Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Rape victim is sentenced to 200 lashes

Alcyone, Hasini, I sure get your point. But regardless, a culture that degrades half of its population to mere pets is not good, no matter which point of view you're taking.

To emphasize my point:
A culture that keeps a big part of its populace in slavery because of their skin color is bad. I think we can all agree on that. Or are you racist?

A culture that oppresses and, ultimately kills a big part of its populace because of its faith is bad. I think we can all agree on that, too. Or are you a nazi?

A culture that eliminates/imprisons everybody who disagrees with the acceptable dogma is bad. I think we can agree on that, too. Or do you happen to be a communist?

A culture that keeps large parts of its populace in poverty just because they're born to the wrong parents is bad. I hope we can agree on that. Or would you like to live in pre-renaissance Europe (as a poor farmer, not a noble)?

A culture that keeps half of its populace as mere breeding stock is bad. At least I think so. Why can't we agree on that?

Don't get me wrong. I'm tolerant, although sometimes I have to admit that I do have prejudices. But I constantly work on getting rid of them. I don't mind women who choose to wear a veil. To me, they're people like you and me.

I don't mind people who believe that sexual relations shouldn't occur before marriage, quite the contrary. Although I didn't live by that maxime, I can see the wisdom in it.

I don't mind if people believe in different things than me. I even find it fascinating to discuss different points of view, at least as long as I can respect the other point.

But here, we're not talking about races, beliefs or anything like that. We're talking about a very extreme case of culturally accomplished sexism. We're talking about people who may not choose anything in their life. People who are forbidden to go out of the house unless they're accompanied by a related male. We're talking about people who get punished severely for trespassing. About people who are not given any choices in life. And that is something I can't and won't respect nor tolerate, even if so-called open-minded people tell me that my point of view is that of a racist and extremist.

Don't get me wrong, I don't propagate a war to free the women of Saudi-Arabia. Or Irania. But I still think that their way of life it not right. In my mind, a culture that denies part of its people the very basic human rights is not acceptable. And I'm not going to change my mind about that.

Hasini and I are NOT arguing that human rights abuses are right.

Let's get that out there first off, because your argument insinuates we are when in fact, both of us frequently state that we do disagree with the treatment of women.

What I am arguing for is actually a consideration of _why_ those things happen instead of blind fingerpointing, which is unproductive and leads to more negativity. Isn't understanding the _why_ the first step to solving a problem? To me, that's better than demonizing the Saudi government.

I really do hope this last isn't aimed at Hasini or myself.

Seriously, I find it difficult to even imagine who would call you racist or extremist for disagreeing with basic violations of human rights. What I have tried to bring up is that there are many ways to approach a problem and some actually do more harm than good.

alcyone

Of course I understand that, let's say, invading Saudi Arabia and make the Saudis free their women under threat of execution (or some such extreme measure) wouldn't do much good. Maybe your assumption that it would be, ultimately, worse for the women there when the troops return back home, but still there is the fact that *our* invasion wouldn't be much better than their suppression of women.

But just asking _why_ things are the way they are and going all sympathetic with the poor males of Saudi Arabia who don't know any better doesn't even begin to solve any problems, either.

The abolishment of misogyny in Saudi Arabia (or anywhere else) can't be accomplished within a day or even a year, it is a long process that may well take several decades. And that's not only because of the men, but also because of the women. There, they don't even know what freedom is, they don't know about making their own choices. As far as I have heard (though I don't know for sure) they don't even get properly educated. And education is a very important step on the long way to freedom.

So, imagine a woman who doesn't know anything but the boundaries of her home to be left free. She can go wherever she wants. But where does she want to go? She doesn't know any places to go - apart from the places she already knows from being led there.

Imagine the men there deciding that they wouldn't care for their women any more because they are free, and thus, none of their business any more. Unfortunately, these women are dependent on the men in their lives for money. Even if this is not strictly the way it has to turn out, I see a strong probability.

So, yes, changes have to take place slowly. But they have to start. The sooner, the better.

Understanding is not sympathy. I can _understand_ if someone doesn't want do their work--that they were tired, that they had "better" things to do. But that doesn't mean I necessarily sympathize and will give them a pat on the head. So I'm a bit troubled that the two are equated in the quote above. Understanding is a rational activity, sympathy is more about emotional response.

Back to the topic on actual practice--I can only speak for myself and the way I approach complex social problems (especially those far from home). I feel uncomfortable asking for others to get educated, before trying to educate myself first on their circumstances.

And, of course, learning is an ongoing process, but thus far, what I have come to believe in (given what I know) is seeking out grassroots feminist organizations in the area and supporting them. This all stems precisely because I'm aware of how ignorant I really am of how fighting against misoginy works in these countries on the ground. I believe very, very strongly in transnational feminism and that influences my views on these issues, but I won't go into it here.

