ABSTRACT
Human rights activists in the Middle East have been assertive in calling for adherence to international human rights law. Islamic human rights schemes can be seen as one facet of a widespread back lash against secularization of laws. Islamic human rights schemes need to be evaluated in the context of ongoing political struggles over democratization in the Middle East. The hostility to critical scholarly comparisons of international human rights law and Islamic human rights schemes typically reflects unfounded preconceptions. At the core of many efforts to delegitimize comparisons of Islamic and international law are convictions that such comparisons violate the canons of cultural relativism. The warrant for extending cultural relativism to challenge international law that has been constructed with the participation of UN member states from around the globe is dubious. Cultural relativists tend to deprecate the positions of Muslims who support human rights universality and who protest that Islam is wrongly exploited to deprive them of rights.
