How The Left Can Criticize Muslim Human Rights Hypocrisy

On Friday, in the UN's Human Rights Council, a block of 17 Muslim countries in alliance with such human rights paragons like Russia, China and Cuba, passed a resolution "urging a global prohibition on the public defamation of religion." The demand "makes no mention of any other religion besides Islam." European nations, Canada, Japan, and South Korea all opposed.

Such a resolution might have been worth supporting had the Muslim member states involved demonstrated even an atom's worth of accountability with respect to their own violations of most human rights. Saudi Arabia considers freedom of religion a capital crime. Pakistan considers blasphemy a capital offense, where it is selectively enforced upon Ahmadis and Christians. Indonesia, too, considers blasphemy a capital offense, and enforces it selectively on religious minorities.

Western liberals generally shy away from calling Muslim states out on their human rights duplicity. There are many reasons for this. Some of us come from post-colonial theory and believe that the real cause of repression in the Muslim world is the history of Western colonialism. Others among us take the position that we are not in a position to extol human rights norms upon Muslim states given our own violations. Yet others simply abstain from speaking out against violence and repression in Muslim states because we do not wish to provide the right wing hawks with more justification for creating war. This reluctance is reasonable. However, the reluctance degenerates to silence, which then allows our right wing peers to appropriate (and hijack) the entire human rights project. Once appropriated, the right wing then determines which "solutions" to apply. Most of their solutions rely upon force.

Liberals need a way to call out Muslim states on their human rights hypocrisy while simultaneously creating a culture of cooperation and respect. Here are some suggestions:

1) Recognize that political freedom is more important than the political model a country employs. Obsessing over whether a country is a democracy or a monarchy is not as important as whether citizens have basic rights like life, liberty, freedom of press and assembly and infrastructure. These rights enable democracy; they are not a by-product of it. A state that does not have the infrastructure to provide for its citizens' material needs, even if it turns democratic, will be quickly subverted.

2) Recognize that the so called Muslim states aren't necessarily "Islamic." The majority of the laws in the Muslim world are an amalgam of European civil code, Shariah, and Anglo-Saxon common law. As such, fixing Religious Law is neither sufficient nor necessary. The most important element of human rights reform in the Muslim world is via legislation or regulation, not the clerics. We must not buy the right wing spin, rooted in Christian supremacism, that until the religion of Islam reforms, change is unlikely. Religions change and mature at their own pace; states evolve and legislate on their own.

3) Recognize and work with dissidents in the Muslim world. As it stands, they have no help. Iranian reformers like Shirin Ebadi have vociferously denounced using Iran's human rights violation as a way to justify military strikes against it. This shows that the dissidents are not willing to work with the American Right. Instead, as Fariba Dawoodi Mohajer, an Iranian human rights activist states: "We must be exposed to new experiences and stay in contact with women from other societies in our efforts to eliminate discrimination, poverty among women, elimination of violence, greater respect etc. Women's problems around the world belong to all women." Statements like that seem to me to be open appeals to Western liberals. Rafia Zakaria, an international lawyer, makes the same point: "Iranian intellectuals, despite being in the direct line of fire of the neo-conservative military agenda, are demonstrating that fighting the expansionist military agendas of the Bush administration does not require silence about the injustices perpetrated by the Iranian regime." Iran is not the only place where such reformers are active: Kuwait, Egypt, Qatar, Bahrain, Pakistan, also come to mind. Yet, aside from a few Soros backed liberals, the global left does not seem to be noticing.

In the middle of the 20th century the American left, pushed along by Albert Camus and Isaiah Berlin, slowly realized that supporting the Soviet Union was inconsistent with the principles of leftism. We must realize something similar today; namely, that the principles of leftism today (international law, human rights, freedom of expression), are inconsistent with staying silent towards Muslim states that violate these principles regularly.

In my next post I will discuss how a Western progressive can speak with a clean conscience with a dissident who does not seem to accept the separation of mosque and state.