positive law. Natural law takes as the basis of human rights a noncodified “higher” law whose justice is seen in some

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way as inherent to humanity—its foundations vary from the religious to the ethical or even existential. Positive law sees law as not necessarily moral or just but rather simply as the codified laws that are defined within particular social contexts and can forever be changed. While natural law impulses were at least part of the inspiration for the creation of a positive law human rights regime, insofar as they gave it language by which it could be constituted, such impulses only became important once they merged with hard-headed structural, realpolitik motives: the search for a basis of political stability after World War II that would help stave off continued conflicts in Europe, the challenge of communism and its appeal to social justice, and the rise and globalization of the modern nation-state.11 This was the context in which invocations of natural law first became meaningful in any real sense, with states negotiating a loose and decentralized positive law human rights system under pressure from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) representing different elements of global civil society. Rather than airy rhetoric, human rights became relevant to states as a form of self-imposed and mutually imposed structural discipline. This obviously didn’t mean the immediate implementation of human rights, but it did mean the birth of an international system through which attention could be focused on processes for addressing rights violations. Such structural anchors—the relevance and interest of human rights both to peoples subject to state power and to states themselves—are only important if the human rights system responds to the on-theground demands of peoples—not once in 1948 or 1966 or 1976, but on an ongoing basis, in a range of locations worldwide. The real measure of the human rights regime, as I will argue in the next chapter, is its ability to balance a grounding in international legal treaty obligations that are binding on states, with the flexibility to be articulated in ways that make sense in diverse political contexts. The third structural basis for human rights—the increasing transnationalism of contemporary global politics—takes on particular significance in regard to these ongoing rearticulations. Taking human rights seriously means recognizing how their increased resonance has taken place in the context of ongoing transnational conversations structured by states, international organizations, and transnational NGOs. This global conversation has meant, for example, that a human rights regime that initially downplayed gender and ignored sexuality has gradually been forced to take them into account. This is more than simply an inconvenience to those who would rather

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focus on “easier” issues. It is part and parcel of the dynamism that has kept the human rights regime from state-defined stasis and propelled its relevance beyond the corridors of international organizations.12 The extension of rights to marginalized populations has been, in short, essential to the growth of human rights and cannot be ignored if we are to come to terms with the place of human rights in global politics. More specifically, as we will see, it is this process that has made human rights increasingly relevant to politics in various parts of the Muslim world.

The Shifting Substance of Human Rights So what is the nature of the human rights regime’s positive law system, and how has it changed over time? Focusing on the way in which the human rights regime has evolved is fundamental to understanding both the essence of the rights regime and its intersections with the Muslim world. The “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm discussed here illustrates this shifting substance. Human rights became more mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s in the wake of fundamental human rights treaties coming into force and nongovernmental monitoring and advocacy groups spreading globally. Rather than leading to triumphalism, however, this instead resulted in the rise of a critical discourse on human rights, particularly from the global South. This discourse emphasized, in particular, two inadequacies: first, a focus on rights only after they have been violated, rather than using rights in a preventive manner; and second, a division of rights into separate categories, rather than emphasizing that effective implementation depends on recognizing their interdependency. The 1993 conference on human rights in Vienna was the key marker of the formal incorporation of these critiques into the human rights regime. Vienna paved the way for institutionalizing substantive changes in how human rights are conceptualized and applied in the work of international organizations, states, and transnational advocacy groups. On that basis, the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm that Asbjørn Eide had begun discussing in the 1980s13 could advance from theory into a practical basis for thinking about how to work on human rights on the ground, as became clear at the subsequent Cairo and Beijing world conferences.14 In general terms, human rights have always been concerned with defining the relationship between the state and individuals as well as social groups. Human rights treaties are increasingly specific in their

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constraints and obligations on states regarding those under their jurisdiction—for example, the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has a particular emphasis on an obligations-based rather than a violations-based approach. International human rights law dictates that governments should never do things such as discriminate or torture, and narrowly limits the circumstances in which rights can be restricted—often by explicitly detailing their balancing with claims such as those based in national security, public safety, public order, public health, and the protection of rights and freedoms of others.15 Governments must, moreover, ensure that all people in a society have equal access to the provision of the substance of rights, through courts and schools for example,16 and, further, should work toward the progressive realization of these and other rights. The human rights regime thus seeks to limit state authority17 over individuals and social groups by defining rights that are held independently of a grant by the state and which the state has an obligation to help implement. This is less a matter of overriding state sovereignty than understanding sovereignty as a negotiation in which deference to a state’s domestic autonomy is conditioned on respect for international legal obligations, including human rights obligations.18 While the human rights regime as a whole affirms the normative appropriateness of comment and criticism across borders with respect to human rights, in a legal sense only the states that consent to oversight by ratifying international treaties are bound by human rights obligations that are subject to monitoring. In terms of soft law, human rights are among the founding purposes listed in the UN Charter (1945). They were given their first specific delineation in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which is still the touchstone for most invocations of rights.19 Such soft law, however, does not necessarily imply state consent to the rights regime. This consent comes only with legally obligatory hard law, which has taken form in a complex web of human rights treaties. The first of these were the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, 1965, entered into force in 1969) and, as previously noted, the ICCPR and ICESCR (1966, entered into force in 1976). These treaties provided a core for the expansion of rights in subsequent treaties, which both gave greater specificity to particular rights and introduced new areas of rights such as collective and indigenous rights. Signing onto these treaties indicates formal acceptance of a negotiated sovereignty in which exclusive authority over

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internal affairs is acknowledged to be subject to the upholding of specific human rights standards.20 Oversight is, in the first instance, domestic, as these treaties become part of a state’s internal law, but international treaty-monitoring bodies and domestic and transnational nonstate organizations take it upon themselves to monitor and pressure states based on their treaty obligations as well. As mentioned, the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm epitomizes how this regime is not characterized by either a static list of rights or a static idea of how such rights interrelate or should be implemented. To the contrary, there have been fairly radical shifts in these domains, with notions of the definition and implementation of rights conceptualized in an increasingly dynamic manner. The concept of a simple obligation to positively respect rights—that a state shouldn’t actively torture or discriminate—has been supplanted by the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm, which many in the human rights field generally regard as more suitable to engaging the complex realities of how states should address their human rights commitments.21 Rather than a simple obligation to positively respect rights, this more complex but more realistic tripartite paradigm provides more specific substance by emphasizing the state. It asserts the state obligation to uphold rights (respect); to work to ensure that rights are not violated by state and nonstate actors and to give access to redress for violations (protect); and to take positive measures toward the realization of rights—including budgetary, legislative, administrative, and other measures (fulfill). To illustrate the paradigm with reference to Article 6 of the ICESCR, which covers the right to work, governments that are parties to the ICESCR have the obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill individuals’ and groups’ right to work. Respecting this right means disallowing discrimination in government hiring and not passing laws that demand discrimination in the private sphere. Protecting this right means passing laws that bar discrimination or forced labor in the private sphere and ensuring basic working conditions and codes of safety. Fulfilling this right means making good-faith efforts to develop the economy and to provide vocational training when necessary and feasible. Another example of how the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm came to supplant previous conceptualizations of human rights can be seen in the way it moved past the misleading distinction between categories of negative and positive rights. As mentioned in Chapter 2 in discussion of the Saudi contribution to debates about human rights and the incoherence of the separate categories into which human rights came

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to be divided, notions of negative versus positive rights (and economic versus political rights) had long been problematic. The fact that Kurdish marginalization in Turkey has helped fuel a separatism that has bedeviled Turkey for years gives an example of why this is conceptually problematic. Is this marginalization social, having to do with restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language? Or is it political, with these language restrictions constituting a denial of free expression to Kurds, who must use a second language to formulate their demands? Or is it economic, in the sense that these social and political discriminations also keep Kurds from advancing economically? Clearly, in some sense, the political, economic, and social are conceptually indistinguishable or, at least, mutually entwined, and any attempt to deal with human rights violations of Kurds (or other marginalized groups) will have to take these intersections into account. The “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm elides the distinction among civil, political, economic, and social rights—each is presumed to have negative and positive aspects to their implementation and to be interdependent. The argument is that it is all very good for a state’s leaders not to order torture, but if torture takes place without the possibility of redress, and if there are no positive attempts to train police and citizenry regarding legal and political norms, the right will mean very little. This interdependence between positive and negative rights is the case with virtually any particular human right; hence the increasing reference to the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm in conceptualizing the implementation of human rights. This change did not come out of the blue but is another example of the dynamism with which positive law has been continuously redefined so that it responds to local contexts around the globe. Distinct categories of political and civil versus economic, social, and cultural rights fell apart in the context of the globalization of human rights in the 1990s. Activists around the world, in a transnational conversation, redefined human rights in terms of the notion of the indivisibility of categories of rights, and gradually this redefinition was accepted by the international institutions that supposedly “oversee” human rights. Separating rights into categories, it was argued, made no sense when, for example, fulfilling a “political-civil” right such as the right to free expression or freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information” (Article 19 of the ICCPR) is in a very real sense dependent on fulfilling an “economicsocial” right such as the right to education (Article 13 of the ICESCR)— just as obtaining an education is dependent on rights to free expression

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and access to information. (Again, this echoes how Muslim state delegations decried the artificial separation of human rights into distinct categories decades earlier, as related in Chapter 2.) Conceptualizing each right as multidimensional and all rights as mutually intertwined simultaneously provided a means to begin undoing the traditional notion that some types of rights are immediate—a government can respect said right—while others are only far-off goals. The traditional notion had been that torture can be stopped immediately, for example, but attempting to fulfill a right to education can only be aspirational. To the contrary, a court system and an educational system can both be immediately respected: enshrine in law the equal right of all to such systems and provide funds to build courts and schools. Such systems also require investment over time to be fully fulfilled: lawyers, judges, and law texts do not spring up overnight, nor do teachers, school administrators, and school texts. All require continued commitment by the government for their realization (which will virtually always be partial) and, more importantly, require application in a manner that is nondiscriminatory and equitable. It may seem obvious to many people now that rights are indivisible, and that they are both immediate and progressively realized, but in fact a transnational conversation was required to inscribe these ideas into our consciousness. More generally, translating assertions of human rights, even when grounded in positive law, into actual practice obviously remains complex and partial, as does the degree to which human rights have (or have not) been flexible enough to make sense in diverse contexts.22 But without this flexibility, as we have seen with the emergence of the much more comprehensive “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm, human rights would not have nearly as much utility or relevance. Natural law impulses and positive law obligations, in other words, will not make a global impact unless ownership of rights is in the hands of the people meant to claim them and unless they have the power through transnational conversations of redefining those rights.

Domestic, International, and Transnational Realities “Ownership” of human rights is also just an abstraction unless one can make a clear case for how they are enforced in ways that have meaningful consequences. The argument of skeptics is that international human

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rights law is not substantially followed in practice and therefore is not an independent variable that effects change. Affiliation with the human rights regime is rhetorical and any apparent impacts are simply coincidental to other self-interests or pressures. There is no authority ensuring that states comply and no reason why they should independently wish to limit their internal authority or external sovereignty. This follows from the neorealist assumption that an anarchic state system lacks a centralized international law enforcer—which is to say it is lawless and therefore has no place for international law. Indeed, skeptics have a point in that it is quite easy to overstate the impact of the human rights regime. While the regime has dramatically increased its profile over the past century, rights violations remain par for the course around the globe. The idea occasionally bruited about that human rights have superseded state sovereignty is absurd; everyday practice tells a more realistic story of continued rights violations by states in all parts of the world. Human rights law, in other words, is largely disconnected from the sort of authority—legal, political, normative, or institutional (elements that will be explored in the next chapter)—that can make it truly relevant. Who will, for example, force Bahrain to discontinue its routine practice of torture or its discrimination against its Shi‘a community? Who will, to extend into humanitarian law, force the United States to comply with the Geneva Conventions after the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison made it clear that the George W. Bush administration had blithely ignored its international obligations? Perhaps the most obvious answer is no one, and thus human rights and humanitarian law are dismissed by some as unenforceable rhetoric. This answer, however, is too easy. It is certainly true that international law—especially human rights law—does not have a centralized model and is implemented only in part and to degrees. But it is implemented, and its enforcement procedures are regularly invoked. This makes it a very real part of global politics, even if the result has been far less than the utopian ideal. Indeed, some powerful actors are particularly insulated from its enforcement, and some lawbreakers openly disdain its strictures, as is the case with any domestic legal system as well. The existence of lawbreakers, however, does not mean there is no law. The routine presence of speeding cars does not signify an absence of traffic laws, and low rates of homicide arrest and conviction do not mean that there is no legal system in place for dealing with that form of crime. The emergence of any system of law only takes place when

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there is an issue of ongoing concern. That the issue of concern—be it reckless driving, homicide, or human rights violations—does not disappear is not a persuasive argument against the existence of law. The question is whether one can find an enduring pattern of implementation that can be attributed to a legal regime. Louis Henkin’s argument—virtually an aphorism, at this point—that “most international law is followed most of the time” is a start.23 But while this recognizes how consensus-driven international law is, it does not address the particulars of human rights law, which is clearly distinct from (and more controversial than) the laws of the sea or other aspects of traditional international law. The test of whether there is a meaningful system of law can be broken into four empirical questions: Are there identifiable laws? Is there a rhetoric of compliance? Is there evidence of pressure to comply? And are there actual patterns of compliance? The existence of a body of international human rights treaties and rhetoric of compliance is not disputed, even by the harshest of skeptics. Doubts surround the latter two points: evidence of human rights implementation that flows out of substantial legal and nonlegal pressures and results in some pattern of compliance. The human rights implementation apparatus is at best decentralized. Nonetheless, it does exist. In part, this takes place through straightforward vertical implementation: court decisions that are enforced, as with the prosecutions of dozens of war criminals in tribunals, civil judgments under the Alien Tort Statute in the United States, and the many European Court of Human Rights cases that are implemented obediently by states under its jurisdiction. This familiar legal model is expanding and this expansion gives human rights an anchor in international and domestic political life. As with any legal system, however, human rights are implemented less through trials and more at the social level; norms set the rules of the game. Just as petty thievery among friends is considered behavior that will lead to ostracization in most “respectable” society (even if unlikely to lead to criminal enforcement), so too can flouting human rights norms lead to an analogous form of ostracization or pressures to conform within a so-called society of states. Two specific examples of this regard the United Kingdom, a country that has moved somewhat slowly toward integration into the European human rights system and has expressed considerable opposition to sharing sovereignty with European Union institutions. Government policy in the UK stood firmly behind the death penalty and against

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allowing gays into the military, in line with what popular opinion surveys in the 1990s showed. Nonetheless, in deference to European norms and, in the case of gays in the military, a specific European Court of Human Rights decision, the UK changed its laws.24 In neither case was there necessarily a threat of centralized sanction, nor was it domestic public opinion that pushed the government to change its policies on these issues (indeed, one can argue that it was the law that influenced later shifts in public opinion). But there was social pressure to comply from the European state system. Compliance would not have taken place without the pressure that flowed out of legal norms embedded in European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence. This is, in fact, how most law is enforced, domestic or international: through norms of acceptable behavior, not by a cop on the corner or the military on the border. These norms, of course, are reinforced if there is some sort of sanction. And, empirically, countries are regularly sanctioned for violating human rights obligations. Most commonly, this sanctioning takes place through the international legal concept of horizontal enforcement: the informal political penalties that states impose on other states for breaking international compacts. The most obvious examples of this are trade penalties that countries like China and Burma have paid for systemic rights violations. The interplay between the European Union and Turkey constitutes another example. Even before the Turkish government began the formal process of seeking to acquire EU membership in 1999, the EU had made Turkey’s human rights record an issue regarding its entrance. Turkey responded, especially in the years immediately after Recep Tayyip Erdoπan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) took power, by addressing some of these concerns. It’s likely that this conditionality was hypocritical on the part of some European states, as there is strong circumstantial evidence that the EU has never been truly serious about Turkish entrance. Nonetheless, the point in this regard is that Turkey did respond with positive improvements in terms of rights for its Kurdish minority and other issues. As with all law, there is clearly an element of power differential in this—a country like the United States is less subject to this sort of enforcement than those that have lesser weight. Still, Turkey as well as China are both relatively powerful countries, and both have become integrated in increasingly significant ways into a thick web of international interactions in recent years. Indeed, levels of international integration are the most relevant variables in terms of how subject to hor-

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izontal enforcement a state is. For this reason, as China and Turkey have pursued economic and foreign policies that seek to move them beyond isolation, they have increasingly recognized international and regional norms. The result has been some uneven (and tenuous) improvement in both countries’ human rights records. As the Turkish case shows, this horizontal enforcement also takes place at the regional level. European Court of Human Rights cases are another part of Europe’s regional system of horizontal pressure, and the Court has expanded to include the right of individual redress. This is a significant expansion of the enforceability of human rights. The InterAmerican Court of Human Rights has likewise expanded to include the right of individual redress, as in its groundbreaking 1987–1988 Velásquez Rodríguez case, which was essential in bringing about accountability in Latin America regarding ongoing state policies of “disappearing” political opponents. African efforts to create an effective regional court are ongoing, with the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights supplanted in 2008 by the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. The most obvious argument against the relevance of human rights law is its lack of the sort of central enforcement agency that is characteristic of state-based domestic legal systems. I would argue that the criminal realm is not the place to look for an analogy between international law and domestic law. Civil suits against the government are much more illustrative of the dynamics at work here. When a state is sued and required to pay damages through its own courts, such judgments need to be enforced by the state against itself. In other words, when one branch of a state makes a holding against another branch, it is ultimately making a holding against itself. States regularly comply with such judgments despite the lack of outside enforcement agents. This speaks to a powerful political structure that constitutes the norm of auto-enforcement. This same structure works—albeit less directly and less consistently—toward the internal implementation of human rights obligations, as the UK cases cited earlier show. One could cite numerous other examples, such as the South African Constitutional Court’s 2002 ruling that an unwilling South African government must make the drug nevirapine available for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.25 The South African constitution explicitly integrates rights found in international treaties into domestic law, as do many newer constitutions. The Court largely based its decision on the constitution’s enshrinement of the right to health.26

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This is the real heart of how human rights are translated into political reality: through an interplay between international and domestic structures, with normative pressures applied by transnationally connected local actors influencing this process. In the South African example, the civil society group Treatment Action Campaign pushed this case both in the streets and in the courts. Once again we see tangible results flowing from a human rights–based frame; this should not be overlooked even as it should not be overstated. Indeed, the nevirapine case is a good example showing the mixed realities of human rights enforcement. Despite legal and normative pressures, South Africa’s government continued to delay actions on dealing with HIV/AIDS for some years after the 2002 case. On the other hand, ultimately it has ended its rhetorical opposition to medical responses to HIV and allowed the largest antiretroviral therapy program in the world, though experts estimate that 330,000 lives were lost due to the South African government’s long inaction on antiretrovirals.27 There are also, of course, elements of vertical implementation in the human rights regime that are more analogous to a criminal model: coerced enforcement overseen by a hierarchical institutional body, backed in a few rare cases by the threat or use of force sanctioned by an international or regional organization. This category of enforcement includes UN Security Council Chapter VII decisions to intervene (or to authorize interventions, as with Nigeria in Liberia and Sierra Leone) and to establish ad hoc international criminal tribunals. It also includes International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments of war criminals in a number of countries and actions by regional actors such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Kosovo. It is a myth that such enforcement does not take place. It does take place, but—especially in regard to Security Council Chapter VII enforcement actions— irregularly and often ineffectively. It is also a myth, however, that such cases are the model by which we can determine the effectiveness of the rights regime. By the time the international community is contemplating the use of force to address crises that have resulted in widespread human rights violations or the use of international criminal law to punish violators, the cat is already out of the bag, as it were. Such situations have arisen because the rights regime did not get sufficiently integrated into domestic contexts through the political-normative means discussed earlier. The essence of the rights regime is to prevent those sorts of events from happening in the first instance. Advocates should focus not only on more “criminal-

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like” vertical interventions into situations of mass human rights violations (though such interventions may be necessary) but on interventions that regularize human rights implementation at a less dramatic but more substantial level by addressing the structural bases behind rights violations. A matrix of elements, many of which have been highlighted in this chapter and preceding chapters, affect how human rights impact politics around the world . This matrix can be characterized as having three intersecting levels: domestic, transnational, and international. The domestic level includes the integration of international human rights into domestic law through legislative ratification, constitutional recognition, civil society mobilization, and court reference to international law in judgments; complementary local political traditions that work to stigmatize (through boycotts or other such actions) those accused of human rights violation; local political organizing informed by international human rights norms; and both state and nonstate institutions that work on human rights.28 The transnational level includes regional and transnational civil society networks that monitor human rights legal obligations and push for transnational legal accountability; transnational networks that mobilize protest movements to both shame and pressure violators; transgovernmental networking to make connections among state agents and between state agents and international organizations; transnational norms that constitute identity in a way that socializes populations to ideas of self-interest that are consonant with human rights; and so-called transgovernmentalism—social learning networks that work transnationally to address issues of common concern.29 The international level includes international treaty-monitoring bodies (and in some cases optional protocols allowing for individual cases to be heard); horizontal state-to-state diplomatic pressure and threat of bilateral or multilateral conditionalities or other forms of coercion; international organizations that integrate human rights into their mandates and programming; internationally authorized sanctions and military interventions; and international criminal tribunals.30 Human rights have been integrated into global politics at the domestic, transnational, and international levels, as well as into a patchwork of legal, political, normative, and institutional tracks. Noting a “patchwork” of intersecting levels and tracks through which human rights move into everyday life is not meant as faint praise. The strength of the human rights regime and its counterintuitive rise as a factor in global politics stem from its penetration of many different potential entry

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points. Looking for a singular enforcement apparatus (such as the ICC or a treaty body) is too limited a conceptualization of how human rights make their impact. Conceptualizing human rights as being made real by a matrix of factors at different levels and tracks makes more sense than focusing on just one (or a few) elements.

The Impact of Human Rights While it may be easy to overstate the impact of human rights, it is also easy to understate that impact. Human rights are in fact a deeply contested but powerful presence in global politics: states universally recognize their validity, peoples globally clamor for their implementation, and they have changed normative attitudes and political behavior in very real and undeniable ways. Such changes have occurred in both dramatic and daily events. Among the most dramatic events have been the precedentshattering trials of Slobodan Milosevic and others responsible for war crimes,31 as well as the human rights–impacted uprisings in the Arab world. Among the more daily are the rulings by regional systems such as the European Court of Human Rights or the ways in which human rights have subtly impacted discourse around political and economic claims. Whether dramatic or daily, all these are examples of how human rights continue to intrude into global politics in quite unexpected ways. As these individual examples continue to accumulate, it becomes increasingly unrealistic to dismiss them as outliers. So too has it become impossible to dismiss changes in general patterns of state action. In terms of such general patterns, human rights have impacted conceptualizations of how to address global problems such as economic underdevelopment and the spread of HIV, directly influencing the programming of bilateral and international donors. So-called rights-based approaches (discussed in Chapter 7) are a buzzword for international organizations as they conceptualize their programming. Indeed, the integration of human rights into on-the-ground policymaking may be the most underreported but ultimately the most important element of the extension of human rights into global politics. Together, this has widely altered individual expectations of what governments can do, cannot do, and should be expected to do, with direct impacts on how domestic politics are conducted, especially in democracies. It is no contradiction, in short, to say that human rights have had real impacts in significant ways—they are more than mere

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aspirations—at the same time that they are often more respected in the breach than in reality. This returns us to the Muslim world, which as I have argued has not been insulated from these global currents. As we saw in Chapter 2, in fact the Muslim world was part of creating the human rights regime, and as we saw in Chapter 3, it is part of the transnational currents that have been essential to the role of human rights in informing many local struggles. Exploring the structural bases of the human rights regime helps us understand how it is that human rights have come to impact so many issues globally and in the Muslim world. Too often, international human rights law is invoked as a vague abstraction rather than in terms of the realities of how human rights intersect with daily politics. This reality is tangible and real, albeit only partially developed and incompletely enforced. The next chapter deals with human rights in a theoretical rather than a structural sense but has the same aim of advancing beyond abstractions and toward a tangible understanding of the human rights regime. As we will subsequently see in Chapters 6 and 7, this is less about such famous cases as the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (regarding the assassination of Rafic Hariri) or Palestinian referrals to the International Court of Justice and more about the types of cases that show the normative integration of human rights into defining appropriate political action. A tangible understanding of human rights is essential if we are to grapple with how they continue to intersect with key debates and events in the Muslim world.

Notes 1. Anat Biletzki, for example, in an overview of the foundations of human rights, takes the debate to be solely about whether human rights are founded in religious or secular moral absolutes. The idea does not even come into play to move beyond such universalist absolutes. Biletzki, “The Sacred and the Humane” in the New York Times, July 17, 2011. 2. Ishay, The History of Human Rights. 3. A’ala Maudoodi, Islam in Human Rights. 4. International Commission of Jurists and International Service for Human Rights, “The Yogyakarta Principles.” 5. Gruskin and Ferguson, “Government Regulation of Sex and Sexuality,” p. 109. 6. For a good general overview on the topic of rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, see International Commission of Jurists, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and International Human Rights Law.

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7. General comments being official explanatory texts explicating specific treaty articles. 8. See International Commission of Jurists, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and International Human Rights Law. 9. For more on this, see Chase, “Paul Farmer and Human Rights.” 10. Ishay, The History of Human Rights. Micheline Ishay’s is a rich work that discusses historical antecedents to modern human rights. While significant to some degree, especially in terms of the sorts of immediate precedents discussed in Chapter 2 that demonstrate continuing relevance, I am a bit dubious as to the ultimate impact of harking back to original historical sources. What is most important in the development of human rights is the particular structural forces that pushed them from vague moral notions to powerful forces embedded in global politics. 11. Lindholm, The Cross-Cultural Legitimacy of Human Rights. 12. For an analysis of one thread of this dynamism, see Kollman, “SameSex Unions.” Kelly Kollman argues that the rise of human rights–oriented transnational networks of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists has had effects on international norms and on some national elites and publics. 13. Eide, “Realization of Social and Economic Rights and the Minimum Threshold Approach.” Originally, in fact, rather than “respect, protect, fulfill,” it was the “respect, protect, promote, and fulfill” paradigm. 14. For a reflection on this transition with specific reference to Egypt, see Zulficar, “From Human Rights to Program Reality.” 15. See the Siracusa Principles for the most detailed elaboration in this regard: United Nations, Economic and Social Council, UN Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation of Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Annex, UN Doc E/CN.4/1984/4 (1984). More specifically, I am citing from Article 21 of the ICCPR—right of peaceful assembly—but restrictions of other derogable rights invoke similar balancing claims in many articles. For the definitive statement on the balancing of rights, see the Siracusa Principles in full. 16. For an overview of rights listed in various human rights instruments, see Donnelly, “The Social Construction of Human Rights,” p. 74. 17. In narrow circumstances, it also seeks to limit the authority of multinational corporations and nonstate political actors that have statelike power. 18. Reus-Smit, “Human Rights and the Social Construction of Sovereignty.” 19. Glendon, A World Made New. 20. Subject, naturally, to reservations, understandings, and declarations. 21. For a further conceptualization of this building on his original work, see Eide, “Universalisation of Human Rights Versus Globalization of Economic Power.” 22. See, for example, Hertel, “Why Bother?” p. 215.

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23. See D’Amato, “Is International Law Really ‘Law’?”; or Koh, “Why Do Nations Obey International Law?” More generally, see Hathaway and Koh, Foundations of International Law & Politics. 24. Lustig-Prean and Beckett v. UK; Smith and Grady v. UK. 25. Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign. 26. Yamin and Parra-Vera, “Judicial Protection of Right to Health in Colombia.” The Colombian constitution of 1991, for example, contains similar provisions making international human rights treaties ratified by Colombia part of domestic law. As a result, similarly, Colombia’s Constitutional Court has been proactive in asserting a right to health for Colombians. 27. Chigwedere et al., “Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa.” 28. Moravcsik, “The Origins of Human Rights Regimes.” 29. Goodman and Jinks, “How to Influence States.” See, as well, Raustiala, “The Architecture of International Cooperation.” 30. Hathaway, “Do Human Rights Treaties Make A Difference?” and “The Cost of Commitment”; and Lamont, International Criminal Justice and the Politics of Compliance. 31. Lutz and Reiger, Prosecuting Heads of State.

5 An Antifoundational Understanding of Human Rights

This chapter’s argument is undergirded by the stories this book has already shared about people like Bahey el-Din Hassan, Amal Basha, and others who have engaged with human rights from their local contexts. Their stories get to the heart of what has driven the dramatic expansion of human rights over the past half-century. It has not been a top-down process resulting from the acceptance by peoples around the globe of one philosophical inheritance or political tradition or institutional authority. Instead, the human rights regime has been a hook that grassroots movements have seized onto to further their own purposes, often working through regional, international, and transnational networks. For all of the focus on international organizations, the normative impulse behind the expansion of rights—the impulse that has made human rights the lingua franca of moral and political claims for justice— lies in the rights regime’s ability to absorb and represent claims for social justice being made by marginal and vulnerable populations previously excluded from conversations about global politics, not by the actors who already dominate those conversations. This historically unprecedented phenomenon is only partly explained by the issues discussed in the preceding chapter: the structural reasons for why human rights have emerged on the global stage and the mechanisms through which human rights have had real impacts on patterns of state and individual behavior. The present chapter sheds further light on the nature of human rights by exploring their groundings and foundations. It begins with a survey of the legal, political, normative, and

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institutional groundings of human rights, arguing that their intersections are key. Focusing on this multifaceted grounding is particularly key in light of both the insufficiency of purely universalist justifications for human rights and the vacuity of cultural relativist and structuralist critiques. Next is a response to the relativist critique that human rights are based in “Western” cultural values and are therefore an imposition if adopted in other parts of the world, followed by an alternative both to this critique and to universalism. We need to move beyond foundationalist talk of a point of origin for human rights, as looking for a singular legal or philosophical source distorts our conception of human rights. An “antifoundational” perspective can better account for the fluidity of the global human rights regime and the multiplicity of its sources. Such an antifoundational perspective sees rights as, in James Ingram’s terms, “created from the bottom up, through practices of communication and interaction.”1 This antifoundational theory of human rights would privilege engagement with shifting identity constructs and transnational normative currents as a source of articulations (and rearticulations) of human rights. Engaging with movements for sexual rights, for example, is seen from this perspective as essential to the continued evolution of the rights regime, allowing it to remain relevant. More traditional notions of an authoritative foundational source resist inclusion of “new” groups and rights—or even fresh definitions of preexisting rights—into their conceptualizations of a core rights corpus. It is not, in other words, that the rights regime as defined from on high allows people to have rights but rather that people claiming rights from many different positions around the globe are what constitute human rights. This constitutive source is not foundational in the sense of being static and solid, but is rather fluid, regenerative, and hence antifoundational. As Chapter 6 explains, this concept is key to understanding how the human rights regime has sustained itself through a global language for making substantive claims for social justice, including in the Muslim world, where in a generic sense there has been a powerful anti–human rights discourse but, simultaneously, a multitude of specific areas where human rights have become normatively powerful.

