Abstract
In the late summer of 2007 I received an invitation from the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Brandenburg in Berlin to give a series of talks on cosmopolitanism as well as to comment on the paper of a well-known French academic living in the United States. I had just returned from spend-ing the summer in Germany three days before receiving the invitation and felt exhilarated at the prospect of returning despite a lingering case of jet lag.
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Notes
There have been a spate of books attesting to this fact, most of them written by Muslim women who themselves have been victims of beatings, attempted murder and, in the cases of those murdered, by investigative journalists and academics who try to understand the root cause of this phenomenon. See Nicole Pope, Honor Killings in the 21st Century (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). This far-reaching book documents the thousands of women murdered every year by close relatives for allegedly violating religious norms and social codes. The author notes its prevalence not only in Turkey and Pakistan but also in European nations.
See also Unni Wikan, In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Of notable interest is a harrowing first-person account of one woman’s survival of attempted murder by family.
See Rana Husseini, Murder in the Name of Honor: The True Story of One Woman’s Fight Against an Unspeakable Crime ( London: One World, 2011 ).
Islamic scholar Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im writes that Sharia as a universal system of law and ethics purports to regulate every aspect of public and private life. It influences individual and collective behavior in Muslim countries through its role in the socialization process of such nations regardless of its status in their formal legal systems. It forms an integral part of the socialization of every Muslim child and is one of the primary forces behind the institutions and customs of the vast majority of Muslim societies. He notes that most Muslim countries have experienced mounting demands for the application of Sharia as the sole or at least primary legal system of the land. Such movements have either succeeded in gaining complete control, as in Iran, or achieved significant success in having aspects of Sharia introduced into the legal system, as in Pakistan and the Sudan. Governments of Muslim countries generally find it difficult to resist such demands out of fear of being condemned by their own populations as anti-Islamic. He states that it is likely that Islamic fundamentalism will achieve further success in Muslim countries. He also writes that the claim that Sharia is fully consistent with and has always protected human rights is problematic both as a theoretical and as a practical matter. He emphasizes that the concept of human rights as rights to which every human being is entitled by virtue of being a human being was unknown to Islamic jurisprudence or social philosophy until the last few decades and that it does not exist in Sharia. Many aspects of Sharia discriminate against women and violate their fundamental human rights, he states. To this day the institution of slavery still remains lawful under Sharia. Of particular concern to human rights is the Sharia law of apostasy. According to Sharia, a Muslim who repudiates his faith in Islam, whether directly or indirectly, is guilty of a capital offense punishable by death. He writes that this aspect of Sharia is in complete conflict with the fundamental human right of freedom of conscience and religion. The Sharia law of apostasy can be applied to restrict other human rights such as freedom of expression. A person may be liable to the death penalty for expressing views held by the authorities to contravene the official view of the tenets of Islam. The law is not just a theoretical construct but has been applied in several cases. The other conflict between Sharia and human rights relates to the status and rights of non-Muslims. In modern terms, Muslims are the only full citizens of an Islamic state, enjoying all the rights and freedoms granted by Sharia and subject only to the limitations and restrictions imposed on women. In the same article, writing on Sharia and human rights of women, Ahmed An-Na’im observes that the notion of qawama has its origin in verse 4:34 of the Koran, which states that men have guardianship and authority over women because of the advantage the former have over the latter and because they spend their property in supporting them. According to Sharia’s interpretation of this verse men as a group are the guardians of and superior to women as a group. The notion of qawama has had far-reaching consequences for the status and rights of women in both the private and public domains. Here are a few examples he offers: Sharia provides that women be disqualified from holding general public office, which involves the exercise of authority over men because in keeping with verse 4: 34 of the Koran, men are entitled to exercise authority over women and not the reverse. Another principle of Sharia that has broad implication for the status and rights of Muslim women is the notion of al-hijab, the veil. According to Sharia’s interpretation of verses 24:31, 33:33, 33:53, and 33:59 of the Koran, women are supposed to stay at home and not leave it except when required to by urgent necessity. When they are permitted to they must do so with their bodies and faces covered. Al-hijab tends to reinforce women’s ability to hold public office and restrict their access to public life. They are not supposed to participate in public life, because they must not mix with men even in public places. Other ways in which women’s rights are compromised appeals to Sharia’s mandate that women are incompetent to be witnesses in serious criminal cases, regardless of their individual character and knowledge of the facts. In civil cases where a woman’s testimony is accepted, it takes two women to make a single witness. Public law discrimination against women emphasizes their inferiority at home. Notions of women’s inferiority, he writes, are deeply embedded in the character and attitudes of both women and men from early childhood. See Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, “Human Rights in the Muslim World,” in The Philosophy of Human Rights, ed. Patrick Hayden (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2001 ), 315–335.
For an historical survey of these and other themes such as “human well-being and illiberal society,” and “personal autonomy and well-being in modern pluralistic society,” see David Conway, Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 119–132.
For a full discussion on the connection between liberalism and moral identity see Liberalism and the Moral Life ed. Nancy Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). Of special interest are the following essays contained therein: “The Liberalism of Fear,” by Judith Shklar; “Humanist Liberalism,” by Susan Moller Okin; and “Liberal Democracy and the Cost of Consent,” by Benjamin Barber. G. See Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).
Aside from the obvious work of Jürgen Habermas on this topic, the work of Seyla Benhabib is illuminating. See her notion of democratic iterations in Seyla Benhabib, The Right of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004 ). See especially Chapter 5.
For a rich discussion on reconciling liberalism with, say, colonialism, see Uday Sing Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in 19th Century British Liberal Thought ( Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999 ).
Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States ( Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997 ).
Linda Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” in Overcoming Racism and Sexism, ed. Linda A. Bell and David Blumenfeld ( Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1995 ), 229–253.
John Tomlinson, Globalization and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 109. Tomlinson is here quoting
Marc Augé, Non-places: Introduction to the Anthropology ofSupermodernity ( London: Verso, 1995 ), 78.
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© 2013 Jason D. Hill
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Hill, J.D. (2013). Multiculturalism and Its Collusion with Racial and Ethnic Apartheid. In: Civil Disobedience and the Politics of Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350312_5
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