Law, Culture, and Human Rights

Abstract

This conference, unfortunately, lacked focus and direction. The conference brochure and posters were the first indication that distressing leaps of association were going to be made. One wondered why, for example, Malcolm X, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein were pictured on the brochure when their actions and ideas were in no way related to anything disclls.5ed in the conference. And why was a picture of a jubilant Hanan Ashrawi set beside a miserable looking woman in a black chador? This crass visual melange of "Islamic" figures would not have been so significant if the conference had been more focused, but this was not the case. Still, there were a number of interesting debates and discussions. The inclusion of a panel of medievalists was one strange feature of the conference. While Joseph van Ess's paper on the role of the individual in medieval Islamic culture was intensting, it was anachronistic in a conference on contemporary human rights. As I listened to Michael cook's talk on "al 'Amr bi al Ma'ruf and Human Rights" (from a medieval perspective), I recalled a statement by an Exeter scholar that orientalists mlize fundamentalists' wildest dreams when they leap back a thousand years to explain current events. It is hard enough to deal with Muslims who want to reinstate a medieval political order without having Cook offer a few of his own suggestions ...