Groundings in Law, Politics, Norms, and Institutions One reason for the haziness regarding what rights actually mean is that the rights regime is supported by multiple groundings—legal, political,

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normative, and institutional. This concept may initially seem confusing to those who associate human rights primarily with something specific like the international human rights treaty system or civil society activism. But when the human rights regime is considered in terms of the mutually reinforcing contributions of law, politics, norms, and institutions, its place in the world becomes more understandable. Its groundings in all four realms have been essential to its ability to continue reinventing itself in meaningful ways and to its global impacts over the past half century. In terms of law, while we need to move beyond a singular focus on foundational positive law, human rights are still in part grounded in binding international treaties (hard law), along with international codes and standards (soft law).2 The process by which states (and nonstate actors, to a lesser degree) participate in treaty drafting and, commonly, treaty ratification is an essential element in signifying both consent to particular elements in the human rights regime as well as its general legitimacy. State participation in the creation of soft law (through declarations, resolutions, and conference documents, for example) similarly signifies an international consensus behind many elements in the human rights regime. There are, of course, defined legal limits to both hard and soft human rights law, as well as significant caveats in many cases. Furthermore, international human rights obligations are ultimately integrated into domestic legal arrangements. The fact that they are elaborated by states means that these obligations will never be as far-reaching and absolute as an idealist might hope—nor, in fact, should they be. Limits are essential for human rights to gain footholds in real-world politics, a point not to be forgotten. In terms of politics, the political context in which human rights instruments are (or are not) drafted, signed, and implemented are each closely interrelated to the legal groundings of human rights. States’ calculations of their own interests and the pressures to which state leaders are subject are defining factors in terms of the development of this legal regime.3 Law divorced from politics is a dead letter; shifting political contours structure both the impacts of human rights and the limits of those impacts. It is therefore essential to take into account the political forces that determine whether and how human rights are constructed and implemented at the local, regional, and international levels. These forces are multifaceted rather than uniform. Their contradictory impulses caution against either a naive optimism that assumes the inevitable progression of human rights or a stubborn pessimism that closes its eyes to changes in state behavior brought about by the rights

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regime. In other words, it is far too simplistic to conceptualize human rights as a utopian legal regime that is sadly blocked by sordid everyday politics. To the contrary, it is a realist legal regime constituted by politics in ways that have simultaneously enabled, limited, reappropriated, and yes, many times, blocked human rights. In terms of norms, the groundings of human rights encompass broad normative currents that inform both law and politics.4 Norms, simply defined, are beliefs that have moved beyond ideals to become part of our collective expectations. It is such norms that have pushed rights onto the global stage and led to pressure from numerous directions for their elaboration and implementation.5 These pressures may be generated by a state’s domestic politics or by its leaders’ internalization of the notion that the expansion of human rights can further their interests by, for example, reducing the likelihood of conflict or disease spreading destablization across borders. Also, the international state system, especially its most powerful members, can generate direct pressure on states to abide by its rules. In terms of norms, the state system also appears to generate powerful socialization pressures toward adopting international standards.6 Beyond this, and perhaps most ambitiously, civil society nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), transnational networks, and globalized normative communities work to spread their understanding of human rights far beyond the policy arena, seeking to redefine popular expectations of state obligations.7 In Iran, for example, we have seen democratic rights asserted as a legitimate expectation over the past decade. Ironically, the very Islamic Republic that fostered that expectation has ended up trying to crush it, at the cost of its own ruling legitimacy. To give another example, Abu Ghraib–style torture is historically unexceptional (in terms of its general violence, though that particular case did of course have some malign particularities) but now causes general revulsion— all but the most strident defenders of the George W. Bush administration tried to explain away US torture policies rather than justifying them. This epitomizes a shifting normative environment; analogous acts in previous eras were taken as inevitable or even celebrated. But in today’s normative environment, torturing an enemy has become shameful, and publicity over such events is a substantive defeat. It reduces an actor’s ideological legitimacy and hence also reduces the actor’s ability to pursue its agenda. Bush and his top generals, showing some

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belated awareness, explicitly termed Abu Ghraib the biggest US defeat in Iraq.8 There are, in other words, strong normative incentives to abide by human rights law (and humanitarian law, of course, though I won’t go into their intersections here). The cost of violating those normative expectations is huge, even for states that hold an overwhelming amount of power in a purely (and merely) material sense. Just as the Bush administration paid a realpolitik price for flouting human rights (and humanitarian) law, states that act within the constraints of the rights regime reap tangible benefits. More generally, these sorts of normative shifts are what have both constituted and further stimulated the legalpolitical construction of the human rights regime, creating the sorts of incentives that have made it a viable part of contemporary politics rather than an idealistic sideshow. But if human rights norms are having an increasing impact, why do rights violations continue? In addition to legal limits and political forces, a third factor to be considered is the effect of normative frames that contest human rights. Sometimes this contestation leads to interesting cross-fertilizations, as with Islamic feminisms or other models that have made various attempts to merge Islamic and human rights norms in ways that satisfy the normative foundations of each.9 At other times the relationship is starkly oppositional, as with Islamist takfeeri movements or the Bush administration’s conceptualization of US engagement as a new form of total war, the so-called long war, in order to justify unprecedented countermeasures. The most powerful normative contestations against human rights have come from nationalisms that justify—indeed sacralize—treating some classes of humans as inferior, as well as from notions of sovereignty that instrumentally use such collective identities to legitimize untrammeled state power. This potent norm of sovereignty also benefits from quite legitimate suspicions of human rights being used as a Trojan horse to justify imperial adventures, past and present. The Bush administration’s invocation of human rights language as a post facto justification of the US invasion of Iraq epitomized this type of attempted appropriation and largely fell flat given its obvious contradictions with the groundings described here. This failure to garner political and normative support is important. It indicates that even though human rights continuously change, their legal, political, normative, and institutional groundings are not endlessly malleable—invoking them in a shamelessly hypocritical manner had little ultimate resonance.

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So, while contested and suspected, there is also little doubt that human rights benefit from a powerfully entrenched normative legitimacy that underpins their political-legal inroads. Such inroads are numerous and far-reaching. These include the obvious, such as attaining an understanding that rape during war is a crime rather than part of the “natural” spoils of war.10 These inroads also include the less obvious, such as the World Health Organization’s recognition of rights regarding sexual orientation as relevant to global health.11 Last in terms of the four types of groundings, the various intersections among law, politics, and norms are what account for the firm institutional grounding of human rights. This encompasses the processes through which rights have become bureaucratically embedded in the programming of international organizations, transnational NGOs, and domestic human rights institutions. Perhaps most famously, Kofi Annan mandated that human rights be mainstreamed into all UN programming during his 1997–2006 tenure as UN Secretary-General. As a result of efforts in this vein, we have seen UN agencies and NGOs operationalize so-called human rights–based approaches to various issues, particularly in the fields of health and development. The interplay of these international institutions with a broader normative environment has been essential to the continual reshaping of the rights regime. Once again, in fact, the interrelationship among different types of groundings is key to understanding the remarkable growth of human rights. Law, politics, norms, and institutions are not contradictory underpinnings to human rights, but rather are reinforcing elements. Any accounting that downplays or ignores any one of these elements is incomplete. And last, as should be clear, it is the transnational context in which contemporary politics unfolds that has permitted these elements to intersect to an unprecedented degree at the global level.12

The Relativist Critique On a normative and intellectual level, human rights have become globally resonant, and thus prevalent as the language of opposition to state power and to abuses more generally. Describing how human rights are transnationally grounded in law, politics, norms, and institutions helps us account to some extent for how and why this has happened but still leaves an important question unanswered: How is the human rights en-

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terprise ultimately justified? That is, what are the theoretical foundations or origins of human rights? The justifications most commonly proposed for human rights tend to be either narrowly positivist—focusing on the legal obligations that states have made through treaties or other binding elements of international law—or else have a natural rights orientation with somewhat unconvincing assertions of universalism. But this leaves out the complex ways in which power, contestation, and agency have shaped how human rights are understood and implemented. The failure to satisfactorily address the question of foundations is especially problematic because of how it limits attempts to realize rights for subaltern groups such as migrants, women, or gay men and lesbians. When human rights are carried into domains where they threaten entrenched interests and structures, the governments attached to those interests and structures often question, however defensively and cynically, the foundations of rights. The claim is then made that those foundations make human rights an illegitimate basis for “outside” criticism (though usually the criticism is coming in the first instance from within political societies). Academic relativism reaffirms this position by also deeming human rights suspect because of their foundations. While the relativist critique has taken different forms, from anthropological cultural relativism to neorealist and postcolonial structuralism, the common assumption is that human rights are specific to either Western culture or politics and are therefore an imposition on nonWestern parts of the world. The relativist critique seems to have little awareness of the irony of a “defense” of culture attacking a human rights regime that includes cultural rights and also includes political and social rights that are essential to vibrant cultural life. This irony becomes more tragic when the relativist critique is adopted, as it often has been, by states that violate human rights, from the United States to China and Iran. The melding of state and academic rhetoric indicates that, as we shall see, the relativist critique is less a defense of cultural diversity and more a defense of elites that mobilize the idea of a static culture under attack for instrumental reasons. Pheng Cheah, writing from a structuralist academic position, summarizes one strand of this critique of human rights as follows: “These new cosmopolitans [foremost among them human rights] [are] generated by, and structurally dependent on, the active exploitation and impoverishment of the peripheral majorities. . . . [This] is largely the

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consciousness of transnational upward class mobility, especially that of the new technocratic professional class that manages and benefits from the global production system of flexible capitalism.”13 Human rights are thus seen as the property of global capitalism and transnational elites. Cheah contrasts this caricature of human rights with a sympathetic portrayal of forces that resist human rights as bastions of collective culture. He sees these forces in postcolonial nationalisms and, most specifically, in an Islamism that rejects Western power embedded in secular cosmopolitanism.14 This sort of critique underplays the social and cultural dynamism of societies around the world and presumes that societies are made up of certain authentic and inauthentic classes. As one sees during revolutionary moments such as the Arab Spring, demanding rights is not the province of some implicitly “inauthentic” transnational class while others, presumably those more authentic to their culture, find rights claims irrelevant. Indeed, at an extreme, this academic discourse leads to the following sort of description of the Arab Spring from Tugrul Keskin: “The Arab Spring—or whatever we call it—is not a revolution, but is a product of globalization and changes in American and European foreign policies which are based on supporting NGOs, academics, think-tanks, women’s organizations, ethnic rights organizations and movements for further exploitation, because the West does not need a unified power structure.”15 This rather insulting notion that Arabs fighting and dying in the streets of Tunis, Cairo, and elsewhere were at the puppet strings of US agencies is of a piece with relativist discourse that denies agency to peoples around the world. (Need it be pointed out that Western funding for the antidemocratic governments against which Arabs were protesting was exponentially higher than the irrelevant crumbs that went to “democracy promotion”?) How to respond to this dismissal of the agency of non-Western peoples? First, this sort of theoretical critique of human rights generally shares a disconnect with empirical realities on the ground, including, as we have already seen, realities in the Muslim world. This disconnect leads to a denial of societies’ diversity and ignores how such societies (and all societies) are in a constant process of redefinition. Ironically, therefore, it is the cultural relativist critique that ends up reinforcing assumptions that essentialize culture, privileging forces that threaten cultural diversity, and taking an uncritical, romantic stance toward states that violate rights. As Arjun Appadurai has written, the challenge is to move away from invoking culture as a static thing and toward using

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it “adjectivally”—in ways that emphasize that culture is not a solid object but rather a dimension of difference that is defined in relation to any number of constructs.16 Indeed, academics who insist on the irrelevancy of human rights represent far more of an outside imposition than does the insistence by local actors that they have the right not to be tortured, the right to political participation, or the right to health. Cultural relativist assertions that local actors do not or should not have the agency to invoke their governments’ consent to international obligations or to network with transnational allies to press such demands represent a denial of peoples’ ability to engage with their own history and their own political circumstances in ways that they consider suitable and deem relevant. The cultural relativist critique of human rights is thus both empirically and theoretically flawed. Although cultural relativists claim to speak on behalf of cultural diversity, we repeatedly see that embattled cultural groups around the world are most insistent in claiming the protections of human rights. This would seem to refute the cultural relativist notion that solidarity across borders for the right to practice one’s religion or speak one’s language is an imposition. It is quite obviously the contrary; minorities of all sorts demand rights. On a theoretical level, cultural relativism is embedded in a notion of culture as a static, monolithic thing, disallowing the changeability that is so essential to cultural life. Ironically, it could be argued that the cultural relativist intellectual construct itself is what undermines cultural diversity, insofar as it rhetorically reinforces the ability of the state to impose singularly defined notions of political-cultural identity in order to maintain its power. There is an obvious double standard in governments’ attempts to discredit rights as illegitimate by virtue of their origin—whether that suspicious origin is “Western” (as is often claimed by Muslim states) or international (the famed US suspicion of all international regimes and elites). These governments simultaneously embrace the norms, whether international or “Western” (if that term is even meaningful),17 that are useful for reinforcing state power. Such norms include sovereignty and self-determination as embedded in the UN Charter. On the other hand, they attempt to de-legitimize those international norms that may have a role in potentially ensuring the rights of and empowering their citizens.18 The variable that causes this hypocrisy, thus, is not international structures or oversight as such; it is the type of international structures and the degree to which they reinforce or challenge state authority.

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Relativist discourse continues to be reproduced in US academia and by power-holders around the globe who claim some exceptional status, whether that exceptionalism is American or otherwise. Relativism’s relevance is unclear, however, to peoples around the globe whose lives and politics are informed by a multiplicity of far more complex and differentiated power relations than such discourse allows. Most troubling is the application of an academic theoretical template that is disengaged from changing global realities and blithely ignorant of the groundings of human rights in law, politics, and institutions. While human rights have a long history of being globally negotiated and appropriated in ways that have often left Western countries—especially the United States—to the side, cultural relativism and its academic successors flow directly out of US exceptionalism and formulations exported from the American Anthropological Association to other areas of the US academy, and from there to the stock defenses made by authoritarian regimes around the world. In other words, cultural relativism is what it critiques.19 Contrary to relativist assumptions, human rights obligations are an imposition on states rather than on cultural entities, and this distinction must be maintained. There has always been in cultural relativist thought a slippery conflation between the state and a culture. Adamantia Pollis and Peter Schwab, for example, in one of the earlier articulations of cultural relativism, say: It is evident that in most states in the world, human rights as defined by the West are rejected or, more accurately, are meaningless. Most states do not have a cultural heritage of individualism, and the doctrines of inalienable human rights have been neither disseminated nor assimilated. More significantly the state—as a substitute for the traditional communal group—has become the embodiment of the people, and the individual has no rights or freedoms that are natural and outside the purview of the state.20

This idealization of the state encapsulates the cultural relativist refusal to criticize rights violations by governments or to see culture as more complex than a static monolith. Conflating the state with an undifferentiated notion of community means ignoring the power relations, stratifications, and contestations that inform politics in all parts of the world, and fails to recognize how the state is often captured as a way to advance one set of interests over

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another. The state is always an object of contestation and an instrument of power; this cannot be ignored. The romantic assumption of a monolithic homogeneity in a charmingly “communal” non-Western world not problematized by power relations is nothing more than a stock Orientalist cliché.21 In a more recent publication, Pollis writes in the same vein that “communalism, which prevails in many non-Western societies, is not based on the primacy of the individual as the basic social unity, but on a community.” According to Pollis, “A doctrine of rights . . . is difficult to transmit to societies devoid of the language of rights and of the very notion of individualism.”22 There may, indeed, be differing ideas of the individual and the community, but the naiveté in cultural relativist analysis is that it conflates the state and community (and the individual). Speaking of “societies devoid of the language of rights” is the worst sort of projection in the Orientalist tradition of positing non-Western societies as insular, disconnected, and unchanging.23 The human rights regime potentially contributes to the protection of cultural diversity in two highly significant ways. First, it attempts to keep states—particularly those controlled by narrow ethno-political elites—from imposing cultural homogeneity on their heterogeneous societies. It is for this reason that majoritarian groups often dominate the states that are most resistant to human rights. Eliminating opposition to the state by eliminating alternative political identities—be they culturally or ideologically based—is a form of furthering the state’s power or, more specifically, the power of an elite that dominates a state. One or more of three discursive rubrics usually provide the public justification for this strategy. The first is national security: in short, “We don’t want to violate rights, but we need to, because enemies are attacking us.” The second is nationalistic sovereignty: “Those from outside our state have no right to criticize what we do within our state.” The third is cultural exceptionalism: “What may seem like rights violations to others are simply a reflection of our culture—attacking those violations is, therefore, an attack on our culture.” In practice, these three justifications often blend together: “We’re under attack from enemy states that want to eliminate our culture.” It is ironic that these justifications are often given credence in the name of cultural diversity. Again, it is worth emphasizing that the naiveté of this cultural relativist position is demonstrated in the real world by the fact that minorities most often invoke human rights. To

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take examples from the Muslim world, Muslim-majority states often have minorities pressing for their rights in the face of state repression; well-known cases of this include the Bahais in Iran, Kurds in Turkey, and Darfuris in the Sudan. In non-Muslim-majority states, Palestinians in Israel and Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia are among the most prominent examples of a minority taking recourse to human rights as a means of protection and self-preservation. Far from endangering cultural diversity, international standards are often among the few impediments to the homogenizing power that constitutes the real threat to such diversity by virtue of the culturally identified state’s wish to restrict or eliminate its cultural minorities. While governmental campaigns against cultural minorities may take many forms, a common tactic is to target practices that are central to cultural life such as the use of language or expression of religion. The distinction between critiquing a culture and critiquing a government that violates human rights—often in ways that threaten cultural diversity—should be, frankly, dead obvious. The second way in which human rights protect diversity is even more essential. The idea that governments that violate rights in the name of culture are immune from criticism while people under their jurisdiction are not so much citizens entitled to rights as cultural subjects who owe fealty to their cultural-governmental representatives is dangerous not just to those citizens but also to dynamic cultural life more generally. Rights that protect individual and social agency are key to the ability of cultures—even (or particularly) those that are dominant— to change and evolve rather than remain static, insular, and prone to xenophobia or shallow charges of “inauthenticity.” Thus the protection that ethnic minorities commonly seek in human rights is intimately connected to intellectual, cultural, social, and ideological dissidents who seek protection from the power of the state. There is an important link between protecting minorities and dissidents: each is essential to the sort of pluralism that is a defining characteristic of societies that change according to their own dynamics. Cultural relativism’s most unfortunate face can be seen when romantic, exoticizing currents lead to apologia for states that violate rights—a “right-side-up version” of Orientalism, in Rhoda Howard’s apt phrase.24 Cultural relativism therefore becomes a justification for racism, repression of challenges to the status quo, and denial of agency to peoples around the world.25 This line of thought has been particularly prevalent in studies of the Middle East and the Muslim world, with aca-

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demics from both the left and the right inclined to naturalize the status quo as somehow indigenous, rather than recognizing that it emerged from struggles for power. Such perspectives encourage the dismissal of challenges to those who wield their political authority to stifle alternative viewpoints. Whether or not cultural relativism is explicitly invoked, its influence is widely felt. For example, the Iranian government sought to justify its violent 2009 crackdown on peaceful protests by claiming that the protests were taking place at the volition of British or US secret services, and thus in some way did not represent the “real” Iran. Some Arab governments made similar accusations during the Arab Spring. These governments recognize that there is a naive inclination for “cultural” deference to their political repression; this speaks to the impact of cultural relativism and to the danger it presents to efforts to recognize human agency across the globe. It is therefore imperative to identify the flaws in the relativist critique of human rights. But doing so does not in itself provide us with a justification for human rights. As the rights regime becomes increasingly prominent on the world stage, it simultaneously and appropriately faces increasing criticism. A clearer theoretical basis is needed that will in turn engage critics in more substantive debates. This basis, I would argue, is associated with neither a particular cultural or political origin nor a generic universality. An antifoundational theory of human rights may better account than any of the alternatives discussed so far for the transformation of human rights into a tangible part of local and global politics.

Toward an Antifoundational Understanding of Human Rights There are two interconnected ways in which human rights are commonly distorted: by being invoked as a singular philosophical abstraction or as a static, unchanging entity. In either mode (or in both, as quite often they overlap), human rights are taken to have been invented in one philosophical or legal moment and to have remained fundamentally defined by that moment. Universalists in their enthusiasm and relativists and some structuralists in their skepticism make that assumption their point of departure in conceptualizing human rights. I would argue, however, that it is futile to seek out the foundation of human rights as a way to understand what they are today.26 This

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notion that we know what human rights are and merely have to apply them is deeply unsatisfying in its implication that human rights are a static thing that simply need to be protected by some sort of benevolent power. Instead of a “tool” to be shaped and used as necessary, human rights are seen as an ultimate goal in and of themselves.27 This plays into a “savior” vision of human rights in which they are a predetermined entity that those with power can provide. To the contrary, human rights are objects of struggle that are seized from below and, in that process, redefined. Compare the language of modern human rights to such supposed “original” sources as the Code of Hammurabi or France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and one finds very little commonality.28 Human rights have been shaped in an evolving process; they are not the child of some a priori truth that is outside politics and outside law and simply must be applied. In short, disembodied intellectual debates about origins risk ignoring the empirical fact that the human rights regime is a shifting and, yes, transnationally defined entity that is often rearticulated and redeployed in different contexts, making the search for a point of origin misleading. So, on what basis do I propose “antifoundationalism” as a more viable justification for human rights, and how can this perspective give us greater insight into how the rights regime is intersecting with political and social life globally, including in locales in the Muslim world? Ultimately, the relevance of rights is due to states being enmeshed in a human rights web (one partly of their own making), the extensive efforts of international organizations and donor agencies to reinforce human rights movements on the ground, and the seizing of human rights laws and norms by civil society groupings in virtually all parts of the world as a basis to advance their work. This is not a singular idea of human rights foundations. But, even if messy, this antifoundationalist justification does coherently account for the multitude of political and normative movements that have engaged with human rights and, in so doing, informed the rights regime with their energy.29 It is intellectually impoverished to conceptualize human rights as eternally defined by one historical moment that has since progressed in a linear fashion.30 The rights regime flows out of political practice, not top-down bequests or universal origins.31 One element of this antifoundational model emphasizes human agency, in recognition of Michael Ignatieff’s argument that rights are fundamentally about giving space for agency. They are not necessarily about the good nor the ethical in the idealistic abstract, but rather about

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the minimum necessary to guarantee human agency—the right to be different, the right to dissent, and the right to engage in politics, economics, society, and culture within a state without discrimination. Ignatieff summarizes a notion of agency as fundamental to the human rights regime in the following way: Such grounding as modern human rights requires, I would argue, is based on what history tells us: that human beings are at risk of their lives if they lack a basic measure of free agency; that agency itself requires protection through internationally agreed standards; that these standards should entitle individuals to oppose and resist unjust laws and orders within their own states; and, finally, that when all other remedies have been exhausted, these individuals have the right to appeal to other peoples, nations, and international organizations for assistance in defending their rights.32

This emphasis on bottom-up agency connects to the idea that there is no singular foundation for human rights; rather there are various impulses that reflect the priorities of diverse individuals and human societies. Rather than viewing the global resonance of human rights as the imposition of powerful Western hegemony onto passive subjects, its resonance is instead indicative of the power of individual and collective agency to engage and transform transnational normative currents. As Neil Stammers has powerfully argued, social movements have played a key role in bringing human rights to life and, in short, have moved peoples individually and collectively toward agency.33 These movements interact with the structures and institutions that characterize contemporary politics, but are not bordered or defined by them. Indeed, agency has enabled people to challenge these structures and institutions in domains as diverse as politics, economics, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender. The antifoundationalism that I am proposing also has a cosmopolitan element. There is, in fact, some notion of cosmopolitanism at the heart of almost every justification for human rights, even if it is not explicitly articulated. By “cosmopolitanism” I am referring to an idea of a connected humanity that binds us in an ethical community that prevails over the sorts of religious, racial, or national particularisms that would limit an ethical commitment to only a specific group.34 Part of the grounding of such a cosmopolitan worldview is philosophical (with variants, including the “thick” or “thin” cosmopolitanisms that Michael

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Walzer and others discuss),35 but such a philosophical cosmopolitanism’s ability to globally underpin human rights is limited. As Jack Donnelly argues, human rights have an “overlapping universality.” In other words, human rights are functionally grounded in the politics and law of contemporary global society that together constitute a sort of ad hoc global consensus, rather than in universal agreement on what underpins human rights.36 There is, as the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) seem to have understood, little basis to assert a unitary philosophical or moral foundation to human rights. To the contrary, human rights are open to various philosophical and moral justifications that move beyond both cultural particularism and singular universality. Fuyuki Kurasawa’s articulation of solidarity or “cosmopolitanism from below” is particularly useful, because, in an antifoundational manner, it focuses on the “labour of solidarity” as the basis for what Kurasawa calls “critical cosmopolitanism” (echoing Gerard Delanty). By seeing cosmopolitanism as “solidarity” made up of dialogical transnational practices, Kurasawa moves beyond the universal and particular.37 He writes: “Bonds of mutual responsibility with distant others cannot be inherited or presumed as given in a post-traditional and multicultural world, and they cannot be solely legislated or prescribed from above on the basis of normative principals or institutional arrangements; they must be made through the pursuit of obstacle-laden tasks that are integral to the work of global justice.”38 So agency and an implicit cosmopolitanism are key building blocks but may not be an ultimate justification. Rather than trying to fit these building blocks into a more elaborate top-down theory of human rights, I propose that it may be useful to instead focus on why human rights are currently meaningful. That is, the “origins” of human rights may not be located in a historical or philosophical moment but rather in our understanding of the dynamics of contemporary global society. This would combine agency and cosmopolitanism with a third component in an antifoundational justification for human rights: recognition of the structural factors that have made rights globally relevant. This component once again calls for a transnationally grounded perspective. The global movement of peoples, goods, technologies, communicative media, and norms has exploded any notion of a “local” community, making assumptions about the impermeability of domestic sovereignties and solidarities questionable.39 Not even the most insular

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country’s domestic politics exist in a vacuum entirely separate from transnational currents. Structurally, beyond general transnational currents, post–World War II decolonization brought with it the globalization of the modern state system and the rise of international organizations that have come to be both a focal point in global politics and an inescapable presence in many parts of the developing world. On that basis, human rights can be seen not so much as rooted in a philosophical worldview but rather more as flowing out of the dynamics of transnational political, economic, social, and normative networks. It is no surprise, in short, that a human rights discourse has arisen from the normative and political structures discussed earlier in this chapter and in preceding chapters.40 This discourse has global relevance in the context of multiple factors: the unprecedented power of the modern state over individuals and social groups in all parts of the world; international organizations and transnational networks that open up pathways around the state’s intrusive ability to dominate political and social life; and transnational norms that can make people aware of the relevance of human rights to their local politics.41 It would be naive to break the world into discrete communities when the structures that define politics around the globe are so interconnected.42 The relevance or irrelevance of human rights is determined by the extent to which they respond to those structures, in a process driven by states, international organizations, transnational networks, and especially grassroots political movements. Peoples’ insistence—to varying degrees and in contradictory ways—on relating specific rights to the political, economic, social, and cultural realities and power relations they confront is what indicates that a different type of justification for human rights is in order. This is the most salient “origin” of the integration of human rights into contemporary law, politics, norms, and institutions. As Samuel Moyn puts it, “human rights in their specific contemporary connotations are an invention of recent date, which drew on prior languages and practices the way a chemical reaction depends on having various elements around from different sources, some of them older than others.”43 The incentives behind this activity may share, in some sense, a cosmopolitan worldview and certainly engage rather than deny a transnationalized world. But seeking a historical or philosophical point of origin is to misunderstand the very nature of human rights.

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This point is well illustrated when we consider how emerging movements for the rights of marginalized groups have been at the cutting edge of change in both the Muslim world and the international human rights regime. More broadly, this epitomizes a “chemical reaction” model of how the human rights regime has been able to invent and reinvent itself in ways that maintain its global relevance, rather than being forever defined by some eternally powerful point of origin. The “origin,” in short, is in the process by which movements—such as those for rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity—can take rights as a tool to advance their own interests and norms; in this they are engaging in the dynamism that has given human rights an entry point into the power relations of a heterogeneous, changing world. The international women’s human rights movement in particular, with its unifying rallying cry of “women’s rights are human rights,” is a classic example of why human rights can best be understood in an antifoundational sense. The women’s movement has been at the forefront of pushing the rights regime to look beyond “founding” principles to define itself in more expansive terms that emphasize the indivisibility of rights and the need not just to respect but also to protect and fulfill rights.44 Contestation between women within the international women’s human rights movement over what constitutes women’s concerns allowed for redefinitions and rearticulations, which kept the movement from being either stagnant or localist. As Brooke Ackerly has written: “Feminist activists have done the apparently impossible: they’ve shown us how to think about human rights as local, universal and contested. They have shown us that contestation over human rights is not evidence that human rights do not exist. Rather, contestation provides a basis for understanding their universal meaning.”45 Ultimately, the success of the “women’s rights as human rights” movement resulted from its ability to make individuals in starkly different contexts all over the globe feel connected through a fertile dialogue that included attention to the meaning of rights. In that context, the movement redefined rights beyond the civil and political, and, contra Ackerly, beyond the universal.46 It isn’t simply a matter of the state agreeing to passively respect the rights of those who are subject to political or civil violations. What is just as important is that the state take positive actions to protect and fulfill the full spectrum of rights in the “private” as well as “public” spheres. This means considering how violations are systemically fostered by political, economic, social, and cultural structures.47 Essentially,

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a state’s obligation encompasses taking all viable measures within its means to address those structural bases of rights violations. The international women’s human rights movement—along with other movements, of course—was at the forefront of this shift. Movements for rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity are at the forefront of even more forceful pressuring of the human rights regime to recognize that “negative” respect for rights is inseparable from “positive” fulfillment of rights, be those rights in the economic, political, civil, cultural, or social categories.48 Broadly speaking, rights are being conceptualized in ways that challenge traditionally narrow notions of what constitutes a protected status against discrimination.49 This is because such rights movements emphasize that respect for rights based on a singular identity risks creating a straitjacket that denies the fluidity of identity.50 Movements for rights regarding sexual orientation have been notable for their insistence on how identities are multiple and overlapping. This shift away from simple identity politics in which sexuality is just one more identity to be protected is a distinctive contribution of movements for rights regarding sexual orientation.51 If breaking down monolithic identities becomes normalized as part of how the human rights regime is understood, this will be as transformative and as important as the contribution of the women’s movement decades before. Such a development would stand as another example of how human rights can be reconstituted in ways that are about grassroots political action and transnational normative movements. Those scattered impulses are the opposite of a permanent foundation, and yet are the concrete basis of making human rights globally relevant rather than a subject of mere philosophical curiosity.52 Hence, another way of describing antifoundationalism is to say that having an openness to cuttingedge normative movements is, paradoxically, the “foundation” of the human rights regime’s ability to sustain its global relevance.

