Conversations with History - Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies our guest today is Abdullah on Nayeem who is the Charles Howard Candler professor of law at Emory University he is a renowned for his scholarship on human rights in Islam and on human rights in cross-cultural settings his most recent book is Islam and the secular state negotiating the future of Sharia he is on the Berkeley campus this semester as the 2010 Tanner professor professor welcome to Berkeley thank you where were you born and raised I was born in a village north of Khartoum Sudan on the Nile in 1946 and I was raised in the village and then followed my father around various towns in northern Sudan going to school and then in vesturport room graduated in 1970 and and looking back how do you think your parents shaped your thinking about the world I think my mother did more but my father also was both of them were very committed to education but also they were very open in their lifestyle in their minds it's remarkable my mother never learned to read and write but she is one of the most educated people I have known in my life and my father also struggled with with a self-educated man so I grew up valuing education but also valuing the need to be open to life and possibilities and to other people I think that is how they raised us and and we're speaking of your mother was she a product of an oral tradition that made her educated although not you know with degrees yes a horrid tradition but also extremely smart I mean she was a very intelligent woman she just grew up in a Sudan where women and girls were not really allowed to go to school much but now her good daughter's she puts us all through education and higher education and her daughter's also now are all educated and I think I for me it is remarkable to see in one generation how the possibilities that we had neither open to my mom are now available to my sisters and my children and and what because your education was into the ways of modernity you have PhDs and and and law degrees in in legal and philosophical studies what helps us understand their push for you to be educated in a way that went beyond the traditional education I think they helped me are my siblings to be open and to be willing to engage new ideas and to be critical in our thinking I think their greatest gift to me personally is really to make me able to take advantage of the possibilities that they came to have and then I have to credit my other teacher my other father my moral father who Muhammad AAHA whom I got to know while I was in at the University of Khartoum as a student and he also opened tremendous possibilities I think so I was fortunate and now I look back at my sort of contemporaries in the village through our education in Sudan and I wonder where they are or what they are thinking but I'm fortunate to be Who I am because of that gift I had and we'll talk about your mentor in a moment but but I'm I am very curious as to what are the elements that made you comfortable in pursuing you know an education in the ladder of modernity so to speak I mean why did you choose to become a lawyer of course I mean that actually as far as they remember at the time that's always what I wanted to be I never wanted to be a doctor or an engineer to me it was about justice being young and thinking that you can bring justice to two people's lives through law so I believe of the diffusion of law and justice goes to my very early childhood and also to the tradition I grew up in we're learning and learning the law is a means to achieve justice one of the gifts of my parents insight is about substance in things not the form so there were religious and they raised us to be religious but to them being religious is about the variance of being religious not the folk conformity with external piety ostentatious parity so I think that K through with me about law about ideas as I came to always look for what what's the point here not what the forum is and is this a gift of being a Muslim and the the religious thinking about issues in the tradition of Islam it is that but also it's about responsibility I think again one of the aspect of the gift is to be a Muslim or to be a Christian or a Jew or any religious affiliation can be a blessing or cares for me my religion is what I make of it so I'm not saved because I'm a Muslim it is what sort of Muslim I am and what that means in my life that makes a difference so I think it is it is the ability to work with the value of religion without getting sort of too bogged down into the ritualistic formality of it and and in in your writings which we'll talk about in in a minute the sense that part of your self-realization involving elements in your faith that point in the direction of self development even though they may be obscured because of certain traditions that developed in that religion yes I think all religions start that way I think in our personal life stories or in the life of the tradition at large the religions start about self-realization about self-liberation about responsibility about rejection of dogma but as they get attached to power and as it becomes institutionalized then I think the essence of the religion is lost that's why we need to renew religious traditions now and again because they get sort of too entangled in threads of power relations and privilege and so on so I think that the ability to discover what the religion was about to begin with to me the tradition is not it cannot be stagnant it it has to be about dynamism and self renewal the tradition itself or else it ceases to be a tradition it becomes a dead tradition - if it's a living tradition then the essence of following the tradition is to follow the innovative the creative the sort of what I call every religion needs its heretics for me heresy is critical to the viability of religious experience and authenticity of religious experience so to keep the door open for heretics is really blessing for every religion and in was this an insight that you learn from your parents that is the way they saw the world they wouldn't have articulated it in those so very ways but the way they saw the world was a way