Beyond a liberal secular Western notion of "human rights"
Human
Rights as theoretically conceived in blueprint form is obviously a great idea.
However, the secular Western liberal "Enlightenment" assumptions of
human rights are problematic because of their universalization of specifically
Western secular values and ontologies. Joseph Massad unpacked the animating
racist assumptions behind liberalism in the West vis-a-vis its own
juxtaposition with Islam as its Other in his book Islam in Liberalism. This
book is a must-read.
Be that as it may, conceptually human rights can be conceived
outside and beyond any Western Liberal secular humanist Enlightenment
ontological trajectory of the concept. The argument can be made for the notion
of human rights existing in both the Abrahamic scriptures as well as the
scriptures of other traditions.
All of
that aside, in the present era classical liberalism has shown itself now to be
an obsolete ideology which has morphed into something else while simultaneously
being among the efficient causes for this present generation's rise of fascism.
This places many conventional human rights advocates in a conundrum, but a
conundrum which I believe to be an opportunity for said advocates to come out
of the ideological straitjackets of Western secular universalizations of the
concept and so now take the concept to new levels where it is also cleansed of
many of its poison pills. To that end, no contemporary human rights discourse
can fail to place the entire structure and operation of Western neoliberal
capitalism under its critical lens. Any failure to do so ipso facto negates the
claims to a genuine human rights discourse and instead makes such advocates
hypocritical mouthpieces of Western elites, neo-colonialism and capitalism.
For
example, I find the notion in the Qur'an about the human being as God's
vicegerent and caretaker of the earth rich with implications. This means that
the notion of rights needs to be extended beyond merely humans as well and also
be inclusive of other lifeforms on this planet whose rights should also be
recognized and protected. As it stands at the moment, Western secular
liberalism qua human rights does not accord animals, plants, minerals and
bacteriological lifeforms any notion of rights and implicitly holds that they
should not be accorded them because humans are seen to be superior lifeforms
who can exploit everything upon this planet at will. This needs to change.