Human Rights as a Two-Way Street An antifoundational reading of human rights does not mean that human rights have no groundings. The interplay between the legal, political, normative, and institutional groundings of human rights is essential. Indeed, there is an ongoing dialectic between, on the one hand, laws and institutions that give permanent structure to the human rights regime and, on the

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other hand, the political processes and normative currents that, if permeable to laws and institutions, renew this regime and give it life. The human rights regime is created by states, anchored in international and domestic law, advanced by grassroots and transnational normative movements, and overseen by domestic and international organizations—but it only takes shape from the interplay among these elements. Normative movements and political processes continually inform and redefine the rights regime at the legal and institutional levels, just as law and institutions give a solidity to the place of human rights in global politics. Recognizing this synergy and mutual dependence rather than prioritizing one element over the other helps us to understand what ultimately propels the human rights regime. Rights rely for their relevance on their capacity to be (re)constituted by those making claims in an emancipatory language that is evolving and multisourced rather than singular and static. While there is no ultimate foundation for human rights, the chaotic impulses that keep human rights relevant most often come from people on the ground in different political, economic, social, and cultural locations around the globe. Claude Lefort’s observation that human rights are the product of past struggles and the object of new ones calls attention to the collective importance of such globally diverse exercises of agency.53 The essence of the rights regime is to take on claims from vulnerable groups that are articulated in the language and structure of the rights regime. To the degree it has done so, the rights regime has, remarkably, thrived. To the degree it has not, it has in many ways been static and elitist, and it has fulfilled the caricatures promoted by its relativist and structuralist critics. The dynamism of both the transnational Muslim world and international human rights thus depend in important ways on each other. Events in the Muslim world and in the international human rights regime are not unfolding along untouching parallel lines. To the contrary, the dynamism of human rights has come from their transformation in the context of the same transnational conversations that impact how issues are conceptualized in the Muslim world. Transnational networks and grassroots activists working from within the Muslim world have engaged with each other and with other key actors in ways that have brought about substantial changes in how the human rights regime defines itself; this in turn explains its ability to further integrate itself into transnational discourses, including those of the transnational Muslim world.

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The process on which human rights relies for its relevance can be aptly described as a two-way street. In one direction, rights facilitate internally articulated change by expanding human agency. This can give societies—and individuals within societies—the power to transform themselves in diverse and contradictory ways. The Muslim world’s dynamism, thus, is tied into advancing human rights. At the same time, the result of more widespread political, social, and cultural agency is that a far larger and more diverse community than the one involved in the creation of the UDHR and key early human rights documents has now entered into global discourses about human rights. This carries the potential to impel further change in the human rights regime. In a cyclical manner, therefore, broader agency and empowerment impact how human rights standards are continuously reconfigured, just as, in turn, human rights standards help allow difference and pluralism to thrive and become the foundation of societies that chip away at imposed authoritarian structures. In other words, human rights inform debates globally, while simultaneously absorbing a multitude of inputs from the same immense realm in which their influence is felt. The Muslim world is an integral part of this vast ongoing transnational cycle. In the end, it is the reality of authoritarian nationalisms of different sorts, and how they base themselves on putatively “traditional” hierarchies and feast on the demonization of vulnerable groups, that makes it so important to discuss even sensitive issues such as human rights regarding sexuality and gender identity. Both theocratic and secular authoritarianisms share a fondness for controlling women and repressing sexuality. This is not a coincidence or a side issue but indicates the threat that human agency poses to political power founded in the narrow straitjacket of social control and exclusivist identity politics. The only way to permanently end repression is to create space for fluid, multiple identities that break down authoritarianisms justified in essentialized constructs of politics, society, and culture. Issues such as torture, discrimination, politically motivated disappearances, lack of free expression, gender inequality, and repression of sexuality are, in that context, inextricably interconnected. These and other human rights violations are tied to projects of maintaining state and religious power by repressing challenges to the claim to monopolize religious, cultural, social, and, ultimately, political truth. It is for this reason that conceptualizing the Muslim world in its transnational complexity is so essential, as that complexity is a rebuke to the

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ideological notion that one meta-narrative can express the Muslim world’s identity. And it is also for this reason that it is equally essential to understand how the relevance of human rights arises from the constant renewal of their foundations and origins, partly through intersections with transnational political and normative currents—not by recourse to some sort of creation myth. The intersections between human rights and the transnational Muslim world have been particularly fraught but are also particularly powerful in terms of underpinning challenges to authoritarianism and to the monolithic constructs of politics and society on which authoritarianism thrives. This chapter has advanced an antifoundational theory of human rights to account for continuing transformations in both the transnational Muslim world and the globally constructed human rights regime, and for the ways in which these entities inform each other. But such transformations only take place in the context of intense debates over contested issues. We turn to the details of such debates in the next two chapters.

Notes 1. Ingram, “What Is a ‘Right to Have Rights’?” p. 410. 2. For valuable introductions to human rights with a legal focus, see Steiner, Alston, and Goodman, International Human Rights in Context; Marks and Clapham, International Human Rights Lexicon; and Smith and van den Anker, The Essentials of Human Rights. 3. Moravcsik, “The Origins of Human Rights Regimes.” 4. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics. 5. Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights. 6. Checkel, “Why Comply?” 7. See, in general, Barker, International Law and International Relations. More specifically, note Risse-Kappen, “‘Let’s Argue!’” 8. See, among others, Sanger and Rutenberg, “The Struggle for Iraq.” 9. Chase, “The Tail and the Dog.” 10. Engle, “Feminism and its (Dis)Contents.” 11. See www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/gender_rights/sexual_health/en. 12. There are, of course, precedents of type—it is the intensity of transnational intersections that has increased exponentially. 13. Cheah, Inhuman Conditions, p. 11. 14. Reinbold, “Radical Islam and Human Rights Values.” Following Pheng Cheah, Jenna Reinbold makes this most explicit by focusing on the Islamist Sayyid Qutb as a sort of protocritical theorist. Critical theorists have had better company.

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15. Tugrul Keskin, e-mail to the Sociology of Islam listserv, on file with author. 16. Appadurai, Modernity at Large. 17. Dabashi, Theology of Discontent. I am reminded, in this regard, of Hamid Dabashi’s pungent dismissal of “the West” as a term with any meaningful conceptual coherence. It is remarkable, nonetheless, how often Dabashi’s points are ignored and this term continues to be used by scholars who, in other contexts, are wary of monolithic categorizations. 18. Fazaeli, “Contemporary Iranian Feminism.” 19. See, for example, Goodale, “Locating Rights,” a work that is a classic example of limiting human rights to what fits into the confines of a narrow disciplinary perspective rather than grappling with the tangible and messy realities of human rights that would challenge those disciplinary assumptions. See, as well, Engle Merry, “Human Rights and the Demonization of Culture,” a rather backhanded defense of the American Anthropological Association’s 1947 denunciation of human rights, combined with a conceptualization of cultural fluidity that is consonant with human rights–based understandings. Its absence of references to human rights beyond a few superficial legal texts seems to indicate a lack of familiarity with the normative foundations of human rights. Contemporary anthropology and postcolonial theory have ideological presuppositions that keep them uncomfortable with human rights, even as they have given substantive ground on the extremely tendentious position of the American Anthropological Association in 1947. 20. Pollis and Schwab, “Human Rights,” p. 13. 21. Ibid. 22. Pollis adds that “in many cultures the very concepts of the individual (as distinct from the person) and of individualism do not exist” (Pollis, “Towards a New Universalism,” p. 8). It is curious that Pollis does not back up her assertion with any concrete examples. Certainly in Arabic, the language of Islam (though not of the majority of its adherents), the word for “individual” very much exists. 23. See Howard, Human Rights and the Search for Community. 24. Ibid., p. 328. 25. Francisco Franco’s regime in Spain, for example, was perfectly analogous to the type of regimes that cultural relativists idealize as “authentic”: selfdefined as upholding cultural norms but, at heart, using this self-definition as ideological justification for maintaining repressive constructs of power. Franco may have wrapped his rule in the aura of military tradition, the flag of national sovereignty, and the cultural mantle of religion, but his rule was no more culturally natural and no less contested than that of despots in other parts of the world. That Franco happened to be in “the West” and that others of his ilk are in different parts of the world is of no apparent relevance to the cruelty and oppression of his rule, nor to the desire of those living under his rule to challenge his repressive politics. If Franco was scorned and reviled without hesitation by many outside Spain, and if post-Franco Spain now takes the lead in

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prosecuting a political leader from the global South such as Augusto Pinochet, is there any reason to assume such dynamic change cannot happen in other parts of the world? 26. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights. 27. Alfredson, Creating Human Rights, p. 23. 28. Ishay, The History of Human Rights. 29. Hoover and de Heredia, “Philosophers, Activists, and Radicals.” Joseph Hoover and Iniguez de Heredia get at this same notion at which I am driving (or, at least, a similar notion) when they write that human rights theorists should not see ambiguity in human rights foundations as a “scandal”—rather, they urge that such ambiguity be embraced as inherent in diverse global politics. 30. For an elegant examination of this and related questions, see Afshari, “On Historiography of Human Rights.” 31. See Ingram, “What Is a ‘Right to Have Rights’?” 32. Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, p. 55. 33. Stammers, Human Rights and Social Movements. 34. See, for example, Appiah, Cosmopolitanism. 35. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad. 36. Donnelly, “The Relative Universality of Rights.” 37. Kurasawa, The Work of Global Justice, pp. 157–193. See also Delanty, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination.” 38. Kurasawa, The Work of Global Justice, p. 162. 39. Reus-Smit, “Human Rights and the Social Construction of Sovereignty.” 40. As have flowed in the same manner, it might be added, globalized normative discourses that dispute human rights, such as cultural relativism— with its distinctly US academic pedigree. 41. Tarrow, “Outsiders Inside and Insiders Outside.” 42. For a multisided analysis of one form of a claimed exceptionalism, see Ignatieff, American Exceptionalism and Human Rights. 43. Moyn, “On the Genealogy of Morals.” 44. On the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm, see Gruskin and Tarantola, “Health and Human Rights.” For my own take on this paradigm, see Chase and Alaug, “Health, Human Rights, and Islam.” 45. Ackerly, Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference, p. 1. 46. See also Narayan, “Essence of Culture and Sense of History” and Dislocating Cultures. 47. The seminal article on this is Bunch, “Women’s Rights as Human Rights.” 48. On this point, see Petchesky, “Rights and Needs.” Also note, more broadly, Shalev, “Rights to Sexual and Reproductive Health”; and Miller, “Sexual but Not Reproductive.”

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49. See International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which entered into force on January 4, 1969. 50. Long, “When Doctors Torture.” 51. See, for example, el-Menyawi, “Activism from the Closet.” See also Human Rights Watch, “In a Time of Torture”; and Whitaker, Unspeakable Love. On the more general issue of sexuality, see Bereket and Adam, “The Emergence of Gay Identities in Contemporary Turkey”; and Khalaf and Gagnon, Sexuality in the Arab World. 52. Ahmed, “Dual Subordination.” For a complementary view on this topic, see Pratt, “The Queen Boat Case in Egypt.” Also on the Queen Boat case, and with a sophisticated take on the intersection of culture, human rights, power, and alternative sexual identities, see Long, “The Trials of Culture.” 53. Lefort, Writing.

6 Political Rights: Democracy and Free Expression

How to give context to what has been argued in previous chapters? One need look no further than headlines to see events that illustrate this book’s main contention: that human rights have embedded themselves within political, economic, and social debates and struggles in the transnational Muslim world. I have made reference to numerous such examples in previous chapters. Chapters 6 and 7 will discuss cases in the political and social spheres with local and global importance that show the significance of human rights. Iran’s 2009 election and its ongoing struggle for democracy and rights is the first of these topics. Democracy in Iran is, ironically, both the object of violent contestation and also normatively uncontroversial. This is to say that, in practice, Iran’s authoritarian regime dares not delegitimize itself by an attack on the idea of democracy. Instead, it desperately seeks to reinforce its power by trying to co-opt the mantle of democratic legitimacy. This is incongruous, of course, given how brutally Iran has repressed democratic movements, but this incongruity is itself indicative of the deep normative acceptance of the democratic ideas at the base of the human rights regime. This is of a piece with my argument that human rights are far more normatively accepted than is often recognized. The issue regarding human rights (and democracy) in the Muslim world is as conventional as it is in other parts of the world. The question is not about if human rights are normatively legitimate; it is about how struggles over the definition and implementation of human rights play out.

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This chapter also discusses related debates over the right to free expression, through reference to continuing debates in the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council (HRC) over “defamation of religion” resolutions, advanced most prominently by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Many of these resolutions, including one that passed the HRC as late as 2010, justified restrictions on free expression out of deference to religious sensitivity.1 The impetus behind these resolutions flowed out of debates over controversial cases such as the Danish cartoon crisis, the Nasr Hamid abu Zeid case, and the Salman Rushdie affair. Despite differences in the politics of each of these cases, the common thread is how they were instrumentalized to justify restrictions on free speech. I argue here that free expression is interdependent with struggles for democracy just as it is interdependent with other rights. Attempts to justify limits on free expression due to proclaimed religious sensitivities risk danger both to democracy and, more broadly, to societal dynamism. Sticking with the example of the Iran case shows how free expression is elemental to broader societal dynamism. Abdolkarim Soroush’s theologically rebellious work, for example, has made an essential contribution to animating Iran’s Green Movement and its pressure for democracy and human rights. Speech is indeed dangerous—not to religion but rather to embedded power structures. While there are legitimate limits to free expression, attempts to limit expression on the basis of religious sensitivities are a ruse to protect the power of such structures both from specific criticisms and from how such criticism can animate more freewheeling debate on any number of other issues. Free expression, in short, is essential to societies having the sorts of dialogues that allow it to evolve according to their own political dynamics.

Iran’s 2009 Election We have already explored the high levels of support for democracy in the Muslim world according to public opinion polls. Iran’s 2009 election vividly embodies this enthusiasm. Summer 2009 in Iran gave us at first a tepidly contested election and then (as excitement built in anticipation that the election might actually matter) a vigorously contested one. The protests, mass arrests, torture, and killings that followed are a sober reminder of the high stakes in this struggle for democracy.

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The 2009 Iranian election resulted in claims and counterclaims from those who protested that the election was stolen and those who attacked such protesters as Western fellow-travelers. Themes on which this book has focused are front and center in these claims: demands for participation, new technological avenues by which people could network and organize,2 normative assumptions about the legitimacy of democracy and rights, contested norms, anger at voices not being heard, clamor for accountability, and claims that violations of human rights put the legitimacy of a ruling authority in doubt. Each of these implies the permeation of human rights language into the everyday politics of Iran. This permeation is not just a matter of cutting-edge activists, norm entrepreneurs, or even thin groups of elites. To the contrary, these human rights–impacted notions have broad resonance. Even the governmental and nongovernmental forces that are most opposed in practice to human rights principles act in ways that nonetheless implicitly acknowledge the relevance of rights. In Iran, for example, the regime violently represses those who espouse democracy and human rights and has done so since its revolutionary inception.3 Yet at the same time, the regime increasingly attempts to co-opt rather than directly dispute the normative validity of democracy and accountability. Instead of attacks on notions of democracy and rights as such, the regime redirects its attacks against those claiming their rights and toward accusations that this opposition is complicit with the Western imperialist Other. This type of attack links together the three powerful normative contestations that most often oppose human rights—norms of national security, nationalistic sovereignty, and cultural exceptionalism. Each of these interlocking norms can be constructed to override the resonance of human rights norms or to justify their violation. The invocation of security, sovereignty, and exceptionalism is bolstered by reference to a powerfully resonant anti-imperialism given Iran’s history with foreign (British, Russian/Soviet, and US) projections of power into its affairs.4 In the immediate aftermath of Iran’s 2009 election, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave a Friday sermon in which he attempted precisely this sort of co-optation, identifying the regime with the language of rights and democracy along with a vague assertion that its “religious democracy” is superior to other forms of democracy. In so doing, Khamenei made clear how essential democracy is to govern-

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mental legitimacy, even to Iran’s Islamic Republic. This is hardly unprecedented, as the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic’s leaders had always been infused with the importance of democracy to the revolution’s legitimacy.5 Khamenei combines this co-optation with an attempt to de-legitimize the opposition by conflating it with “meddling foreign forces,” particularly British and US—in other words, he says (most clearly in a section quoted later) that the claims of the opposition to represent human rights are tainted by their violation of norms of nationalism and cultural nationalism. But first, here is the section in the speech in which Khamenei claims the regime’s ownership of the discourse of a right to democracy: The 22 Khordad (12 June) election was a massive display of our nation’s responsibility in determining the country’s destiny. It was a huge display of the spirit of cooperation among the people in managing their country. It was a great display of the people’s fondness for their system. Indeed, a similar event to what happened in this country I have not seen in the world, in various democracies, be they pretend, false democracies or democracies based on people’s votes. Last Friday’s elections were unprecedented in the Islamic Republic apart from the referendum which was held in Farvardin 1358 (March 1980) [on having an Islamic republic]. Around 85 percent (of eligible voters), around 40 million people, (took part in election). . . . These elections showed our religious democracy to the entire world. All those people who are ill-wishers towards the system witnessed what religious democracy really is. This is a third way different from dictatorships and tyrannical systems on the one hand and democracies removed from spirituality and religion on the other. This is religious democracy. This is what attracts the hearts of people and brings them to the center of the arena, and it just passed its test. . . . The campaigns and debates were good and interesting initiatives. The debates were very open, transparent and serious. The debates were a slap in the face of those who had tried to insinuate from outside that the campaign was a trumped-up show and unreal. They realized that the debates were real and serious. . . . The race between the candidates was completely free, serious, and transparent. . . . Street challenges after the elections are not the right thing to do. This is, in fact, challenging the principle of elections and democracy.6

This cynical claim to represent democracy and accountability (and transparency!), and to position those protesting against electoral fraud as the challengers of democracy, reflects two of the core claims of this

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book. First, the prevalence of the language of human rights (political rights, in this case, specifically the right to democracy—political participation and representation) even in the most unlikely places. Second, the deep normative acceptance of these political values in discourse on all sides and at all levels even if not, of course, in practice. “If not in practice,” however, leads to the obvious retort: Why is this significant given that the current regime (and all other states, varying only in the degree to which rhetoric and practice are out of sync) stays in power and its rhetoric is transparently false? While logical, this misses the essential point: the Iranian regime needs to claim (despite deeply undemocratic structures even before 2009’s blatant electoral fraud) to represent democracy in order to maintain its popular legitimacy. No state is particularly inclined to abide by its human rights rhetoric, but depending on the degree to which a political system keeps a government accountable to its people, the legitimacy costs of violating rights can be greater or lesser. In Iran, the failure to live up to human rights standards has been an essential part of the regime’s loss of legitimacy. Its need to resort to a higher level of direct repression comes straight out of that loss. Revolutionary consensus that has its popular legitimacy democratically reaffirmed is a far cheaper—and hence more self-interested—mode of governance, and indeed was effective in Iran for many years after the 1979 revolution. The chaos of street battles and repression that have riven Iran’s Islamic Republic are a detriment to the government in terms of both its hard and its soft power. Even as the regime stays in power over the medium term, it has lost a significant portion of its appeal as a model in terms of Middle Eastern and broader Muslim world politics. Iran had invested considerable resources in attempting to bolster this soft power appeal. Internationally, Iran’s reported drive to develop nuclear weapons, if true, could possibly face sterner opposition from Europe and the United States and make it less tenable for those governments to stick with a long-term policy of engagement. But those are relatively minor issues. The real cost is in terms of Iran’s domestic political legitimacy. The Supreme Leader was rather direct on this point—albeit defensive—in his postelection Friday sermon in the section in which he boasts of the Iranian regime’s freedom and hence legitimacy. In his sermon he also identifies the claims of the opposition with the “the biased propaganda . . . [of] enemies of the Iranian nation” in an attempt, as referred to earlier, to de-legitimize the opposition at the same time that he boosts that of the regime:

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The second point about the elections is that the 22 Khordad elections showed that the people live in an atmosphere of trust, hope, and enthusiasm in this country. This was a response to many of your enemies’ remarks expressed in their biased propaganda. If the people have no hope for the future they would not take part in elections. If they do not trust their own system they would not take part in elections. If they do not feel free, they would not welcome the elections. Trust in the Islamic Republic became evident in these elections. I will tell you later that the enemies have targeted this very trust. The enemies of the Iranian nation intend to undermine this trust. This trust is the biggest asset of the Islamic Republic and they want to take it away. They want to create doubt about elections. They want to cast doubt on the trust of the people. The enemies of the Iranian nation know that when trust is gone, participation will weaken. When participation and presence on the scene is weakened, the legitimacy of the system will be questioned. This is what they want. They want to undermine trust to weaken participation to deprive the Islamic Republic of legitimacy. The harm inflicted by this is far worse than setting fire to buses and banks. . . . People trust the Islamic Republic system. This trust has not been achieved easily. The Islamic Republic, by its officials, performance, and immense efforts, has been able to deepen this trust in the hearts of people over the past 30 years. The enemy wants to take the trust away and dishearten people.7

“Trust” is used here, correctly, in direct connection to “legitimacy.” Khamenei recognizes (quite incisively, actually) that his battle is precisely over trust and legitimacy. Without this, the regime stands naked with only its guns. Iran’s regime can maintain itself in power by force in the short term, but the loss of trust to which Khamenei refers has an expensive immediate cost and puts its long-term future in doubt. Thus a perception that Iran has failed to maintain its democratic bona fides—not to mention the massive rights violations on a range of other issues—is most emphatically not a side issue but is at the heart of what is among the most important ongoing political dramas in the contemporary Muslim world and a clear precedent to the eruption of the Arab Spring eighteen months later. Khamenei must affirm that his regime is democratic in the tradition of how Iran’s post-revolutionary regime has always finely balanced claims to be both Islamic and republican. The alternative is to concede the illegitimacy of the 2009 election and of the regime as a whole, as Khamenei’s words make clear. Human rights, thus, are normatively key—indisputable, actually—even to those most opposed to their implementation.

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And, of course, in a less cynical manner, this normative legitimacy is what leads to masses of Iranians pushing for change at the cost of freedom and life. This commitment to seeing human rights–related norms implemented is shown in the mass enthusiasm for Mohammad Khatami (elected in 1997 with 70 percent of the vote in an election with 80 percent turnout and reelected in 2001); the broad disaffection following the regime’s crackdown on Khatami’s power, and the ability of reformists to even stand for election, which led to a 25 percent reduction in voter turnout and conservative victories in 2004’s parliamentary elections and 2005’s presidential election (even then, reportedly the conservative populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad only made the final runoff instead of the reformist Ayatollah Mehdi Karroubi due to fraud); and the mass willingness in 2009 not just to once again turn out to vote but also to lay lives on the line in protesting fraud. Khamenei and the Iranian regime could only respond by weak claims to be the true democrats and by calling on competing normative tropes (national sovereignty, anticolonialism) to dispute the legitimacy of the opposition and its claims of electoral fraud. A single election, in short, became a battle over claims to represent democratic legitimacy and associated human rights. So, are human rights relevant to informing events around Iran’s 2009 election and, even if so, are these events illustrative of a larger pattern or are they simply singular with no broader importance? A skeptical take on each of these questions would object to the relevance of rights in defining which issues are being debated and how those issues are being defined in global politics, especially in the Muslim world. A cultural relativist argument would imply that human rights–based demands simply cannot exist in a country such as Iran or, to the small degree they might exist, are the sole concern of a Westernized elite, separate from “authentic” Iranians. This reflects a cultural relativist assumption that human rights can only be the provenance of the privileged and, to the degree they appear on the agenda of Muslim parts of the world, do not reflect the concerns of most Muslims, but merely a transplanted elite. Thus there is a predisposition to see movements for human rights within countries as, at best, a peripheral matter that should not enter into our consideration of global politics. In other words, the internal affairs of other countries can and should be isolated from global politics or notions of cosmopolitan solidarity. As previous chapters have shown, however, it is doubtful that such isolation can occur. Both historically

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and in terms of contemporary politics, transnational currents have been ever-present in their impact on domestic and international politics and in their intersections—to ignore this would be foolhardy. The irony is that the Iranian revolution itself epitomized the transnational structures that define global and Muslim world politics. It was informed by the disparate currents, such as Platonic philosophy, that were a focus of Ruhollah Khomeini’s scholarly thought;8 the Parisian-grounded third worldist political philosophical trends that were so essential to Ali Shariati’s (“the ideologue of the Iranian revolution”) rethinking of a revolutionary Shi‘ism; and the components of Iran’s revolutionary coalition, including liberalism, Tudeh-party communism, and notions of Islamic (or “barefoot”) socialism.9 One could almost call it a cosmopolitan revolution, if not for the knot of xenophobia at its ideological heart. While current turmoil in Iran is driven by different ideological impulses, it is also an expression of transnational norms and networks intersecting with Iranian politics. To cultural relativists, the veneer of the Islamic Republic is very similar to what Orientalists have always claimed is “authentic” to the Muslim world: a state that fiercely proclaims its independence from Western power in its desire to stay true to its “indigenous” traditions— in this case identified with Islam or, more specifically, Shi‘a Islam. What could be better than such a regime? Or, more to the point, what could be more natural? Because this, after all, is the underlying claim: that such regimes represent the underlying essence of their societies by virtue of their claim to definition by a local (and putatively singular and monolithic) cultural identity. In this vein, criticism of cultural nationalist governments from the outside is often disdainfully identified with imperialism; if it comes from the inside it is often seen even more disdainfully as inauthentic fellow-traveling with the “foreign.” What is unfortunate is the lack of differentiation between, on the one hand, rich, ungainly, and multileveled cultural life and, on the other hand, singular governmental structures that attempt to speak on behalf of such a reduced idea of a “culture” in one voice. This has its echo in Foucault’s famously romantic and naive identification of the Iranian revolution with, in his words, “the timeless drama into which one could fit the historical drama of a people that pitted its very existence against that of its sovereign.” Foucault emphasizes this notion of an Iran that is “timeless” (the classic Orientalist trope regarding non-Western societies), singularly defined by one ongoing cultural essence, as follows: “What struck me in Iran is that there is no

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struggle between different elements. What gives it such beauty, and at the same time such gravity, is that there is only one confrontation: between the entire people and the state power threatening them with its weapons and police.” Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson comment that Foucault’s “denial of any social or political differentiation among the Iranian ‘people’ was absolutely breathtaking.”10 Indeed, Foucault’s is a classic marriage of the sort of cultural relativism already discussed at length together with the too-common notion among poststructuralist scholars that the non-Western world is inevitably premodern, without the power structures and disciplinary apparatus of “Western” modernity.11 This is seemingly what leads Foucault to think about Iran in the tradition of undifferentiated, Orientalist ideas of what constitutes its politics—quite contrary to his compelling and complex investigations of power. This leads to the underlying notion that the only thing at play in the 1979 revolution was the transfer of power from an inauthentic Shah to an undifferentiated collective mass of Shi‘a Iranians—the unification of state and “culture” to which Pollis and Schwab refer, as noted in Chapter 5. The irony is that the Iranian revolution was nursed by transnational currents and was advanced by a coalition deeply fractured by class, region, and ideology—fractures that would explode after the revolution took power.12 A denial of both these fractured power structures and the agency of peoples within those structures continues to be too common. As’ad abu Khalil, for example, posted on his blog under the title “The US Conspiracy in Iran” that “I am now more convinced than ever that the US and Western governments were far more involved in Iranian demonstrations than was assumed by many”13—no evidence is given for this free-floating assumption. This denial of agency to Iranians is not unusual: in the name of structuralism, peoples around the world are designated as mere playthings at the puppet strings of great powers.14 This is no more sophisticated than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Ayatollah Khamenei seeing British or US puppet masters behind every popular movement. These popular movements by their very existence belie this simplistic romanticism and, thus, those from this theoretical perspective must deny their authenticity. As Hamid Dabashi trenchantly observes about abu Khalil’s writings on Iran: “At what point does a legitimate criticism of media representations degenerate into an illegitimate disregard for reality itself; or has a sophomoric reading of postmodernity so completely corrupted our moral standards that there is no reality any more,

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just representation?”15 This is obviously not just a comment on abu Khalil but on a whole genre of theory that is stuck on an internal contradiction: claims to deconstruct all-encompassing regimes of power have too often bizarrely coexisted with a reductionism that ignores the complexity of power structures in countries like Iran or other parts of the non-Western world. This contradiction comes out of a deeply patronizing attitude toward non-Western regions and a deep lack of awareness of the complexity of their power relations. Such power relations are of course complex in Iran as elsewhere, and the claim of Iran’s ruling elite to legitimacy is in no way natural or cultural but rather deeply political, flowing from the instrumentalization of religion into a tool of state. To depoliticize such societies, sanctify their postcolonial rulers as beyond criticism, and see homegrown struggles for human rights as mere puppetry is, indeed, to descend into a postmodern farce. The irony is that this is done in the name of protecting culture from Western impacts, but what often ends up being supported is the repression of those who are the most intellectually engaged, politically active, and culturally pluralistic, and hence those who are best placed to contest and reinvigorate dominant political, social, and cultural constructs. Reza Afshari speaks to the falsity of this underlying notion of a “real” or “authentic” Iran that outsiders supposedly miss because, through their Western eyes, they are said to see only Westernized Iranian counterparts. Referring to and then quoting from Azadeh Moaveni, Afshari writes: [Moaveni] became conscious that she belonged to a class “unrepresentative of Iran as a whole.” She started hanging out with Iranians on the other side of the divide, hoping to discover “the authentic soul of the country” among what she, with many others, assumed was the representative majority. Instead, in her words she found: “The divide that matters in Iran . . . is not between city and town, or wealthy and working-class. In any Iranian city, be it Isfahan, Yazd, or Shiraz, the relevant divide was between a minority of religious militants, many of whom had political and financial ties to the government, and the majority of moderate Iranians, who longed for stability and prosperity. The latter included many devout believers, who revered Islam and lived according to its edicts. But they had grown to consider their faith a private matter.”16

