After Abu Ghraib Exploring Human Rights in America and the Middle East

This book traverses three pivotal human rights struggles of the post-September 11th era: the American human rights campaign to challenge the Bush administration’s ‘War on Terror’ torture and detention policies, Middle Eastern efforts to challenge American human rights practices (reversing the traditional West to East flow of human rights mobilizations and discourses), and Middle Eastern attempts to challenge their own leaders’ human rights violations in light of American interventions.

This book presents snapshots of human rights being appropriated, promoted, claimed, reclaimed, and contested within and between the American and Middle Eastern contexts. The inquiry has three facets: first, it explores intersections between human rights norms and power as they unfold in the era. Second, it lays out the layers of the era’s American and Middle Eastern encounter on the human rights plane. Finally, it draws out the era’s key lessons for moving the human rights project forward.

• Places American and Middle Eastern experiences with human rights after September 11th side by side
• Brings out both the human rights projects’ failings and renewed promise during the era; it includes the era’s lessons for moving the human rights project forward
• Interdisciplinary approach and methodology (combining critical human rights/legal theory and constructivist theory from international relations)