Free Shadi Sadr, Uphold Women’s Rights

Thanks to MuslimahMediaWatch for posted this on their blog.

Shadi Sadr, the prominent Iranian lawyer and women’s rights defender, was violently arrested by plainclothes security officials on her way to Friday Prayers on June 17, 2009.

Sadr was the latest causality amidst the ongoing crackdown of Iranian civil society following the disputed Iranian election on June 12. Since then, hundreds of activists, intellectuals, and dissidents have been arrested without cause or due process.

While all of these arrests are disturbing and unwarranted, Shadi’s represents a severe blow to the Iranian women’s movement, an important element of the pro-democracy cause in Iran and one of the leading tides in the overall reformist movement.

Shadi Sadr is a human rights lawyer who specializes in defending the rights of women in Iran. She was the director of Raahi, a legal advice center for women, which was shut down by the government in 2008, as well as Zanan-e Iran (Women of Iran), the first website dedicated to women’s rights activism in Iran. Shadi writes extensively on women’s rights issues and human rights for Meydaan-e Zanan (Women’s Field) on www.meydaan.org, which houses several women’s rights initiatives and local campaigns, including the “Stop Stoning Forever” Campaign. Shadi is a member of the Network of Volunteer Lawyers and defends pro bono some of the most vulnerable women defendants, including those who have been sentenced to death by stoning.

I first met Shadi in 2007, while I was researching a paper on the Stop Stoning Forever Campaign. Like many other young women activists, I was blessed to receive the mentorship, guidance, and knowledge that Shadi bestows on her colleagues, and particularly on the younger generation of women’s rights defenders. Shadi is an inspiration to all of us who strive for justice, and is the epitome of self-sacrifice for the good of humanity. One colleague joked that her belief in justice and the rule of law is so high that she would probably “defend her attackers.”

This is not the first time the Iranian government has gone after Shadi. She and another colleague, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, were held over two weeks in March 2007 before being released on bail. They, along with several other Iranian women’s rights defenders, were accused of “propaganda against the system”, “acting against national security” and “participating in an illegal demonstration” in connection with the June 12, 2006 demonstration.

In reality, Shadi Sadr has never endangered national security, unless the Iranian national security is inextricably based on the oppression of women. Shadi has been firm in her belief that the empowerment of Iranian women is compatible with both Islam as well as the Islamic Republic. She has been steadfast in her conviction that reform of discriminatory laws is possible, and serves as a bridge between religious and secular forces to make that change happen.

As one commentator said in response to Shadi’s arrest: “It’s how one controls a civilization — by taking their best and brightest away. Live in fear and live in defeat.” Shadi will not live in fear, and the Iranian women’s rights movement will not live in defeat. We call upon the women’s rights community and all human rights activists and organizations to speak out in defense of Shadi Sadr and all those who are being unjustly persecuted in Iran for their non-violent dissent. Please write to local and international media, mobilize your networks, and urge your policy makers and embassies as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay to take action to protect the basic human rights of all those who are being abused and arrested in Iran. You can write in Persian, English, or your own language.

For more information on how to help, as well as details on where to speak out, please go here.

Neda and American Activism - Links

Unveiling the revolution

The world has been shocked by young Iranian women fighting on the front lines -- but their rebellion is nothing new

By Tracy Clark-Flory


I am not Neda

Watching a violent death caught on tape seems so ghoulish and exploitive; are people really watching to bear somber witness, or merely because it's so shocking -- perhaps even perversely thrilling, in a tiny, shameful way -- that we can watch?

By Kate Harding

Islamic Double Standards

[Note: I found this on Progressive Islam and I loved it. Good Read]

Islamic Double Standards

Written by Kecia Ali

Wednesday, 28 December 2005
SEX AND SEXUALITY: DEALING EFFECTIVELY WITH ISLAMIC DOUBLE STANDARDS

By Kecia Ali

Popular discussions of women in Islam, among both Muslims and non-Muslims, often focus on the not very precise concept of “women" status, while more scholarly discussions usually revolve around “gender. The latter is useful for analytic purposes, since it allows for the idea that appropriate male and female roles are socially constructed and not the result of an unchanging nature. Really, though, “women" and “gender" often serve as proxies for the real subject of debate: sex and sexuality. Of course, sexuality figures in the exoticized, fetishized Muslim Woman as she is stereotypically presented in Western media. But seldom recognized, or at least rarely admitted, is most of the big controversies among Muslims over hijab, female seclusion ala Taliban, hadd punishments for zina, polygyny, honor killings, and so-called female circumcision are at base about sex and sexuality. In one way or another, these practices are about keeping women from, or punishing women for, making themselves available to men who do not have sexual rights to them.

