Abstract

Modernity is part of a vocabulary of Western Universals that, in theory and practice, thrives on a comparative. The West is pitted against the imagined other, an alter ego, an alter-native. Some Western theorists of 18th, 19th, and 20th C. left out the other, the alter - native,(although the latter are significant components of the structure of Modernity) in their deliberation of an associated modern socio-political environments. The silence and theoretical neglect of the other have triggered in turn a reaction against the nefarious consequences of an eviscerated, truncated modernity. The human rights regime as a modern project challenges the presumption that the modern universal, human rights,is relevant for only a segment of the human global population. In the wake of the increasing publicity of transnational and intra-national terror, I consider the impact of policies that aim to combat terror as a contemporary form of silence or disregard against the background of the concepts of diversity and human rights.