Decolonizing the “Universal” Human Rights Regime: Questioning American Exceptionalism and Orientalism

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.4.1.0059
• Pages: 59-77
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Date: 01 October 2018
• Author: Hakimeh Saghaye-Biria
• Subject Matter: Human Rights,American exceptionalism,Orientalism,Eurocentrism,universality,hegemony,critical Muslim studies

ReOrient 4.1 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

University of Tehran, Iran

DECOLONIZING THE “UNIVERSAL” HUMAN

RIGHTS REGIME: QUESTIONING AMERICAN

EXCEPTIONALISM AND ORIENTALISM

Hakimeh Saghaye-Biria

Abstract: This article aims to decolonize the discourse of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights through the lens of Critical Muslim Studies, arguing that such systems

of “international norms” are Eurocentric in character and hegemonic in practice. I argue

that the promotion of a Western system of human rights as universal works through the

two pillars of Orientalism and Eurocentrism, focusing particularly on the discourse of

American exceptionalism as a distinct American form of Eurocentrism. Such a critique is

a necessary first step for creating the grounds for alternative human rights orders, such

as the notion of Islamic human rights. To be successful, any alternative Islamic system for

alleviating human oppression and suffering should first dismantle the hegemonic grip of

Orientalism and Eurocentrism on human rights.

Keywords: Human Rights, American exceptionalism, Orientalism, Eurocentrism,

universality, hegemony, critical Muslim studies

Introduction

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (UN General Assembly

1948), which became the bedrock for subsequent international human rights cove-

nants and treaties, was born in 1948 upon the ashes of European and American war

atrocities. While both sides of the struggle had committed war crimes, the declara-

tion was mostly a product of the winners against the losers. It was put together just

3 years after the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which

killed more than 140,000 innocent men, women, and children and brought death

and injury to many more in the years to come. The bombing came only 4 years after

President Roosevelt’s famous “Four Freedoms” speech. Ironically, despite its bleak

human rights record at home and abroad, the United States has ever since claimed

to be the leader of universalizing human rights and more so following the fallback

from the Vietnam War, crafting “human rights into a new language of power

designed to promote American foreign policy” (Peck 2011: 5).

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While the notion of “human rights” is often promoted as a universal corpus of

values, it has proved highly controversial. These controversies mostly center on

the issues of effectiveness and consistency. The United Nations, the United States,

and other Western powers are often criticized for applying double standards with

regard to human rights enforcement. Western countries in general and the United

States in particular have been criticized for failing to comply with human rights

standards domestically and globally. These centers of power, however, use the

notion of human rights to challenge and pressure adversaries. Critical scholars

argue that the root cause of the problem lies in the Eurocentric nature of the uni-

versal human rights corpus. Critiquing the universal mission of human rights on

the normative scale and highlighting its limitations, they question the very univer-

sality of human rights and its comprehensiveness, thus revealing the narrow

Western-centric nature of the current human rights regime. Scholars taking this

approach level their critique of the current human rights order at the formation

stage in addition to the implementation stage.

Mutua (2002), for example, puts forth “a substantive critique of ‘the Eurocentric

human rights corpus,’” making a case against “the dominant Western human

rights project.” He writes,

What is advocated here is the need for the human rights movement to rethink

and reorient its hierarchized, binary view of the world in which the European

West leads the way and the rest of the globe follows in a structure that resembles

a child–parent relationship. (Mutua 2002: 8–9)

Sayyid’s (2003: 285) definition of Eurocentrism is useful here. Eurocentrism is defined

as “a multidimensional attempt to restore Western cultural practices as universal.”

I argue in this article, which focuses on the American approach to universal

human rights, that American Orientalism and American exceptionalism provide a

firm conceptual basis for such a critique, which is a necessary first step to open the

space for alternative human rights orders, especially that of Islamic human rights.

The discourse of Islamic human rights is based on Islamic philosophical principles

rather than on the Western concepts of humanism, individualism, liberalism, and

secularism. At the most fundamental level, Islamic human rights is based on belief

in the One God and in His exclusive possession of sovereignty (tawhid) from

which the doctrine of the dignity of man as God’s vicegerent on earth is derived.

Consequently, the bedrock of Islamic human rights is “the rejection of all forms of

oppression, both the infliction and the endurance of it, and of dominance, both its

imposition and its acceptance,” to use Article 2c of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s

constitution. Verse 64 of the third chapter of the Quran may well be called the

main declaration of human rights in Islam: