The Pathway to Legitimacy and Universality of Human Rights from a Cross-Cultural Perspective——A Brief Review of An-Na’im’s Theory of Human Rights Legitimacy and Dialogue

摘要

Within the international human rights circle,Abduliahi AhmedAn-Na’im is regarded as a representative of Southern voices."Under such a circumstance that the confrontation between the West and non-Western countries on human rights has become a routine reality,An-Na’im advocates a contingent universality of human rights or "contingent universality of human rights," and insists that the universality of human rights be based on the cultural legitimacy of human rights.While he sees the internal dialogue of human rights in all non-Western countries,including Islamic ones,as a basic way to ensure the international human rights standards be accepted gradually,he also believes the cross-cultural dialogue among different societies can eventually lead to the reconstruction of the legitimacy of international human rights standards or even the standards themselves.An-Na’im’s theory of moderate cultural relativism points a way to achieve universality of human rights for developing countries,but there are a few questions that need to be further addressed.