Cultural Legitimacy and Human Rights in Bangladesh: Strategies for Effective Advocacy

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This essay addresses the “cultural legitimacy” of human rights norms in Bangladesh and suggests some strategies for Bangladeshi human rights advocates to effectively disseminate and strengthen human rights standards among their constituents. Abdullahi An-Na‘im argues that human rights will never be secure in a country until they are seen as culturally legitimate, and consequently “human rights advocates in the Muslim world must work within the framework of Islam to be effective” (1990, 15). Taking this idea as its starting point, this article draws on the idea of public reason and the development of politics in the West to suggest some ways that An-Na‘im’s imperative might be realized in practice.