Comment: On Sawad’s PhD thesis
25 May 2011, 10:28 AM
Ali Ahsan
Ahmed Ali Sawad’s PhD thesis has rightly been hailed ‘brilliant’, and we must all be pleased that a mind of such brilliance lives amongst us. This comment cannot at all do justice to its depth and scope. This is a quick comment in the hope of starting a debate on our own rejection of certain human rights.
‘Cultural’ universalism
Sawad’s thesis is in many ways a demonstration of the remarkable ability of a ‘culturally different’ mind’s grasping of other ‘culturally different’ conceptions of human rights and self-understandings.
Sawad’s culturally different background has not prevented him from grasping the major ‘Western’ conceptions of rights, from natural law theories to John Rawls’s political liberalism. He could also engage in a vigorous ‘universal critique’ of those conceptions (unless ‘universal’, inter-subjective communication would be meaningless and ineffective.)
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