Those Muslims who push for strict observance by women of customs and rules designed to ensure social chastity frequently reject any attempt to impose comparable restrictions on men. Even when parallel restrictions are accepted in theory, there is no push for accountability for male transgressions: When was the last time a man was sentenced to stoning for adultery? The application of different rules and consequences to the same cases is the classic definition of a double standard. Now, double standards are by no means unique to Islam, and the simple fact of their presence among Muslims is therefore not surprising. Many contemporary Muslims, though, are unwilling to acknowledge either the existence of the double standard or, even more troublesome, its roots in the key source texts of Islam.

It is fashionable to declare that the Quran provides for the full equality of men and women, and it undeniably does so when it comes to status of all human beings as individually sovereign and accountable before God for their beliefs and actions. However, on certain matters related to sex, Quranic verses apply clearly different rules of propriety and conduct to men and women. While both men and women are commanded to cast down their gazes, only womens dress is specifically regulated. Men alone are granted permission to have more than one spouse concurrently. Further, and most problematic from a modern perspective, male owners are explicitly allowed to have sexual access to their female slaves (what their right hands possess). (While few Muslims today advocate slavery of any sort, let alone the sexual use of female slaves by their masters, this was a feature of the first Muslim community. The Prophet himself had at least one concubine, and the practice continued lawfully by elites in various regions of the Muslim world until the twentieth century.)

Now, these Quranic statements, along with precedents from the early Muslims, were elaborated by scriptural commentators and jurists over the course of several centuries into an authoritative discourse of gender and sexuality that viewed male desires as praiseworthy, provided fulfillment was sought within lawful channels, which included polygynous marriage and slave concubinage. Female desire, on the other hand, was largely ignored as a positive force and treated instead as something to be contained. The vague Quranic prescriptions on female dress and modesty solidified into rules prescribing total concealment and segregation. Some jurists even classified women's voices as shameful when heard by unrelated men. While scholars occasionally mentioned the moral duty of a husband to satisfy his wife sexually, the overwhelming emphasis of the classical tradition was on ensuring female chastity outside of marriage and sexual availability and exclusivity within it. This pertained, of course, to free Muslim women. Enslaved women, even Muslims, were subject to looser controls on their dress and movements; they also had fewer legal rights and protections.

In addition to being strongly class and gender-differentiated, Islamic jurisprudence has historically been very explicit that most of its regulations concerning the interaction of unrelated men and women were based on preventing powerful desires from giving rise to unlawful actions. Additionally, the regulations governing the rights and duties of the parties in marriage largely revolved around sex. Marriage, the jurists declared straightforwardly, was a contract for exclusive sexual enjoyment of the wife. This exclusivity was not reciprocal; any attempt by a woman to contractually stipulate at the time of marriage that her husband could not marry additional wives or take any slave-concubines was rejected by the majority of Sunni jurists because, in the words of master-jurist al-Shafi, it would be "narrowing what God made wide for him"

Mainstream Muslim discourse today, as represented in the pamphlets and booklets that circulate at ISNA conferences and local mosques across North America, attempts to present an Islamic sexual morality that stands in sharp opposition to loose Western mores. Family values Muslim-style upholds modesty, chastity, and monogamy except, that is, when polygyny is presented as a solution to a perceived social or personal need, and celebrated as a more humane alternative to extra-marital affairs. Lois Lamya' Al-Faruqi lays out these ideas in Women, Muslim Society, and Islam. She argues that the "Islamic gender system" avoids the pitfalls of Western promiscuity. She suggests that the breakdown in Western families is due to “the increased sexual dispensability of the wife, in contrast to the Islamic norm of limiting sex to marriage. One possible critique of her work, and indeed the voluminous apologetic literature on "women's rights in Islam" in general, is that it contrasts an Islamic ideal to a Western reality - hardly a fair basis for comparison. Here, however, we can evaluate what she claims to be the Islamic norm against the traditional sexual ethics formulated by medieval Muslim jurists.

