An-Naim, Abdullahi

English

Digital Commons @ American University Washington College of Law

REMARKS OF ABDULLAHI AN-NA'IM*I want to start by saying that we have to be clear about distinguish-ing the forest from the trees. Culture is very fundamental, and noneof us can ever escape it, whether it is the culture that we were bornwith or culture that we acquired. It is always there; it is in this room;it is in all our minds, in all our hearts. So the issue is not to have ornot to have culture.Religion is also fundamental and universal and is not going to goaway either. So the choice is not whether or not we can havereligion.What is at issue, I think, is whose views of religion and culture willprevail. This is the notion of contestability of culture andcontestability of religion.As a Muslim, I always make the heretical sort of statement thatreligion is secular, which may appear like a contradiction in terms.But the fact of the matter is that there is no way we can access, we canrelate to, we can be influenced and formed by religion, exceptthrough human agency. Our human agency is definitive of ourreligion. In that sense, religion is secular, religion is human-made.The point here is to emphasize this secularity of religion, and assuch, to make it political-to make it a political asset. This conceptapplies equally to culture. When I speak of religion and culture, Ispeak in the same vein, in the sense that they are both human-made,are both human-remade. In the immediate wake of America'smidterm elections, it was very interesting for me to see, as a foreignerliving in this country, how so-called American culture was manipulat-ed, used, and abused in the campaign. What we see now in theoutcome is a triumph of a particular view of so-called Americanculture.The question for women's rights advocates and reproductive rightsadvocates is not whether or not religion and culture are relevant, buthow to take control and manipulate them. In other words, the goal* Executive Director of Human Rights Watch/Africa in Washington, D.C.; LL.B.,University of Khartoum, Sudan; Diploma in Criminology, University of Cambridge; Ph.D.,University of Edinburgh, Scotland.1383THE AMEICAN UNIWRSITY LAw REviEw [Vol. 44:1383for women's rights groups is to see religion and culture as a mediumand as a vehicle of change, not necessarily as something that isinherently antagonistic to reproductive rights and the rights ofwomen.There is the mistaken impression that all we need to have is a rightsparadigm or a system of rights. The issue is not simply a question ofrights, it is a question of ability to use rights, to the extent that rightscan make any difference anyway. Beyond legal and rights paradigms,there is a whole world of women and men and social, cultural, andreligious activities, which are deeply rooted and very inaccessible.One of the problems that we have with negative religious and culturalphenomena is that they are so inaccessible, and that even the victimsare co-opted into perpetuating those practices.In my chapter seven of Rebecca Cook's book, entitled Human Rightsof Women, that theme also is touched upon, addressing how to accessthose levels of consciousness and motivation, which are embodied inreligion and culture, and to transform them at that level.Why do we give fundamentalism such space in our thinking and inour media? The intellectuals, the liberal-minded human rights typesof the Islamic world are so apologetic and defensive; they concede tothe fundamentalists more than what the fundamentalists are askingfor themselves. Most of all, they concede to the fundamentalists thelegitimacy and the right and the ability to define the issues and todefine the space of discourse. That is something that we have toquestion among ourselves. We are not simply dealing with someonewho holds a counterview, but we are dealing with our own internaldefeat, which gives that counterview more weight than it deserves.One of the issues that one finds in discussing questions of culturalspecificity or relativism and religious fundamentalism is the fear thatby engaging in a cultural or religious discourse you are conceding theplatform, you are conceding the terms of reference to the other side.My point is that it is not the mere faet of engaging in religious andcultural discourse, it is the manner that we concede the discourse tothe other side. If we engage in discourse with a view that religion andculture are all defined for us, we are being co-opted; we are conced-ing the struggle before engaging it.But if we engage in that discussion with a view to redefining or tostart defining for ourselves what our religion and culture are, thatorientation is what makes a difference.It is not simply the ability of organized religion to control ourlives-it is our inability to control our lives in the face of organizedreligion.1384

Remarks Conference on the Interventional Protection of Reproductive Rights: Religious & Cultural Rights

https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1490&amp;context=aulr

Remarks Conference on the Interventional Protection of Reproductive Rights: Religious & Cultural Rights

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