Book Review: Katerina Dalacoura, Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998, 238 pp., no price given pbk.)
| Author | Emma Murphy |
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/03058298000290030802 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Millennium
898
foreign aid debate, o n humanitarian inte rvention, the Ameri can response to Islam,
or the way relig ious freedom and th e persecution of Christians abroad have become
issues in American p olitics, then it is i mportant to examine the impact of these
organisatio ns and infl uential commentato rs. The Desecu larisation of the World is
an important contribution to the growing literature on religion and international
relations as well as an i mportant intervent ion in the de bate on religio n and
American forei gn policy. The Ambivalence of the Sacred is one of the most
important books to date on the relationship between religion, conflict, and conflict
resolution.
SCOTT THOMAS
Scott Thomas is Lec turer in International in the Department of Econo mics and
International Development at Bath University
Katerina Dalacoura, Islam, Liberalism an d Human Rights (London: I.B .Tauris,
1998, 238 pp. , no price given pbk .).
There can be few issues as critical an d co ntentious fo r sch olars of the Islamic
world as t hat addressed by thi s volume. The questi on of the place and rel evance of
human rights discourse in Islamic socie ties is fundamental not o nly to the political,
legal and civil o rganisation of those societies t hemselves, b ut also to the
relationshi p between the Islamic and non-Islamic wo rlds. Civilisatio nal
confrontati on based on arg uments of n ormative, an d subseque ntly literal,
confrontati on be tween the Islamic world and th e re st, rely on assumptions of
fundamenta l religio-cultu ral differentiation . Put more simply, the arg ument can and
has bee n made that Islam is inco mpatible with tho se moral, democrat ic and social
values that the West holds most dear and will there fore inevitabl y end up in
confrontati on with the West.
To discuss the relationship b etween Islam and human rights is to tread heavily
on a ra nge of sensiti vities. The problem i s often felt p articularly acutely by
Western an alysts, who may seek to avoid the orie ntalist pitfalls out lined by
Edward Said, o nly to find their deference to notion s of cultural authe nticity serving
unpalatab le, illiberal end s. Alternatively, asserting t he universality of hu man rights
displeases the traditi onal Islamic establishment, whic h rejects both the notions of
universalit y and human rights , as well as t hose whom Fred Halliday has iden tified
as ‘appropri ating’ human right s.
In her book, Katerina Dalacoura has no q ualms ab out taki ng the bull by the
horns, a sserting from the start her intention ‘to b uttress support for the conc ept of
human rig hts, primarily t hrough discreditin g the cultural e ssentialist thesis’ (p. 1).
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