The supposedly Islamic ideal of monogamous, two-parent families with a father-breadwinner-husband and childbearer-homemaker-wife is a fiction, a radical reenvisioning of sexual ethics that cloaks itself in the garb of classical authenticity. That is not to say that such a family structure is incompatible with any basic principles or specific rulings of the Quran, sunnah, or even traditional jurisprudence. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that this norm is not merely a reproduction of a classical ideal but rather itself an interpretation, and a distinctively modern one at that. It has gained widespread acceptance in many segments of the community despite its lack of continuity with traditional laws because many contemporary Muslims, including intellectuals who inform other Muslims about what is Islamic, are uncomfortable with the classical double standard authorizing multiple partners for men with no stigma attached while accepting restrictions on female mobility to ensure sexual exclusivity and availability of women wives and concubines to the men with sexual rights over them. Such views are simply incompatible with the notions of fairness and justice held by many Muslims.

The endless apologetics and polemics over women's status and rights reflect Muslims failure to engage with a contemporary crisis of sexual ethics. There are very real problems faced by Muslims, especially but not exclusively those living in the West, who are attempting to regulate their intimate lives in ways that correspond to both their faith convictions and their twenty-first century contexts. It is only by direct engagement with issues of sex and sexuality that Muslims can make progress in thinking about appropriate ways to respond to the current predicament. For many reasons, Muslims today should not simply adopt the viewpoint of the classical jurists. However, Muslims can certainly learn from their frank approach to discussing sex and sexuality as an integral part of life for Muslim individuals and communities.

Dr. Kecia Ali is a Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer in the Women's Studies in Religion Program at Harvard University Divinity School, where she is completing a manuscript on marriage in early Islamic jurisprudence. Ali has contributed articles to the recent anthologies Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism and Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith. From 2001-2003, she wrote about Islam for the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project at Brandeis University. Her current study, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence, is due to be published by Oneworld in 2005. This article is based on a presentation given during March 2004 at New York University, at a panel entitled “On Authority: Revisiting Tradition in Islam through the Discourse of Gender

This article was originally published at:
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2004/04/sex_and_sexuali.php

Whose line is it anyway? Identity and Authenticity when it comes to ‘saving’ and speaking for Muslim Women.

Speaking on behalf of -- Orientatalism and Identity

How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the 'other')?

Edward Said wrote those words after becoming exhausted by reading academic works on the Muslim world written by Englishmen, French, Germans, and Americans. The lack of first-hand experience or knowledge, clear bias, clash-of-civilizations framework, and moral dichotomies were ubiquitous in these scholarly texts, which permeated into the general media and public discourse on the “Muslim World.”

But after Edward Said’s ingenious work Orientalism, from which the above quote was taken, new concerns over the “who speaks for whom” question encouraged critique of texts and media that represented Muslim people, and particularly the authorship of such representations.

In laymen’s terms, can non-Muslims “speak” for Muslims? Or, more specifically to my interest, can “Western” women speak and act on behalf of “Muslim” women?

This concern was then transformed into questions concerning activism, and who has the legitimacy to act in a particular political situation or humanitarian crisis. The question was raised: are the people being saved really in need of saving? Who decides?


Are you experienced? Who can write about Muslim women:

I follow several blogs that discuss such questions. MuslimahMediaWatch, one such blog, describes itself as “a forum where we, as Muslim women, can critique how our images appear in the media and popular culture.”

The writers at MuslimahMediaWatch usually present an English-language media source published in the “West” that displays some representation of Muslim women, and critiques it for the way in which this representation might be essentialized, misinformed, racist, sexist, or otherwise mischaracterized.

A common critique raised at MuslimahMediaWatch is that a white “Westerner” cannot legitimately speak on behalf of Muslim Women. This critique is important, because very often the wants and needs of a particular group of people are mischaracterized by others who are not familiar or misinformed on the reality of the situation. Writing from Montreal, my awareness about the context of Nigeria is limited; whereas someone who is actually living and working there gains first-hand knowledge. Often when we try to represent another group of people, we superimpose our own biases, mores, and perspectives inappropriately. The actual group being discussed loses their voice, message, and agency in the process.