on which you seek the substance and you don't get sort of in a slave to the formality of it and therefore you are always questioning whether this is the right thing to do not whether it is the right think that other people think but what do you think on what you are responsible for and so on and let me understand as you your education ends up in legal studies but in your earlier education what what war pieces of wisdom books subjects that you pursue that that provided steps toward your your ultimate insights to me I think in the Muslim tradition the Sufi tradition is the best I mean it is the most humane I call it what the human face of Islam it is the most profound so being exposed to Sufi poetry is Sufi insights that's where because they are really about what what the essence of his spirituality is rather than the formality of religious dogmas so I think for me the really the Sufi tradition in the Muslim experience is is very foundational but also I got exposed to Western philosophy I remember as a student in higher sort of what you call them Intermediate School which was like mid Mitra sort of high school level I used I love to argue and I remember my teacher calling me Socrates I mean like he was sort of joking that because I always especially in the religious instruction class I was questioning and pushing and so he called me that in disapproval like you are argumentative you are but but I I really then I went to look and see what is this man why am I called this and so that was I think all of that came together for me and and one thing that I came to understand is that as a human being I should remain open to all human experience and I should benefit from all human experience good am bad a formative influences you mentioned was Muhammad Muhammad Taha tell us a little about who he was and and your first encounter if not with him then than what he was offering in the way of a path hmm Mohammed AHA was actually a civil engineer by training and by profession but was a Sufi in orientation and he himself embodied very much the values I have been talking about in terms of how he's transformed himself and realized fundamental insights about what it means to be human and to be Muslim and to submit to the will of God and to live by that so I had heard about him long before I met him the first time and I remember as a young man growing up we were told beware don't listen to him because he's a Spellbinder he he will catch you and you never escape but by chance I'm happened to attend one of his lectures when I was still at the University of Khartoum student in my second to third year you were very happy about there being about 18 19 19 I think yes and I could never walk away I mean I just had that first lecture it was about the Islamic Constitution yes and no so his argument was that we need the Constitution to be about the substance of being Muslim but never to be called an Islamic Constitution and again or an Islamic state as I came to argue in this book so I listened I felt not only that he was talking to me but he was talking for me that everything he said sounded to me like something that I would have thought or felt and wanted to say so I could never walk away so I started following him around and going to his other lectures he was an engineer but also conducting sort of this personal mission of propagating very ingenious I think brief formulation and the interpretation of Sharia so I followed him and it was a struggle because he was seem to be a heretic to be an outsider and to me he was the best Muslim that can ever be so I couldn't understand that and I so I was looking enough to stick around long enough to become one of his students and to follow him and to be part of his movement and and what he was offering for a young person such as yourself is is a path between what was modern and what was what was secular in a way what was but at the same time trying to grapple with its relation to the tradition and not rejecting the tradition is that yes yes I think he helped me come to peace with myself I think like when I heard him and I read his work I felt like being washed in a sense of inner tranquility and peace because as a young man growing up I was committed to values of human rights of constitutional governance of democratic governments but the tradition of which I was part as a Muslim growing up in Sudan was antithetical to all of that and I couldn't understand how Islam could be so negative about women about religious minorities freedom of religion by showing me that what what what I read acted in Islam was not really the essence of Islam but it was a human interpretation that was he contextually historically conditioned and so his basic message was that we can only understand and experience being religious through our experience in life through our context our history and that we couldn't possibly repeat or reenact earlier and the standards of Islam which Muslims except as Sharia in the modern context because that is not what the message of Islam is for us today so I think in that sense yes he brought me to he gave me sort of an inner sense of sort of reconciliation to parts of myself the longing for the authenticity and depth and emotional attachment of tradition and the commitment to contemporary values of human rights democratization and and you you actually translated his scholarship once you came to the west and so on I I'm curious because you were a follower and he was a charismatic leader with substance how do you account for his insights do you do was it because he was a learning man because he was an engineer because he was a religious man all of the above I mean what what led him to this path that that helped you understand your path I think very much the the the very fact that as I have come to know in my own life that all any of those gifts can be an impediment I mean that the question is being religious or being an engineer of being a professional man being an educated man all of that could become a very rather than a bridge to insight and but I think that his the anchor and the anchor that I hope he had passed on to me another of his students is that true spirituality is not about power