Human Rights in Asad’s “Thinking about Terrorism and Just War”

Excerpts from the Paper

Human Rights in Asad's "Thinking about Terrorism and Just War"
Talal Asad is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology in the City University of New York, a person familiar to many who study subjects of postcolonial societies, development and politics. His 2009 article, “Thinking about Terrorism and Just War”, appeared in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and is an interesting thematic paper that can be recommended to all students exploring Human Rights.
The paper may not offer much that is new for persons interested in Just War theory in relation to other subjects. There is little presented in the paper now under discussion that will not appear elsewhere but perhaps the value of Talal Asad’s publication is his way of drawing...

.....tes and Third World powers ‘occupy the same space of political violence’ in which terror is normal. (p.22)
He then refers to a Western threat of nuclear war that is not shared when, in fact, ordinary people of the Middle East and South Asia know this threat is not apt to arrive from the West. Persons who believe 100% in a just war of spiritual rightfulness, well financed, and an ideology more rigid than what appears anywhere in the West, do have access to nuclear resources and a helpful rationale of the end justifying the means. It is a curious dimension of the situation for a scholar of Talal Asad’s origins to overlook.
Work Cited
Asad, T. (2009). “Thinking about Terrorism and Just War.” Cambridge Review of
International Affairs. 23: 3-24.