Recourse to a notion of some unseen “authentic” that ignores the dynamism of contemporary societies such as Iran’s flows out of a

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lazily assumed cultural relativism, no matter how at odds this is with empirically grounded realities. In order to justify averting their gaze from on-the-ground struggles being broadcast, networked, twittered, and all the rest, the actuality of struggles framed and informed by human rights is dismissed. That is what is problematic: the denial by theorists of agency to peoples around the world, including in Iran.17 Iran’s twentieth-century history and the history of its current regime show how insufficient this conceptualization is. While we have no idea what will be the end result of 2009’s tumult in Iran nor what the precise allocation of popular opinion is—no one does18—what is clear is how fractured Iran is, how ideologically diverse, how bursting with cosmopolitan vigor its intellectual debates are, and how transnationally defined its politics are.19 This is not new but has been evident over the past century. The Iranian regime may try to enforce xenophobic exclusivism, but its founding 1979 revolution, as previously noted, was grounded in forces far more complex, as was Iran’s constitutional revolution from 1905 to 1911,20 and as was the Mohammad Mossadeq era in the early 1950s.21 Just as Iran’s twentieth-century history has been informed by many different forces and norms, the cosmopolitanism of the revolution’s twenty-first-century children is not novel either but rather flows out of that century of revolutionary turmoil in Iran impacted throughout by forces every bit as transnational as those that now stand opposed to the regime in power. Reza Afshari connects Iran’s century-long dynamism to ongoing shifts in post-revolutionary Iran that have been ignored by many analysts until recently. He is worth quoting at length to that effect: The general gravitation toward democracy and respect for international human rights in Iran, especially among its educated youth, should be viewed as a pragmatic response to the collapse of almost all traditional social networks and associations. None of the traditional bonds can protect the individual from the naked forces of the centralized state and the dysfunctional market economy. Shifting networks of greed and corruption have replaced the traditional ties. The socially managed symbolic resources and religiously encoded system of meanings are reshaped and largely subverted in interactions with economic-political interests of those in power. In the officially-approved side of the Iranian divide, the traditional sentiments embedded in religious belief are overlaid by self-interest and a relentless pursuit of material gains. . . . There is a degree of incongruity between the regime’s conservative assertions of culturalism and the accelerated pace of socioeconomic changes. The boundaries of traditional urban neighborhoods are

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crumbling. The influxes of the rural populations into cities, in particular Tehran, as well as the paradoxical swelling of the size of the middle classes during the clerical rule, have made significant impact on the traditional cultural patterns, including those of familial interactions across generations, marriage, and divorce. Extended families and the culture that sustained their patriarchic bends of minds cannot be housed in apartment buildings designed for nuclear families—couples with one child or two. The desire for modern education—deeply instilled in the minds of the middle classes since the 1920s—has spread outside its original class boundaries. The impressive numbers of university students, among whom females slightly outnumber men, shows this long-term trend. Consequently, women have entered the work force in significant numbers. It becomes somehow surrealistic to speak of traditional communal bonds where the individual sits in a private office, engages in specialized work, and leaves the office behind the wheels of a private car selected to the individual’s taste. Even the Islamist hardliners whose denunciations of the “Western” individualism were the loudest are daily chauffeured from their plush houses to their “downtown” offices and mosques.22

These are the types of changing economic and social realities that have so impacted Iran’s shifting intellectual currents and been part of its shifting political configurations. This underpinning has included direct connections between intellectual leaders and political street action, including trends influenced by religious secularists like Abdolkarim Soroush, lay secularist philosophers like Ramin Jahanbegloo (whose work at the interstices of Iranian, Western, and Indian philosophy has been evidenced by the use on Tehran’s streets of the Gandhian techniques he favors), to liberal reformers like Ayatollah Eshkevari and his student Mohsen Kadivar—the latter of whom is close to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, 2009’s reformist candidate.23 The 2009 Iranian election vividly shows just how close the nexus can be between a dynamic intellectual life and changing political constructs. As time goes on, the situation in Iran will of course evolve. When change comes (as it always does), it is quite possible that it will simply be some variation on the status quo, perhaps an even more militaristic turn as Ahmadinejad relies more on his military and basiji allies over the tainted legitimacy of Khamenei. Or perhaps Mousavi or some of his colleagues in what can be called the “official opposition” will manage to take some degree of power and implement their reformist reinvention of the foundations of the Iranian revolution. If so, they will have reconstituted the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy, but with

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an emphasis on its “republican” origins and the sorts of rights such republicanism presumes and a de-emphasis on both the revolutionary centering of the Shi‘a clergy that Khomeini ushered in and the messianism of Ahmadinejad. Or perhaps it will take the form of a more radical rejection of the status quo than what Mousavi (who, after all, is a man of the regime) represents? There is certainly considerable reason to speculate that Mousavi is just the allowable tip of the iceberg that has rammed the Islamic Republic’s status quo, and that underneath it lies a far deeper rejection of a political system identifying itself with a Shi‘a clerical monopoly on political legitimacy and more ready for a pluralistic form of politics. Iran’s politics are complex enough that each of these possibilities (and others) is conceivable. Hamid Dabashi writes of his revolutionary generation’s bequest to Iran’s current generation in a way that suggests the latter possibility has some currency: In the resurrected soul of this generation no metanarrative of salvation holds supreme, no sublime supposition of truth holds any water. They have been after the nuts and bolts of a more meaningful life, from which I have concluded that in specifically political terms what is happening today is far more a civil rights movement than a revolution; it is a demand for basic civil liberties, predicated on decades of struggle by young Iranian men and women to secure their most basic and inalienable rights. I might very well be wrong in my assumption, and there might very well be yet another revolution in the offing, countered by a military coup, opposed by even more severe economic sanctions, even a blockade, perhaps even by a military strike by the US/Israel. No one can tell. But the singular cause of civil rights of seventy million plus human beings, I daresay, will remain definitive to this generation. In the course of these thirty years, this generation has learned from its parental mistakes and might be given the allowance that it is marching forward through a major epistemic shift in Iranian political culture—seeking to achieve their most basic civil liberties within whatever constitutional law that cruel fate has handed them.24

In any case, this book is not about predicting Iran’s future. We are exploring the skepticism as to whether or not human rights can inform which issues are being debated in Iran and how they are being debated. The situation in Iran epitomizes the way that, often under the radar, human rights discourse infiltrates the language and actions of politics around the world, including in the Muslim world. The impacts are dramatic. Both in theory and in the practical context of contemporary Iran, we see that on-the-ground realities are too shifting to be accounted for

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within the assumptions of a cultural relativist or structuralist framework. The dynamism of human agency—epitomized by Iranians both during the 1979 revolution and by Iran’s ongoing turmoil—explodes any such framework.

Democracy, Free Expression, and the Defamation of Religion The relevance of free expression to broader political rights flows straight out of our exploration of contemporary events in Iran: Is there a clamor for political rights connected to democracy and, if so, does this reflect the importance of specific rights that, arguably, are essential to democracy, such as free expression? While there is no human right to democracy per se, there are rights to many of the elements that constitute democracy (the right to political participation, most obviously) and that are essential to its realization, just as democracy is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the implementation of human rights.25 We have already established the normative legitimacy of democracy in the Muslim world by reference to the World Values Survey (see Chapter 3), which reported higher levels of support for democracy in Muslim countries than in Western countries. The mass participation by Iranians in elections when they are perceived as potentially free and fair gives a more vivid indication of democracy’s on-the-ground legitimacy, just as do the rhetorical contortions of an authoritarian leader like Khamenei to claim the mantle of democratic legitimacy. But if democracy is widely accepted, the question becomes whether free expression is fundamental to establishing and sustaining democracy. It is this question that is more contentious and to which the Human Rights Council’s series of “defamation of religion” (and ultimately “freedom of religion or belief”) resolutions responded, though in a way that at least in the resolutions’ earlier forms subordinated free expression to freedom of religion. I would make a three-part argument here. First, that free expression is essential to the sort of the normative interchange that can make democracy real. Second, that it is not just that free expression is fundamental to political rights such as those that constitute democracy, but that—per ideas of the indivisibility of all categories of rights—free expression is essential to accomplishing a range of rights including, for

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example, the right to education, the right to health, the right to development, and even, most important to this discussion, the right to religious freedom. And, third, that, therefore, penalizing expression that may be perceived as insulting, even to religious sensitivities, is dangerously counterproductive to the realization of a broad range of human rights. Also, more broadly, this is destructive of the sort of politicaleconomic-cultural dynamism that is essential to fruitful engagement by individual and social groups in local-global dialogues over human rights. Free expression, in other words, should not be protected solely as a stand-alone right, but rather because it is embedded in a web of interdependent connections to other rights. Purported “clashes” around free expression and religious sensitivities inform a number of famous cases. The most recent of these was the Danish cartoon crisis of February 2006, in which the publication of cartoons bearing the likeness of the Prophet Muhammad resulted in riots and anger around the world. Perhaps most interesting, though less famous, was the Nasr Hamid abu Zeid case in the early 1990s. Abu Zeid, an Egyptian professor of Islamic studies, was deemed by an Egyptian court to be an apostate—a convert out of Islam—because of his innovative writings on Islam that attempted to situate its holy texts in an interdependent political, social, and cultural context. This finding that abu Zeid was no longer a Muslim led, somewhat bizarrely, to a decree that he be divorced from his wife (a Muslim female cannot be married to a non-Muslim male, so the abu Zeids’ desires in this matter were irrelevant to the court) and eventual exile for the Zeids as the divorce case wended its way through the court system.26 A common thread in both the Danish cartoon and abu Zeid cases is the former Mubarak regime in Egypt. In the Danish case, Egypt was central to the role of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in converting a local issue into one that became a focal point across the Muslim world. In the earlier abu Zeid case, the Egyptian government was less certain how to react to rising Islamism and (if one assumes substantial governmental ability in Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt to dictate the outcomes of at least low-level court cases) took an oscillating position. This foreshadowed Mubarak’s strategy of co-opting the appeal of political Islam by taking the lead in pressing issues of “protecting” Islam in the public sphere (it is interesting that in post-Mubarak Egypt the former ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood are making common cause in many ways, indicative of these policy ties). Egypt’s championing of the Human Rights Council’s resolution on religious defama-

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tion as a response to the Danish cartoon case was an apparent part of this political calculation.27 It is a third case, the Salman Rushdie affair, that formed the archetype of a purported clash between a right to free expression and religious sensitivities—sensitivities particularly identified with Islam. In a fatwa issued on Valentine’s Day 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini put a bounty on Rushdie’s head in the name of Islam. This death sentence was due to the offense taken over publication of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and was instigated by a petition pursued by Muslim groups based in the United Kingdom. This affair embodied the caricature that the Muslim world—personified in Khomeini’s stern countenance and rioters in the UK—does not tolerate pluralistic free speech.28 From the perspective of those sympathetic to the reaction against The Satanic Verses, Rushdie became a symbol of those who would undermine embattled cultures in favor of a hybridity that represents subordination to the West. That Rushdie came from a Muslim and third world background and had been celebrated as such (indeed, the Iranian government had awarded him a literary prize just a few years previous to Khomeini’s fatwa) only reinforced the sense that he was a traitor who came to characterize the sort of heterogeneity that threatens non-Western cultures. Beyond the caricatures that have defined too much debate on this topic, an inescapable subtext to Khomeini’s fatwa is a cultural nationalist move by Iranian government ideologues to take refuge in the group as a barrier against threatening transnational influences. In power structures that, like the Islamic Republic’s, are based in representing some notion of purity (be it ethnic, cultural, or religious), critical speech will likely be seen as an attack, justifying retribution. In fact it is an attack, in a sense. Not an attack on the cultural construct in question but rather an attack on the right of one group to monopolize the definition of that cultural construct. Those whose political power is based on their monopolization of “culture” rightly sense, therefore, the danger to them of provocative and critical expression. How such cultural groups are to be defined is the key question in these cases. The abu Zeid and Rushdie cases highlight this: Will the powers that be in Egypt (at Cairo University, Shaikh al-Azhar, and the Egyptian government, most specifically) and Iran (the fatwa against Rushdie was issued by Khomeini and has since been sporadically reaffirmed—though also often left in informal abeyance—by high-ranking clergy affiliated with the Iranian regime)29 define from the top down

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what is or is not permissible regarding discourse on Islam? Or can a Muslim scholar of Islam like abu Zeid or a Muslim-raised but secular writer like Rushdie contribute to this cultural dialogue as well? This is ultimately a choice about how democracy is constituted: in a context of tightly controlled political, social, and cultural life, or in a more freewheeling milieu in which many voices are heard and have an impact. Free expression is essential to this fuller manner of constituting democracy. Regarding the former type of democracy, however, Ali Khamenei’s speech, cited earlier, notes Iran as an exemplary “religious democracy.” Khamenei is correct in a sense in that Iran epitomizes the idea of melding a notion of a hierarchically defined monolithic group controlled from the top down by cultural elites with the structural form of a democracy. This is not, however, the type of democracy that responds to the demands of a vibrant civil society such as Iran’s. Indeed, most elections in Iran have been mere opportunities for Iranians to affirm options that have been predetermined within a narrow range by the regime, rather than anything close to grassroots-connected real choice.30 Even pre-vetted candidates with close ties to the regime— such as Mousavi—are, as we have seen, too threatening to be allowed a share of power insofar as they pose the possibility of expanding agency to many Iranians and, in so doing, simultaneously breaking down the regime’s monopoly on political-cultural authority. It is not surprising, therefore, that despite his moderation, Mousavi and his followers have been tarred with the same brush as has Rushdie—as enemies who threaten cultural sovereignty. Despite their obvious differences, in a sense figures as disparate as Rushdie and Mousavi do share the commonality of threatening the project of allowing an ideological claim to monopolize truth to define a political community. The movement from below for democracy and rights in Iran, however, follows impulses that are far more unpredictable and chaotic. It is grounded in ideas that shake notions of monolithic singularity and so is obviously in revolt against the imposition from above of a standardized definition of culture and politics. And, of course, free expression is essential to constituting and circulating these demands. This is attested to by long-standing battles between the regime and leading intellectuals it has imprisoned, students it has repressed and beaten, and journals it has closed. Those battles are at the forefront of an essential nexus: the fight to open up to more pluralistic definitions of culture is key to the fight to a more sustainable democracy that represents the multiple voices of a society. Culture as an objective “thing” is debilitating

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to the possibility of difference;31 if culture, to the contrary, is taken as constituted by multiple, overlapping, and changing currents, then it can contribute to pluralistic and tolerant democracy. Free expression is central to that pluralistic concept of culture and, thus, is essential to democracy. This nexus moves us beyond connections among free expression, dynamically defined “culture,” and democracy and toward the second of my arguments regarding free expression: the connection of the right to free expression to the realization of a number of other rights as well. The classic arguments from the 1990s about the indivisibility of rights referred to in previous chapters make the essential point that rights are interdependent. Implementing the right to health, for example, depends on numerous other rights being implemented (for example, the right to information, such that people can make informed health choices; the right to education, such that these choices can be critically understood; and so forth). The right to free expression, similarly, is at the center of this interdependent web. In the abstract one can argue whether the right to free expression is more or less important than other rights articulated by the international human rights regime. This would, however, miss the point. It is not a matter of one right being more or less important but rather how each right is essential to the realization of a panoply of rights. To return to the right to health, the activism of Act Up! in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States and Europe, so essential in focusing attention on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, was often obnoxious, rude, libelous, and even defamatory, if not blasphemous (famously, during a “die-in” demonstration inside a New York City Catholic church, a communion wafer was broken and thrown to the ground).32 But this practice of a right to free expression was an essential part of what produced vastly improved health outcomes for HIV-infected individuals in the United States, in Africa, and around the world. Similarly in South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign intense public battle to raise domestic and international dissent against the government’s denial of HIV as the cause of AIDS has also been raucously critical of sacred cows in the country. Again, this has been essential to progress on a key health issue. It took place in the context of protesting against an African National Congress government that controls most levers of power in South Africa and so is quite difficult to challenge. But, in the context of a democratic South Africa with international human rights integrated into its domestic constitution, rights protections existed such

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that the Treatment Action Campaign’s voice—and the voices it represented—could be freely expressed and heard, and could be transformative. One can continue listing other rights and their connection to the right to free expression and their broader interdependence. What is the right to education, for example, if it is not underpinned by the right to free expression? It is free expression that allows for an open public sphere of debate and intellectual integrity without which education is empty of its essential critical edge. One could continue with examples, but the essential point that takes us to my second argument in this respect is that—contrary to the implication of the HRC’s resolution regarding a need to repress freedom of expression in order to defend freedom of religion—freedom of religion is, in fact, among those human rights most dependent on the right to free expression. Reading the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Articles 18, 19, and 20 in tandem give a good sense of the interplay and mutual dependence between rights to religious freedom and other rights, especially free expression. Article 18’s link between freedom of religion and freedom of thought and conscience plays directly into Article 19’s protection of the right to free expression. The limits noted on free expression in Article 19, in turn, play directly into Article 20’s definition of how incitement is a rights violation. To make this trio of rights make sense, incitement needs to be properly understood as something that is much more than the simple perception of offensiveness, and that does not override freedom of expression. To the contrary, freedom of expression is essential to freedoms of religion, thought, and conscience; the close link that Article 20 makes between religion, thought, and conscience is essential to making clear that what is being protected is not monolithic religious institutions or orthodoxies but rather the right of believers (and nonbelievers) to articulate and exercise their beliefs. Freedom of expression is essential to this, even if such expression is critical or provocative; there is obviously no need to protect noncritical speech. The “yelling fire in a crowded theater” standard often cited to justify restrictions on free speech is one way to understand Article 19’s limits on expression or Article 20’s restriction on hate speech. A standard of incitement makes clear that, per “fire in a theater,” incitement implies causing a reaction that cannot be expected to be rationally contained. In the three cases mentioned previously, rather than an immediate, uncontrollable reaction, there were delayed and limited—albeit

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intense—outbursts in very specific political contexts, and fostered by powerful political actors. As an example regarding the Rushdie affair, Sadik al-Azm has written about how the Arab world saw very little public reaction to The Satanic Verses. The book was met, rather—as in most parts of the Muslim world—more with a disdainful shrug than with irrepressible violence.33 Along these lines, a spate of Arabic-language books on the affair that were published at the time tend to follow this line of condemning both Rushdie and his book, focusing on Rushdie as part of an attack by the West on Islam, but also taking care not to endorse Khomeini’s fatwa.34 Violent reactions against Rushdie only took place in specific locales: the United Kingdom and India (amid agitation among a minority under distress who saw Rushdie, one of “their own,” as a cultural traitor), Pakistan (among the Barelvi sect, who have a particularly fervent attachment to Muhammad as a godlike figure rather than the simple prophet he is held to be by most other Muslims), and months later in Iran. In Iran, despite a lack of public reaction, Khomeini issued his fatwa in the immediate aftermath of agreeing to the “bitter pill” of peace with Iraq and with his regime facing considerable public dissent.35 “Calls for moderation by the then–Speaker of the Parliament Rafsanjani, [then-]President Ali Khamenei and successor-designate Ayatollah Montazeri [whose refusal to endorse the fatwa contributed to his being dropped as Khomeini’s designated successor], were gaining ground. . . . The debate over who was more revolutionary and who more Islamic gained renewed vitality with the fatwa, a process which favored the radical factions.”36 The obvious suspicion is that the fatwa was a classic diversionary tactic. In the rest of the Muslim world, as in the Arab world, the reaction was mild. Violent reactions, in other words, were instrumentally produced rather than a result of spontaneous outrage. Similarly, the abu Zeid ruling came while a Cairo University academic committee mulled abu Zeid’s promotion (the promotion was initially rejected, though some years later he received it). The hisba complaint (hisba can be broadly compared to a civil suit, but one brought on Islamic principles—i.e., an individual Muslim brings a suit to a state court for a sanction to ensure that other members of the Muslim community are abiding by its norms) regarding abu Zeid’s supposed attack on Islam was brought to an Egyptian court by an academic rival before any publication that could have conceivably incited public outrage. Abu Zeid’s writings are, in any case, so dry and academic as to make the thought of their causing outrage on their own exceedingly unlikely. And

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yet the abu Zeid case is actually far more typical of what is at stake in attempts to subordinate free expression to religion. What is repressed are voices of critical intellectuals from societies of which Muslims are a part that are critical to a vigorous cultural and intellectual life. As noted before, the Egyptian government’s position on abu Zeid was difficult to read and seemed to shift as the case went slowly through Egypt’s courts. In subsequent years, however, the Egyptian government increasingly saw its political interest in leading rather than following on issues that it perceived could give it Islamic legitimacy, including repressing voices on Islamic reform.37 Last, reactions to the Danish cartoon crisis were also slow to come to a boil, again following politics and an organized operation rather than spontaneous public reaction. Immediate reactions included letters to the editor in Denmark and about a month later a protest by some 3,500 people in Copenhagen and a letter of protest from the OIC, but mainly nonplussed reactions in the Muslim world.38 This is no great surprise in that the notion that what caused this outrage, the breaking of a strict theological taboo on portraying the Prophet Muhammad, was always facile. In fact, images of the Prophet are historically common, even if theologically verboten. I have seen them, for example, as a matter of course in casual strolls through souks in various parts of the Muslim world. Muhammad was a particularly favored subject of portrayal in Persian miniatures as well as in other art from Muslim sources. Such portrayals have not evoked anything like the reaction of those faced with a fire in a theater. It was only after a coordinated effort that the Danish comics exploded as an issue months after their initial publication. This was not because a religious taboo had been broken, but because the images had been placed by activists into a normative frame in which they became part of a “clash of civilizations” motif. Jytte Klausen quotes, for example, the Arab League head at the time, Amr Moussa, as saying about the cartoon crisis that “make no mistake about it, the ‘clash of civilizations’ is real.”39 As part of this, and giving a vivid illustration of how initial reactions were not just delayed but even blasé, an Indonesian editor explains that he chose to publish the [cartoon] on his news Web site that has proven the most inflammatory: the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse. “I wanted them to know why it was insulting.” . . . To his surprise, there was almost no reaction. A few e-mailed comments to the Web site, he said. That was all. So he republished the caricature

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more than a week later, on Oct. 22. Again, nothing. “We were confused,” he recalled, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. “Why aren’t people reacting to this story?” What followed was a quintessentially 21st-century battle.40

The reference to a “quintessentially 21st-century battle” means that turning the cartoon case into a hot-button issue was the result of a dogged political campaign pursued by Internet, text message, and other forms of transnational communication (just as we have seen regarding human rights and Islamism and other transnational movements). It was only after a concerted organizational effort that took three or four months to coalesce that the anti-cartoon sentiment flourished into boycotts and violence, with the sort of protests that killed up to a hundred people in Nigeria, and demonstrations in Indonesia (and Syria and elsewhere) at the Danish embassy. These responses were, obviously, deeply political and organized rather than outbursts of uncontrollable spontaneity. In all of these cases, reactions have been much different than that of those faced with a threat to their life from fire, or the reasonable restrictions listed in Articles 19 and 20 of the ICCPR. There is no reason to assume that a violent reaction from Muslims is a predictable response to provocative books, cartoons, or books about cartoons.41 This is not to say that these reactions should not be taken seriously, nor is it to say that these three cases are exactly analogous—there is a clear difference between a work of fiction, an academic treatise, and a caricature.42 It is to say, however, that it is the underlying politics behind the extremity of responses to these works that needs to be taken seriously, not stereotypical notions that Muslims en masse respond with violence to critical or provocative expression, or that those who do respond with such violence are broadly representative. To take this point one step further, there is a real danger in analogizing a violent reaction from Muslims as being as inevitable as a mass stampede in reaction to a scream of “fire” in a crowded theater. The danger lies in the implicit assumption of irrationality that is projected onto Muslims. A violently frenzied response to a publication and the reaction to fear of “fire” in a closed public space are not analogous. The only way they are analogous is if one assumes that Muslims are irrational actors who are somehow compelled to respond to a publication with the same fear and frenzy of one faced with being burned to death. Beyond reinforcing unwarranted stereotypes of Muslim irrationality, assuming that critical speech is incitement if it concerns Mus-

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lims also has another unfortunate consequence: it reinforces the legitimacy of those political forces that stoke for their own political reasons what violence does occur in reaction to such publications and insist that it stands for the “real” Muslim world. But there is a larger and even more important sense in which it is counterproductive to legitimize the suppression of critical speech. Such suppression will limit not just free speech but also the ability of a political culture to evolve according to its own dynamics. Indeed, in Iran much of the recent popular push for democracy and human rights flows out of its intellectual fluorescence, which has been under way for over a decade and has roots that extend further back in history. This fluorescence has continued to take place in the face of increasingly fierce repression by Iran’s government. In the face of such repression, what is essential is that such critical voices be given support if human rights and agency are to be advanced. Giving a cover for repression, as the Human Rights Council’s resolution on defamation potentially does, is to further marginalize the sort of critical voices that have been essential to making Iranians—in resistance to their government—among the globe’s most politically and intellectually engaged populations. The irony is that while an international body like the Human Rights Council is pressured by states to limit the right to free expression, peoples on the ground in a predominantly Muslim country like Iran are pushing for an expansion of that same right. I have already mentioned some of the primary figures in the lively Iranian intellectual world, but the work of Abdolkarim Soroush is particularly indicative of my argument. Soroush was appointed after the Iranian revolution to the Cultural Revolution Institute, where he helped oversee the purging of the Iranian educational system of those who were skeptical of the Iranian revolution. Soroush’s views, however, evolved, and by the 1990s he became among Iran’s most popular lecturers with views that implicitly (and explicitly) opposed the union of religion and state in the country. Soroush cofounded the journal Kiyan (closed by the regime in 1998) and his university lectures, which were also widely circulated through various alternative media, consistently attracted overflowing crowds despite regime harassment. The work of Soroush as perhaps the foremost intellectual identified with reform Islam was among the key elements in opening up political and intellectual discourse in Iran on Islam and its relation to politics. His work exemplifies the notion that critical expression that provokes reaction and angers authority should not be seen as a battle between an isolated individual and the

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community: rather, it is part of the sort of collective conversations that are essential to reinvigorating cultural, political, and religious life. In this sense, free expression is critical to freedom of religion and conscience, not something to be counterpoised against it. Soroush’s thought is worth looking at in more detail to understand the reasons behind its impact in undermining the claim of Iran’s Islamic Republic to be able to monopolize public discourse. He asks the basic question that has always bedeviled political philosophers: “Who will guard the guardians”—in other words, if religious leaders are to become political leaders, who will oversee and constrain their power, a power that has a corrupting and distorting influence.43 His implicit questioning of the Iranian regime’s ideological foundations began with that fundamental question. Soroush distinguishes between religion and religious knowledge by making the argument that one is divine and the latter human and that the latter, hence as human, can and must be questioned. Unlike Ali Shariati, the ideologue of the Iranian revolution who expanded the construct of Shi‘a Islam to be inclusive of many other influences and elements, Soroush wants to prune religion. His aim is to get rid of what is marginal to the essence of Shi‘a Islam and return it to its mystical relationship to the divine by removing the political detritus that distorts that relationship. In order to accomplish this, Soroush urges that religion be de-ideologized. Its ideologization takes place, according to Soroush, when the human becomes more important than the divine, and when religion becomes an instrument for obtaining worldly political and material goals—an obvious reference to the Islamic Republic. He sees this as leading to dogmatism and exclusivism in which the official interpreters of a religion claim to be its sole guardians, extend that claimed monopoly into the political realm, and then use that political power to reinforce their religious authority. There is, in such a context, no one to “guard the guardians.” Marrying religious and political power is dangerous because it necessarily militates against pluralism and democracy by virtue of monopolizing religious-political power in the hands of a small group who claim access to “truth” as a basis of their rule. In this context, the outward appearance of religiosity becomes fetishized and the inner, mystical essence of Islam is distorted or even lost. This echoes arguments I have been making about the dangers of a top-down control of the notion of culture. Free expression is essential for allowing that sort of authoritarian hierarchy to be unsettled by dissenters.

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Soroush gives what is primarily a religious argument against uniting religious and state power. He is not the first to argue that there is too often a false binary between the secular and the religious (Ali ’Abd alRaziq, for example, also made this argument),44 but he does advance this notion in an original manner. His first aim is to save Shi‘a Islam from politics, and his secondary aim is to save politics from religion. Sentiments such as his are shared widely among Iranian clerics who fear that association with a worldly government has tainted clerical religious legitimacy and reduced religiosity in Iranian society; hence the increasing number of clerics who distance themselves from the government. Soroush also makes a point that other reformers sometimes miss: that religion is not about rights, it is about duties. Democracy and human rights, therefore, cannot be justified by religion but rather need an extra-religious justification. This is obviously a call for secularism and pluralistic authority, but a call that is based in religious mysticism and a sustained connection to Shi‘a traditions. In this way, Soroush is essentially making an analogous argument to Article 18 of the ICCPR, noted earlier: that freedom of religion is protected through freedom of thought and conscience. Article 19–protected freedom of expression is essential to articulating freedom of thought and conscience and, in so doing, protecting freedom of religion. As with other rights mentioned, there is a real interdependence here. It is not just that freedom of expression is essential to democracy and cultural life but also that it is essential to the implementation of a broad range of other rights. This obviously also makes the last of the three arguments with which I started this section—that it is counterproductive to repress free expression. Soroush’s ability to express his intellectual and religious conscience, for example, has been fundamental to his ability to contribute to reinvigorating Iranian intellectual, cultural, and political life. It is certainly true that like, say, abu Zeid before him, protectors of religious orthodoxy may see such speech as offensive or even defamatory. Vibrant cultural and religious constructs, on the other hand, do not just allow such critical inquiry; they rely upon it to maintain resonance and dynamism. To the degree that a figure such as Soroush was harassed by government-sponsored militias and his writing and speech were repressed, it was those violations of freedom of expression that simultaneously violated freedom of religion and conscience. To the degree that his voice (among others—Soroush is by no means a singular figure) has nonetheless been heard, it has contributed to reinvigorating reli-

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gious and political life in Iran and in the broader transnational Muslim world. This is the essence of the argument that free expression is essential to democracy, to realizing a broad range of rights, and that limiting free expression by deference to cultural sensitivities is a very dangerous game that is likely to reinforce status quo authority and stifle voices of creative dissent. Voices of dissent demanding rights to free expression exist and have a wide audience. The question, as it always is with human rights, is whether governments will be able to freely repress such rights in the interest of their own hold on power or whether there are avenues through which those actions can be challenged.

