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Islam and women's human rights entertain an uneasy relationship. Much has been written on the subject. This volume addresses it from a new perspective. It attempts to define some basis for constructive dialogue and interaction in the context of international law and, more precisely, in the context of participation of many Muslim States in the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Having discovered a constructive potential in both Islam and women's human rights, the author concentrate on the role which international law should play in promoting dialogue and constructive interaction. This is done mainly through analysis of the regime of reservations and of the practice of reservations developed in the context of Muslim States' participation in the CEDAW.The basic thesis defended is the following: Islam as articulated in the practice of States and women's human rights, as reflected in international instruments, are both results of human activity. Their analysis in this study reveals more commonalities than one might expect.

Abstract
The article argues that no understanding of global constitutionalism will be complete without a thorough discussion of its political dimension. The current state of scholarship on global constitutionalism is dominated by discussions of legal elements. However, any theory of global constitutionalism has an underlying vision of the political. Without discussing this underlying vision of the political global constitutionalism will remain incomplete. In particular the article demonstrates that the contemporary debates on global constitutionalism are plagued by a contradiction between its aims and its underlying vision of the political. Thus, global constitutionalism postulates individuals as central units of its concern. However, by maintaining states as central actors although in a changed form and with fewer powers global constitutionalism unwittingly subscribes to a vision of the political anchored in the state form and based on the exclusion/inclusion dynamic. This vision of the political is most clearly articulated by Carl Schmitt. The discussion of his view of the political demonstrates that the political based on the state form makes the project of global constitutionalism impossible. The only way forward is an open discussion of different visions of the political and a search for a more adequate vision of the political able to further the aims of global constitutionalism and its focus on individuals. The article discusses one of these alternative visions of the political, namely the concept of the coming politics and coming community as articulated by Giorgio Agamben. It demonstrates how with this vision of the political the project of global constitutionalism can conceive of a political community fully dedicated to the singularities of each individual human being without creating divisions. The article concludes that in order for global constitutionalism to continue as a viable project, an open and explicit discussion of the political is called for.

The article revisits the relationship between culture and human rights through the analysis of one traditionally condemned cultural practice known in human rights law as female genital mutilation. The analysis draws on anthropological and medical literature and demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary analysis to any inquiry within the area of relationship between culture and human rights. An analogy between the traditional practice of female genital mutilations and the less widely publicized female genital aesthetic surgeries practiced in many Western countries serves as a methodological tool. Laws and attitudes towards both practices are compared, demonstrating many similarities and thus the difficulty of drawing a clear-cut line between a cultural and an a-cultural practice. In this light, human rights' insistence on condemnation of the practices of the Other exclusively appears as hegemonizing, racializing, and, ultimately, discriminatory in its effects. Some suggestions as to what a more adequate human rights approach could look like are made as well, as the constant necessity for interdisciplinary inquiry in human rights law is emphasized.

This article revisits the relationship between culture and human rights through the analysis of one traditionally condemned cultural practice known in human rights law as female genital mutilation. The analysis draws on anthropological and medical literature and demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary analysis to any inquiry within the area of relationship between culture and human rights. An analogy between the traditional practice of female genital mutilations and the less widely publicized female genital aesthetic surgeries practiced in many Western countries serves as a methodological tool. Laws and attitudes towards both practices are compared, demonstrating many similarities, and thus the difficulty of drawing a clear-cut line between a cultural and an a-cultural practice. In this light, human rights' insistence on condemnation of the practices of the other exclusively appears as hegemonizing, racializing, and, ultimately, discriminatory in its effects. Some suggestions as to what a more adequate human rights approach could look like are made as well, as the constant necessity for interdisciplinary inquiry in human rights law is emphasized. Adapted from the source document.