Arab Voices: The Human Rights Debate in the Middle East (Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies) - Softcover

Dwyer, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520074912 ISBN 13: 9780520074910

Publisher: University of California Press, 1991

Synopsis

Although many Westerners claim human rights as a major achievement of Western civilization, Muslims argue just as sincerely that human rights are central to Islam. They argue as well that the West's rhetorical emphasis on human rights cannot hide the fact that within Western society basic human rights are violated every day.

Through the use of extensive research and interview material from Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, Kevin Dwyer explores what human rights mean to Middle Eastern men and women—lawyers, political militants, religious thinkers, journalists, and human rights activists. The debate ranges widely from the nature of human freedom and human rights organizations to the role of religion in Arab and national identity. The reader gains a strong sense of the complexity and vitality of life in the Middle East today and of the kinds of issues that are at the center of informed discussion there.

From the book:"Human rights may be something new for the West, but we in Islam have had it since the beginning. We have no differences between whites, blacks, Jews, Muslims—everyone is free. We never persecuted the Jews here the way they did in France and England. In England and in the US you fight against the blacks—why just the other day there were news items about fighting between the police and blacks in London."—Muhammad Mekki Naciri, member of Morocco's Council of Religious Scholars

About this title

About the Author:

Kevin Dwyer directed Amnesty International's Middle East department for six years. He is a research anthropologist and author of the book Moroccan Dialogues. Since 1985 he has been researching human rights and economic and social development.

From Publishers Weekly:

An anthropologist and former head of Amnesty International's Middle East section, Dwyer ( Moroccan Dialogues ) spent six years researching the conceptions and praxis of human rights in three Islamic nations--Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Drawing heavily on interviews, Dwyer presents these countries mired in a pervasive crisis brought on by modernization under which, while there may be broad agreement among elites as to the value of human rights, there is no consensus as to what those rights should be or how individual rights should be balanced against societal interests. Yet ultimately the author fails in his aim of understanding "Middle Eastern notions of human rights." As Dwyer himself admits, the three nations examined, each with strong ties to the West, are not representative of Islam as a whole. More serious is his decision to limit his contacts to intellectuals. Educated, and to varying degrees Westernized, these individuals present a skewed perspective on societies where, as one Moroccan sociology student said,p. 123 among the common people, "you don't even hear the word 'freedom' expressed."
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0520074912
• ISBN 13: 9780520074910
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 350