ABSTRACT
Human rights imply a particular form of relation of the individual to society and the state that differs from what most cultures mean by human dignity. For many communitarian critics of modern Western society, human rights imply disorderly, selfish, and antisocial individualism. This perspective is evident in both the African and the Muslim claims to conceptions of human rights superior to the conception found in the West. The normal response of Muslim traditionalists in the international debate on human rights is not to forthrightly state on record that they disagree with some human rights. Rather, it is to try to co-opt the language of human rights. Communities in the preindustrial European world and the contemporary underdeveloped world were and are based upon common birthplace, kinship ties, and ancestral links and generally reinforced by homogeneous religion, language, and custom. In the Western world, these communities have by and large broken down.