it's about renouncing power that is where you gain a more sustainable and aamir sort of self renewing power when you when you renounce it not when you invest in it so his life is time that for me what was most striking about his ability to live what he preached and to me that remains the test for myself and anybody else so the what extent do our actions reflect the values we proclaim if they don't then there is no value in the values we proclaim so it is it is the living flesh and blood of being pious not of appearing to be pious or putting on the similar comparison in your lecture you you emphasized the importance of changing yourself so you can change the world following on the examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and and others that you talked about and and I have the sense now as I listen to you that important in in this struggle is not an out-and-out radec rejection of any of the traditions that you're grappling with whether it's modernity or in tradition so so part of this self development is doing the hard work of navigating between them as opposed to rejecting that one or another or embracing one or another totally is that yes I think that's true to me I call it mediation because it is not a categorical resolution well I'm not rejecting religion I'm not to be rejecting modernity I'm not accepting the sort of the sort of perceived truth of religion and modernity on face value so to mediate is to sort of travel between the two and to bring a synthesis within my own self my own consciousness and experience and commitment and practice by that synthesis and I think each of us have to find her own or his own sort of thin slices of traditional modernity of whatever competing paradigms that we live around by and I think people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King have really done tremendously in in transforming the nature of power power is part of life and power struggles are part of we shouldn't be naive to think we can have a powerless or a conflict-free experience but the question is transform the terms of the conflict to make it nonviolent but under the notion of force not violence that they are not if they were not naively they sought to affirm but transform the nature of power these ideas I find them in my own personal life day by day and for me I'm not responsible for outcomes I'm responsible for what I do and say so to the extent that I live what I preach to the best of my ability and do my best to transform my environment social as well as material then I have done my part I'm not responsible for the outcome what happened to your mentor did he enter politics and then what were the consequences he was never in politics in the sense of seeking power he started in the nineteen thirties when the Sudan is sort of independence struggle started establishing a political party called the Republican Party because you are seeking to establish a republic in Sudan a Democratic Republic in Sudan but when in the nineteen sixties the party was never going to contest the election it was a vehicle for promoting ideas about stomach reform and in nineteen sixties when political parties were banned he transformed it into which just simply a social movement or a religious intellectual reformative Reformation movement and it continued to work for us from the 50s into the eighties but he was political but not a politician so he engaged political issues of the day he had an opinion a position on every single issue that came along eventually of course and he was tolerated by various types of so-called civilian and military regimes in Sudan until eventually it came to head in the early eighties nineteen eighties when numeri who was the dictator of the time was started as a military dictator instead so that into a single-party state suddenly shifted to Islamic fundamentalist ideology and decided to impose Sharia as a state law and Taha came out open again is that cherub charging it as a distortion of Islam and the destruction of the unity of the country for that single sheet of paper manifesto or statement he he was put on trial for political crimes of treason undermining the constitution and nothing that really he did was anything of that and he was convicted and sentenced to death and was executed in January 1985 and I left Sudan in April about three months after he was executed and then you came then you actually what was your next path in other words you you left your country with a commitment to advocacy so you wanted to to work in implementing this heritage that you had yes I thought it was my personal exchange I was fortunate because I had of an American friend was a professor at UCLA Law School invited me to come and to teach at UCLA for two years and I at that time I finished the translation of the second message of Islam those days Muhammad's main book had it published by aesthetic hues 1987 and so I felt that and by the way the way that mahute himself in the early eighties before I left Sudan one day he just handed me that book and said translate this and of course because of my training I had English and Arabic and so I took it as a personal charge to do that but then for me it became once he was executed and the movement was suppressed in Sudan I had to leave but thinking that my mission is to bring his ideas to the world that to make it that you cannot kill an idea by killing its author so that was my mission and I kept watching to see things changing so that so I could go back and for several years I took a short term appointments various places until the early nineties when it looks like it was not likely to be that they can go back home soon I took a position as the director of Africa watch based in Washington DC so there's a human right watch yes applause the division of Human Rights Watch it's called Africa watch at the time and then became a division of Human Rights Watch as a united organization and then in 1995 and went to Emory to go back to teaching in law school so I have been teaching at Emory Law School since 95 help us understand the sale set the skill set that there is necessary because you're you're navigating this world between tradition and modernity but you're