Call for Papers: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Muslim Thought & Human Rights

The Journal of Contemporary Poetics which is published by the Department of English, Faculty of Languages and Literature, International Islamic University Islamabad, Pakistan welcomes articles and book reviews from various disciplines in Literature, Linguistics and other disciplines in Social Sciences and Humanities on Critical Reflections on Contemporary Muslim Thought & Human Rights.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War ushered a new global world order and initiated a new wave of violence. Since 9/11, in particular, various forms of geopolitical conflicts, wars and neo-colonial enterprise have resulted in unprecedented human suffering, massive dislocation of human population and has left a huge question mark for the humanity to ponder over. The rising number of migrants and stateless persons worldwide has exacerbated human rights crisis which necessitates urgent review of existing laws, conventions, moral order, ethical conceptions and theoretical perspectives on human rights. It is no coincidence that, except for the Rwandan genocide of the 1990’s, Islam and the Muslim world figure in all the other conflicts and wars.

Religion, Islam in particular, as a source of foundational beliefs in human rights often finds itself at odds with the secular and juridical sources of human rights. The interdisciplinary boundaries between religion as an ethical guide to billions of people and the legal and political debates in the age of nation states and multinational capital have become sites of a vital dialogue between the two epistemic models: on the one hand, the nation states have failed to guarantee the human rights promised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and on the other hand, political theorists point to discriminatory practices implicit in ethical models of religious and natural laws. It is precisely against this backdrop that this themed issue of Journal of Contemporary Poetics invites scholars working in the fields of history, cultural studies, political science, psychology, religious studies, critical theory, film and media studies, literature and languages, postcolonial studies, and law to present fresh insights into the debate.

Some possible topics can be, though not limited to, the following:

• Borders, Citizenship and Human Rights
• Peace Debates and Human Rights
• Gender, Identity and Human Rights
• Democracy, Hegemony and Human Rights
• Neoliberal Economies and Human Rights
• Genealogy of Human Rights
• Human Rights in the Age of Surveillance and Privacy
• Slavery in the Digital Age
• Prisons, Torture, Police Violence and Human Rights
• Dehumanization of the Enemy and the Limits of Human Rights
• Textuality of Human Rights Laws
• Narratives of Atrocity and Human Rights
• Story Telling and Human Rights
• Ethics and Religion in Human Rights Discourse
• Sustainable Development, Environment and Human Rights
• Organized State Violence and Human Rights
• Minorities and Human Rights
• Emerging Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights Discourse
• Children and the Borderless Imagination
• Universal Rights and Personal Imaginaries
• Human Rights in an Age of Terror
• After Human Rights: The Case for Higher Laws
• Comparative Ethics and Human Rights Discourse
• Islamic Jurisprudence and Human Rights Laws

The journal is double-blind peer reviewed. Please send your papers (6000-8000 words) in MS Word format in the form of attachment to jcp@iiu.edu.pk or submissions@jcp.com.pk by January 15, 2019. The papers should be written following MLA style guidelines. The editorial team would contact you by February 28, 2019 about the acceptance of the paper. For further information, please visit our website at jcp.com.pk and iiu.edu.pk