The Interdependence and Relevance of Political Rights In the political realm, just as in the economic and social realms, as we shall see, there are clear interconnections among rights. This makes compromising any single right a danger to the realization of a broad range of rights. The reality is that even on controversial issues such as free expression, there is broad normative resonance for such rights, including in various parts of the Muslim world. More specifically, their violation has little to do with notions of either a clash between Islam and the West or cultural relativist fears of cultural imperialism. Such violations, on the contrary, have everything to do with protecting structures of power from dissenters against the political-cultural (and economic and social) status quo. We have, thus, moved past any notion that such human rights issues are irrelevant to Muslims. As this book has shown, Muslim societies consistently make clear the relevance of these issues. But this does not mean that governments have an incentive to implement such rights. Indeed, often their power derives from continued violations of those rights. To stick with the case of Iran, the brutal repression of its Green Movement is unsurprising given that the regime would lose its political and economic monopoly on power were it to accede to reformist demands. We have seen this regarding democracy and free expression in the political realm, just as we will see it regarding social rights in the next chapter. The key point for now is that, in the specific context of struggles for democracy in Iran and interconnected debates around free expression, the general argument this book has been advancing holds up.

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Issues such as the right to political participation and the right to free expression are indeed much debated and are in fact at the center of political action in the Muslim world. Political debate and activity on these issues is clearly defined in a transnational space. And last and most important, rights to political participation and free expression are a clear normative expectation not just in the abstract but also in framing and informing specific political actions in crucially important contexts.

Notes 1. United Nations, Human Rights Council, Resolution A/HRC/RES/13/11. In 2011, the Organization of the Islamic Conference lost sufficient support to pass this resolution and instead agreed to a consensus Human Rights Council resolution that backed away from defamation of religion as a human rights violation, and instead returned to protecting the rights of believers to practice their faith. See also, United Nations, Human Rights Council, Resolution A/HRC/RES/16/13. 2. Elkus, “Information Counterrevolution.” The importance of twittering has been clearly exaggerated and is most likely the fixation of outside media rather than actually a key element in Iranian events. Still, in some sense it was an appropriate symbol of changing political turf—one that is explicitly transnational and outside traditional communication structures—that has changed political opportunity structures. 3. For a full history of rights abuses in the Islamic Republic, see Afshari, Human Rights in Iran. 4. See Abrahamian, A History of Modern Iran; Bill and Roger Louis, Mussadiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil; or Gasiorowski and Byrne, Mohammad Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Most specifically on the US and British roles, see Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men. 5. See “Interview with Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani,” Iranian Students News Agency, January 30, 2005. In the interview, Rafsanjani recounts the history of the Islamic Republic’s engagement with democracy from its earliest days, as well as the theological justification for democracy. Regarding the latter, Rafsanjani says: Election, therefore, begins from the leader. During the time of the prophet, as well, there was allegiance. In Medina, the political parties and groups vowed allegiance to him. At that time, elections were not in the form that they are today. The leaders of the groups would make agreements with the prophet. In the Koran, as well, there are several verses about allegiance. Allegiance, therefore, has a completely religious background. In the thinking of the imam and in our thinking— which is religious thinking—when someone wants to take charge of

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the destiny of the people and interfere in the affairs of the people and legislate, he needs the permission of the people. And this permission is shaped with elections. In the past, our elections were at the level of the leaders of groups and political parties, but now the people elect directly. Elections, therefore, are a reality that is both rooted in religion under the heading of allegiance and is also a factor for the acceptability of the regime. If the people do not want to, they would not accept the decisions of the regime, even if they like the regime. In the statements of the imam, especially in the early years of the Revolution, there are many instances regarding the duty of the people to participate in elections. Elections are a very proper way to correct the work of the government, and republicanism stems from this issue. Hence, Islam is compatible with republicanism. Other than the time of the prophet and the twelve infallible imams, Islam has not determined the type of government. The way to decide the type of government is through norms. Of course, all sorts of governments depend on the wish of the people. Islam, republicanism, and elections are, therefore, all in harmony with one another. Thanks to Ann Mayer for passing on this citation. 6. USG Open Source Center, “Iran.” Khamenei concludes this last section with a threat: “I want everyone to end this sort of action. If they do not end it then the consequences of this lie with them (street protestors).” 7. Ibid. 8. See Martin, Creating an Islamic State. This Platonism shows itself, in fact, in Khomeini’s concept of vilayet e-faqih —rule of the Supreme Leader— somewhat akin to at least one reading of Plato on the role of the philosopher in The Republic. 9. I have previously cited a number of books on the Iranian revolution. Specifically on Ali Shariati, see both the numerous works of his that have been translated into English, as well as Rahnema, An Islamic Utopian. 10. Afary and Anderson, “Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian Revolution,” http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue37/Afary37.htm. See also, Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution. Beyond Foucault’s own works, it is also worth reading Merquior, Foucault. 11. On this, see Zakaria, “The ‘Other’ Orientalism.” 12. Amid the many books on the revolution, among the best are Dabashi, Theology of Discontent; and Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran. See also Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown; and Khomeini, Islam and Revolution. 13. abu Khalil, “The US Conspiracy in Iran.” 14. See, for example, Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors. Mahmood Mamdani’s argument is, frankly, eviscerated in Just, “‘We Can’t Just Do Nothing.’” 15. Dabashi, “Left Is Wrong on Iran.” 16. See Afshari, “A Historic Moment in Iran”; and Moaveni, Honeymoon in Tehran.

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17. While a theoretical perspective has no necessary ideological correlation, realists and neorealists have tended to be affiliated with the right just as relativists and postmodernists have tended to be identified with the left. 18. In terms of election results, for a solid statistical analysis of the election results see Ansari, “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election.” See also the work of Farideh Fardi in Peterson, “Was Iran’s Election Rigged?” These sources rather conclusively rebut a few claims that somehow the election results were valid. 19. For a glimpse of this, see Kamrava, Iran’s Intellectual Revolution. 20. Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution; and Abrahamian, “The Causes of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran.” 21. Gasiorowski and Byrne, Mohammad Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. 22. Afshari, “A Historic Moment in Iran.” 23. On Soroush, in addition to his own works, see, Gamari-Tabrizi, Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran. On Jahanbegloo, in addition to his own works, see Postel, Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran. On Eshkevari, in addition to his own works, see Hosseini and Tapper, Islam and Democracy. Additionally, many of Kadivar’s writings are available at his website, http://kadivar.com/Index.asp. 24. Dabashi, “An Epistemic Shift in Iran.” 25. For an interesting discussion of this, see “Democracy” in Marks and Clapham, International Human Rights Lexicon. For a more seminal work on the right to political participation, see Fox, “The Right to Political Participation in International Law.” 26. Much has been written on this case. See, for example, Sfeir, “Legal Culture.” 27. See Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, From Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Repression. This report’s concluding chapter, “The Exportation of Repression: Arab States’ Performance at the Human Rights Council,” is incisive on the subversion of the HRC by a coalition of states led by Egypt and by OIC members more generally. 28. Chase, “Islam and Human Rights.” 29. See, for example, “Iranian Foreign Minister Kharazi: Interview with al-Hayat,” al-Hayat, October 3, 1998. Iran’s position has oscillated, but in general it is that it cannot and will not revoke the fatwa; rather it has simply agreed to cease pursuing its application. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi was quite clear on this distinction, though it seems to have escaped most of the Englishlanguage media reporting. In his interview with al-Hayat, for example, when Kharazi was asked if the withdrawal of the fatwa on Rushdie presented a new opportunity in relations with the United States and Europe, Kharazi prefaced his reply by saying, “We have not withdrawn the fatwa. The fatwa hasn’t changed and remains in place.” Kharazi went on to specify that Iran’s position

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was that it would not pursue the application of the fatwa nor would Iran reward anyone who carried out the death sentence. He refused to say, however, whether or not one who killed Rushdie would be granted sanctuary in Iran. What has shifted, therefore, is an acceptance of the real-world political limits on the application of ideal forms of natural law and the political impulse that generated the fatwa’s initial issuance. 30. See Gheissari and Nasr, Democracy in Iran. 31. See, in general, Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers and Modernity at Large. See also Agamben, Coming Community. 32. Allen, The Wages of Sin, p. 143. 33. Sadik Jalal al-Azm, “Interview: Trends in Arab Thought,” Journal of Palestine Studies 27, no. 2 (Winter 1998): 73. 34. Among these books are Yahya, Ayat al-shaitaniyya; Ayub, Shaitan algharb; Ahmad, Ayat al-shaitaniyya; al-Budur, Nadthra fi ayat shaitaniyya; Sa’ud, Shaitan as-sahayana; Kharufah, Hukm al-islam fi jaraim Salman Rushdie; al-Shakir, Zahirat Salman Rushdie; and Muhajirani, Muamarat alayat al-shaitaniyah. 35. al-Haq, “Fatwa: fi bayan dabat al-riddah ’n al-islam,” pp. 360–361. The text of Khomeini’s fatwa is as follows: In the name of God, may He be exalted. To God we belong, and unto Him we return. This is for the information of all honorable and proud Muslims wherever in the world I happen to reach them. The author of the book, The Satanic Verses, which has been compiled, printed and published against Islam, against the Prophet of Islam, and against the Qur’an, has been sentenced to the death penalty. In addition, the publishers of this book who were aware of its contents are also subject to the same penalty. I require of all honorable and proud Muslims to obtain the execution of the author at once, so that no one henceforth will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims. Anyone who dies in the cause of ridding the world of Rushdie will be regarded as a martyr and go directly to heaven. Further, if someone has access to but does not have the ability to execute him, he should inform someone else so that the penalty on this author’s acts is executed. The actual crime with which Rushdie is charged is not stated. Is the crime insult? Heresy? Blasphemy? Apostasy? Are the publishers of The Satanic Verses sentenced to death for the same reason? Or for a different crime? None of this is stated, making for a rather peculiar legal statement, particularly given that a fatwa is normally issued with great precision. Specifically, the fatwa only describes Rushdie as guilty of “insult” and of acting against Islam, neither of which are defined as crimes under Islamic law. The Islamic shari‘a specifies seven hadd crimes (“absolute” crimes, those that have a specific textual source in the Quran) that carry an obligatory punishment: adultery, false accu-

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sation of adultery, wine drinking, apostasy, theft, brigandage, and rebellion. It is worth noting that the definitions of hadd crimes are shared (with minor variations, for example rebellion is not considered by some to be a hadd crime) by all Sunni and Shi‘a schools of law. All other crimes, or crimes that cannot meet the high evidentiary requirements necessary for a hadd conviction, are tried as tazir crimes, which carry lesser penalties and accept the necessity of deference to the power and discretion of temporal rulers. It may be that, as Iran’s head of state, Khomeini was simply acting to enforce a tazir penalty, one much more open to discretionary interpretation. Khomeini and the Iranian government, however, have said, at times, that the fatwa was a religious edict separate from Khomeini’s political power; thus, one would expect it to be bound by Islamic and Shi‘a legal precedents. In any case, as a tazir punishment is by definition less than that of a hadd, it would not normally be punishable by death. If blasphemy is the crime being charged, under Islamic legal norms it would not justify a death sentence. It would subject Rushdie to the death penalty only by claiming it as proof of Rushdie’s apostasy (riddah), a hadd crime that is punishable by death. The Shaikh al-Azhar at the time, Shaikh Gad al-Haq, issued a fatwa that elegantly and concisely summarizes the laws governing apostasy and the possibility of repentance. While Gad al-Haq goes through the distinctions among each of the various schools of law, he also lays out the general principles of who a murtadd is in Islam: “one who denies Islam’s basic principles and who thereby rejects God . . . and rejects what is known of the duties of religion.” So apostasy would seem to be the legal charge against Rushdie, with proof of this charge found in Rushdie’s disrespect toward the foundations of Islam, which can be seen as a form of blasphemy. In Islamic law, blasphemy comes under two categories: zindiqa and sabb al-rasul. Zindiqa indicates freethinking, atheism, or heresy, which if expressed publicly is considered scandalous and menacing. Sabb al-rasul is, translated literally, insult of the Prophet. The Encyclopedia of Islam says of zindiqa that “the term is explained by its political character; it brands the heresy which imperils the Muslim state.” Heresy indicates a split from and attempt to subvert the community of believers. For an Islamic state, like Iran, zindiqa would also be deeply political, indicating seditious religious teachings and is related to riddah, or apostasy. Riddah literally means “turning away” and enters Muslim history with the “Apostasy Wars,” the fight against the secession of Arab tribes from Islam and the budding Islamic empire after Muhammad’s death. Just as the Greek root of apostasy means “defection” or “revolt,” so too does riddah have a clear implication of defection to an enemy camp, as Rushdie was seen to have done. When the legitimacy of a self-defined Islamic state such as Iran is tied to Islam, an attack on or betrayal of religion is also an attack on or betrayal of the state. 36. Bahar, Guardians of Thought, p. 86. 37. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, From Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Repression.

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38. Klausen, The Cartoons That Shook the World. While the OIC is not representative of public opinion, it is interesting that even here one finds a political genealogy in the adoption of the cartoons as a cause célèbre. Klausen writes that, for example, “the famously fractious leading members in the conference . . . found common cause in the criticism of Western bias against Islam,” p. 78. An external enemy is always useful in papering over internal differences. 39. Klausen, The Cartoons That Shook the World, p. 79. 40. Shadid and Sullivan, “Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement.” 41. See Klausen, The Cartoons That Shook the World. In addition, in Klausen’s overview of the Danish cartoon crisis, reproductions of the cartoons were censored by Yale University Press, making it a case study in the somewhat irrational and arguably racist fears raised by a Muslim bogeyman. 42. One obvious distinction in the cases to which I am referring is their sources. One could make the argument that the Danish cartoons were produced by non-Muslims and that this variable makes that case substantively different than others. 43. For a representative sample of Soroush’s writings, see Sadri and Sadri, Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam. 44. Ali, A Religion Not a State.

7 Social Rights: Sexual Orientation

A core contention of this book is that there are continuous reconfigurations in what constitutes human rights. This includes the emergence of new social rights such as those regarding sexual orientation and gender identity—rights that, per a notion of rights as indivisible and interdependent, range across the political, civil, economic, social, and cultural spheres. As in Chapter 6 regarding democracy, in this chapter we will see how such reconfigurations regarding social rights, in relation to sexual orientation in particular, have been key to making rights relevant to debates in parts of the Muslim world. In turn, having such debates informed by human rights has represented an important shift in approaches to key issues. Such shifts, as noted earlier, are profoundly contested. We saw this in Chapter 6 regarding democracy and the right to freedom of expression. We will see this again in this chapter’s focus on arguments for and resistance against rights in relation to sexual orientation. Nonetheless, though of course contested and unsettled, these debates are opening up a range of possibilities that reflect the dynamics of societies in the Muslim world. Rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity are now at the cutting edge of global human rights activism. This has had its expressions in the Muslim world as well, in terms of both transnational and local activism regarding the discrimination and violence that take place against gay men and lesbians. Does such activism reflect cultural dynamism and individual agency, and do internationally established

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rights give an anchor to those who are challenging this discrimination and violence? Or is this fellow-traveling with the West in a way that reflects political and cultural imperialism and that dooms this activism to the margins? Struggles over rights violations due to sexual orientation are certainly less mainstream and less normatively accepted in parts of the Muslim world (including the Arab world) than other issues discussed here. Nonetheless, even if more marginal, debates and struggles over this issue (like those over democracy and free expression) express individual and group agency against the state’s ability to monopolize political, economic, and social life in the name of static cultural constructs. Struggles for empowerment—whether they are about democracy or sexual orientation or a range of other issues—get to the heart of what this book is exploring. Human rights are an evolving process, but they are only relevant to the degree that they respond to demands of groups on the ground. This makes discussion of these demands about more than just specific issues. These specific issues are elements that point to the broader potential impact of human rights: Can they give a useful tool to those on the ground who are working to open up political, economic, social, and cultural structures? If so, then they are about more than helping advance reform on specific issues and have revolutionary potential. After discussing some of the history behind pushes for rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity globally and in the Muslim world, this chapter focuses on events and debates in the Arab world in this regard. Parts of the Arab world have been a particularly contentious site of backlash against movements for such rights both at the political level (where governments have used gay men, in particular, as a scapegoat) and intellectual level (where some have argued that a notion of a homosexual identity is an illegitimate Western import). These political and intellectual struggles over rights and identity, thus, are particularly illustrative of how sexual orientation is at the tipping point of broader pushes for opening state-societies. Historically, perhaps the most difficult global human rights debates have dealt with ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Peoples and groups within the first two categories have been—in their own self-interest—at the heart of advancing human rights claims. They have done so in response to embedded power structures that have, among other things, made them a focus for rights violations, especially the sort of structural discriminations that plague all state-societies.

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Bringing women’s rights into the human rights regime not only brought attention to gender as it relates to women but also, and more broadly, in many ways changed the rights regime by making it cognizant of how its own structures led it to overlook issues and populations.1 In this tradition, rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity—relevant to, among others, gay men, lesbians, hijras, transvestites, transvestis, and other orientations and identities that are constructed in globally varied cultural and social contexts—are an increasing focus of discussion and activism. This is as challenging (and potentially as transformative) as women’s human rights have been in changing the human rights regime and further expanding human agency.2 Indeed, sexual orientation and gender identity have recently been a focus of pushes for an expanded conceptualization of human rights that would include protections for the diverse range of groups who are uncomfortably conflated together within those (and other) catchall terms. For many years human rights protections were not acknowledged to be applicable to sexual orientation or gender identity, whether by Geneva-based treaty-monitoring bodies or by major international human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Human Rights Watch. Chapter 4 has already detailed some of the ways in which over recent years new readings and new instruments have brought these topics into international human rights law. This is not because international law already contained these protections but rather because new readings and new laws flowed out of transnational normative conversations pushed by activists. This has included everything from the Yogyakarta Principles, which attempt to lay the foundation in international law for rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity,3 to the work of human rights treaty-monitoring bodies in condemning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (beginning with the 1994 Toonen case at the UN’s Human Rights Committee), European Court of Human Rights rulings (such as Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, which led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in the United Kingdom)4 that specifically mandate enacting protections into law, domestic supreme court rulings (such as in India) that uphold rights regarding sexual orientation, and UN general comments that give substantive weight to the integration of sexual orientation into the human rights corpus (beginning with General Comments 14 and 20 issued by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights). This was not a top-down process but occurred because of the synergy among law, politics, norms, and institutions on which this book has focused.

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As part of this process, in many parts of the world members of various sexual orientations and gender identities have increasingly identified openly and politically as such—that is, have taken, for example, being a lesbian as part of informing public identity rather than simply a private sexual practice.5 In response, these same groups have often borne the brunt of angry reactions. From Jamaica to the United States to Iran and elsewhere, nationalist-patriarchal credentials have been advanced by demonizing and violating the rights of those whose sexual orientations or gender identities challenge traditional norms.

Controversies over Sexual Orientation in the Middle East In the Middle East, local variations on this increasingly visible push for rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity have followed on the heels of high-profile campaigns targeting homosexuality, especially gay males. This includes Egypt’s infamous 2001 Queen Boat raid, in which state police arrested and tortured men suspected of being gay;6 death sentences for those accused of homosexual activity in Iran;7 and the existence of the death penalty for homosexual acts in six Middle Eastern countries (the only other country known to have the death penalty for homosexual acts is Nigeria, though Uganda in 2009 seriously considered a law that would have instituted the death penalty for “aggravated” homosexual acts).8 This has in turn made the rights claims of those subject to such violence all the more visible and urgent. Again, as with other rights issues, the idea that the transnational Muslim world is insulated from the movements and debates that animate human rights globally is clearly false. To the contrary, even human rights regarding sexual orientation—controversial in all parts of the world—have relevance in parts of the Muslim world, including the Middle East and the Arab world. And despite violence and repression from within the Middle East, groups claiming a public identity based on sexual orientation and gender identity continue to increase, albeit with local variations.9 A pertinent example comes, again, from Iran.10 Iranians fearing persecution based on sexual orientation (gay men and lesbians) or gender identity (transgendered) have been fleeing Iran and making claims for refugee status at the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Ankara on the basis of a “well-founded fear of persecution” standard from international law.11 Granting of such status has been spotty; there

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have been successes for some while others languish in Turkish refugee camps. The stories documented in this regard by the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees12 tell of refugees marginalized and fearful for their freedom and lives—hardly the elites claimed by theorists such as Pheng Cheah (see Chapter 5) or Joseph Massad.13 Rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity have triggered passionate debates among both intellectuals and human rights activists regarding whether they are strategically wise to pursue or, more provocatively, whether such identities (and pursuing political action based on such identities) are even legitimate.14 It is the latter debate about legitimate identity that is particularly troubling and speaks to this book’s theme of how human rights have been injected into debates regarding marginalized populations and their right to exist and be part of the public sphere. Negar Azimi nicely summarizes the political dynamic in this regard over recent years: The politics of homosexuality is changing fast in the Arab world. For many years, corners of the region have been known for their rich gay subcultures. . . . But sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular are increasingly becoming concerns of the modern Arab state. Politicians, the police, government officials, and much of the press are making homosexuality an “issue”: a way to display nationalist bona fides. . . . The policing of homosexuality has become part of what sometimes seems like a general moral panic.15

In this context, in the Arab world, among various sexual orientations and gender identities, it is gay males who have been most prominent as subjects claiming a (limited) public space, objects of reprisal, and (again, in a limited though expanding manner) claimants of rights. This speaks to two issues that must be acknowledged. The first of these is the resonance of a notion of a gay identity and hence the relevance of rights to those claiming this identity. Insofar as the populations most affected articulate such rights, they have to be acknowledged rather than buried under an Alice in Wonderland–like culturalist notion that such things cannot or should not exist in that part of the world. Changing realities indicate otherwise. Indeed, a focus on gay men is quite limiting, as there exists a considerably more diverse set of sexual and gender identities that are also protected from discrimination under international human rights law.16 Sexuality is a set of undefined erotic practices mediated by social

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norms, economic structures, and political situations. The subjectivities that flow out of this are multiple, not reducible to men or to with whom one has sex. The second of these issues, flowing out of the resonance of a gay identity, is the repetition of what has become a familiar debate: do the articulations of a public identity and related rights claims reflect individual agency or cultural imposition?

Massad: Are Rights a Western Identity Project? Such arguments have taken place regarding virtually all pushes for human rights in virtually all parts of the world. In the Arab world, they are by now a form of Kabuki theater in which new topics are shadowed by previously rehearsed roles and arguments regarding other topics. Joseph Massad, for example, frames the debate over rights regarding sexual orientation in a binary manner, stigmatizing self-defined Arab gays as inauthentic fellow-travelers and those who have lent them transnational support as, in his term, “gay missionaries.” Massad’s argument in “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World” and Desiring Arabs is that rights regarding sexual orientation are about a “Western” identity project rather than claims that legitimately reflect an identity authentic to Arabs.17 Putting aside for a moment the merits of Massad’s argument about the illegitimacy of an Arab gay male identity, his argument assumes that Arab gay males are in fact organizing for rights—albeit to his disdain (a disdain, one should note, based in identity politics, not homophobia).18 And, indeed, it is the case that Arab gay males have come to be at the center of a vitriolic debate regarding their rights and their identity. Whether they should have rights is linked to the question of whether their identity is “legitimate.” Claims for protection from rights violations such as discrimination have been met by counterclaims that “gay” is not a legitimate identity in some societies and that, therefore, rights protections for gay men are irrelevant to these societies. As we know, human rights are a charged topic, subject to critiques from both politicians and scholars. Rights regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, more specifically, have been subject to particularly harsh scrutiny as illegitimate “Western” exports. Massad’s work has connected both sides of this critique with his assertion both that Arab gay male identity is an illegitimate import and that its emergence is part of the illegitimate spread of human rights around the globe.

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Massad poses this issue in particularly stark terms. Using language that calls to mind a Huntingtonian “clash of civilizations” worldview, he speaks firmly from the camp that rights for gay males are part of an imperialist project. He argues that activism supporting rights in relation to sexual orientation is what he calls “an incitement to discourse”—that those whom he calls “gay missionaries” have “created” gays where none existed in the Arab world.19 Massad argues that rights regarding sexual orientation are a “Western” notion rather than coming out of claims that could legitimately reflect an identity authentic to Arabs—an Arab identity, in his terms, is a “subjectivity that exclude[s] homosexuality.”20 Gay, in short, is not an indigenous Arab identity; hence the need for his notion of “an incitement to discourse.” The implicit idea in this concept is that the existence of gay Arabs can only be explained due to the imposition of an outside force rather than through their own agency. Massad connects these attacks on gay Arab males to a broader attack against women’s rights in the Arab world and, more generally, to attacks on human rights—each seen, similarly, as outside impositions rather than locally relevant. Massad’s underlying assumptions seem to be picked up from critiques of human rights such as Cheah’s: that human rights are about creating global citizens and, as such, are a leveling project that serves the purpose of global capital and its elite transnational classes. These are not arguments that should be seen as being of relevance only to academics or only in the context of the Arab world. These arguments mirror those that governments in many parts of the world have long made about human rights, including in the Muslim world. There are two issues with Massad’s general argument against human rights that are relevant not just to this debate but also to each of the debates discussed in this book. The first issue is empirical and the second is theoretical. Regarding the empirical, the absurdity of Massad’s position is in how malleable and childlike he makes Arabs out to be in his notion that gay Arab men are “created.” By way of perspective, let us recall that there is the full force of the US government’s public information apparatus and much global opinion that would have the Arab world accept, among other things, the legitimacy of the US invasion of Iraq, or of Israel controlling all of former mandate Palestine, and so forth. Obviously Arabs, even faced with powerful international and transnational currents, have had no problem resisting such forces—there are other powerful normative currents that come from many sources to

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contest them, just as the idea of rights regarding sexual orientation is deeply contested in all parts of the world. But according to Massad, at least one sector of Arabs are empty vessels susceptible to being converted by “missionaries” from the supposedly all-powerful and ominously named “gay international” cabal (invoking the great Red Scares of the past) to betray their own ways and their own people. Massad identifies this omnipotent cabal as consisting of two small international gay and lesbian human rights groups (the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission [IGLHRC] and the International Lesbian and Gay Association [ILGA]),21 along with a few fellow-traveling Arab groups like al-Fatiha or Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society. Tellingly, Massad leaves out a number of other relevant Arab organizations; he seemingly has little interest in recognizing activism from within the Arab world. In any case, in relative terms, organizations like the IGLHRC and ILGA have minuscule resources.22 As transnational (and missionary!) forces go, they are dust in the wind compared to the money and media that governments (both Western and Arab) control and that Islamists and other nonstate movements can deploy. It is, in short, sexual paranoia of the worst sort to see these small entities as able to convert Arabs to the joys of an identity that can often bring with it family crises, social stigma, and political repression. This paranoia is all the more ironic when it is assumed that these converting missionaries come out of a monolithic “West” writ large, rather than from a community that is in fact marginalized in “the West” (a problematic term, given its fractured nature, as evidenced by its bitter ongoing fights over rights regarding sexual orientation). Indeed, Massad’s work is filled with claims that, at best, show little familiarity or even intellectual curiosity about human rights, a static view that Arabs should be unchanging in their sexual identities, and no sense of why it is that rights protections are being asserted by those subject to discrimination and violence based on their identity. At worst, Massad’s arguments are simply outlandish and bizarre—he goes on at length, for example, about a story of UN police being ordered to beat unconscious an Arab who objected to including sexual orientation in a UN conference document.23 Anyone who has participated in any sort of UN-organized conference, with its stultifying protocol, will take that hearsay story with a grain of salt. The essential point is that Massad overlooks the struggles and repression of a vulnerable and marginalized group and turns their victimizers, regimes such as Egypt’s under Hosni

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Mubarak, into seeming heroes for defending Arab integrity against cultural traitors, just as they would in their own propaganda. Transnationalism is indeed a force in contemporary global politics— though it is a force far broader and more complex than the few NGOs on which Massad focuses. Sexual and gender identities are defined in spaces that, for better or worse, move us into the interstices of the global and the local and are informed by all the flows of power, information, and meaning that move transnationally into various cultural locations.24 But those transnational currents only resonate when they are informed by social movements, rather than being imposed from the top down. The US government can fund as many “Voice of . . .” radio stations as it likes, for example, but they only matter when they have a message that resonates. Similarly, human rights are an important normative force around the globe, but only insofar as rights are informed by immediate political, economic, social, and cultural claims being articulated by peoples will they have resonance and impact. Even more specifically, there are indeed only a few transnational NGOs working on rights regarding sexual orientation across borders. Given political and social conditions in the Arab world, the only important impact they can have is if peoples reach out to such NGOs from within the Arab world. It is certainly true that identities are a construct and that the construct of “gay” is relatively new in the Arab world. Khaled el-Rouayheb, for example, makes a meticulously researched argument that homosexuality is a construction of the nineteenth century in the Arab world, though obviously sexual acts between men predate that and an explicitly “gay” identity followed.25 This is a constructed identity that has evolved and is no doubt affected by a transnational context. Gayness is not indigenous or native anywhere, but its evolution in the Arab world is much more complex than a simple master-native puppet relationship. Indeed, as As’ad abu Khalil discusses, “there is no doubt . . . that heterosexual and homosexual identities existed in the Arab/Islamic civilizations.” Quite correctly, he notes that “to dismiss homosexual identities from the lives of Muslims is to associate homosexuality with Western life and experience,” a binary view of the world that is deeply problematic.26 The notion of nonheterosexual sexuality as the basis of identity is a radical challenge to traditional norms wherever it has arisen and has faced backlashes in virtually all parts of the world. Parts of “the West” are, perhaps, more progressive when it comes to rights regarding sexual orientation, but the sort of intense nonstate violence directed at homosexuals in countries that range from Poland to South Africa or

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Jamaica is quite familiar in the recent history of “the West” as well. Indeed, both nonstate and state violence on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is far from banished in any part of the world (in the United States, for example, in 2009 there was an 11 percent increase in hate crimes based on sexual orientation).27 In this context, it is not shocking that there are transnational networks advancing rights regarding sexual orientation, nor is it shocking that there are countervailing political-normative networks of which Massad is a part from an academic perch. This is simply the empirical terrain of contemporary politics. At the United Nations, for example, many countries in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), including many Arab countries, have stoutly attacked resolutions advancing rights regarding sexual orientation. The OIC’s allies in this have been the Vatican, Malta, the United States (during the George W. Bush administration), and a few other countries. At a state level, in 2009 Uganda’s proposed draconian law that would increase the punishment for “aggravated” homosexuality to include the death penalty was reportedly drafted with support from nonstate US-based religious actors.28 These churches did not “create” Ugandan homophobia any more than much-smaller NGOs could “create” Arab gay males. They do, however, show that transnational forces that impact upon politics and identity formation come from many different directions. Ironically (and absurdly, to be sure) in this regard, homophobic forces in Uganda accuse Arabs of bringing homosexuality to Africa in the 1800s—a telling twist on the xenophobic nationalism at the heart of Massad’s odd missionary theory of the spread of gayness to the Arab world. The commonality is in the assumption and valorization of cultural insularity and a demonization of all that is unwanted as foreign or culturally alien and, hence, illegitimate. In an ironic twist on Massad in that regard, Paul Wasswa Ssembiro, a Ugandan church leader who pushed for the law regarding homosexuality proposed in 2009, argues that “the issues of homosexuality seem to have penetrated [African culture] with the coming of Arabs, particularly in Uganda in the 1800s. . . . The first history we dig up into homosexuality is based back then. Looking at my own culture, the Baganda culture, the formation of the family, the values and the proverbs, the values by which we were brought up, homosexuality is largely foreign.”29 Perhaps Massad and Ssembiro could collaborate on a joint “Arab gay missionaries” theory. There are no closed borders and there is no reason to expect that campaigns to ensure the rights of all citizens, regardless of sexual ori-

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entation or gender identity, will not cross borders. This is analogous to how the Vatican, Family Life International, the United States (during the Bush administration), and OIC countries have coalesced across borders with arguments very similar to Massad’s that rights regarding sexual orientation are inappropriate in “their” cultural contexts. Never mind that these contexts vary from those putatively dominated by traditional Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, or Muslim or Arab identity. What they share and what Massad reinforces are political projects built on a notion of a fixed, static identity; any challenge to that is a challenge to their political projects.