also becoming a lawyer and you are both a lawyer and a legal philosopher and a philosopher about politics and in Islam what what what are the what what if students were watching this what are the elements in in managing all of these portfolios it sounds like there's both an intellectual dimension a professional dimension but also a psychological dimension III hope there's all that but what I know is that it's a personal quest I'm not really in this for achieving any of those distinctions or claims to expertise I'm just personally seeking what I believe to be right and to do what I think is the right thing to do and I'm blessed and I'm really privileged to be an American citizen at this point where I can pursue this was vigor and with vitality and to be able to teach you know it is amazing that having published this Alvaro's book in English and my own Ferriss book in 1990 which called toward an Islamic rock formation in which I applied his ideas those ideas were read more in English than they could ever be read in Arabic so though he wrote in Arabic and my own native native language is Arabic but English is spoken by more Muslims around the world the Arabic is and publishing an English you reach more young people and students and professionals than you reach them is writing Arabic which is restricted also in the Arab region for censorship reasons Taha'a books are not available in the arab world for public even in sudan they are still banned but to being able to translate I could reach Muslims in Indonesia Muslims in Central Asia in sub-saharan Africa and so that is that what I see is I'm just pursuing a way of fulfilling what I believe is my personal charge for which I am personally responsible everything else my is really truly incidental to that and and in this mission there there is an important element of both education and advocacy that is you you you to paraphrase what you just said you're trying to changing yourself you want a byproduct of that to be to be in a position to help change the world is that fair yes I think it's fair but also to realize that the most we can do is to do the best we can as I said I'm not responsible for outcomes but I am responsible for trying to improve my way of doing what I do to make it as persuasive as accessible as I can make it on my homepage I have this notion I call it I think we have a website about Islam and human rights and we call it the scholarship for social change that is really the motto I work with which is it has to be scholarship for it to be useful so bad scholarship doesn't help any cause but for me it's kurup should not be neutral in the sense of being non-committal about taking moral positions or political positions I should invest in investigating issues in scholarship but ultimately I have to take a position and I have to defend that position until I'm persuaded to change it so for me it is it is that pursuit of yes I do believe in human agency and I do believe that all that is good I'm bad happens through the agency of human beings to me God does not act in the world exceptional human agency it is the agency of human beings that is where our moral responsibility is a critic of your work might say let me be the devil's advocate here that you are naive in your work about power and about interest groups hmm if we look at the case of your mentor in other words the that in the end result was power said no and and and took his life so so what helped me understand the lever by which you you you move beyond just rejecting power mm-hmm and make your ideas influential this obviously is a perennial problem namely theory and practice whew and so as we develop the best ideas and and and you are really doing an important contribution in that regard in the end what is involved in implementation mmm-hmm I call myself a pragmatic optimist so I'm optimistic in that looking at the longer span of history and I see how great ideas came to evolve and triumph over time I'm confident that human rights democratization Islamic reform will triumph over time it is the short term that people have a hard time with and for me that conviction of optimism is really what what is driving me but it is a pragmatic optimism it is not a naive optimism it's understanding the nature of power but seeking co-opted and as I said about Gandhi seeking to transform it so it is not a power free world but it is who has power to what ends and for me diffusion of power our education is key to diffusion of the power of knowledge religious education and release experience is the diffusion of religious authority and so to me I say that power and authority is in the eyes of the beholder you have power over me to the extent that I concede it to you but if I deny it there is no way that you can get it and so enhancing people's ability to hold on to their own self empowerment and to refuse to concede power to others whether kinetics or or intellectual leads of whoever that this is my most cherished resource my self empowerment I refuse to concede it end of story but that's not that it's not that easy yes and therefore I work with political action I work with human rights advocacy I work with ideas to create conditions where ordinary people like myself don't have to be exceptional like Gandhi or Martin Luther King so I'm not an hero I'm not a hero III don't want to be put in prison or torture that's why I invest in human rights and that so I think honestly I would say that I'm more pragmatic than those who think that they can impose to so-called the notion of imperialism those who think they can impose their values on others they are the naive ones I am the pragmatic one who knows that it cannot be done but let's talk a little about Islam in the secular state and show your book and some very important ideas here because what what you are trying to do is bring a perspective to Islam and its dilemmas that it's not it's not that you're coming up with something new you're trying to articulate a different tradition within the tradition in order to help Muslims deal with this this dilemma of modernity versus tradition and so you you you have an important point about the separation of the state and Islam explain