Surely some people are more legitimately qualified to speak on the situation of a group of people, whether that comes from personal experience, education, or accomplishments. But very often, it comes down to identity. One article on MuslimaMediaWatch critiquing a work by New York Times columnist Randy Cohen was entitled: “The ‘Limits of Tolerance’ of a white, privileged, non-Muslim man.” Clearly the identity of Mr. Cohen, as a white, privileged, non-Muslim man, had something to do with his supposed misrepresentation of Muslim women, particularly Pakistani women in Swat valley.

In another piece, writer Sobia comments on an article by Sally Armstrong on the situation of Afghan women. She writes: “Now anytime the idea of a non-Afghan, Western/Northern person trying to save Afghan women is presented, I can’t help but wonder if long lasting solutions are being sought, and usually they are not.” (Armstrong’s other qualifications, such as education or personal experience, were not mentioned.) Sobia implies that Armstrong is unqualified to speak about Afghan women and does so poorly. She argues that Armstrong is not taking the “cultural and religious context, as well as how they ended up as they are – a.k.a. colonization” into account in her article. She also suggests that Armstrong allow Afghan women to speak for themselves by quoting organization such as RAWA, and giving greater priority to root causes of the Afghan women situation.

But in writing this critique and offering suggestions, Sobia does not cite any Afghan women’s organization as her source for information either. She says that

If women in the West do want to help Afghan women, they would be better off questioning the tactics and purpose of their governments’ current ‘war on terror’.

This position is surely a reasonable one, but the fact is, Sobia is the one offering this suggestion to help Afghan women, not the Afghan women themselves (at least not in this piece.) There is no viewpoint or perspective mentions by an Afghan woman explicitly presented in either the original piece by Armstrong of Sobia’s critique. Whether or not one considers this problematic in its own right, the issue becomes problematic when considering that Sobia’s fundamental critique of Armstrong was one based on identity and complexity. Armstrong is not qualified to speak because she is not an Afghan woman. Furthermore, she simplifies the issue. But Sobia is not an Afghan woman either, and later in her comments admits that the issue of women in Afghanistan is too complex to cover with justice in a short article or blog post. In addition, the writer of one of the critiqued articles commented that: “The purpose of the article was not to provide a grand overview of all the complex historical reasons why women in Afghanistan are in the situation they are in, nor to provide answers to the problems.”

What makes Sobia different exactly than Sally Armstrong in this case? The bottom line is this: Are non-Afghanis not allowed to talk about Afghan women? Does a non-Afghan, Western Muslim woman have more of an authority than a white, Christian women?

Sahar, another commentator, seems to think so. She says:

Non-Afghan Muslim woman writing on Afghanistan would have a closer insight on the complexities of the Afghan experience than say a Westerner. Why? ’cause there are commonalities that even a non-Afghan Muslim woman can identify.

However, what she means exactly by “Westerner” is unclear. What is implied is that A Muslim woman living in the West would have “closer insight” than a non-Muslim Westerner.


The Hierarchy of Authenticity:

The hierarchy of authentic perspectives becomes complicated. Does a third generation Afghan woman living in Ohio have better perspective than a Christian Pakistani woman living in Lahore? What about a White woman, like Sally Armstrong, with years of experience living in Afghanistan? One Afghani-Western commentator writes: “Armstrong’s writing is at least informed by experience. Many commentators have never even been to Afghanistan. She should be given some respect for that. The memories of us exiles are likely further removed from contemporary Afghanistan than hers, especially if we have never been there.”

Many of the commentators on MuslimahMediaWatch agree that there exists no homogenous “Muslim world”, and that differences with regarding nationality, race, age, gender, sect, caste, and socio-economic status have important roles to play in coloring the Muslim world tapestry. But if one admits this, as well as admits that there exists no essential “Muslimness” that influences worldview, then a Saudi Arabian Muslim woman has no more in common with a Nigerian Muslim Woman than an American Christian Women. Are the ties of Muslimness as strong as, or stronger, than the ries of womanhood, or other category?

In MuslimahMediaWatch’s description they state: “are of different nationalities, sects, races, etc., we have something important in common: we’re tired of seeing ourselves portrayed by the media in ways that are one-dimensional and misleading.” But they have one more thing in common: they have all lived in the “West.” Does the authenticity of being Muslim cancel out the inauthenticity of being Western?

