On conceptions of time in human rights studies: The afterlife, Islam, and reparative justice in post-uprising Tunisia

Abstract

This article argues that conceptions of time are undertheorized in human rights studies and that such conceptions have a significant impact on how people participate in systems of justice. Within the context of the transitional justice process launched in Tunisia in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring—a context deeply shaped by an Islamist/secular divide—I examine how competing notions of time led to opposing modes of participation in reparative justice. Specifically, I analyze the Islamic principle thawāb (reward in the afterlife for suffering experienced on earth) as a theological notion of time and show how it structured Islamist victims’ participation in reparations measures. Observing that critiques of reparative justice have developed through a strictly secular notion of time, this article foregrounds Islamic concepts that are still underrepresented in such studies, particularly Islamic notions of time and the afterlife. I argue that thawāb contests the universalism of the secular, linear notion of past-present-future dominant in human rights and transitional justice studies.