that to us because you you believe your faith is important in the context of a separation but not a separation of Islam from politics yes please disentangle that if I may actually I would like to at least the first sentence in the Ferriss chapter because that is really key to my whole approach that ruin the first sentence I say in order to be a Muslim by conviction and free choice which is the only way one can be a Muslim I need a secular state so my claim is that a state that is neutral regarding religious doctorate it does not take a position or religion is absolutely essential for the possibility of being religious because once the state takes a doctrinal position of any religion no matter how popular and widely held that position is it is bound to be oppressive of some believers or others who do not agree with that so I am opposed to totalitarian States whether ideological or religious the second point is that what I am articulating I think and I tried to demonstrate in Chapter two is in fact Muslim history that the notion of an Islamic state is the heresy it is the new idea it is a post-colonial discourse that throughout 1400 years of Muslim history that the state has never been Islamic it is in the post-colonial context using a European idea of the state and a European idea of positive law that Islamists like would do D for the first time in the mid 20th century articulated the notion of an Islamic state to enforce Sharia as a state law so I am more with the tradition in naming what we have lived with as secular States not religious states they I mean the Islamists are the ones who are departing from tradition by injecting mixing a European idea of the state and the hierarchical centralized political power with a notion of positive law to bring Sharia in to enactment as state law is a negation of the religious quality of Sharia it ceases to be Sharia by the very act of enacting it as a state law but then also I have to acknowledge that Muslims have this longing for their values to be reflected in their politics and by all means all societies do so the point for me is that the state as their institution must be separated from religion but politics is how people behave and the choices they make so long as we can change our mind about the politics which we choose so I emphasize constitutionalism human rights and citizenship as the bull arc for what are called civic reason which is similar to Rawls notion of public reason but different my notion is is more inclusive than his and I think I find it more broadly acceptable to Muslims because I'm saying you can't justify state policies with reference to reasons that all citizens can share without or debate without reference to religious belief because if you say we have to do this because God said so end of conversation but if you say I have to do this we should have do this democratically because of one two three four five I can argue about with you about one two three four five so that combination of are saying that I knew in your politics you can reflect your religious values but it has to be contested under constitutional protection for everybody but institutionally keep the state out of religion and keep religion out of the state let's go over this briefly because I want to run audience to be clear about what you're saying so in a way the state is about power and about forcing people coercing think people to do things and but but it it performs a function which is to create a society that is regulated so different religions and different conversations and dialogues can occur and in that that world of society and politics Islam a person can be religious and bring their faith and their moral convictions to the discussion but these two things in our time have been conflated namely the the notion that to bring Islam to politics and society you have to control the state yes you were rejecting that now what I'm curious about is that has happened in our time because of power you know the the power of imperialism has brought changes to the Muslim world especially the Arab world that has been rejected by extremists within Islam so so I guess what what I find intriguing is there's a power game here both you know coming from the West and the form of imperialism and the reaction you know among Islamic extremists and so how does one how does one when the dialog how does one empower ideas such as yours and an Taba to to to have a voice in this struggle hmm I think it is already happening but it is just to be careful and about how to do it and how to do it more effectively the Islamist I called them from the Mentalist really they are disingenuous in that they the sort of the rhetoric is opposing the West and imperial recent history and neo-colonial history but their practice is in fact co-opted a more taken by Western institutions I mean they do not reject everything Western they are very selective they keep the state which is the Western institution so in the Muslim world in Africa and Asia the state was Imperial it had very little to do so in the pre-colonial time there were states but they were not centralized institutional sort of bureaucracies like the european state has come to be so when when the european colonial administration british and french and brought this european idea of the state and european colonialism ended muslim societies kept the european idea of the state as a territorial bound centralized hierarchical coercive political authority so they kept that the most characteristically european and colonial of all political institutions they kept but they want to inject into it so they kept the shell of a state and they want to bring the values and the institutions of a previous era into that new shell with which i mean there is there is incompatibility here so that is what I'm challenging I'm challenging that to say that since we have to live with the post-colonial state as that is the most viable for the time being until we can get through its own institutions over time if we decide to do that but since we have to live with it we have to bring a the safeguards that that are more consistent with the nature of the state so constitutional governments human