It reminds me of the Sotomayor hearings: Is her “identity” so all encompassing that she is incapable of being “impartial” – or like the neutral category white, rich, male – when interpreting the law?

Who's the legitimate Activist?

This issue tends to hit home. People often criticize my scholarly work on Iran or question my activist involvement with the Iranian women’s movement by brushing me off as a “Westerner.” They look at my name, Rochelle Terman, and assume I’m not Iranian and thus have no legitimacy to offer my opinion on issues affecting Iran. I am Iranian, but more importantly, I question whether it matters at all. The greatest legitimating factor in my work is my education, commitment, experience and knowledge – not my identity.

Recently, with the crisis unfolding in Iran after the disputed election, several critiques have been offered of American “activism” in the Iranian situation. Surely these concerns are legitimate, as American involvement in Iran has often done more harm than good to the Iranian people. But I suspect something else is going on here. Very few of the most critical, cynical, or aggressive commentators on the Iranian situation have been Iranians themselves. Yet they are deeply suspicious of non-Iranians caring about Iran or involving themselves in the issue (except for, of course, themselves.)

(Some) Iranians on the ground have certainly been yearning for international attention by posting images and news on facebook, twitter, and other widespreading sources. But these critics are wary of wide attention Iran has been getting in the news, how people who didn’t seem to care before now suddenly do. It almost seems as if they don’t want Americans to care about the situation in Iran because they are American and it’s none of their business. All the while, these critics, very often Westerners, are claiming to know what’s best, what’s really happening on the ground, what Iranians really want.

When it becomes a fad to care about Iran (or Honduras or Burma) even the average American-Joe wants to join in. This turns some people, namely the “real”, “authentic” and “legitimate” activists into sour grapes. These activists want everyone to know that they cared about this issue way before it became cool to do so. They become suspicious of anything that popularizes the issue – news, media, images – and say that “real” Iranians don’t want this or that at all. They scathe Americans ‘activism’ for the simple fact that they’re… well… white American.

What’s most interesting about this phenomenon is that these activists, commentators, and critics are almost always Western themselves, or more specifically, live in the West with all the privilege that that entails. Why do they feel more entitled to care? Why are more legitimately concerned? What makes them more credentialed to act?

Rights and the Social Contract: Arendt

[Note: This is the last party in a series on Rights and the Social Contract]

Arendt, Imperialism and Fascism:

In her study on the origins of totalitarianism, Arendt pinpoints nationalism as the irrational and absolutist myth that has emerged to dominate fascist political systems, and relates it to the growth of liberal imperialism. Historically, the nation-state has assumed responsibility for the rights of its citizens. This rests on an inherently exclusionary nature of ‘the nation’, or a group of individuals that share the common myth of race or national identity which has come to dominate the social contract, and which by definition must exclude other individuals. Nationalism necessitates absolute and internal enemies. They are absolute, because their enemy status is based on their circumstances of birth (their race for instance) as opposed to any act of enmity. They are internal, because group identity requires those excluded from it for no other reason than their circumstances of birth (i.e. they share the same living space, culture, language, etc. but are somehow irreconcilably ‘different’.) These enemies lie outside of the social contract, and are thus outside of ‘fundamental’ rights.


Fascism took this concept to the extreme, removing the personhood from the individual removed from politics. Not only are civil rights removed once one is removed from the political sphere (i.e. de-nationalized) but her humanity is in a sense removed. This not only buttresses the primacy of the political, as well as the cult of personality, but effectively dehumanizes those excluded from the political group.

This provides a moral justification for extermination of the Jews, for instance, in Nazi Europe. Arendt also sees this trend in her explanation for imperialism. As Arendt shows, the origins of imperialism centered around economic expansion and growth. Many see imperialism today as political concept, when in fact it had originated with business, industrial production and ever growing markets characterized by the Industrial Revolution (Arendt, 125.) When the capitalists in liberal states outgrew their own nation’s economic limitations, they looked for expansion outside of it. The capitalist system, based inherently on continuous economic growth, mandated that political boundaries of the nation-state be dissolved for market reasons. Economic expansion now became the ultimate political goal of foreign policy (Arendt, 126.)

