Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World

The book under review seeks to answer the question: do human rights matter in the Muslim world? Going against the conventional wisdom, Chase argues that Muslim engagement with human rights concerns has been significant. Moreover, this engagement shed new lights on human rights in general. This is a timely work addressing an important topic. Complex and ambitious, the book is challenging and contributes some important insights, even though one may disagree with the author on where to draw a line between free speech and hate speech. Chase argues that human rights have been politically and historically important for the Muslim world. Palestinians have extensively used human rights to voice their grievances and demands. In the United Nations, Egypt pushed the question of self-determination and Iraq gender equality into two covenants. Arab NGOs of various stripes have been mobilized for human rights. More and more Muslim actors see human rights as emancipatory and empowering. According to Chase, Muslims participate in conversations on human rights in the “transnational space”. This participation, in turn, fosters crossfertilisation between Islamist and human rights activists. Building on the constructivist international relations insights – namely, the idea that the normative structures and agents/actors mutually and constantly shape one another – Chase conceptualises the transnational space as a two-way street: it socialises Muslims into human rights and also remakes human rights. (p. 53) Admittedly, Muslim groups and states sometimes reject or dishonestly invoke human rights.