rights protection are in the experiences of the same societies that if all these states have been found to be extremely useful so to go back to your remarks I agree completely I should have clarified the state has limited but very important functions but it is by far from being the totality of the public life of societies so the state should be kept neutral for the purposes of keeping the peace of adjudicating disputes of allocating resources when mediating political conflicts that is what the state is for defending the realm against aggression that is the functions of the state but the rest of life in civil society in religious institutions in all of the universities all of that culture all of that is where religion can be part of life as it should be I believe as a Muslim but not to be in any way sort of co-opted by the state or co-opting the state you make a important distinction in in in trying to reinforce intellectually the separation that the the the authority in religion and in the state are very different as is the function of religious authority and political authority and the state talked a little about that because it's very important they there are two different kinds of Authority and when religious leaders take over the state which you are saying they shouldn't do then there is a corruption of both kinds of Authority yes actually Iran today is a very instructive example of that confusion because the nature of religious authority must be spontaneous in the community that is because it is premised on a notion of piety and religious knowledge that is very difficult to quantify or to verify so whom I trust to be my religious spiritual leader is someone that has to be my choice bears on my understanding of our knowledge of the person on her or his piety and honesty and consistency and so on that sort of Authority is is drastically different from the nature of political authority which is inherently coercive and which has to be something that is the object of verifiable Authority the ability of someone to exercise authority in a coercive fashion so confusing the two so what I'm saying is that the nature of religious authority and the nature of political authority are fundamentally different so someone may have the charisma and that person may enjoy a level of this and the other but still they are different they are separate and this is not to say that there is no politics in release institutions the Catholic Church or local community of Muslims or Jewish community there is politics everywhere but it is it is the question is that the nature of religious authority must be kept spontaneous sort of voluntary because other to coerce someone to accept someone else's Authority is a negation of the possibility of being religious so Iran today gives us a very clear example of how you when you think of the supreme ruler or guardian who is above the constitution but how does he get to be there other than in politics so the very idea of a Council of clerics who politically get to be at the sort of the peak of religious authority is a really negation of the nature of true religious piety in your work you identify traditions within Islam that that pose a problem for someone who's Western and modern the treatment of women for example the the relationship of Muslims to non-muslims and other religious groups those and then the whole question of jihad whether one implements a jihad against the other obviously these three problematic areas will arise in a realm of politics mm-hmm what what is what is the key here because you you say also that you're the focus of your life's work is really to mediate universalism in particular settings so particular settings cultures have to be respected but what the the agenda is to bring citizenship Human Rights constitutionalism to these settings and in in the politics and society you're gonna run up against these problematic areas treatment of women talk a little about that what what is the way out there if I can put it this way to me the notion of universal human rights is a concept and the content and a context so the concept is a concept of rights of humans as humans everywhere the content that is what are the specific rights sort of the sort of list of Rights that we acknowledge as human rights is a Content that is broadly used through a consultation consultative consensus building process so for me the universality of the content of any say equality for women to me it is a human right but it is not a human right because Western society says so but because I believe it's lab says so too and my charge is to articulate that Islamic rationale not only for myself but also for other Muslims who are more likely to be persuaded if they see it as a racemic value then if they it is presented to them as a Western value they have to concede so it is and I say that universality is not proclaimed it is constructed through dialogue and I use Rawls idea of overlapping consensus to say that we can agree on a set of human rights norms despite our disagreement as to why we come to that conviction so as a Muslim I choose to come to it from an Islamic discourse not denying anybody else the right to come through that come to that conviction through another discourse but claiming my right to do so in my discourse because as a matter of principle that is the fulfillment of my self-determination as the person as a community but also tactically it is more likely to be persuaded to Muslim so the values that you mentioned our the problematic aspects which is about freedom of religion treatment of religious minorities women equality for women to me these are human values not Western values and I do not accept that always the Tsutaya societies subscribe to these values after all the Holocaust is a Western phenomena fascism is a Western phenomenon so it is not as if the West is enlightened democratic humane and the rest of the world is which was really that the logic of imperialism to say that we are out to the so-called white man's burden to civilize Africans by colonizing them that is the same logic so I reject that I do not believe that human rights can be advanced by this course I say that says there are