Looming over discussions of human rights in the Muslim world is the question of Islam: is it inherently contradictory to human rights, or somehow reconcilable? Whether it be in old debates on the Muslim world’s emerging postcolonial states, ongoing debates in Iran’s Islamic Republic, or fresh debates over Iraq’s constitutional future, this question is perceived as fundamental. This chapter’s argument is that Islam and human rights can be constructed as oppositional or supportive, but they are not inevitably one or the other, and conceptualizing them as necessarily in a direct relationship to each other is, in fact, an abstract diversion...

The incidents that took place in March 1987 at Mazra’et Tora prison in a Cairo suburb provide a symbolic framework to illustrate the relations between political Islamists and human rights activists on the one hand, and the dynamics of the formation of the human rights movement in Egypt and the Third World on the other. The prison housed two groups of political prisoners, one Islamist, accused of committing acts of violence, and the other Nasserist, accused of planning to commit acts of violence against foreign establishments to protest the settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The prison administration treated the Islamists...

The concept of globalization has been ubiquitous in intellectual debates in Europe and North America over the last decade. A wide range of technological, economic, and social transformations have been explained through the discovery of this magical concept, and it quickly displaced modernity/postmodernity as the dominant explanatory paradigm in contemporary intellectual discourse. The information revolution, the decline of the nation-state, mobility, hybridity, risk society, and the compression of time and space represent just some of the evolving concepts discussed under the edgeless umbrella of globalization. European and North American discussions on globalization inspired intellectuals worldwide, including those in the Arab...

In 1999 three political scientists, Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, published a book that sets out a theory of how human rights change occurs within particular states and that demonstrates how international human rights norms and the activities of transnational human rights advocacy networks impact human rights conditions.¹ The book contains eleven case studies that apply the theory to human rights developments in diverse countries from different geographical regions.² The authors conclude, “our case-study evidence strongly suggests that the spiral model has applicability in strikingly diverse domestic circumstances.”³ All of the countries in their sample showed substantial progress...

In the late twentieth century, the worldwide social movement of women disrupted traditional notions of the public-private divide and the distinction between human rights and family matters by advancing slogans such as “the personal is political,” “women’s rights are human rights,” and “for gender justice and economic justice.” Women challenged their marginal role in the public sphere of politics and markets, their position as minors and dependents in the private sphere of the family, and the exclusion of women’s issues and perspectives from debates on politics, economics, culture, and human rights. Today, women’s rights and women’s participation are on the...

As we enter the twenty-first century, human rights activists in the Arab world are looking back at more than twenty-five years of activity and reflecting on their achievements and their failures. Successes have been few and far between, progress—when it has come—has been painstakingly slow, and human rights violations remain widespread across the region. During the same period human rights organizations have grown, diversified, and mushroomed across the region. These developments have led some activists to question the overall effectiveness and impact of their work. The future is full of challenges, ranging from the nondemocratic nature of the...

The “foreign funding debate” refers to a set of debates within Egyptian civil society over the advantages and disadvantages of Egyptian NGOs accepting funds from non-Egyptian, particularly Western, organizations (nongovernmental and governmental). These debates have become particularly heated with regard to human rights NGOs because of the more politicized nature of their work and the political activist origins of many human rights advocates.¹ Debates over foreign funding take part among and between NGO activists, members of political parties, journalists, and intellectuals in seminars, in informal gatherings, and via the media. In addition, the government adds to the debate by determining...

It was a night to remember. I had come home around midnight after spending the evening at Haidar Abdul Shafi’s in a stimulating discussion of the politics of peace with a group of Israeli leftists. I was so pleased when I entered my house to see that Federico Allodi had arrived. Of Spanish origin, a scholar and a philosopher and a professor of psychiatry in Toronto, Federico is a rare friend of Palestine and dear one to me. Busy and active in Canada for the cause of a just world, throughout the time of the intifada he has not missed...

Yemeni intellectuals voiced human rights concerns throughout the twentieth century. Of course, as elsewhere, the early incarnations of a human rights movement in this most populous corner of Arabia did not use the term huquq al-insan (human rights), popularized only in the 1990s. Moreover, the emphasis was consistently on limiting arbitrary governance and justice. Still, Yemenis tackled issues such as social equality, popular participation, judicial autonomy, due process, prison conditions, and intellectual freedom, among others. This chapter explores how a fragmented yet tenacious intellectual movement grounded in indigenous political culture produced writings intended to breach authoritarianism for over half a...

When human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim and his twenty-seven colleagues were ushered into an Egyptian Emergency State Security Court on February 26, 2001, it was effectively the entire Egyptian human rights movement that stood trial. Despite a campaign by international human rights groups, a vigorous legal defense, and testimony from some of Egypt’s most respected figures, Ibrahim was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison for “propagating false information and vicious rumors abroad . . . which would weaken the state’s prestige and integrity.”¹ Although Ibrahim and his colleagues were eventually acquitted by the Court of Cassation...

For the three decades that spanned 1960–1990, Morocco’s political achievements were stained by a terrible record of human rights violations. Detainees were commonly tortured, sometimes in mobile detention centers. Several hundred prisoners of conscience were incarcerated after patently unfair trials. Deaths in detention went unexplained, and hundreds of individuals disappeared without a trace to secret prisons. The political climate was generally intolerant of dissent, and a quiescent citizenry carefully avoided discourse that questioned God, king, or Morocco’s territorial claim to the Western Sahara. King Hassan II was respected and feared by most Moroccans. His minister of interior, Driss Basri,...