The goal of the nation-state bourgeoisie was inextricably tied to the capitalist system under which they operated—indefinite growth, indefinite productivity, indefinite wealth. However, once they forced their goal onto the political agenda, they started the chain reaction leading to the terrors of imperialism. As we know, the nation-state is a political structure defined by limitations: territorial, legal, and cultural. “Of all forms of government and organizations of people, the nation-state is least suited for unlimited growth because the genuine consent at its base cannot be stretched indefinitely, and it only rarely, and with difficulty, won from conquered peoples” (Arendt, 126.) While economically, the nation could expand indefinitely, politically and culturally, it could not. The liberal nation-state was the first political entity that was suppose to pride itself on government consent and contract. It was suppose to represent the people over which it ruled with supposedly liberal values such as democracy, reason, and open debate via the social contract. The fact that “expansion for expansion’s sake” grew out of the nation-state was an inherent absurdity, representing the forbearing consequences imposed by imperialism (Arendt, 135.) The body politic had no place in expansion because expansion necessarily presupposed tyranny and violence (Arendt, 135.) The result was not the building of a empire, lands spanning the globe under a common law and common political situation, but imperialism. The liberal state could not build an empire, forcibly spreading its social contract; it was an inherent contradiction and no nation-state could do it with clear conscious or adequate explanation. Besides, expansion had no intention of bringing law to uncivilized people, it was meant to bring markets. Instead, imperialism, the expansion of the nation-state without actually extending its body politic, had emerged.

Because the nation-state was not bringing law, only guns, colonized peoples were never integrated into the society of their oppressors. This, however, instigated not cross cultural appreciation of course, but oppression. “The more ill-fitted nations were for the incorporation of foreign peoples (which contradicted the constitution of their own body politic), the more they were tempted to oppress them” (Arendt, 153.) The imperialist state was focused on assimilating, not integrating, the foreign peoples for mainly economic domination. Colonized people were never meant to Englishmen or Frenchmen. To be so would be grounds for the demands of civil rights and true ‘integration’ into the imperial state, with all its political benefits. At the same time, the colonized were not meant to have a state of their own either. What we are left with is in essence a state-less people, with a cultural unity of their own, but with no body politic to adequately represent it, and no economic substance to nourish it.

What happened to the rights of these people – both the imperial subject and the internal enemy—when they are forcibly removed from the political sphere? As Arendt states: “It seems that a man who is nothing but a man has lost the very qualities which make it possible for other people to treat him as a fellow-man.” (300) The contemporary human rights regime has attempted to solve this problem through the use of the concept of “human dignity” or the quality that makes all human beings deserving of basic rights despite their inclusion or exclusion from the political sphere. But this moral justification is problematic both in theory and practice, as the nation-state, which is inherently based on exclusion, is still the primary unit of the world order.

Rights and the Social Contract: Marx and Schmitt

[Note: This is part 3 in a series on Rights and the Social Contract]

Marx

Marx criticized the “fundamental rights” reflected in the revolutionary French and American documents by arguing that they contradicted people’s inherently social nature and exasperated the capitalist false notion of the individual outside of the social context and her relationships. Marx argues: “There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things” (321.) This social nature is thwarted in the capitalist system, and solidified in the social contract. The rights-bearing individual is an "isolated monad…withdrawn behind his private interests and whims and separated from the community" (Marx 1844, 146).

This is evident by the supposed right of property, which along with personal security forms the foundation for the social contract. The right of property, Marx argues, isolates the individual from others while allowing her to transfer her resources to others for her own pleasure or gain, without regards to the unequal distribution of resource among society. The right to liberty is in actuality the right to profit from the capitalist system, which in turn causes oppression of the worker. The right of equality in these texts, similarly, is purely formal equality, without regard for the inequality in the social and economic realms that cannot be isolated from the political sphere. For as we have seen with Rousseau’s arguments, how can true freedom be achieved when massive inequalities exist? Furthermore, these ‘natural rights’ are not ‘natural’ at all but simply an intellectual justification for the capitalist machine.