Who Decides If Human Rights Are Relevant? Moving Beyond Fixed Identities Railing against outside (or transnational) influence is a red herring that diverts attention from the real issue at play. As we have seen, such transnational interchanges exist on many different levels and on all sides of this (and other) issues. Indeed, for all of the snide derision Massad heaps on gay Arabs as transnational elites, in his position as a Columbia University professor who also speaks proudly of his position in the UK and of lecturing in the Arab world, he ironically incarnates the idea of a transnational elite far more than do fragile movements for rights regarding sexual orientation in the Arab world or ad hoc support for them from a few transnational NGOs. The pertinent issue in this antitransnational rhetoric is an attack on an assertion of a gay Arab identity. As noted earlier, this is not due to homophobia per se but rather is part of the attacks that face the assertion of minority (ethnic, gender, or sexual)30 identities. Such social groups, in asserting alternative, coexisting identities, in so doing “interrogate identity as a fixed point and central reference,” as Dennis Altman argues.31 The assertion made by such groups when they claim rights, in other words, is that the public sphere can be both pluralistic in accommodating difference and also fluid in that identity is not taken as defined by one sole element (i.e., one can be Arab and gay and . . . ). This is the key issue at play in this debate: will such pluralistic fluidity inform constructions of identity, or will static nationalist notions of singular identity based in cultural authenticity predominate? In that context, Massad’s culturally essentialist reaction against gay Arab males is analogous to the reaction by dominant groups to rights claims by ethnic minorities and by women’s groups. Each has been

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systematically met with similar charges of inauthenticity from cultural nationalist governments and their intellectual supporters. Arab feminists, for example, have been caricatured as inauthentic, upper class, and Westernized, just as ethnic minorities such as, for example, Bahais in Iran, are often seen as a suspicious fifth column because they do not fit into the appropriate cultural nationalist profile. Perhaps the most apt analogy between an ethnic and sexual minority is in the way Massad disappears Arab gay males (in his words, “it is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist”)32 and how the Turkish state and its own nationalist intellectuals have disappeared Kurds by saying they cannot even exist in Turkey—the notion they can be redefined as “Mountain Turks” or “Eastern Turks.”33 A similar disappearance of an identity can be found, ironically, in the Zionist claim that in Palestine would be found “a land without a people for a people without a land.”34 A denial of the possibility of an Arab gay identity has a structural similarity to denying Kurds or Palestinians political and social rights. At the core of each is the nationalist imperative to see the nation as a united whole, untainted by pluralistic difference. Empirically, the question is not, as Massad would have it, if an Arab gay male should exist or if transnational currents should extend into the Arab world. Such things are empirical realities to deal with, rather than deny. One can protest all one likes against Arab “converts” and against transnational currents and how they impact upon identity formation. Nonetheless, self-defined gay Arab men do exist, though there is no reason to assume there is a singular global gay identity.35 Sexual identities flow out of a complex of cultural, social, economic, and political interactions that complicate any notion of a homogeneous gay identity, either domestically or transnationally.36 Debates about from where someone is speaking (e.g., an al-Fatiha member in the diaspora, a Helem member in Lebanon, or part of Human Rights Watch in New York) are rather beside the point.37 Beyond the empirical falsity of Massad’s assertion that Arabs are part of a “subjectivity that exclude[s] homosexuality,”38 the second issue with Massad is the theoretical assumptions underlying his denial of empirical reality. Even if one assumes that Massad’s rather fantastic story of the overwhelming power of a few small NGOs “creating” gay Arabs could somehow make sense empirically, on a theoretical level it would nonetheless remain problematic. Massad’s implicit notion of a binary between the authentic and inauthentic rebuffs the pluralism,

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multiplicity, and churn of societies around the world, including in the Arab and Muslim worlds. This denies agency and stands in defiance of the transnational currents that inform daily life, and which in turn are also informed by Arabs and Muslims. In so doing, it gives a deeply distorted view of the realities of how peoples have engaged with human rights (including rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity), understating political and social dynamism in the Arab world and globally. Massad’s conceptualization of identity formation ignores that sexual and gender identities are defined in a space that, for better or worse, moves us beyond an insular conception of the local and is instead informed by the transnational flows of norms, networks, media, diasporas, and the like, that define life in the Arab world and elsewhere. Denial of evolving identity construction and transnational currents in such cases does not just deny reality, it essentializes culture by denying its inherent pluralism and changeability. The issue is not whether or not gay Arab men can or should exist. The issue is how to respond when gay Arab men (and others) demand their rights. On a purely academic level, one can simply observe that such voices exist and are making themselves heard. This empirical reality must be recognized and integrated into theoretical frames, a project of which this book is a part. Indeed, this empirical reality is what is missing from the sort of academic literature that smugly dismisses those making rights claims as “created.” But just as empirical realities need to inform theory, so too does theory inform practice. The issue on a practical level is if solidarity will go to those suffering rights violations and looking to make their voices heard, or if solidarity will go to those violating their rights. Understanding from a theoretical perspective what is at stake in such debates is part of recognizing the practical import of such potential solidarities. A human right to nondiscrimination is a practical response to the sorts of marginalization that gay men and other sexual minorities face. A human right to be protected from the sorts of scapegoating these populations face from both government and societal forces is, similarly, a merely practical response to everyday realities, as is the case with a range of human rights. To put this in real terms, one has to ask if it is appropriate to demonize as a cultural traitor, for example, a teenager in Cairo who is sexually attracted to others who share the same sexual impulses and may have latched onto the idea of making this part of his public persona. As

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Amr Shalakany plainly states, “Quite frankly, I simply don’t see why Egyptian men should be thrown in jail and tortured just for picking up other men in a Cairo bar—even if the latter is a Massad-dreaded sign of being infected by a ‘Westernized-gay-identified’ behavior.”39 It may be that this identity has arisen in a transnational context in which this hypothetical teenage boy has access to the Web or other media that contain images of gayness and gay identity (though, again, as Brian Whitaker points out, it must be emphasized that what Massad identifies as “creating” gay Arabs is not transnational media or communications, but the few very specific “gay international” missionary organizations that he singles out).40 What, then, is one to do about such a teenager caught in one of the Egyptian police’s reported entrapments of those they suspect to be gay?41 Deny that Egyptian kid—or, analogously, an Iraqi gay subject to pogroms in post–Saddam Hussein Iraq, or, outside the Arab world, an Iranian or a Nigerian subject to the death penalty for homosexuality— the right to engage in the world and define himself in that context? If so, what is being denied is not just gayness in a specific cultural context but also the right of peoples to define and redefine their own cultural and identity constructs. What is being denied, in other words, is agency and pluralistic identity formation. Massad’s emphasis on static cultural purity is, to borrow a phrase from Arjun Appadurai and apply it in a somewhat different context, a clear expression of a “fear of small numbers.”42 In other words, it is the anxiety felt by politically and culturally dominant groups when faced with assertions of difference, a fear that so often leads to explosions of violence targeting minorities. In Appadurai’s explanation for such violence, this expression of fluidity and pluralism in identity “remind[s] these majorities of the small gap which lies between their condition as majorities and the horizon of an unsullied national whole, a pure and untainted national ethnos.”43 The essential issue at the nexus of the theoretical and the political is that Massad’s work on gay Arabs encapsulates a discourse of violence that often faces those who have identities that challenge the status quo—the “small numbers” that challenge, as Appadurai says, the pure whole. Again, this extends beyond sexuality and into nationalist discourse on minorities in other categories. This is all part of what Appadurai describes as “an emerging repertoire of efforts to produce previously unrequired levels of certainty about social identity, values, survival, and dignity.”44

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This is the subtext when Massad dismisses the authenticity of those Arabs who claim a gay identity. As we saw when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used similar accusations of inauthenticity to dismiss protesters in Iran, this has political significance. It is an accusation of treason in a world viewed through a stark and dangerous “clash of civilizations” prism that levels all difference into a simplistic binary. This binary plays into the hands of those invested in maintaining status quo power structures. Indeed, it is fair to say that Massad’s anger at Arab gay visibility is part of a political focus on homosexuality by Arab elites. It is, ironically, this “moral panic,” as Azimi put it earlier, that has contributed the most to making these groups visible. Appadurai speaks, again, to this point in saying that “minorities are not born but made, historically speaking. In short, it is through specific choices and strategies, often of state elites or political leaders, that particular groups, who have stayed invisible, are rendered visible as minorities against whom campaigns of calumny can be unleashed.”45 This is precisely the role to which gay Arab males have been relegated in recent years. The pluralism they represent is seen as a threat to a singular construct of culture and politics. This nationalist fear, as replicated in academic arguments such as Massad’s, is at the heart of debates regarding sexual orientation, just as it is at the heart of virtually all controversies discussed in this book. Accusations of fellow-traveling are a danger to cultural dynamism insofar as they reinforce notions of static, unchanging cultures that have no place either for agency at the individual level or for diverse social groups who challenge dominant identity constructs and are seeking a place in the public sphere. It is precisely for this reason that debates over sexuality are important even if they are not mainstream. Counter to ongoing attempts at surveillance and control, those engaging with identity formations contrary to the status quo represent the combustible energy behind pushes for engagement with human rights. Such identities may be fluid and they certainly are constructed rather than predetermined, but they also express human urges that are not controllable by even the most authoritarian states. They represent ruptures in the status quo that are worthy of note for all those interested in changing political-social patterns and how those can connect to the global human rights regime. Connections between such identities and movements for rights regarding sexual orientation get to the essence of the urgent relevance

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of human rights. The integration of human rights into framing and informing debates on homosexuality in the Arab world is yet another example of how rights have become central to debates globally as well as in the Muslim world. Massad’s rhetorically violent reaction and the literally violent responses by states in the region indicate, in turn, how sensitive and important the topic is. They also indicate that if the human rights regime ignores these debates, it will cut itself off from precisely the sort of normative impetus that has allowed human rights to increasingly become the language through which claims for justice are made in politics around the globe. An underlying question throughout this book is “Who decides if human rights are relevant?” The answer is obvious, of course: those subject to injustice decide if human rights are relevant. In this case, the language of human rights has shown some degree of relevance and will become more relevant to the degree it continues to transform itself by incorporating the claims made by those who have been too often on the margins of what the rights regime has represented.

Opening Up to the Margins Human rights have often been thought about in terms of having authoritative sources that Costas Douzinas critiques as “father or law-maker who is outside the operation of law.”46 Reflecting on democracy in Iran or freedom of expression or sexual orientation makes clear why it is critical to move away from such a conceptualization. If such a conceptualization is assumed, I would argue that it is in line with static views of the human rights regime that make it resistant to change and incorporation of normative flows that animate domestic, global, and transnational politics. It risks, therefore, making human rights a matter of inert treaties rather than a dynamic legal, political, normative, and institutional regime. It is true that an argument that it is important to address rights that challenge dominant authorities can be based in pure cosmopolitan, activist engagement: peoples subject to violence and repression, no matter why, deserve solidarity.47 An argument for addressing such rights, however, can also be based in a theoretical understanding of human rights that sees their continued relevance and expanded resonance as lying in their engagement with emerging normative movements, not a turning away from those movements. Recall, to put this into perspective, that rights regarding sexual orientation are controversial within

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parts of the human rights community all over the world. Leaders of major human rights institutions and groups have in no way taken the lead on rights regarding sexual orientation. They have instead been pushed in struggles that have arisen from the margins to take these issues into account and integrate sexual orientation into the human rights corpus. This leads to an argument that goes deeper into why it is a dangerous mistake to forswear even the most difficult, contentious issues. Turning away from such issues is to turn away from permitting the definition and redefinition of the rights regime in ways that keep that regime alive. The dynamism of the human rights regime can expand only if it is open to integrating claims from even the most marginalized social groups, no matter how admittedly difficult the politics. Transnational traffic is a two-way street: the law and institutions of the international human rights regime can be a protective shield to help grassroots minorities, be they ideological, ethnic, gender, class, sexual, or geographic. But, in return, it is the transnational flow of political and normative movements from the grassroots that renews the human rights regime from below and allows it to maintain its relevance. We saw this with pushes to force the human rights regime to recognize that a framework of intersecting (“indivisible and interdependent”) rights should take into account violations on the basis of sexual orientation. This is what unites all the debates discussed in this and the preceding chapter. The underlying point has been much larger than just the specific rights and specific controversies discussed. All these debates— concerning political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights—are interlinked. Attention to one implies attention to the others (and yet others); and by the same logic, inattention to one (women’s rights are just too difficult, or a similar sentiment about rights regarding sexual orientation) implies inattention to others. One cannot in principle stand for the human rights of only some groups and ignore the rights of other groups; the cognitive dissonance produced discredits the entire project. Beyond that, there are two key underlying issues. The first of these issues is the liveliness of debates around rights issues in the transnational Muslim world. If nothing else, the intensity and centrality of these debates should be quite clear. Understanding this human rights dimension is vital in order to grasp the dynamics of these debates. Democratic movements in the Muslim world are informed by principles that have become normatively mainstream in the context of the expansion of human rights. Free expression is hotly debated in contexts where it is

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critical to the expression of dissident points of view. And, to push the envelope, debates over sexuality in the Muslim world are informed by those same sort of difficult debates that have taken place around the world regarding why rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity are essential to a vibrant public sphere. If the public sphere is to be opened in a truly revolutionary manner, the rights regime cannot be limited only to certain populations. The second of these underlying issues is how these debates are not about the Muslim world in isolation—they take place in a context of intense interaction with both transnational currents and networks that connect to the international human rights regime. This is part of showing how human rights shape normative constructs in the transnational Muslim world. This helps us understand the transnational Muslim world’s normative complexity and how this informs ongoing processes of change. These societies are not static but are animated by norm entrepreneurs who increasingly feed off transnational currents to continue the history of human rights in the transnational Muslim world, and the transnational Muslim world’s engagement with the international human rights regime. The result has been normative openings to different ways of conceptualizing issues. This leads us to this book’s conclusion and to once again focusing directly on human rights. It seems clear that human rights are a variable with which we must tangle in addressing many key and controversial issues. Simply put, they inform struggles around issues in many parts of the world, including in the Muslim world. Indeed, we have seen how human rights are part of the normative realities that inform the issues we have explored, and we have seen some of the dynamics by which they have impacts, albeit impacts that are always too limited from an activist perspective. An awareness of this dimension gives insight that is lost if one either ignores or misunderstands the relevance of human rights.

Notes 1. Fraser, “Becoming Human.” See also Fraser and Tinker, Developing Power. 2. International Council on Human Rights Policy, “Sexuality and Human Rights”; Narrain, “Human Rights and Sexual Minorities”; Miller, “Sexuality, Violence Against Women, and Human Rights”; and Saiz, “Bracketing Sexuality.”

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3. International Commission of Jurists and International Service for Human Rights, “The Yogyakarta Principles.” 4. Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, Series A, no. 45, European Court of Human Rights, September 23, 1981. 5. In general, see Ilkkaracan, Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East. 6. Human Rights Watch, “In a Time of Torture.” 7. See, for example, Human Rights Watch, “Iran.” There is a contentious debate about how many Iranians have actually been executed for “homosexual offenses,” but a consensus seems to exist on this case. 8. While there is obviously a preponderance of Muslim majority states here (in Nigeria the death penalty for homosexuality is in place in Muslim-majority provinces), it is equally obvious that most Muslim-majority states do not have the death penalty for homosexuality, so there is no reason to impute an Islamic imperative here. For a history of homosexuality in Islam, see Jamel, “The Story of Lot.” 9. Long, “You’re Not Universal and Stop Whining About It.” Scott Long discusses at length here the amount of outreach to Human Rights Watch from gays and gay groups in the Middle East. 10. Iran is yet again an example of a state where many felt that, in deference to “traditional” or “culturally authentic” values, there would be no room to discuss rights of marginalized social groups. Contrary to this notion pushed by Iranian elites and accepted by many in academic elites outside Iran, however, Iranian women’s groups have been at the forefront of contentious debates, making their voices heard on issues of gender and, more broadly, taking the lead in demanding rights and democracy. Sexual politics in Iran are also quite dynamic, with the regime of control the government imposed over sexual matters fraying under challenges from a youthful population that increasingly is redefining and reversing those sexual politics, with implications on a broad range of political issues. See also Pardis Mahdavi’s book Passionate Uprisings, which documents both the sexual revolution noted in her book title and, per the title’s reference to “uprisings,” the implicitly and explicitly political nature of sexual politics in Iran. 11. Miller, “Gay Enough.” 12. See the Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees website, www.irqr.net. 13. Massad, Desiring Arabs. Massad caricatures a gay identity in the Arab world as being located in the “richer segments of society [in which] the Gay International has found native informants . . . (as part of the package of the adoption of everything western by the classes to which they belong)” (pp. 172– 173). To claim that any challenge to the dominant identity is perforce “Western” is to bandy about meaningless (or at least overly generic) cultural signifiers. Massad also consistently conflates “Arab” and “Middle Eastern,” so one might assume that he would caricature Iranian gays in the same manner.

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14. “Exposing Oppression in Egypt: Interview with Sabry Maher,” by David Khalili, National Sexual Resource Center, June 18, 2008, http://nsrc .sfsu.edu/article/homophobia_oppression_egypt_film_queen_boat. All of the issues I have discussed so far in this book are controversial. Nonetheless, many mainstream practitioners and theorists of human rights see rights regarding sexual orientation or gender identity as too contentious to be advanced in the Middle East or the Muslim world. This is shown by a reticence by local and international human rights groups to address issues within this category, as when those arrested in the Queen Boat case and accused of “debauchery” had difficulty finding support from many traditional human rights groups. One arrested person was told that “human rights matters in Egypt have ‘more serious’ issues and they don’t want to lose their credibility with the people if they take on this case.” The understandable fear is that pushing such cutting-edge issues goes too far and risks discrediting the human rights regime by reinforcing an image of it as overly focused on the rights of those who affront putatively local cultural identities. 15. Azimi, “Prisoners of Sex.” Azimi adds that “Public regulation of morality is an area in which [Egypt’s] secular regime—often through its mouthpiece religious institution, Al Azhar—is in harmony with the Islamists.” It’s also interesting that Azimi notes that police reports often justify arrests for homosexuality as an effort to avoid harming “the country’s reputation at the international level” (Azimi is quoting from a police report)—an example of how transnational currents work in many different directions. 16. See Habib, Female Homosexuality in the Middle East. One should recognize the focus on gay males—out of a variety of sexual and gender identities—in this analysis. In this I am simply responding to the preponderance of the literature, as it largely has a focus on gay males. The absence of lesbians and other subaltern sexual orientations and gender identities in work such as Massad’s, however, should be critiqued. The literature in this field is rich in making clear the danger of conflating together many different subaltern sexualities and gender identities, which is precisely one of the dangers that must be recognized in focusing exclusively on gay males in the Arab world. Meem is an example of an organization working on behalf of lesbians in the Arab world, but there is no doubt that gay males have been the focus of much greater attention; see the Meem website, http://meemgroup.org/news. 17. Massad, “Re-Orienting Desire” and Desiring Arabs. See also Halstead and Lewicka, “Should Homosexuality Be Taught As an Acceptable Alternative Lifestyle?” 18. Massad recognizes that homosexual practices between men have a long history in the Arab world; it is the emergence of a gay identity that enrages him. 19. Massad, “Re-Orienting Desire” and Desiring Arabs. 20. Massad, Desiring Arabs, p. 41. 21. Ibid., p. 185. 22. Whitaker, “Distorted Desire.” Brian Whitaker’s book review of Desiring Arabs includes a numerical overview of reporting by human rights groups

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on sexual rights issues in the Arab world, showing how very little attention for these human rights is focused on the Arab world. 23. Massad, Desiring Arabs, p. 180. 24. Blackwood, “Transnational Sexualities in One Place.” 25. el-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World. See also Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities. Steve Murray and Will Roscoe’s book could be seen as contradictory to Khaled el-Rouayheb’s, and it certainly has a different emphasis in that Murray and Roscoe attempt to resuscitate different conceptualizations of sexuality that have existed throughout the history of the Muslim world but are critiqued by el-Rouayheb for an overly romanticized, Westernized view of the Muslim world’s homoerotic tradition, which el-Rouayheb doesn’t see evolving into “homosexuality” until the nineteenth century. Together, however, these two books give insight into the shifts and levels of sexuality in what el-Rouayheb calls “the Arab-Islamic world.” 26. abu Khalil, “Gender Boundaries and Sexual Categories in the Arab World,” p. 95. 27. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Hate Crime.” 28. See Kaoma, Globalizing the Culture Wars; and Long, “You’re Not Universal and Stop Whining About It.” 29. Interview with Kapya Kaoma in Kaoma, Globalizing the Culture Wars, p. 13. 30. Petchesky, “The Language of ‘Sexual Minorities.’” Along with others, Rosalind Petchesky makes a strong argument against the term “sexual minority,” which in many ways I accept (hence the use of other terms in this book). Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that while “sexual minority” has the disadvantage of conflating together many different groups and the even more unfortunate disadvantage of emphasizing a static identity for protection rather than the fluidity and changeability of identity, it also has some advantages. Foremost among these advantages that are lost when the term is no longer used is that in responding to state-centered repression and discrimination it highlights the similar structural position of many who have nontraditional sexual orientations or gender identities. A transvesti in Salvador, Brazil, and a gay male in Warsaw, Poland, experience their sexuality in very different contexts—as do ethnic minorities, for that matter, for example an African American in the United States compared to a Kurd in Turkey—and yet their subaltern status does mean that they share a similar structural position compared to those who identify with dominant sexualities and ethnicities, and so “minority” may be a useful descriptor all the same. One might add that “minority” also highlights structural similarities between the social position of an ethnic minority and a “sexual minority.” 31. Altman, “Global Gaze/Global Gays,” p. 430. 32. Massad, Desiring Arabs, pp. 162–163. 33. US Library of Congress, “Turkey.” 34. While this chestnut had seemingly been put to rest, US politician Mike Huckabee repeats it, indicating that is not the case: “I have to be careful

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saying this, because people get really upset—there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” Quoted in Levy, “Prodigal Son.” 35. Gross, “Queer Theory and International Human Rights Law.” 36. See Gross, “Post-Colonial Queer Globalization and Human Rights.” See also Rofel, “Qualities of Desire”; and Altman, “Rupture or Continuity?” 37. It is worth recognizing, however, that in much of the Arab world, normative and political space is to a large degree dominated by the state and by the elites who are allied to it or who, like Massad, mimic the state’s rhetoric in the language of the academy. Whatever one thinks of their existence, the voices of such elites must be addressed rather than dismissed, just as voices of those articulating sexual rights claims should be addressed rather than dismissed. 38. Massad, Desiring Arabs, p. 41. 39. Shalakany, “On a Certain Queer Discomfort with Orientalism,” p. 128. 40. Whitaker, “Distorted Desire.” See also Whitaker, Unspeakable Love. Whitaker calls attention, importantly, to lesbian life in the Middle East, which is far more invisible than gay male sexuality. 41. Human Rights Watch, “In a Time of Torture.” 42. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers. Appadurai is discussing ethnic minorities, not sexual or gender minorities. His concepts, however, illuminate their structurally similar position. 43. Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers, p. 8. 44. Ibid., p. 7. 45. Ibid., p. 45. 46. Douzinas, The End of Human Rights, p. 328. 47. Nussbaum, For Love of Country? As opposed to the “critical cosmopolitanism” that has impacted my thought on this topic, Martha Nussbaum gives the classic rendition of cosmopolitanism. See also the responses in Nussbaum’s book by fifteen authors. On critical cosmopolitanism, refer again to Delanty, “The Cosmopolitan Imagination.”

8 Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World

This book has been about how human rights figure into the political and social dynamics of the Muslim world. In that context, it underscores the complexity of the relationship between human rights, revolution, and reform. In one sense, human rights are reformist: they attempt to socialize and discipline states to reform policies in ways that accord with a global legal, political, and normative consensus regarding certain minimum rights. In another sense, human rights are revolutionary: they have the potential to create space for transformative political change from the bottom up. Human rights as an instrument of reform can advance state stability, offering tools for states to govern with greater consent and legitimacy. This reformism may prove to be insubstantial; as we have seen, many states mouth the rhetoric of human rights but do little in terms of actual implementation. Human rights may also bring, however, a revolutionary possibility. This would be very different from classic revolutions such as those seen in France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and Iran in 1979. What those events shared was a top-down template guiding many people’s thinking about how a state-society should be overturned. The application of an idée fixe of what will constitute the core of the new state-society—be it based in ideology (for example, Marxism) or identity (for example, religious or ethnic nationalisms)—animated these revolutions. Human rights are revolutionary in a contrary sense: not for applying one model of what politics should be but rather

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for granting agency to peoples to define from the bottom up what a society will be—within some constraints, but beyond one identity or ideology. Human rights, in short, can threaten state stability by giving impetus to movements that de-legitimize governments by virtue of their failure to live up to the promise of human rights. This begins as a reformist process but has latent revolutionary potential. This revolutionary promise, however, may elicit a violent backlash by forces that are threatened by the possibility of change. Revolutionary movements also court the dangerous uncertainty of a vacuum of political authority and the chaos such a vacuum may portend. As I wrote at the end of Chapter 1, I do not claim any seerlike ability about what will happen in any part of the Muslim world. I have only claimed that human rights–informed movements are possible. Indeed, as I was completing this book, the Arab Spring took shape as a dramatic example of just such possibilities. In concluding the book, therefore, I would like to reflect on how the lessons of the preceding chapters relate to the Arab Spring. I start by reviewing key points from the preceding chapters and discussing how they connect with each other. These chapters inform an understanding of how and why human rights are so threatening to status quo structures and are thus vulnerable to severe backlash from the forces empowered by such embedded structures. The second section of this chapter describes on a global level the sorts of backlashes that have, indeed, developed simultaneous to the global expansion of human rights norms. In the third section I elaborate on the Arab Spring, explaining how it provides further examples of many of the themes that have run through this book. Most notably, the Arab Spring illustrates how human rights– influenced movements open the door both to backlash and to revolutionary possibility. Last, I end by observing that even if no predictions about the future can be made with any certainty, it is clear that the key variable regarding battles for and against such revolutionary change is human agency. Such agency has the potential to alter history in unexpected ways.

Reflections on the Book This book’s connecting thread has been a focus on the disparate sources of the stubborn presence of human rights. How have human rights framed

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and informed political, economic, and social debates and action in the Muslim world? And how, in turn, have these debates connected to reconstructions of the human rights regime? My core argument from the beginning has been that human rights are a relevant variable in intellectual debates and political events in the transnational Muslim world. Human rights have a history in the region, the region is part of transnational spaces of which human rights are also a part, and, in that historical and contemporary context, human rights have had a normative impact on the consciousness of peoples in terms of how they understand their political, economic, and social possibilities. Simply put: human rights are part of how people think about the world around them. It is for these reasons that human rights cannot be ignored. They constitute a tangible variable that must be taken into account, as they have real impacts on political action both globally and in the transnational Muslim world. These impacts, in turn, inform the international human rights regime as it continues evolving in the context of global interactions. The inputs it receives at the global and local levels give rise to the possibility that it can remain relevant and even become increasingly relevant around the world as the source of language through which claims for justice are advanced. The Muslim world’s historical engagement with human rights may have been unexpected to some readers. Delving into this historical context has been an important part of this book, and Chapter 2 in particular discussed various aspects of the deep roots of human rights in the region. Going back to the human rights regime’s first treaties, Muslim states have made significant contributions to key elements of those treaties—from the right to self-determination to gender equality. The fact that this is a surprise to many indicates the extent to which the idea that the Muslim world is alien to human rights—that “they” may not even care about rights—has become embedded in the collective consciousness. This stereotype becomes particularly ugly when it fuels accusations that those working on human rights in the Muslim world are inauthentic. Looking beyond the actions that states have taken in international forums, Chapter 2 also described the long intellectual history behind the emergence of a nonstate discourse on human rights in the Arab world. Arab human rights activists and nongovernmental organizations are part of a deep-rooted tradition informing contemporary intellectual and political life, as are their counterparts in other areas of the transnational Muslim world. This history helps to explain both state and nonstate engagements with the human rights regime.