Obviously, while Saudi Arabia is a special case (having no organizations last time I checked, I hope I'm wrong now, but its been a while since I last looked--drop me a line someone if you know), it isn't a unique one. As the other countries (such as Iran and Afganistan) with equally misoginist regimes gradually change, I feel it will too. This will take a long, long time, but for me what is important that it come organically, from within the society, because that way it will stick. I don't feel the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There IS more than misoginism in these cultures and I feel that while the misoginism shouldn't be condoned, these cultures are deserving of our respect just as any other.

This is what works for me (I am refering to my approach to the problem of practice, what I feel, actually "helps" to bring about change albeit gradually), what I can sleep easily with and not feel hypocritical. It might not work for everyone. Again, I'm privileged by even having access to the resources both financial and in terms of time (part of my job demands I know a little of this) to learn about these things. I am also very much a product of my environment.

But again, what's most important is being conscious of any position of privilege from which one speaks and the dangers of it.

alcyone

There is only so much respect I can give to societies that are just out-of-control sexist. One of the most horrible cases I have ever heard of was a young Pakistani woman who was sentenced to be gang-raped as a way of punishing her family because her brother had spent some time alone with a woman from another, richer family. Just try to imagine it, please. Imagine that your brother dates a woman, and the woman's family disapproves of him. They decide to punish him, and the punishment will be that you are legally sentenced to be gang-raped in public to atone for what your brother did.

The woman in question, Mukhtaran Bibi, had the arrogance of not committing suicide after the rape, as any nice girl is supposed to do in those parts of Pakistan. Instead, when the case became internationally known thanks to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, there was a trial where the rapists were sentenced to be executed. (But very soon they were pardoned and set free. Where sharia rules, by the way, a murderer does not have to be executed, but can be pardoned and set free instead. However, a woman who has had illegal sex must, according to sharia, always be killed. Sharia, anyone?)

In that same trial where the rapists where sentenced and then pardoned, Mukhtaran Bibi was awarded a sum of settlement money because of what had happened to her. She took the money and opened a center of refuge and education for other women in rural Pakistan. To many people around where she lives, her continued existence - the fact that she is alive and has not committed suicide - is an insult to the entire society, and she and her family live under constant death threats.

Wikipedia on Mukhtaran Bibi

In the late 1980s, The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. I was angry at that, so I started giving a sum of money to a Swedish organisation which was providing help to the people in Afghanistan. But once I attended a meeting where a man told us about the situation in Afghanistan, and among other things he informed us that many Soviet soldiers rape young Afghan girls. And that is so tragic, he said, because when an Afghan girl has been raped, she commits suicide.

I have to tell you I was unbelievably outraged at that. Of course I thought it was horrible that Soviet soldiers raped Afghan girls, but honestly that is the sort of thing that happens in most wars. So many women are raped during wars, so I was saddened and angered but not shocked to hear that. But I was absolutely shocked to hear that all the raped girls committed suicide afterwards. If they did that, it could only mean that their families and society couldn't accept them afterwards - that their families and society actually told these girls that they had no right to live after they had been raped. I was extremely shocked when I realized this, and I stopped giving money to Afghanistan. Arguably that was not an appropriate reaction at all - maybe I should have given even more money to that organisation which helped Afghanistan, because it could be that more money and more help might be the best way to make the people of Afghanistan change some of their most cruel customs. But frankly, I just couldn't stomach the idea of giving money to Afghanistan any more.

Not just Muslim societies treat women unspeakably. In the early 1980s, I saw a documentary about a Christian village in Egypt. The TV reporter asked the "mayor" of the village if there were many crimes committed in his village. "Not at all," the mayor replied, "the people here are very law-abiding."

"But I'm sure you told me earlier that there have been several murders committed here?"

"Ah, that," said the mayor. "That was only some men who killed their wives."

"They killed their wives? Why did they do that?"

"That was because some strangers had come to the village. They stopped at some houses where women were sitting outside, doing housework. The strangers asked the women questions, and then the women answered."

That was all. The strangers asked the women some questions, and the women answered. And because of that, the women were killed by their husbands, and the "mayor" of the village condoned the killings, thinking that they didn't count as crimes at all.

I can say that no women were interviewed in this documentary about the Egyptian village. Some women were filmed, and they looked fearfully into the camera. No wonder they didn't dare to say anything and thus commit the horrible crime of speaking to male strangers!

I understand that there are all sorts of historical, economic, religious etcetera etectera reasons for the fact that women are treated like this in some societies. But don't ask me to respect those rules and customs. Don't ask me not to condemn them!

Mellie, you are right that women, too, help uphold those customs in the countries where women are treated so awfully. The truth is that we all play with the cards we were given. If the rules of your society say that people are going to kill you if you speak to male strangers, then you don't speak to male strangers. And you teach your daughters not to speak to male strangers. And you probably don't protest if men in your society kill their wives for speaking to male strangers.

But I do think that we in the west should speak up for those women. I do think we should protest, and loudly. But just so that you don't misunderstand me: no, I don't think that the west should wage war on those countries and bomb them to save their women.

Ann

That's exactly the point we disagree on. I simply cannot respect such a culture, a culture that, in turn, wouldn't respect me at all, if only because I am female.