Schmitt:

Schmitt critiqued the liberal social contract by arguing it was an inherently relativist institution, and that absolute rights could not exist under such a relativist institution. Liberalism bases its foundation on the notion of the individual. However, as soon as this distinction is made, an almost immediate tension arises between the individual and society. In an attempt to resolve this tension, liberalism offers a way to represent the masses in government operations while still keeping some faint idea of affective decision making by the individual. Through a parliamentary republic, the will of the whole society was equated with the sum of individual wills through voting. Clearly, there was no cohesive group identity—the group was rather seen as nothing more but a compellation of individuals. Through parliamentarism, the relatively insignificant and futile power of the vote was instead seen as a call towards the “universal liberal value of liberty.” Furthermore, it was an ambiguous way to mathematically produce democracy—a heterogeneous and non-unanimous mass produced in turn a heterogeneous and non-unanimous parliament.

Schmitt argues that the essence of liberalism is not an absolute oppressive machine like the Leninists would like to believe, but rather serves as an amoral or and completely relative institution. The intellectual basis of parliament in fact disallows for either state power or any kind of metaphysical conviction to appear within its sphere (Schmitt, 46.) Its relation to the masses was one of representative relativism. As the nation was a heterogeneous and varied group, members of parliament indeed represented that complexity and uncertainty. Philosophically, reason was intrinsically tied to liberty in a parliamentary liberalism. Social progress had to be realized through public discussion, argument and counter argument. It took no notice of its historical moment, nor inherent feeling or drive. Rather, parliament was and a slow and tedious process of talking, with the hope of somehow arriving at a relative truth and usually realizing a moderate one. In this way, liberty too was relative. Just as the tension between the individual and the society was never fully resolved, so too the conflict between liberty and equality was left unanswered. The only hope was a moderate progression through deliberation, hence the dominant protection of the freedoms of press, speech, and assembly.

However, as argued by Schmitt, the philosophical foundations of parliamentarism have collapsed under the weight of its own practicality. The public discussion necessary to adequately represent the complexities of society dissolves with the formation of committees, fragmentation of government responsibilities, and closed-door decision-making. With members of parliament each pursuing their own interests (and mostly economic interests), reflection of the “general will” in Rousseau’s sense was eclipsed by individual desires. Furthermore, this system of closed-doors and backhand deals were so opaque that society could not realize the basis of liberalism, or the social contract, was being undermined by capitalism. For how can ‘absolute and fundamental rights’ exist under such a relativist, person interest-driven system? This opens the floodgates for absolute, as opposed to relative, theories to dominate the masses. Absolutist theories offering a strong framework of morality and identity become a strong alternative to the wishy-washiness and uncertain ‘justice’ of liberalism.

Schmitt and others believed that an “irrational myth” will emerge from the masses, dominating the political sphere and the social contract. The myth is the metaphysic absolutism of a set of irrational believes that constitute the most major movements in history. Because such myths (such as nationalism) provide no material benefit and are often enforced with violence, it is both inherently irrational (in the sense that it is coercive) as well as disinterested and aesthetic (in the sense that one cannot directly monetarily gain from identifying with it.) It is what gives us an identity as both an individual and a wider whole, allows us a concept of liberty and unity, as well as a sense of happiness and democracy. The only way for the sphere of the state to be compatible to the sphere of society is for both to be subjects under a common myth. While it justifies the use of force by the state to regulate the masses, it also binds the state itself to exactly the will of the people and nothing less. Only then will true democracy arise, when one person, the dictator, represents the only truth society knows, reflecting “the general will.” However, as Schmitt says on page 71 of his work: “The momentum must come from the masses themselves; ideologists and intellectuals cannot create it.”

Schmitt, like Marx, criticized individualism for contradicting man’s inherent social nature. Schmitt provides the best account for this in his Concept of the Political, in which he avers that the political sphere is based on antagonizing groups, and any concept or identity that can set one group apart from another with the chance of war between them by definition becomes political: for instance, race, sex, class, nationality. Thus an individual cannot be political in her own right: she must belong to a political group. Schmitt, however, diverges from Hobbes in the sense that he believes group identity presupposes the liberal state, while for Hobbes individual antagonism is the driving force for the social contract and group identity and antagonism only comes later.

Rights and the Social Contract: Rousseau

[Note: This is part two on a series about Rights and the Social Contract.]

