Personally, what jumped out for me in the linked article was the argument that the author opposes "anything which I perceive to be in violation of human rights". Now, I'm all for human rights...but human rights have to be based on something. Historically, justifications often harken back to religion.
There have been plenty of contemporary attempts to find a fully secular and humanistic basis for human rights. Richard Rorty makes a particularly interesting case for this. But personally, I find these arguments...really really iffy. And if your conception of rights and values isn't absolute, then it's just relative. And if it's relative, how can you justify condemning someone else?
Hence the liberal dilemma. You can't condemn.
Having said that, obviously, obviously it isn't right to tar all Islamic politics with the same brush. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not a political party. It is a movement that various nominally secular political parties are aligned to. A technicality, yes, but a critical one. The Muslim Brotherhood hasn't hijacked a liberal revolution - they were the leading opposition group to begin with. At least in Egypt, an argument can be made that the Arab Spring was a revolution of the educated elite - students, netizens, young professionals and the like. These folks never really represented the majority in the first place.
I mean, yes, most of the outside world would much rather Egypt's new parliament be run by liberal parties rather than the Muslim Brotherhood aligned ones, but really, that's their business. It's democracy.
-- Acyl
There have been plenty of contemporary attempts to find a fully secular and humanistic basis for human rights. Richard Rorty makes a particularly interesting case for this. But personally, I find these arguments...really really iffy. And if your conception of rights and values isn't absolute, then it's just relative. And if it's relative, how can you justify condemning someone else?
Hence the liberal dilemma. You can't condemn.
Having said that, obviously, obviously it isn't right to tar all Islamic politics with the same brush. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not a political party. It is a movement that various nominally secular political parties are aligned to. A technicality, yes, but a critical one. The Muslim Brotherhood hasn't hijacked a liberal revolution - they were the leading opposition group to begin with. At least in Egypt, an argument can be made that the Arab Spring was a revolution of the educated elite - students, netizens, young professionals and the like. These folks never really represented the majority in the first place.
I mean, yes, most of the outside world would much rather Egypt's new parliament be run by liberal parties rather than the Muslim Brotherhood aligned ones, but really, that's their business. It's democracy.
-- Acyl