درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The emerging right to democracy (e.g. Franck, T) within international law favors a liberal, democratic packaging. Yet as Abedolkarim Sourash argues, there has been a conflation of liberalism and democracy, which must be decoupled.  It is from this point of departure that this paper will examine the international legality of militant democracy and interrogate when and how a constitutional democracy can legally act in an anti-democratic manner to combat threats to its democratic existence.  Militant democracy was a term introduced in 1937 by Karl Lowenstein. It refers to a form of constitutional democracy authorized to protect civil and political freedom by pre-emptively restricting its exercise. Lowenstein’s writings, at the time, were concerned with the limitations of democratic institutions in containing fascism. Militant democracies stand in contrast with the principles of legal pluralism, but the extent to which international law authorizes transformative political agendas that seek to implement forms of religious, cultural, or national autonomy is unclear.

After the atrocity’s committed during the Second World War, the citizens of the world cried out for a universal code of ethics. On December 10th 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a universal declaration of human rights, thus setting a new standard for all nations to follow. According to Article 18 of that declaration “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance”. People, and women in particular, who are born in different parts of the world have different cultural, as well as religious identities. It is time for education on, and a universal understanding of, the identity differences of Muslim women to be made universally accessible, and understood. Although the ultimate result was the near obliteration of an entire race, and a worldwide war, the groundwork was laid in a much quieter manner. The Nazi party slowly began working their ideals into society. First espousing the sovereignty of the German race and then planting the seeds for the loathing and contempt that would follow for all other races. Near the end of the Second World War Adolph Hitler described Jewish people as “something aggressive” the same words that French president Jacques Chirac recently used when petitioning Parliament to pass a law banning the wearing of hijab in France?

The guiding question of this paper is “How can, if at all, the universality of human rights survive critical examinations within the prevailing multiculturalist frame of reference?” This paper examines the possibility conditions of critically reasoning for the universality of human rights. The discussions in this paper runs at two levels of analysis. At the conceptual level, a theoretical monist-pluralist frame of reference will be developed to reformulate the problematic of the universality of human rights in a form more compatible methodologically with multiculturalist approaches in the humanities, social sciences and current discourses of cultural studies. Demonstrating the weaknesses of the alternative solutions, the main hypothesis of this study suggests to refer to a reconstructed version of the “golden rule of reciprocal fairness.” At the practical level, this paper will set forth three “why”, “which”, and “how” questions regarding those principles which can bolster a universal reception of the human rights as fairness.