Human Rights Are Universal Without a‘But’,
Elham Manea

What makes a person? What drives him or her to be the person he/she became known for? Sometimes I wonder; would I have been the same, if it was not for the eyes of my mother? The silent echoes of her eyes have hunted me all my life. If it was not for those echoes, I would not have written Echoes of Pain — صدى الأنين -my first Arabic novel.

Would I have been someone different, if it was not for the voice of my father? Just like my mother, he talked long with me, about life, death, religion and the freedom of the human’s will. His idea of playing with me as a child was to recite a part of poem, and I have to start a new one with the last letter of his part. I loved his games. He was the philosopher that believed in me, more than I did. Dream of the stars, work hard, and with a bit of luck you will capture them in your hands. I never understood what he saw in me, but I learned overtime to trust his faith in me.

My mother’s stories were different though. Hers were formed by pain: pain of being a girl, circumcised at eight; pain by being cursed by her beauty, and therefore married off by her father at the age of 13 — better to marry her early and make her the trust of another man; and pain by the stories of women she knew — painful stories — a pain that was often interrelated to man. Man was not to be trusted. Man inflicts only pain. But then I had a man as a father! And God he was wonderful to me. He was my hero.

Over the time I learned how to make a story complete by looking at the different aspects of it. To hear my mother’s stories, would not be complete without hearing the voices of my father and all the men involved. Over the time I started to recognize the pain caused by injustice and discrimination but situate them within the social context that causes them. To change that social context means to change culture. And religion is part of that culture. It has to be reformed. Over the time I started to understand as well that to end injustice and discrimination, one has to fight for these ideals. Nothing comes for free. We have to fight for our rights.

Traveling constantly between different Arab, Islamic and Western societies because of my father’s work as a diplomat made me the person I am as well. It does not really matter where you come from, your colour, religion, or gender, in the end you are a human. Everywhere I went I met humans. And everywhere I went I saw and heard of stories of discrimination. Discrimination is universal and so are the human rights that should be protected to end these violations.

Is it too much to ask? To insist that human rights are universal? Is it too much to persist in the belief that no one, no society, no state, no culture and no religion can use ‘a relativist’ argument to get away with violations of human rights? Human rights are universal. It is as simple as that. Many Arab States, conservative and Islamist groups, in addition to Western cultural relativists, claim that a woman should be deprived of her individual freedom and right to choice because her religion and culture dictates so! Their argument does not only reflect on women’s lives. It does also have consequences for the minorities living in these societies and for those who fight for the freedoms of religion, speech and political rights. I believe their argument is wrong and I am taking a clear stance against it.

First published in Amina Chaduri Blog