Chapter 10 illustrates the conflict that has existed between the West and the Islamic world from the time of the negotiating and drafting history of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Against this background, the Western conceptions of human rights are looked at in comparison with Islamic declarations of human rights. In this analysis, international law clearly reveals itself to actually consist of a plurality of international systems deeply informed by the cultural differences by which peoples are divided. This appreciation makes it possible to compare the Western and Islamic visions of human rights so as to identify what common ground there is between them. This is done by canvassing the attempts that have been made to interpret Islamic religious sources from a historical perspective. Several insights emerge from this exploration as we consider how, starting from the Barcelona Declaration of 1995, the Mediterranean has come to be identified as the geopolitical area that – by reason of a long historical tradition of cross-fertilization among civilizations (Greek, Roman, Hebraic, Christian, and Islamic) – can give rise to a “meeting of civilizations.”