Human Rights and Cultural Difference: Middle Eastern Perspectives

Abstract

The idea of a universal doctrine of human rights is currently under attack in the name of cultural particularism and difference. Political leaders in China, Indonesia and Singapore have rejected Western expressions of concern about violations of human rights by their governments, with the argument that Western conceptions of human rights are not universal but culturally specific to the West, and the effort to impose these ideas on others is no less than arrogant cultural imperialism and interference in the affairs of sovereign states. In the Muslim world, too, we hear rejections of Western notions of human rights as culturally specific and the assertion that Islam has its own concepts of rights (which, for a believer, are universal). In this essay I shall explore some of the issues raised in this regard, with examples drawn mainly from Egypt and the Arab world, but which have obvious implications for current concerns in Turkey. I should make it clear at the outset that there is no one Islamic position on this issue, but many. In the Arab world, but more specially in Turkey, there are many Muslim thinkers and activists who have produced Muslim formulations of rights which are not different from the universal ideals.