40: Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im – Decolonising Human Rights

Global Governance Futures: Imperfect Utopias or Bust

Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law Emeritus at Emory Law, associated professor in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and senior fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion of Emory University. A world-renowned scholar of Islam and human rights and human rights in cross-cultural perspectives, An-Na'im teaches courses in international law, comparative law, human rights, and Islamic law. His research interests include constitutionalism in Islamic and African countries, secularism, Islam and politics and human rights. Our conversation was inspired by his latest book, Decolonizing Human Rights, which challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neocolonial understanding of human rights. Abdullahi proposes a transformation from human rights organised around state-determined practice to one that is focused on what he calls a “people-centric” approach that empowers individuals to decide how human rights will be understood and integrated into their communities. This argument serves as the starting point for our conversation on the complexities, paradoxes and cultural dimensions that challenge a traditional Western perspective on human rights and invites inquiry into what a decolonized, culturally-inclusive alternative might look like. Abdullahi’s official profile can be found here: https://law.emory.edu/faculty/faculty-emeritus/annaim-emeritus-profile.html We discussed: Decolonizing Human Rights, 2021: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/decolonizing-human-rights/decolonizing-human-rights/1A39889DEDE614E07D18FFF988BF085F Human Rights and its Inherent Liberal Relativism, 2019: https://goldsmithspress.pubpub.org/pub/v1c6tsos/release/1 Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspectives: A Quest for Consensus, 2010: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/340