Western and my charge is to make them acceptable to Muslims my charge is to bring Muslim voices my own and others into debating what human rights as a Content mean and yes the context eventually will come in to say even if we subscribe to these values the way we translate how they apply in practice will also be a matter of context and priority and Americans should understand this because they refuse to accept international supervision of their human rights practice at home they say our Constitution is our ultimate sort of arbiter of what rights are due to Americans and by the same token others people who have the same claim I think that many other societies are willing to be part of a global venture of human rights universal standards then Americans are so coming back to say the United States is more relativist just like China is relativism just like Iran is relativist more than many of the African and other Asian continues were Muslims are the majority so the agenda then for scholarship and your scholarship is to bring clarity and lucidity both to what human rights are on the one hand and what Islam is for Muslims and and so it's a dual education process which must be brought to Mayer not only for Muslim communities but also to the powerful such as the United States who basically say well we're for universal rights we just don't abide by them when we chose not to and you're saying the role of advocacy is to be lucid in for both settings yeah yeah yes I think you're right what I say is this that the process of building consensus around human rights norms and their institutions is dual it is what I call internal discourse to transform cultural understandings are released understanding within Muslim communities that's an internal discourse then I call cross-cultural dialogue but my approach is premise on the ability and willingness of other human rights advocates in other societies to do they internal discourse so that if you see for example the United States and let's compare it to another country rather than religion world religion Islam say the United States and Egypt or United States and Turkey American humorous advocates should be grappling with human rights issues that are problematic to Americans not to others and equality for women is still is a problem for many Americans the question of the death penalty may be the question of but whatever the issue economic and social rights arrive to help scale a right to education other societies take this as human rights Americans are not willing to do that so I would say that charge American humorist advocates to struggle just to get a feel of how difficult it is to transform attitudes within your own society the death penalty is a good example see those who have struggled to abolish the death penalty and how hard it has been to understand how difficult it is for others to do the same in their societies but assuming that both sides of us are doing this then we can engage in what I call cross-cultural dialogue to promote consensus so it is not that I am assuming that Muslim societies will come to the table just fully closed with their own convictions and no change but no they are sort of I am they are there are women rights activists there are free will freedom of religion activists who are struggling in those societies now about imperialism if I may close with this point is that imperialism makes it very difficult for human rights advocates to struggle for the rule of law in international relations and struggle for human rights in their societies that for me as a Muslim I would say I should not the United States behavior should not be my standard so that I should be committed to this values regardless of what the West does or does not do but the reality is that many people in my communities will say why should we abide by these standards if the resistance is not really bye-bye them so that double standard issue sort of therefore what I say that Imperial impulse of the matter states like invading Iraq or engaging in sort of all sort of Imperial adventures that undermines the very possibility of international law I want to challenge ahead Muslim sort of understanding of aggressive jihad as contrary to the rule of law and in contrary to civilized behavior but it's very difficult to do that when people feel under attack by superpower that appropriate the right to act unilaterally arbitrarily outside international institutions and expect others to abide by those institutions the short-term problem seems to be power and abuse of power the long-term solution is people changing themselves and changing their world briefly one last question you know time is just about up for a brief answer how would you advise students to prepare for for navigating this you in what in our discussion you have described what chasing the flame and keeping the flame alive was for you because of your parents and also because of your mentor mmm table what what advice for students keep it personal I think so long as when we think that we are solving the world's problems but not our own I think we're missing the point only for me I as far as that what are what message I would like to bring is keep it personal keep it immediate because our I tend to avoid responsibility if I can attempt to evade questions if I can so keep my feet to the fire I understand that I have a very limited span of life in which I am supposed to heal my inner self into one being so that when I depart I depart home are not divided I don't have time to waste and I would say for everybody find your cause find your issue but keep it personal and give it the best you can Abdullah thank you that was very a great discussion let me show you a book one more time and I want to thank you for coming to the Berkeley campus and being on our program thank you thank you very much thank you and thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with history you

Channel: UC Berkeley Events

Views: 19,870

Rating: 4.9207921 out of 5

Keywords: UC, Berkeley, ucberkeley, event, Conversations, With, History, Harry, Kreisler, Abdullahi, Ahmed, An-Naim, Islam, Secular, State

Id: Yg3hLdJLrOY

Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2010