Rousseau:

Rousseau puts his concepts of freedom and equality and the role they play in the social contract within the framework of the general will. The general will embodies the desires or needs of the general public put into abstract terms. It is different than individual will, which serves the interests of the individual alone. It also differs from the common will, which is just the sum of individual wills, and carry within it contradictions and disputes. The general will, on the other hand, is exactly that—general. It is always thinking about the good of the community as oppose to any one individual, and in turn, it can never be seen truthfully or clearly by any individual within.

The purpose of the general will is to act as the sovereign in the political dichotomy of the body politick. Rousseau believes that the legitimate magistrate is not just whoever holds power. The morality of government is directly related to how closely it follows the sovereign, or general will. While the general will is completely abstract, it is the lawmaker’s job to interpret the general will into specific statues used for settling individual disputes and securing the peace. If done the way it is suppose to, rationally and objectively, than the general will be serve to create the laws that must then be carried upon all the passive individuals making up the general will, now in this case the state.

While the general will is always for the good of the community, it may not always be desirable among every individual, and in fact, this is often the case. Because the general will can only think in abstract terms and individuals can only think in terms specific to them, neither can comprehend the other. Rousseau says: “The general will is always upright and always tends to the public utility: But it does not follow from it that the people’s deliberations are always equally upright.” (59) This seems to imply that while the general will be always be the moral decision, individuals are incapable of being moral all the time.

But how can a group of immoral individuals thinking only of themselves become a moral general will? The answer for Rousseau goes back to the difference between general will and common will. Only when people completely alienate themselves to the general will and give up their personal interests can they be part of an inerrable body. This is the social pact that Rousseau says: “means nothing other than that [people] shall be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each Citizen to the Fatherland, guarantees him against all personal dependence.” (53) After one gives themselves to the righteousness of the general will, this sovereign can then make righteous laws to govern individuals and at the same time protecting their freedom and equality. While Rousseau admits that laws can become inappropriate with the passing of time and change in societal conditions, he argues that the general will itself would remain constant. The general will is not individual interest—it cannot move with the particulars of life.

However, even though individuals may seem invisible and powerless in the face of the general will, they are in fact completely free and equal according to Rousseau. The general will acting as the sovereign protects all individuals from other individuals. No one has the right to coerce anyone else except by going through the general will, and hence everyone is equal as members of the sovereign and the state.

Although we understand that everyone is equal politically under the general will, how are they in turn completely free according to Rousseau, and what is the moral foundation? Equality is the only way to be free for Rousseau. The “chains” that had formed suppressing the lives of modern man were created out of inequality, first in property and wealth, and then in political power. Equality of individuals for Rousseau is not enough existing only within the body politick. To be equal under the general will is to be equal in terms of race, class, privilege and material possessions as well. Only then can people be free from the oppression of other individuals as well as from the sovereign. A legitimate government for Rousseau is one that is formed by the general will, which can inherently only promote the common good, and rightly interprets its desire to form laws. In other words, only when people are completely free are they completely equal; only when people are completely free is the sovereign a morally-legitimate body.

Although Rousseau uses the concept of the general will as the foundation for the social contract, it remains ambiguous and difficult to interpret. There seems to be an underlying tension between the submission to the common good and the individual’s personal interests and utility. Rousseau himself admits that many times the individual’s interests will come in conflict with that of the general will. On the one hand, the general will is only concerned with the good of the whole and the equality of individuals among it. At the same time, the individual who may care about the general good may also care about her own self-interest, and if this is oppressed by the general will, she may not feel free. In other words, if the “legitimate sovereign” that Rousseau describes is meant to free people of their chains, how is this reconciled with complete submission one must give to the general will in order to be part of the social contract?

It is not surprising that the philosophical origins of “rights” emerged parallel to those of the “liberal nation-state.” Locke’s concept of ‘natural rights’ in the social contract had profound influence on the Western nation-state model and rights-based concepts. Locke argued that men have rights to "life, liberty, and estate" in a pre-political state of nature, and that these natural rights put limits on the legitimate authority of the state. Locke's influence can be seen in the revolutionary American and French political documents of the eighteenth century, and especially in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The fundamental rights proclaimed in the French revolutionary political documents reflect Locke once again: life, liberty, equality, security, property, and the free exercise of religion. While Locke claimed that individuals deserved these rights within the state of nature, they are only enjoyed within the social contract and hence the political sphere. Similarly, for Rousseau, the just social contract reflects the general will, which aims for the realization of these rights, ‘forcing people to be free.’