ABSTRACT
Since 1945, human rights language has become a source of power and authority. Human rights doctrine is now so powerful, but also so unthinkingly imperialist in its claim to universality, that it has exposed itself to serious intellectual attack. The cultural challenge to the universality of human rights arises from three distinct sources—from resurgent Islam, from within the West itself, and from East Asia. Western defenders have forced human rights activists to question their assumptions, to rethink the history of their commitments, and to realize just how complicated intercultural dialogue on rights questions becomes when all cultures participate as equals. Western defenders of human rights have traded too much away. Human rights represent a revolutionary creed, since they make a radical demand of all human groups that they serve the interests of the individuals who compose them. The best way to face the cultural challenges to human rights coming from Asia, Islam, and Western postmodernism is to admit their truth.