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So Chapter 2 began to establish the groundwork for later chapters that discussed in more detail the specifics of attention to human rights in the transnational Muslim world. But it also made clear that a binary conception of some sorts of people caring about human rights and some sorts of people not caring is a projection of a stereotype, not an empirically grounded observation. As in the rest of the world, in the transnational Muslim world there are fractured, overlapping, and contradictory normative formations. Some of these formations support human rights (in various ways and to various degrees) and others contest human rights (in various ways and to various degrees). There is nothing unique here. In any part of the world, the question is not if human rights are relevant, it is how are they relevant—in which ways, through which political formations, through which normative constructs, and with what impacts? Human rights violations arise from efforts to maintain state and religious power by repressing challenges to elite monopolies on religious, cultural, social, and ultimately political truth. It is for this reason that Chapter 3’s conceptualization of the Muslim world in its transnational complexity—in terms of political, economic, social, and cultural connections that work beyond the borders of the state—is so important. That complexity is a rebuke to the ideological notion that one meta-narrative can define a region’s identity. The Muslim world has never been isolated from global currents, contrary to popular stereotypes and even some academic work. The transnational Muslim world’s differing political systems and power structures, as well as its shifting identity configurations and ideological movements, intersect in a variety of ways with transnational networks, media, technologies, economic forces, and diasporic links. Its ongoing connections to such transnational currents explain the intensification of rights discourse in various parts of the region. Of course, human rights are not the only or even the most powerful force at play in transnational spaces. In fact, Chapter 3 focused less on human rights than on other transnational networks that impact the Muslim world’s politics, specifically Islamism. Al-Qaeda, in particular, was discussed in terms of how it illustrates many of the dynamics through which nonstate normative actors make an impact on the transnational Muslim world. It is not just that Islamists of various stripes work in a transnational space but also that this almost inevitably has led to intersections with the sorts of human rights networks highlighted in this book. Many of

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these intersections have been conflictual as some of the core political ideas are contradictory. Islamism, in principle, is about actualizing an ideology based in a discourse of access to eternal truth, even if in practice Islamist groups differ as to what that means and are prone to shifts and compromises. Human rights, in contrast, are not an ideology with a claim of access to such singular truth. The human rights regime seeks to ensure space for a plurality of views and a multiplicity of fluid identities by advancing principles that are grounded in shifting conceptualizations of laws, politics, norms, and institutions, and thus are open to continuous reinterpretation. Nonetheless, despite these essential differences, Islamists and human rights groups do often share a common political location: opposition to the domestic status quo, particularly in authoritarian states. That has led to seemingly unlikely intersections including points of cooperation and coalition. Chapter 3 discussed the results of some of those intersections, such as the integration of human rights language into the demands of Islamists and quasi-alliances between human rights–oriented groups and Islamist-oriented groups in places like Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan. While these are perhaps alliances of convenience, there have also been evolving articulations both of Islamism and of human rights that clearly draw on each other. More than anything else, these intersections reaffirm how human rights are a part of the fabric of normative debate in the Muslim world. Human rights, however, should no more be essentialized as static than should the Muslim world. Indeed, understanding the reasons behind the impact of human rights on the Muslim world requires understanding the specifics of what human rights have been and are becoming. What is known by the term “human rights” has changed radically over time. Too often, however, human rights are invoked (particularly by critics) in a way that simplifies and caricatures them. Moving beyond such caricatures began in Chapter 4 with an exploration of the structural forces that helped impel the creation of the human rights regime. These structural forces include the globalization of the modern state system, states’ reciprocal interest in the stability of human rights–protecting states, and the increased transnationalism of political interactions. This is what set the stage for the extension of human rights into positive law. One can discuss the various groundings and foundations of human rights all one wants, but unless there is a functioning system of positive law and at least some level of implementation, human rights are reduced to mere rhetoric.

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In fact, such an implementation apparatus is far from uniform and far from complete. It does, however, exist in a patchwork that has substantive consequences at the domestic, transnational, and international levels. This began with the conversion of the soft law Universal Declaration of Human Rights into a series of hard law treaties, the first set of which came into force in the 1970s. New treaties have continued to develop human rights accompanied by the elaboration of complex, decentralized, and partial paths to implement human rights. Chapter 4 made particular note of the “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm in this respect. Building off notions of the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights, this paradigm moves past a violations-based approach—criticizing a state after the fact—and toward an obligations-based approach that works with governments on the implementation of rights in their self-interest. The bottom line regarding implementation is that states are now compelled to take into account the reality that at the legal, political, normative, and institutional levels there is substantial pressure to implement human rights. To ignore this would be as naive as insisting that states do not violate human rights: obviously there are both massive violations of human rights as well as myriad cases of human rights being implemented in ways that impact daily political life around the globe. Chapter 4 laid the groundwork for what in Chapter 5 was termed an “antifoundational” conceptualization of human rights (with a half-nod to American philosopher Richard Rorty). Human rights in this reading do not have an extrapolitical philosophical or legal foundation that is universally relevant. Nor are human rights simply a pragmatic matter of a shifting legal consensus by states, though legal groundings are elemental. An explanation is required beyond pragmatism for the dynamic that has pushed them into international law, international politics, and international institutions. This dynamic, I would argue, relates to the rights regime structuring claims made by marginalized populations seeking representation and justice in domestic and global politics. Per Claude Lefort, human rights are the product of past struggles and the object of new ones. The global women’s movement’s deeply transformative engagement with human rights may presage the potential for the movement for rights regarding sexual orientation to have a similarly transformative impact on human rights by emphasizing social pluralism and the fluidity of identity. This antifoundational reading rejects a hierarchical conception of a human rights corpus that would resemble a prefabricated modular form ready to be installed around the world. Instead, it conceptualizes human rights as needing to privilege engagement with the shifting dynamism of

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identity and with the transnational normative currents that underpin emerging claims from vulnerable populations. The groundings of human rights in law, politics, norms, and institutions provide the superstructure within which this process can unfold. Treaties and institutions are anchors giving the human rights regime a solid entry point into international law and organizations. Treaties and institutions are, thus, essential to making human rights a relevant recourse for populations subject to systemic rights violations. But the political connections that enable various local and global actors to pressure states to implement human rights and the transnational normative movements that renew human rights laws and institutions from below are just as essential to maintaining the relevance of human rights, if not more so. The dialectic between, on the one hand, legal and institutional anchors and, on the other hand, political and normative impulses is the motor that gives the human rights regime both permanence and vitality. This was vividly illustrated in Chapters 6 and 7, which presented case studies of political and social debates. These examples show how even in the most difficult, contentious, or repressive contexts, the energy that keeps human rights alive most often comes from individuals and social networks far from seats of power in states or international organizations. As described in Chapter 6, the push for democracy in Iran comes from a grassroots movement that—in the face of state repression, without international aid, and at a continuing cost in blood—has insisted on claiming its human rights. This movement’s presence makes clear to the world the falsity of the Iranian government’s claim to speak on behalf of an undifferentiated mass of Shi‘a Iranians and, more broadly, the falsity of the claim that governments or singular political movements can speak on behalf of diverse social groups. Indeed, Iran’s democracy movement puts on the table for all to see the fluidity of political identity, in the Muslim world as elsewhere, contrary to assumptions still too commonly asserted. Beyond providing an example of the presence of human rights in contemporary debates, such events also show what is at stake in these debates. In simplest terms, they are contests between, on the one hand, power structures that seek to monopolize notions of cultural identity in order to prop up their authority and, on the other hand, efforts to make space for pluralistic and shifting claims from multiple locations within Iran and other state-societies. Debates about freedom of expression were also seen in Chapter 6 to buttress the argument that a core issue in struggles between singular and more pluralistic notions of cultural identity is the link to power.

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Debate over free expression takes place at two levels. At one level, states and powerful transnational actors have fomented putatively spontaneous fury over controversial expression—the politics of creating this fury show that it should not be taken at face value as representative of a singular Muslim monolith. At a second level, however, this fury—even if not spontaneous—should not be dismissed, as it draws from the normative well of populist anger at the West that allows such fury to be instrumentally manufactured. The normative level is where the real battle is, and at that level we see splintered and diverse points of view. As a reminder, this book has never claimed that there is a normative consensus behind human rights in any part of the world, just that human rights–influenced norms inform many debates and events. Beyond the existence of a variety of normative viewpoints, the key question is in what context they will play out. Will it be under constraints defined by states and on terms that pander to cultural nationalism and reinforce binary notions such as a clash of civilizations? Or, to the contrary, will participants from all levels of societies (including political and intellectual dissidents) contribute their views? That is the essence of what is at stake in debates over free expression. In other words, the underlying variable can be defined in the following terms: is there a democratic space in which diverse voices can contribute freely, or are debates debased by the threat of ugly repression or violence orchestrated by those atop the hierarchy of political power? Last, the debate over rights relating to sexual orientation, discussed in Chapter 7, is perhaps the most contentious case presented in this book. At the same time, it perhaps best demonstrates how pent-up demands for a more open, less static public sphere are bubbling up despite political-social repression. Such demands show the intensity and irrepressibility of forces pushing for human rights to subvert the imposition of singularly defined constructs of appropriate political, social, and cultural life. The question is whether tightly controlled political, social, and cultural life can constrain such challenges, or whether demands for rights can create a more dynamic public space in which a range of voices can impact the norms and politics of these societies, turning the debates we have been exploring into the basis of more fundamental change. A rejoinder that attempts to impose essentialized, monolithic notions of identity on Muslim societies must take into account the vibrancy of individual and group agency, the inevitability of transnational normative connections, and how these inform conceptualizations in which polit-

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ical societies are not essentialized as static but rather are open to changes based in fluid identity constructions and social pluralism. This is the conceptualization of human rights in the context of the Muslim world that has been built in this book. In short, it is a caricature to see peoples as mere objects of their domestic governments or of transnational, globalizing forces. To the contrary, they are struggling to act as agents within these contexts and should be recognized as such. The arguments that inform this conceptualization also inform this final chapter’s focus both on potential backlashes against human rights and on the reformist and even revolutionary possibilities that human rights bring.

The Global Backlash Against Human Rights In a sense, this book has had a seemingly optimistic tone. In exciting ways, human rights increasingly define which issues are discussed, how those issues are discussed, and, at times, what actions are taken regarding those issues. This is true regarding the examples on which this book has focused, just as it is true regarding global politics more generally. Human rights, for example, have put the United States in the spotlight for everything from its domestic treatment of minorities to its rendition and torture in international spaces—and Abu Ghraib in the interstices. Human rights have put European countries in the spotlight for everything from the exclusion of immigrants and minorities to the expansion of rights-based conditions for European Union membership, including state submission to rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. Human rights have put African countries in the spotlight for everything from global opposition to apartheid in South Africa to International Criminal Court indictments of Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir for the actions he oversaw in Darfur. Human rights have put Latin American countries in the spotlight for everything from the disappearances of political enemies to struggles against military rule, as with the one that ended Augusto Pinochet’s reign in Chile and ultimately brought about his indictment for human rights violations. And this book has repeatedly demonstrated how human rights are a variable that must be integrated into analyses of issues in the transnational Muslim world, from struggles for democracy to struggles for free expression and rights regarding sexual orientation. More generally, the language of human rights has been essential to keeping Palestinians on

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the world’s geopolitical map in the face of the sort of dispossession that in another era would have written a people out of history. In other parts of the Arab world, human rights increasingly inform non-Islamist opposition to the authoritarian status quo (and to some degree have come to inform the Islamist opposition as well). In Iran, human rights have been at the core of opposition to an exhausted Islamist regime, exposing the vacuity of cultural nationalist politics claiming justification in notions of religious truth. In the broader Muslim world, as in parts of Southeast Asia and Africa with Muslim-majority populations, human rights have sometimes, as in Indonesia, been part of democratic-based political movements that engage with rather than combat their societies’ inherent pluralism. And in many parts of the world that have substantial Muslim minorities—from the United States to Europe, India, and even China—human rights have been invoked to combat the sort of exclusion to which Muslims have often been consigned as the contemporary world’s great Other. Yet the unexpected emergence of human rights as a channel that enables claims for justice to be made from the bottom up has also triggered a backlash on many fronts. In Geneva, the ineffective Human Rights Commission has been supplanted by the Human Rights Council, which has shown itself to be far more effective—but sadly in a sometimes aggressively counterproductive way. Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries in particular have responded to the perceived threat of human rights by seizing the language of human rights and turning it to their often authoritarian purposes. I have already noted examples such as resolutions discussed in Chapter 6 regarding limits on free expression; some of the same countries championing those resolutions have also gone as far as to provide at least a partial shield for Sudan’s genocidal regime. Beyond the corridors of the Human Rights Council and international organizations, powerful states including China and the United States have contributed to the backlash against human rights as well. China is acutely aware of the danger that civil and political human rights represent to its model of one-party rule and so, smartly acts to subvert the international human rights regime when it can. Like other states, China is becoming more canny in proactively undermining human rights, and its economic weight enables it to enlist allies that can help stop the United Nations from addressing human rights. In the United States, the overbearing neoconservatism of the George W. Bush years distorted human rights into a rhetorical tool of US foreign policy. The

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Barack Obama administration gives indications of moving to the other extreme, at times promising to adopt a Kissingerian neorealism in which human rights are seen as an impolitic obstacle to accomplishing self-interested US foreign policy objectives. The United States, in short, remains an outsider to the expansion of the global human rights regime—as it has for decades, despite its self-flattery to the contrary.1 One may hope there is room between neoconservatism and neorealism for a nuanced foreign policy that is self-interested in a more long-term manner. This would be a policy that doesn’t attempt to impose human rights, but does see how facilitating the domestic and international institutionalization of human rights can be in the mutual interest of states and peoples. Historically, however, the United States has oscillated between false invocations of human rights rhetoric and isolationist policies that use cultural relativist arguments to either segregate itself from the international human rights regime or actively undermine human rights. How much does this backlash from states matter? Considerably, I believe, as this has been a real setback to the human rights regime further embedding itself in the workings of global politics and international law. But at the same time, while states have had structural reasons to take part in building the human rights regime, states can never be the primary carrier of human rights. They are, instead, their target. Human rights are not the property of states, nor are they dependent on the most powerful of states bringing them to the world as a gift; in fact, just the opposite is the case. When forced to abide by human rights, it is states that benefit— human rights are a gift to them, not the reverse. This is not to say that human rights represent a simple win-win proposition without losers. The key here is to distinguish between a state in one sense as the amalgamation of institutions and peoples within an internationally recognized territory, and in another sense as a government that sits atop a power structure within that state. The state in the first sense has an interest in the sorts of political, economic, and social development to which rights can contribute, as do its peoples. A government’s hold on power, however, may be threatened by these same processes that empower its peoples. Indeed, the key to the expansions of the human rights regime in the past half-century has been the efforts made by groups previously excluded from conversations about global and local politics. To downplay such groups and their normative impulses in order to put states and international organizations at the center of human rights is to downplay

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the most vibrant source of human rights expansions, as recent geopolitical events show. A backlash from states indicates how human rights continue to be contested. There is no utopia in sight. On the other hand, that backlash will, in turn, also be contested by the same nonstate actors and currents that have so often been behind human rights advances. Although states and international institutions are a powerful part of the human rights regime’s superstructure, when they have taken human rights into account it is usually because they have been forced by political and normative pressure to do so. As I have emphasized, in other words, it is people and social groups who continue to carry human rights into our political life, not states. It is important to keep this in mind as one reflects on a backlash from states against human rights, as it puts such a backlash in perspective. In real-world terms, it is not just that when states invoke human rights as part of their foreign policy that they are usually using false rhetoric. A pretense of state leadership threatens to distort our understanding of human rights by giving the false impression that peoples need to wait for the United States—or the Scandinavian countries, or the European Union, or the African Union, or some other such power—to lead. To the contrary, while there is no ultimate leader or source for human rights, the chaotic impulses that keep human rights relevant most often come from people on the ground in different political, economic, social, and cultural locations around the globe. A backlash from states is to be expected and, in fact, is something of a constant. It is people, social groups, political movements, and transnational networks who have put and kept human rights on the agenda in domestic and global politics. So, yes, human rights are in a precarious position, as they have long been. But this just means that the struggles from which human rights have emerged are continuing.

The Arab Spring: Between Backlash and Revolutionary Potential As much as anything else, this book has described ways in which populations in the Muslim world have seized on human rights language and made that language their own. The Arab Spring illustrates this precise point with its openly raised demands for rights, freedom, and justice, de-

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mands that have brought millions into the street. This was perhaps most heartbreakingly expressed by the Egyptian who immolated himself, on the model of Tunisia’s Mohamed Bouazizi, after crying: “Security service, my rights are lost in this country.”2 Of course, generalized calls for rights are far different than having consensus around a political agenda. The results, therefore, are messy, confusing, and contradictory and will likely remain so. As noted at the start of this chapter, the immediate outcomes of the Arab Spring portend backlashes that demonstrate the deeply embedded structures opposing human rights in the region’s states. However, as also noted, the Arab Spring’s uprisings also show the potential for deeply transformative change despite the obstacles they face. The Arab Spring has been, at heart, a call by populations for their governments to live by the word of their human rights commitments. In this sense it was anticipated by social changes that have been sweeping the region for some years that were at best only implicitly political— what Asef Bayat termed “social non-movements.”3 The transition toward openly political movements began in purely reformist ways, with calls for governments such as those in Tunisia and Egypt to abide by the human rights obligations that they had rhetorically affirmed. The failure of these governments to respond was part of the pent-up frustrations that ultimately exploded. Such an explosion was, in a sense, unsurprising. It is not so much that the governments would not implement human rights but that, by their essence, they could not implement human rights. Regimes such as those that held power in Tunisia and Egypt for so long would immediately lose power if they began respecting democracy and human rights: the very foundations of their governments were authoritarian and based in power hierarchies that the implementation of human rights would dissolve. Reformism—that is, working within the system—can have an impact in states that have at least a degree of fluidity in the relationship between authority and power. In states where political authority equates to a virtual monopoly on power in the political, economic, and social spheres, it is more likely that those with that monopoly on power will see no avenues toward democratic compromise. Reform, in other words, becomes impossible. It is then that human rights become the language of revolution for those who dare to make claims against such governments. We see all the uncertainty and even danger of what that revolutionary human rights language can lead to in the Arab Spring. The Arab

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Spring has unleashed revolutionary moments—i.e., it has advanced hopes for revolutionary change with some partial successes. These successes, partial as they are, have stunned observers due to their decentralized leadership (if, indeed, there has been leadership at all) and grassroots energy. Mohammed Bamyeh aptly describes this in the following terms: In these revolutionary experiments we encounter a rare combination of an anarchist method and a liberal intention: the revolutionary style is anarchist, in the sense that it requires little organization, leadership, or even coordination; tends to be suspicious of parties and hierarchies even after revolutionary success; and relies on spontaneity, minimal planning, local initiative, and individual will much more than on any other factors. On the other hand, the explicit goal of all Arab revolutions is the establishment of a liberal state—explicitly, a civic state— not an anarchist society.4

This anarchic energy from the bottom up is part of what makes these revolutionary moments so different from classic revolutions. They have been an expression of normative shifts that have taken place on the ground, especially among youth, under the noses of their rulers (and indeed under the noses of many academic observers). Given the repressive regimes in which these populations lived, opposition almost had to take form in amorphous, “anarchic” ways. These revolutionary moments by themselves, however, are far from achieving anything that can be considered an actual revolution. At best, their lack of leadership complicates attempts to transition their anarchic energy into a consolidated role in their governments. And, of course, forces associated with the previous status quo still maintain powerful positions from which they can resist fundamental change. At worst, they have released violent forces of backlash and chaos from state elites who know that—lacking democratic and human rights–based legitimacy—there is no possible coexistence with forces pushing for human rights. They know that in any representative system, those currently governing would be pushed from power and into either exile or a criminal trial. In this, the Arab Spring has been analogous to Iran’s frustrated Green Movement, which two years earlier de-legitimized Iran’s government without dislodging it from power. This anticipated both the hopes and the frustrations of the Arab Spring. Egypt is an example of such an incomplete revolution that has seen steps both forward and backward. “Revolution Tahrir Square style” has

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opened up extraordinary possibilities in Egypt, but it has also exposed how deeply entrenched preexisting power structures are. Hosni Mubarak has been successfully deposed and, as I write this, is on trial. This is remarkable. At the same time, however, the military of which Mubarak was a part remains the dominant institution in Egypt. The military has worked to maintain the deeply embedded power hierarchies that sustain its dominant position. It is doing so in a delicate dance with the Muslim Brotherhood, which, while sharing the military’s distance from the Arab Spring’s anarchic impulses, nonetheless combines popular appeal with much more organized, institutionalized forms of power that have allowed it to move into the power vacuum Egypt’s Arab Spring created. Until now, the Muslim Brotherhood has cooperated as much as it has clashed with the Egyptian military; it is unclear to what degree the Brotherhood seeks to replicate top-down forms of hierarchical power or is open to more substantial pluralism.5 The impact of human rights movements on opening normative and political paths toward a more democratic and pluralistic Islamism—as explored throughout this book—will be given a test in post-Mubarak Egypt. Overthrowing Mubarak was merely an uncertain first step toward a more complete Egyptian revolution that may or may not be realized. Events in Syria provide an example of an even more ferocious backlash. Whatever the final result, the Bashar al-Assad regime has shown its awareness that granting democratic rights would lead to its clique losing power. The response has been predictable: brutal massacres and attempts to foment sectarian strife that will frustrate any possibility of either reform or revolution. Muammar Qaddafi’s overthrow in Libya followed a similar dynamic of protest, massacres, and strife that verged on civil war. Qaddafi’s defeat, aided by a North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention, demonstrated more than just the distinct geopolitical dynamics at play in Libya as compared to Syria. It showed that the dangers of these uprisings are more than just that they may be partial or that they may set the stage for bloody backlashes. The ultimate danger is that, once the status quo is overturned, there will be a political vacuum in which chaos will take hold—Yemen’s current multileveled civil war is perhaps the best example of this. There is very little political scientists can say with the “scientific” certainty the field claims. Among the better-established lessons in political science, however, is that while democracies are more stable than authoritarian governments, the states most vulnerable to instability and civil conflict are those

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undergoing a democratic transition.6 This is precisely what faces Libya, Yemen, and other Arab states that are looking beyond the rulers who have repressed them for decades, but must contend with the disparate and disorganized nature of the forces behind these overthrows. It is of course premature to draw conclusions from the early days of the Arab Spring. What we know is that it has moved past mere reformism and brings real hope for revolutionary change based in, among other things, claims for human rights in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres. However, there are reasons to fear that these revolutionary moments will be superficial or fleeting. A likely outcome is a contained reform, with the structures of the deep state in places like Egypt retaining privilege and power. These revolutionary moments have also made real fears of massacres and civil wars, chaos and cooptation both in the present and the future. But these revolutionary moments hold promise of real transformations as well. However this revolutionary potential plays out in the short term, its very existence has made clear this book’s main thesis: that despite many people’s assumptions, discourses of opposition to the status quo have been roiling under the seemingly stolid surface of even the most authoritarian parts of the Muslim world, including discourses that show how human rights have affected both normative expectations and political actions. Whatever the types of backlash that occur, the Arab Spring has discredited the cliché that rulers and their intellectual allies sought hard to maintain: that this is a region of monolithic identities at odds with notions of human rights and other pluralistic, democratic ideas. Further, it has opened space for the multiple identities and ideologies present in the Arab world—and the Muslim world, more generally—to express themselves in the public sphere. This is to say that space has been opened for a different and more fluid form of politics. This holds revolutionary hope. So long as attention is focused away from nationalist notions of monolithic identities and toward grassroots demands for the sorts of rights this book has discussed, then a very different future is possible. While the forces arrayed against such a future are powerful, the human agency that the Arab Spring demonstrates is also powerful. Arab publics have stood up to the paralyzing fear of opposing some of the most repressive regimes the world has seen. A revolutionary utopia is not waiting on the other side of those remarkable acts of collective bravery. But as Richard Falk aptly puts it, on the other side of fear is agency7—the desire to be the subject of politics rather than the object of politics.

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The Urgency of Agency Beyond this book’s main argument, its case studies, and the subthemes I have described, there has been one more overarching theme of great importance. Human rights are often discussed as if they are in and of themselves a goal, and in and of themselves an ideological worldview. This is not the case. To the contrary, human rights are more about processes than ends—processes that can restrain state dominance, empower peoples and social groups, and advance individual and group agency. What is accomplished with that empowerment and agency is not determined by human rights, it is only enabled by human rights. If agency is shorthand that embodies what the human right regime advances in various ways and at various levels, then agency, in turn, is not an end in itself. Rather, greater human agency contributes to breaking down rigid identities and ideas and, in so doing, breaking down borders between peoples and allowing pluralism to flourish. This is, ultimately, the essence of human rights. They are the opposite of an ideology in the sense that the rights regime does not prescribe what is the correct political or economic or social system. But if there is a core to the agency that human rights promote, it is that such agency gnaws away at the foundations of identities and ideologies based in the dominance of one meta-truth. There are many fissures in seemingly monolithic blocs of authoritarianism and patriarchy in the Muslim world and elsewhere. The point I would make in this respect is that the alternative to authoritarianism and repressive power structures lies in opening space for fluid, overlapping, and multiple identities that break down essentialized culture. It is as part of this project that human rights are a powerful tool. And the essence of this tool is that it refuses to decree what should replace essentialized culture and fixed ideological worldviews—it is left to the imagination of humans to do so. Is this ideological? To the contrary, just as the ultimate source of human rights is antifoundational, then in my conceptualization of human rights they are about helping us deconstruct the notion of fixed ideological foundations in all domains. For a truly emancipatory politics that will permit real change in endless variations, this is essential. One of my first teachers, Hamid Dabashi, discusses the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in a way that eloquently echoes the process I envision; I would like to conclude this book by sharing Dabashi’s words: “If Kiarostami is successful in holding our attention constant for a while and thus teaching us to see differently . . . he will

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map out the principal contours of a post-metaphysical mode of being in which no ideology, no absolutist claim to truth, no metanarrative of salvation, ever will monopolize the definition of our ‘identity,’ the constitution of ‘subjectivity.’”8 This anti-ideological mode is a revolutionary project just as much as building authoritarianism is a project. Human rights are being debated in regard to various topics in various domains and various geographies. These debates, however, are ultimately about more than just those topics or domains. They are about moving beyond exclusivist claims to power and identity that for too long have blighted the field of political possibility—and, indeed, the field of human possibility.

Notes 1. Mokhtari, After Abu Ghraib. Shadi Mokhtari makes a convincing case that both human rights offenders and defenders have too often contributed to a distorted construct of human rights that poses the United States as a leader needed to advance human rights globally. US leadership implies US ownership. This understanding of ownership reinforces the misbegotten cliché of a Westto-East flow of human rights. To the degree that there is a misperception of such ownership, it inhibits the spread of human rights. To the contrary, as Mokhtari makes clear, the legitimacy of human rights is determined by the degree to which rights are identified with local actors and normative frames. 2. Younis, “Egyptian Sets Himself on Fire.” 3. Bayat, Life as Politics. 4. Bamyeh, “Anarchist, Liberal, and Authoritarian Enlightenments: Notes from the Arab Spring.” 5. Martini and Taylor, “Commanding Democracy in Egypt.” 6. Mansfield and Snyder, “Democratic Transitions.” 7. Falk, “Revolution on the Nile.” 8. Dabashi, Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema, pp. 303–304.

