After Abu Ghraib: Exploring Human Rights in America and the Middle East

by Shadi Mokhtari

Overview

Mokhtari’s book examines the changes in the human rights discourse in the United States and the Middle East after the maltreatment and torture of the U.S. captives in the Abu Ghraib and other prisons became public. Through the text analysis of speeches and news reports, as well as in-depth interviews with human rights NGO officials, she makes a thorough assessment that both credits and criticizes the NGOs. Mokhtari shows that human rights advocacy has been successful in pushing the U.S. courts and Congress to recognize the relevance of international human rights law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107401488
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/21/2011
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Shadi Mokhtari is Assistant Professor at the School of International Service at American University. She currently works with a domestic violence nonprofit organization in the Washington DC area and serves as the managing editor of the Muslim World Journal of Human Rights. She holds PhD and LLM degrees from Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; a JD from the University of Texas School of Law; a master's in international affairs from Columbia University; and a BA from American University. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and has contributed chapters to books, including Islamic Law and International Law ('The Iranian Search for Human Rights within an Islamic Framework') (2007), Islamic Feminism and the Law ('Towards a New Agenda for Islamic Feminism:Clearing the Human Rights Minefield') (2008), and Migrant Women's Search for Social Justice ('Migrant Women's Interests and the Case of Shari'a Tribunals in Ontario') (2009). In 2006, she was selected as a 'new voices' panelist at the American Association of International Law Conference and was awarded honorable mention for the John Peter Humphreys Fellowship from the Canadian Council on International Law.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. American imaginings of human rights and the Middle East; 2. The human rights challenge from within; 3. The Middle Eastern gaze on American human rights commitments; 4. American imprints and the Middle East's new human rights landscape; 5. From the ashes of the post-September 11th era: lessons for the human rights project.

Editorial Reviews

Insightful, sober, and forward looking analysis of the practice of human rights in the harsh realities of violent conflict and moral ambivalence. This is how to uphold principled commitment to human rights, through critical pragmatic optimism, not unrealistic naivety or futile mutual aggression.”

- Dr. Abdullahi A. An-Na’im
Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law
Emory University




“Critical of the constructivist theory’s omission of human rights violations in western states, Mokhtari examines the human rights discourse that emerged in the US after the torture of the US captives in the Abu Ghraib and other prisons became public. She shows that human rights advocacy has been successful in pushing the US courts and Congress to recognize the relevance of international human rights law, but only by reproducing the prevalent “East/West geography of human rights,” which treats the US as the origin and innate holder of international human rights norms and the East as the outlaw to be tamed and taught. Moreover, the Middle Eastern human rights NGOs appear to have accepted and internalized the core assumption of this binary. This book is not only original and timely, but it also has strong ethical and theoretical dimensions. As a documented commentary on policy, constructivist theory, and NGO strategies, it is a must reading for all who are concerned about human rights issues.”

- Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat
Juanita and Joseph Leff Professor
Political Science, Purchase College, SUNY

From the Publisher