Julius: The “Human Rights” Religion

Guardian, Anthony Julius – As for the appropriations of, and accommodations with, liberal positions, the general abandonment of Marxist positions in favour of liberal or post-liberal ones is evident wherever one looks, but particularly evident, perhaps, among France’s political theorists. The “class struggle” between 1848 and 1936 encouraged people on the left to regard rights as mere abstractions, aspects of bourgeois ideology that concealed and legitimised the subordination of one class to another. But this supersession of rights by communism did not take place: on the contrary, it was by exposing the absence of “rights” in the Soviet Union and its satellites that communism was discredited.

A human rights discourse now dominates politics; there is a powerful human rights “movement”. It is the new secular religion of our time.

Jim, Meet Mary. Jim, You’re Fired.

Economist – IF YOU are a youngish man who sits on a European corporate board, you should worry: the chances are that your chairman wants to give your seat to a woman. In January the lower house of France’s parliament approved a new law which would force companies to lift the proportion of women on their boards to 40% by 2016. The law would oblige France’s 40 biggest listed firms to put women into 169 seats currently occupied by men. Spain has also introduced a quota at 40%, to be reached by 2015. Italy and the Netherlands are contemplating similar measures. This week Britain’s government threatened to make companies report formally on their recruitment of female directors.

Annulment Over Virginity Lie Causes Outcry In France

[AP] The bride said she was a virgin. When her new husband discovered that was a lie, he went to court to annul the marriage—and a French judge agreed.

The rest.

Let’s See If The French Are Toeing The Line

The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, will carry out a high-level visit to France starting on Tuesday 20 May to assess a broad range of human rights issues including prison conditions, precautionary detention (retention de sûreté), juvenile justice and migrants’ rights.

The rest.

The Battle Within

Huh. Maybe Steyn’s on to something. French Muslims seem to agree.

Tensions between Algerians, the larger community with an estimated 3.5 million people in France, and Moroccans, numbered at one million, have hobbled the project from the start.

But according to Abdelwahab Meddeb, a Tunisian-born poet and Islamic scholar, the council’s troubles also reflect the wider battle gripping the Muslim world, “between traditional Islam, official or state brands of Islam, and Islam as a militant ideology — i.e. Islamism.”

He believes the Paris mosque — though it will not say it outright — fears losing ground to the radical Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF), the third major force in the CFCM with 10 of the board’s 43 seats.

…

For Meddeb, “the Paris mosque doesn’t know where it stands, just like the whole of traditional Islam. They are are petrified, they don’t dare confront Islamism.”

Intelligence reports suggest only a few dozen French mosques are under the influence of hardline radicals, but Meddeb says it is a “fact” that many more mosques are warming to the UOIF’s tougher brand of Islam.

The rest.

The UN Laboratory Of Hatred

NY Sun:

Three European countries are mounting a campaign for two available seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council, even as the prestige of the Geneva-based body reaches a new low.

France, Britain, and Spain are lobbying the 192 U.N. member states, seeking to gain support for their claim to two available slots among the seven that are reserved for Western countries on the 47-member council. America has declined to run for membership on the council, which in the two years since its inception has faulted only Israel for human rights violations.

…

Mr. Zimeray described the first Durban conference as a “laboratory of hatred” and said it would have become the most significant event in international “political life” had it not been immediately followed by the attacks of September 11, 2001. Durban II risks the same fate, he said, and he acknowledged that the Human Rights Council “is not perfect.”

Asked why France should lend its prestige to a body that he said has an “obsession” with Israel, Mr. Zimeray said that if Western countries withdrew from the Human Rights Council and established a separate rights panel, they would create a situation like that in ancient Greece, where democracy was reserved for Athenians only.

The rest.