Acronyms

AKP AOHR CERD ECOSOC EOHR HRC ICC ICCPR ICESCR IGLHRC ILGA NATO NGO OIC UDHR

Justice and Development Party (Turkey) Arab Organization for Human Rights International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Economic and Social Council (UN) Egyptian Organization for Human Rights Human Rights Council (UN) International Criminal Court International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission International Lesbian and Gay Association North Atlantic Treaty Organization nongovernmental organization Organization of the Islamic Conference Universal Declaration of Human Rights

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Index

Abstraction, human rights as, 72–75 Abu Ghraib prison crime, 27, 96–97, 181 Abu Khalil, As’ ad, 127–128 Abu Zeid, Nasr Hamid, 133–135, 138– 140, 143 Act Up!, 136 Afghanistan: self-determination debate, 33 Afshari, Reza, 128–130 Agency: antifoundational model emphasizing, 106–107; Arab Spring opening space for, 188; human rights bestowing, 15; importance of agency as process, 189–190; Iran’s election, 127–129; as key variable in revolution, 16; ownership of human rights, 190(n1); power for change, 19–20; sexual orientation and gender identity, 153 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 125, 130–131 al-Banna, Hassan, 53–54 al-Fatiha, 158 al-Qaeda, 176; normative relevance of human rights, 61; redefining Muslim identity, 55; as transnational, nonstate, normative actor, 21(n10); transnationalism, 67(n9)

al-Tahtawi, Rifa’a Badawi Rafi’, 36 Ali, Muhammad, 36 Ambiguity in human rights, 116(n29) American Anthropological Association, 102, 115(n19) Amin, Qasim, 39 an-Naim, Abdullahi, 17, 40 Anarchic state systems, 83 Annan, Kofi, 98 Anticolonialist movements: Egypt’s dynamism during, 54; human rights as basis of support, 37–39; Palestinian NGOs, 39–40 Antifoundational approach, 10–11, 178; justification for human rights, 106, 108–109; normative movements and political processes shaping human rights, 111–114 Anti-imperialism: Iran, 121 Antoun, Farah, 36–37 Appadurai, Arjun, 164 Arab Charter on Human Rights, 41 Arab Human Development Reports, 37 Arab League, 41 Arab Organization for Human Rights (AOHR), 38 Arab Spring: challenge and backlash, 15–16; cultural relativism justifying racist oppression, 105; hope for lasting revolutionary

211

212

Index

change, 188; Iran’s election controversy presaging, 13, 124; new approach to governance, 1–2; opening political space, 6; partial successes, 185–187; as product of globalization, 100; root causes of, 184–185; secularism and religion, 40; Syrian backlash, 187 Arab Street, 2, 20(n2) Arab world: civil society and human rights, 35–42; defining, 4–5 Arafat, Yasser, 26, 39 Armenian genocide, 27, 44(n3) Australia: sodomy law, 73–74 Authenticity: ethnic and sexual minority rights, 161–162; Iran’s elections, 125–126, 128–129; Middle Eastern gay male identity, 156–159 Authoritarianism: Arab civil society’s opposition, 36; defining a transnational Muslim world, 49; impact of human rights on opposition, 5; Iran’s struggle for democracy, 119, 121; monolithic “Arab Street,” 2; overthrow versus reformist political practices, 14–15; Palestinian NGOs countering, 39; sexual identity and orientation, 13– 14; state inability to implement human rights, 185; transnational human rights norms, 57 Azimi, Negar, 155, 170(n15) Azmy, Mahmoud, 32–33 Backlash to human rights protest: Arab Spring’s potential for change, 2–3; authoritarian use of, 182; contesting, 184; global nature of, 15; Syrian backlash to Arab Spring, 187 Bahais, 104 Bamyeh, Mohammed, 186 Barefoot Islam, 54 Basha, Amal, 62 Beirut Declaration, 41 Ben Baraka, Mehdi, 37 bin Laden, Osama, 60 Bottom-up agency, 107 Bouazizi, Mohamed, 185

Bureaucratic embedding of human rights, 98 Burma: sanctions, 85 Bush, George W., 96–97, 160, 182–183 Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, 42 Cairo Trilogy (Mahfouz), 54 Capitalism: human rights as property of, 100 Caricature of human rights, 73 Cartoon. See Danish cartoon Casablanca Declaration, 41–42 Cassin, Rene, 32, 45(n19) Cheah, Pheng, 99–100, 157 China: backlash against human rights, 182; defining a transnational Muslim world, 50; integration into human rights regime, 86; sanctions, 85 Civil rights, 81; Muslim states’ role in international development of, 34 Civil rights movement, Iran’s revolution as, 131 Civil society: human rights NGOs, 35– 42; Iran as religious democracy, 135–136 Clash of civilizations, 139–140, 157 Clash of Civilizations? (Huntington), 19 Coalitions, political: Islamist and liberal movements, 17, 21(n14) Colombia, 92(n26) Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 74 Communalism, 103, 115(n22) Compliance: determining patterns of, 84; meaningful system of law, 85; special procedures, 34–35 Consensus on human rights, 41 Constructivism: significance of transnationalism, 55–56 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 79 Cosmopolitanism, 107–108, 166 Court systems, 82 Cultural configurations: culture as dimension, 100–101; states’ strategies for undermining NGO work, 42–43; women’s rights, 39

Index Cultural diversity, 74. See also Diversity Cultural exceptionalism, 103 Cultural relations, 129 Cultural relativism, 98–105; authenticity and legitimacy of Iran’s elections, 125–126; conceptualizing human rights, 105– 106; Foucault on the Iranian revolution, 127; Mahmood’s static view of Arab Spring protest, 46(n32) Culturalism: Iran’s dynamism, 129– 130 Culture: free expression and religious sensitivity, 134–135; human rights as cultural imposition, 156; human rights as responsibility on state rather than culture, 102 Dabashi, Hamid, 127–128, 131, 189– 190 Danish cartoon, 12, 59–60, 133–134, 139–141, 150(nn38,41) Darfuris, 104 Death penalty: for homosexual acts, 154, 160, 164, 169(n8); United Kingdom, 84–85 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (France), 73 Decolonization: dynamic origins of human rights, 109; Muslim states’ role in human rights declarations, 31 Defamation of religion resolutions, 120, 132–135, 145(n1) Democracy: Arab civil society, 36; free expression controversy, 12–13; free expression interdependence, 135– 136; free expression providing normative legitimacy, 132–133; free expression’s interdependence with, 120; interdependence and relevance of political rights, 144– 145; Iran as religious democracy, 121–124, 135–136; Iran’s dynamism, 129–130; Iran’s history and theology, 145(n5); Iran’s religious-political marriage threatening, 142–143; Iran’s

213

struggle for, 119; normative expectations and shifting political impacts, 10; social movements engaging in rights discourse, 182; South Africa’s HIV drug availability, 136–137; stability and civil conflict, 187–188. See also Iran, election in Democratic transition, 187–188 Demographic currents: Arab Spring, 2– 3 Desiring Arabs (Massad), 19, 156, 169(n13) Development, economic and social: human rights intersecting with, 56– 57; rights-based approaches, 89 Diaspora: defining a transnational Muslim world, 49–50 Disabilities, persons with, 79 Discrimination: international human rights law, 79. See also Racism Dissidents, 104 Diversity: human rights protecting, 103–105; Iran’s election, 129; myth of Muslim world as monolithic whole, 48; theoretical and empirical views of human rights, 100–101 Divorce: Egypt’s abu Zeid case, 133 Domestic politics: Arab human rights NGOs, 41; compliance with international law, 84–89 Dudgeon v. United Kingdom, 153 Duties, religion and, 143 Dynamism, 81, 112–113; expanding to include all marginalized groups, 167; free expression and, 133; Iran, 129–130; “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm, 80–81 Economic rights, 73, 81–82 Economic structures: endurance after regime overthrow, 5–6 Education: Arab civil society’s educational programs, 35; free expression and the right to, 137; Iran’s individualism, 130; right to, 82 Egypt: abu Zeid case, 133–135, 138– 139; Arab civil society’s

214

Index

intellectual history, 37; Arab civil society’s NGO work, 38; Arab Spring as incomplete revolution, 186–187; Arab Spring platform, 1– 2; 1503 Procedure, 35; gay identity and rights, 163–164; Islamistliberal coalitions, 17; Kifaya movement, 51; Mubarak’s hypocrisy over human rights, 60– 61; Muslim Brotherhood, 54; Nasserists suppressing Islamist rights, 28–29, 37–40, 63; public regulation of morality, 170(n15); Queen Boat raid, 13, 154, 170(n14); right to selfdetermination, 33; self-immolation, 185; state inability to implement human rights, 185; UDHR exclusion of self-determination, 32–33 Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR), 29, 57, 63 el-Rouayheb, Khaled, 159 Election. See Iran, election in Embedded power structures: entrenchment of Egypt’s power structures, 187; role in reformist processes, 6 Emergency rule (Egypt), 60 Empowerment, 152. See also Agency Enforcement mechanisms: international law’s lack of centralized apparatus, 9; lack of centralization, 86 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 85 Eshkevari, Hasan Yousefi, 49 Ethics: natural and positive law, 76–77 Ethnicity, 152–153 European Court of Human Rights, 85– 86, 153 European Union: backlash against violations, 181; state sovereignty, 84–85 Expectations and attitudes. See Normative expectations Expression, freedom of. See Free expression Faith in Moderation (Schwedler), 52 Fascism, 37 Fatah rule, 26, 39

Fatwa: Salman Rushdie, 134, 138, 147(n29), 148–149(n35) Feminism, 40; Arab civil society, 39; Islamic feminism as crossfertilization of human rights norms, 97. See also Gender equality; Women’s rights 1503 Procedure, 35 First International Conference of the Arab Human Rights Movement, 41–42 Fluid identities, 161–166, 171(n30), 179 Foucault, Michel, 126–127 Foundations of human rights, 10–11; relativist approach, 99–105. See also Antifoundational approach; Origins of human rights France: anticolonial movements, 37– 38; Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 73 Franco, Francisco, 115(n25) Free expression: consequences of suppressing, 141, 143; Danish cartoon crisis and abu Zeid case, 133–135; defamation of religion, 145(n1); democracy’s interdependence with, 120, 135– 136; human rights informing political debate, 12–13; human rights language, 59–60; importance of debate over sexuality, 167–168; indivisibility of rights, 136–137; Iran’s religious-political marriage threatening democracy, 142–143; normative legitimacy of democracy in Iran, 132–133; Rushdie fatwa, 134, 138–140; singular and pluralistic notions of cultural identity, 179–180; UN’s defamation of religion resolutions, 120 Freedom of thought and conscience, 137 Gay and Lesbian Arabic Society, 158 Gays: fluidity of sexual identity, 161– 166, 171(n30); focus on males, 170(n16); gay men in the Arab world, 13–14; Massad’s “gay

Index missionaries,” 156–158, 160, 164; in the military, 85. See also Sexual identity; Sexual orientation Gender equality: ICCPR and ICESCR provision, 33; Muslim states’ contributions to treaty elements, 175; response to embedded power structures, 152–153; sexual politics in Iran, 169(n10). See also Women’s rights Gender identity: advancing human rights claims, 152–153; authoritarian nationalism and, 113; authoritarian response, 13–14; Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 74; social movements challenging traditional concept of human rights, 111; transnational reach of, 151–152 Ghonim, Wael, 1–2 Global context: antifoundationalist approach, 11; dynamism of international law, 3–4; Muslim world’s involvement in and contribution to, 176; transnational political space, 8 Globalization: emergence of human rights, 75 Governance: Arab civil society’s stance, 36; Arab Spring platform, 1–2; defining a transnational Muslim world, 49–50; historical context of human rights regime, 7; Iran’s struggle for democracy, 119; Islamism and transnationalism, 51– 56; legitimacy of Iran‘s “religious democracy,” 123–126; Palestinian civil rights, 27. See also Authoritarianism Grassroots movements, 93; Arab Spring’s partial successes, 186 Green Movement (Iran), 120, 144, 186 Groundings: agency as fundamental element of human rights, 107; antifoundational approach, 111– 114; law, politics, norms, and institutions, 94–98 Halliday, Fred, 67(n3), 68(n31) Hamas rule, 26, 39

215

Hard law, 95 Hassan, Bahey el-Din, 28–30, 57, 63 Health services, right to: sexual identity rights, 74; South Africa’s HIV drug provision, 86–87, 136– 137 Hierarchies, political, 4 Historical context of human rights regimes and discourse: Arab civil society, 35–42; Egyptian Nasserists and Islamists, 28–29, 37–40; importance and relevance of, 42– 44; Muslim states’ role in human rights regime, 31–35; Muslim world’s historical engagement, 175; Palestinian case, 26–27; regional roots of human rights discourse, 7; structural bases of the emergence of human rights, 75–78 HIV treatment, 86–87, 136 Horizontal enforcement, 85–86 Human Rights Commission, 182 Human Rights Council, 182 Human Rights: From Where and to Where (Khoury), 37 Human rights regime: characterizing and conceptualizing, 71–72; domestic, transnational, and international levels, 88–89; impact of, 89–90; importance in shaping global issues, 1–2; levels and elements of implementation, 82– 89; Muslim states’ role in the development of, 31–35; political and structural factors defining, 8–9; shifting substance of, 78–82; structural bases of the emergence of, 75–78; transcending abstractions and caricatures, 72–75 Human rights violations: backlash against, 181–184; cost of violating normative expectations, 97; debate over effectiveness of human rights regime, 18; enforcement operations, 87–88; global continuation of, 83; hypocrisy over, 60; Palestinians’ self-determination, 27; political, economic, social, and cultural structures fostering, 110– 111, 113–114; sanctions, 85

216

Index

Human Rights Watch, 60, 153 Humanitarian law, 97 Huntington, Samuel, 19 Hussain, Taha, 37 Identity: al-Qaeda attempting to redefine, 55–56; Arab Spring opening space for, 188; eliminating political opposition and political identities, 103; fixed and fluid identity, 161–166, 179; fueling revolution, 173–174; transnationalism and Islamism, 51. See also Gender identity; Sexual orientation Ideology: anti-ideological mode, 189– 190; Arab Spring opening space for, 188; de-ideologizing religion, 142–143; fueling revolution, 173– 174; global nature of fundamentalist ideologies, 53–55; Iran’s election, 126; normative expectations regarding, 96–97. See also Islamism Impact of human rights, 89–90 Implementation, 177–178; integration of human rights norms despite lack of implementation, 56–57; Iran’s election as commitment to, 125– 126; levels and elements of, 82–89; as “moral imperative,” 74–75; states’ inability to implement human rights, 185 Implementation mechanisms, 9; Arab states’ engagement with the international human rights regime, 40–41; transnational dialogues, 11– 12 Incitement, 137–138, 140–141 India: Rushdie fatwa, 138; sexual orientation rights, 153 Indigenous authoritarianism, 2. See also Authoritarianism Individualism, 103, 115(n22) Indivisibility of rights, 136–137 Indonesia: Danish cartoon, 140 Institutions. See State institutions Integration of human rights, international, 84–86

Intellectual history, 175; cultural relativism, 98–104; diaspora influence on, 64–65; diversity of the Muslim world, 24; dynamism of human rights discourse, 106; human rights informing debate, 16–17; Islamicizing human rights discourse, 53–54; Ottoman Period to contemporary society, 36–37; political rights in Iran, 128–130; women’s rights, 38 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), 79 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 31–33, 73, 79–80, 137, 143 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 31–33, 73, 79–80 International Criminal Court, 62 International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), 158 International Institute of Law for the Francophone Countries, 61 International law, 3–4; human rights grounding in, 9–10; implementation and enforcement, 83–84; lack of centralized apparatus, 9; protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, 153 International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), 158 Internet: transnational Muslim world, 50–51 Iran: cultural relativism as justification for racism, 105; defining a transnational Muslim world, 49– 50; dynamic nature of sexual politics, 169(n10); dynamism, 129– 130; fluidity of political identity, 179; free expression and religious sensitivity, 134–135; Green Movement deligitimizing government, 186; history and theology of democracy, 145(n5); human rights infiltrating politics, 131–132; intellectual protest against religious regime, 141–142;

Index minorities’ pressure for rights, 104; normative currents fostering expectations of human rights, 96; “real” and “authentic” Iran, 128– 129; religious-political marriage threatening democracy, 142–143; Rushdie fatwa, 138, 147(n29), 148–149(n35); secularism and religion, 40; sexual identity, 154; sexual-orientation-based persecution, 154–155; shifting intellectual currents, 130–131; transnationalism, 64–65 Iran, election in: commitment to human rights implementation, 125– 126; controversy over, 13; denial of agency to Iranians, 126–129; equating state and individual, 126– 127; human rights language permeating, 120–121; normative legitimacy of democracy, 132; “religious democracy,” 121–124; as struggle for democracy, 119; twittering, 145(n2) Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees, 155 Iraq, US-led invasion, 7 Islam: religious stance on human rights, 24–26 Islamism, 2; Arab civil society and, 35; contradictions with human rights, 53–54; Egypt’s public regulation of morality, 170(n15); Hamas political model, 26–27; historical context of Palestinian demands, 7; Islamic feminism as cross-fertilization of human rights norms, 97; legitimacy of human rights discourse, 28–29; political coalitions, 21(n14); reconciling human rights and religious doctrine, 16–17, 65, 176; relativist critique of the foundations of human rights, 100; secularism, human rights, and, 40; states’ strategies for undermining NGO work, 42–43; transnational human rights norms, 56–58; transnationalism and, 51–56; variables in the Muslim world, 5. See also Iran

217

Isolationism: US, 183 Israel: Palestinian anticolonialism and human rights, 38–39; Palestinian involvement in civil rights, 26–27; result of Arab naksa, 38 Jordan: US human rights violation in the Middle East, 27 Justification of human rights, 99, 108– 109 Karroubi, Mehdi, 125 Khamenei, Ali, 121–125, 139 Kharai, Kamal, 28 Kharazi, Kamal, 147(n29) Khatami, Mohammad, 28, 125 Khayr al-Din Pasha, 36 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 12, 54, 126, 134, 148–149(n35) Khoury, Raif, 37 Kiarostami, Abbas, 189–190 Kifaya movement (Egypt), 17, 51 Klausen, Lytte, 139–140 Kosovo, 87 Kurds, Turkish, 44(n3), 81; minority pressure for human rights, 104; redefining identity, 162 Language of human rights, 171(n30), 176; Arab Spring’s use of, 184– 185. See also Antifoundational approach Law: multiple groundings of human rights, 94–98. See also International law Lawyers: Islamist political opposition, 28–29 Lebanon: defining a transnational Muslim world, 49; UDHR exclusion of self-determination, 32 LeFort, Claude, 178 Legitimacy, 28; Iran’s elections, 125– 126; Iran’s Green Movement delegitimizing government, 186; Iran’s “religious democracy,” 123– 126; Middle Eastern gay male identity, 156–159; normative legitimacy of democracy in Iran, 132; sexual orientation and gender identity, 155; Western origins

218

Index

delegitimizing human rights, 101– 102 Lesbians, 170(n16) Liberation of Women (Amin), 39 Liberia, 87 Libya, 187 Local context: antifoundationalist approach, 11, 108–109; grassroots movements connecting to the human rights regime, 93; ownership of human rights, 190(n1) Local politics, 3–4 Los Angeles, California, 49 Lutfi al-Sayyid, Ahmad, 37 Mahfouz, Naguib, 54 Mahmood, Saba, 46(n32) Malik, Charles, 32 Marginalized groups, 74; extension of human rights to, 78; sexual orientation and, 155; social movements forming entry points for human rights, 110; suppression of free expression, 141 Marxist perspective, 37, 54 Massad, Joseph, 13, 19, 156–166, 169(n13), 170(n16) Massadeq, Mohammad, 129 Media: control of contemporary media, 21(n9); normative flow of human rights-related information, 10 Modern state, 76–77 Modernity, 54–55; Foucault on the Iranian revolution, 127 Modernization theory, 18–19 Mokhtari Shadi, 27–28, 190(n1) Monolithic forces, Islam and Islamism as, 16, 40 Montazeri, Hussein-Ali, 138 Moral imperative of human rights implementation, 74–75 Moroccan Organization for Human Rights, 42 Morocco: Arab civil society, 37 Mousavi, Mir-Hossein, 130–131, 135 Moussa, Amr, 35, 139–140 Mubarak, Hosni, 25; abu Zeid case and the Danish cartoon crisis, 133–134; entrenchment of Egypt’s power

structures, 187; hypocrisy over human rights, 60–61 Multidimensionality of rights, 81–82 Musa, Nabawiyya, 39 Muslim Brotherhood, 54, 133, 187 Muslim world: Arab civil society, 35– 42; coexisting with non-Muslim societies, 12–13; defining, 4–5, 21(n16); historical background of human rights, 43–44; minority pressure for human rights, 104; prominence of Muslim states in human rights discourse, 31–35; structural bases of the human rights regime, 90; transnationalisminternational human rights link, 112. See also Egypt; Iran; Islam Naksa (setback), 38 Nassaf, Malak Hinfi, 39 Nasserists, 28–29, 37–40, 63 National security, 103 Nationalism: Arab civil society, 39–40; Arab Spring, 5–6; Iran’s election, 126; resisting human rights, 100; sexuality and gender identity, 113 Natural law, 76–77, 82 Nature of human rights: law, politics, norms, and institutions, 94–98 Negative and positive rights, 80–81 Networking: normative expectations of human rights in the Muslim world, 64; transnational dimensions of politics and human rights, 8 The New Woman (Amin), 39 Nigeria, 87; Danish cartoon, 140; death penalty for homosexual acts, 154, 164, 169(n8) Nonaligned states, 31–33 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): Arab civil society, 35–42; bureaucratic embedding of human rights, 98; importance to human rights, 26; role in normative expectations of human rights, 64; socialization pressures for adopting international standards, 96 Normative expectations, 4; bringing rights from the abstract to the real, 58; defining norms, 96; Iran’s

Index “religious democracy,” 123–125; lack of consensus on human rights, 180; multiple groundings of human rights, 94–98; normative movements and political processes shaping human rights, 111–114; as part of politics in the Muslim world, 63–66; reconciling democracy with Iranian authoritarianism, 119–120; sexual orientation as Western invention, 158–159; shifts in, 58; statedominated space in the Arab world, 172(n37); transnational human rights norms, 56–63; transnational space, 48 Norms: defining, 96; human rights grounding in, 9–10; reconciling the Muslim world with international norms on human rights, 24–26 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 87, 187 Nuclear weapons: Iran, 123 Obama administration, 183 Opposition to the state, 103; human rights and the non-Islamist language of, 5 Organization of Islamic Cooperation, 182 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), 41, 120, 145(n1), 150(n38), 160 Orientalism, 104–105 Origins of human rights, 73–74; contemporary global relevance, 108–109; disparate sources, 174– 175; dynamic rather than philosophical origins, 108–109; foundational approach, 94; relativist approach, 99 Ottoman Empire: Arab civil society’s call for reform, 36 Oversight and monitoring, 80 Ownership of human rights, 82– 83 Pakistan: 1503 Procedure, 35; Rushdie fatwa, 138 Palestinian Authority (PA), 39

219

Palestinians: anticolonialism and human rights, 38–39; backlash against violations, 181–182; history of human rights involvement, 26– 27; international law enforcing claims of, 7; minority pressure for human rights, 104; Zionism denying Palestinian identity, 162, 171–172(n34) Particularist context of human rights, 3 Patriarchal family and social structures, 39–40 Petchesky, Rosalind, 171(n30) Philosophical abstraction, human rights as, 105–106 Political configurations, 4; defining human rights, 8–9; human rights as part of politics, 63–66; human rights informing debates, 12–14; Islamism and transnationalism, 52– 53; secularism and religion, 40; social configuration link, 13 Political rights, 81 Political structures: endurance after regime overthrow, 5–6 Politics: authenticity and legitimacy of Iran’s elections, 125–126; domestic, transnational, and international levels, 88–89; globalization, 75–78; human rights grounding in, 9–10; impact of human rights, 89–90; interdependence and relevance of political rights, 144–145; Iran’s “religious democracy,” 123–124; Iran’s shifting intellectual currents, 130–131; multiple groundings of human rights, 94–98; normative movements and political processes shaping human rights, 111–114; religious-political marriage threatening democracy, 142–143 Positive and negative rights, 80–81 Positive law, 76–77, 82, 176 Postcolonial world: Arab civil society, 38; resisting human rights, 100 Power differential, 85–86 Power relations: human rights as responsibility on state rather than culture, 102–103; Iran’s election

220

Index

threatening the power elite, 135; Iran’s ruling elites’ legitimacy, 128; social rights, 152–153 Premodern state, 76–77 Protections, human rights: sexual orientation and gender identity, 153 Qaddafi, Muammar, 187 Queen Boat raid, 13, 154, 170(n14) Racism: cultural relativism as justification for, 104–105; Danish cartoon, 150(n41) Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 139, 145(n5) Rape during war, 98 Reform, human rights as instrument of, 173 Reformist political practices, 6, 173, 185; overthrow versus, 14–15 Refugees: sexual orientation driving, 154–155 Regional human rights activities, 175; Arab civil society, 38; international shift from, 41 Relativism. See Cultural relativism Relevance of human rights, 23–24, 30, 44 Religion: de-ideologizing, 142–143. See also Islam Religious authority: Arab civil society debating, 36–37; Salman Rushdie fatwa, 134 Religious defamation. See Defamation of religion resolutions Religious democracy, Iran as, 121–124, 135–136 Republicanism: Iran, 131 “Respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm, 78–81, 178 Revolutions, 173–174; Arab Spring’s revolutionary moments, 186. See also Arab Spring Rights-based approaches to development, 89 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 32, 45(n19) Rorty, Richard, 178 Rushdie, Salman, 12, 134–135, 138, 147(n29), 148–149(n35) Saleh, Ali Abdullah, 17

Sanctions, 85 The Satanic Verses (Rushdie), 12, 138 Saudi Arabia, 31; defining a transnational Muslim world, 50; negative and positive rights, 80–81; self-determination debate, 33; transnationalism, 65 Savior vision of human rights, 106 Schwedler, Jillian, 52 Secularism: Arab civil society, 36–37, 40; extra-religious justification for democracy, 143; Iran’s shifting intellectual currents, 130–131; Mahmood’s static view of Arab Spring protest, 46(n32); transnational Muslim world, 49 Self-determination: Muslim states’ contributions to treaty elements, 175; Palestinians, 27, 57; UDHR’s exclusion of, 32–33 Sexual identity, 73–74; authoritarian nationalism and, 113; fluidity of, 161–163, 171(n30) Sexual minority, 171(n30) Sexual orientation, 13–14; advancing human rights claims, 152–153; Egypt’s Queen Boat raid, 13, 154, 170(n34); gay men, 155–156; global controversy over rights, 166–167; intensity of push for rights, 180; Massad’s Desiring Arabs, 169(n13); Middle East controversies, 154–156; normative legitimacy, 98; social movements challenging traditional concept of human rights, 111; transnational reach of, 151–152 Sexual rights: 94 Sexuality: international controversy over, 170(n14) Shaarawi, Huda, 39 Shi’a Islam, 54, 126, 143 Sierra Leone, 87 Social and economic rights, 73, 81–82; Muslim states’ role in international development of, 34 Social configurations, 4; human rights informing debates, 12–14; political configuration link, 13; women’s rights, 39

Index Social mobility, 100 Social movements: agency as element of human rights, 107 Social rights, 81. See also Gender identity; Sexual orientation Sodomy law, 73–74 Soft law, 35, 44(n10), 79–80, 95, 178 Soft power, 123–124 Solidarity, 108; sexual identity and rights, 163 Soroush, Abdolkarim, 49, 120, 141– 144 Source of human rights. See Origins of human rights South Africa, 32; HIV drug availability, 86–87, 136–137 Sovereignty, 83; Iran’s election tropes, 125; Iran’s struggle for democracy, 121; justification for eliminating state opposition, 103; normative expectations, 97; Western origins delegitimizing human rights, 101– 102 Special procedures, establishment of, 34–35 Ssembiro, Paul Wasswa, 160 State authority: benefiting from human rights, 183–184; culturalist view of human rights protecting diversity, 104; human rights as responsibility on, 102; human rights regime limiting, 79; human rights threatening state stability, 174 State institutions: human rights grounding in, 9–10; multiple groundings of human rights, 94– 98; state sovereignty and human rights law, 83; state-individual relationships, 78–79; structural bases of human rights, 75–78; undermining NGO work, 42–43 States: inability to implement human rights, 185 Static entity, human rights as, 105–107, 166 Structural bases of the emergence of human rights, 75–78, 176; agency, cosmopolitanism and, 108–109; defining human rights, 8–9 Substantive democratization, 57

221

Sudan, 182; minority pressure for human rights, 104 Sunni Islam, 53–54 Syria: Arab Spring backlash, 15; backlash against Arab Spring, 187; Danish cartoon, 140; selfdetermination debate, 33 Tahrir Square protests, 1–2, 17, 30, 46(n32), 186–187 Tarrow, Sidney, 66(n1) Technology: transnational Muslim world, 50–51 Tehran, Iran, 49 Toonen case (1994), 73–74, 153 Torture: backlash against, 181; international human rights law, 79; normative expectations regarding, 96–97; “respect, protect, fulfill” paradigm, 81–82 Trade penalties, 85 Transmitters, 49 Transnational Muslim world: defining, 4–5 Transnationalism and transnational space: al-Qaeda as transnational, nonstate, normative actor, 21(n10); al-Qaeda’s strategy to redefine Muslim identity, 55–56; antifoundationalist approach, 11– 12, 108–109; Arab human rights NGOs, 41; Danish cartoon, 140; debates around rights issues, 167– 168; defining, 47–48, 66(n1); domestic compliance with international law, 84–89; elements and levels of implementation, 82– 89; emergence of human rights, 75–78; free expression and religious sensitivity, 134–135; heterogeneity and change in the Muslim world, 64; historical context, 67(n3); human rights and Islamic discourses, 17; human rights infiltrating Iranian politics, 131–132; human rights norms, 56– 63; Iran’s election, 126–127; Islamism and, 51–56; Islamist and secular Egyptians, 30; legal, political normative, and

222

Index

institutional grounding of human rights, 95–98; Massad embodying the transnational elite, 161; Muslim world and, 48–51; Muslim world’s place in, 8; regional history of human rights, 175; sexual orientation as Western invention, 158–159; social rights, 151–152; transcending West-centric abstractions of human rights, 72– 73; treaty obligations, 76–77; Western origins delegitimizing human rights, 101–102. See also West, the Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa), 87, 136–137 Treaty obligations: delineation of human rights, 79–80; expansion of rights, 79–80; multiple groundings of human rights, 95; Muslim states’ contributions to treaty elements, 175; natural law and positive law, 76–77 Tunisia: Bouazizi’s self-immolation, 185; state inability to implement human rights, 185 Turkey: diplomatic crisis with Israel, 27; EU membership, 84–85; integration into human rights regime, 86; Kurdish marginalization and persecution, 44(n3), 81; minorities’ pressure for rights, 104 Twitter, 145(n2) Two-way street, relevance as, 113 Uganda: death penalty for homosexual acts, 154, 160 UN Charter (1945), 79–80 UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), 35, 38 UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 154–155 UN Human Rights Committee, 120; sodomy laws, 73–74 UN Security Council: enforcement operations, 87 United Kingdom: decriminalization of homosexuality, 153; Rushdie fatwa,

134, 138; state sovereignty and human rights, 84–85 United Nations: bureaucratic embedding of human rights, 98; defamation of religion resolutions, 120, 145(n1); institutionalization of human rights, 10; Muslim states’ role in human rights regime, 31– 35; sexual orientation rights, 153, 158, 160 United States, 190(n1); backlash against human rights, 182–183. See also Torture Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), 113; antifoundational approach to human rights, 10–11; economic rights, 73; human rights as founding purpose, 79; human rights permeating everyday consciousness, 58; legal status, 44– 45(n10); Muslim states’ role in the formation of the human rights regime, 31–35; overlapping universality of human rights, 108; reconciling human rights and religious doctrine, 65 Universalism, 3, 105–106 Upward mobility, 100 Vertical implementation, 87–88 Vienna conference, 34, 41, 45(n18), 78–79 Violations. See Human rights violations Violence: sexual orientation-based crimes, 13, 154, 160; sexuality extending into nationalist discourse on minorities, 164–165 Vitoria, Francisco de, 76 Voter turnout, Iran, 125 West, the: blame for Iran’s election controversy, 121; human rights identified with, 72–73; hypocrisy over human rights, 60; Iranian crackdown on peaceful protests, 105; overstating role in human rights development, 32; ownership of human rights, 190(n1); problems

Index defining, 21(n16); putative role in Iran’s election, 127–129; “real” and “authentic” Iran, 128–129; relativist critique of the foundations of human rights, 99–100; sexual orientation as Western identity project, 156–161, 169(n13); social rights, 152; states’ strategies for undermining NGO work, 43; transnational discourse, 64–65 Women’s rights: antifoundational nature of social movements, 110– 111; Arab civil society, 39–40; bringing attention to gender rights, 153; as Western invention, 157; Yemen’s female prisoners, 62. See also Feminism; Gender equality World Health Organization, 98 World Values Survey, 57, 132

223

World War II: international human rights regime, 8–9 Xenophobia: Iran, 126 “Yelling fire in a crowded theater,” 137–138, 140–141 Yemen: Arab Spring backlash, 15; backlash to Arab Spring, 187; female prisoners’ rights, 62; Islamism and transnationalism, 51; US human rights violation in the Middle East, 27 Yogyakarta Principles (2006), 73, 153 Youth bulge, 2–3 Zionism, 162 Zionist and anti-Zionist movements, 37–38

About the Book

Do human rights inform the nature of politics in the Muslim world today? If so, how? And perhaps more fundamentally, why? Linking these questions in a provocative way, Anthony Tirado Chase persuasively rejects popular arguments that there is an incompatibility between human rights and the Muslim world. Chase uses a range of local developments as his point of departure, in the process stressing the importance of focusing on the diverse Muslim world rather than on one of its parts. He carefully supports his assertions with examples from contentious “on the ground” debates. Adopting a comprehensive view of human rights, he offers a fresh take on the debates over democracy, free expression, and social rights in Muslimmajority states, as well as on the role of movements within those states in shaping what constitutes global human rights. Anthony Tirado Chase is associate professor of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College. He is coeditor of Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices.

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