Sad, but true. But, given the fact that I'm a very rebellious person when I feel treated badly, I might try to escape that system. I don't know if I would get that chance, but I would sure be looking for it.

Alcyone, I don't think that severely misogynist cultures deserve our respect just like any others. Yes, I'm sure that there are some things that these cultures deserve respect for, but not for their views on women.

But I do agree with you that real change has to come from within, and it can't be imposed from outside. But to me that doesn't mean that I have to respect their misogyny, or pretend that I do.

Ann

None of us are condoning human rights violations or misogyny. None of us are saying that we should not do anything about them, or that we should not take a stand against them.

Ann, your example about Afghanistan quite proved the point I was trying to make. You had such a severe reaction to the notion of sexually assaulted Afghan girls being driven to commit suicide that you decided to condemn the whole of Afghan society. Moreover, you then stopped contributing to a fund that was supposed to help that society. This is exactly the kind of reaction that Alycone and I are trying to caution against.

I don't know all that much about Afghan culture, so let's shift focus to a culture I do know about. In India, which is equal parts Hindu and Muslim, this same thing happens to girls who are victims of sexual assault. They are driven from their homes so that they shall not taint their families, or they are asked to commit suicide. Under the law in some parts of India, if the rapist is convicted, the rapist is given the option of marrying the girl they raped in exchange for a pardon. This is because the girl's marriage prospects would have been ruined by the notoriety she had gained from the crime, and no man would marry a woman 'sullied' by another man's touch.

This is what gets reported by the news, and this is the aspect of Indian culture that the world will instantly identify it by. Indian culture will instantly become synonymous with misogyny and MISOGYNY ONLY. They don't get to see the respect of the young towards their elders, they don't see a society who treats their teachers with respect bordering on reverence, they don't see families who hold their matriarchs in worship, they don't see siblings have been taught to "cut an olive in eight pieces, and share it equally amongst themselves, setting aside a share for their parents". They don't know that once upon a time, 'a woman could travel safely alone and from one end of the country to the other with a ruby on her open palm'. All the richness and the worthwhile values it has been imbued with over a period of five thousand years, the nuances and the traditions that make up these people's daily lives - they will all be waved aside and demeaned because of one warped aspect of their society.

Let's compare and contrast these two situations, shall we? On one hand, we have a society who's girls have been "sullied" and "dishonoured". Dishonour is the thing above all else that they have been conditioned to avoid. Threat of dishonour is the thing which provokes the most visceral of reactions in an Afghan family. Do they push their emotional reaction aside to examine whether the girl has truly behaved badly? No. Do they set their all-encompassing fear of society aside to try and help and heal these poor girls? No. Do they try and see past the notoriety these girls have unwittingly gained, and see that there is still worth and value left in them? No. So they disown them, wash their hands of them and will them to destroy themselves.

And so these poor girls end their lives in droves, preferring to do it themselves rather than face the long-drawn out death that an uncaring society will surely afford them. And the rapists, the ones that are truly to blame, will continue to ruin other young lives, unchecked and unpunished.

On the other hand, we have you, Ann. You hear reports of young girls being driven to suicide. Misogyny is the one thing above all that life has conditioned you not to tolerate. It is the thing that evokes the most visceral reaction from you, the most extreme emotional response. Do you push your emotional reaction aside to examine whether the all the values, ethics and practices of Afghan society really do conspire together to drive girls to suicide? No. And even if the culture is really misogynist, do you research and review this society to see whether there is anything of worth inherent in its traditions worth salvaging? No. Do you set your all-encompassing hatred of societal misogyny aside to try and help and heal this society? No. So you wash their hands of the entire country, because a society who makes their girls kill themselves deserves to be left unaided by the right-thinking world to go to hell in their own way, right?

So a little Afghan child freezes to death for the lack of an extra blanket, or woman doesn't have enough food rations to feed her baby or, most ironically, an outcast Afghan girl is driven to die in the street because the women's organizations that might have helped her don't have enough sponsors or financial aid to accommodate her. And Afghan society sneers at the values of the West, who will condemn their people and is content to see them destroyed. And they will continue to treat their daughters as badly as ever.

I'm not EQUATING their ACTIONS with yours, Ann. That would be criminally stupid of me. I'm drawing paralells between their REACTIONS and yours. Both are emotional rather than intellectual judgments which end up punishing the innocent unjustly. THIS is what Alycone and I are warning against.

Of course, the cases aren't exactly the same. At most, you might be guilty of negligence while Afghan society is certainly directly culpable of active persecution of those girls. You had the right to withdraw your own monetary contributions (as opposed to the rightness of doing it, mind). They had no right to harass those poor girls to commit suicide. Whatever wrong you did was certainly not at all on the same level as the one they committed.

But ultimately, (from my point of view) you'd still have made a wrong decision because of a knee-jerk emotional reaction and someone innocent would still be punished unjustly because of it.

Cultures aren't made up of just one aspect. There are a myriad of factors in the make-up of a society, different aspects, different values and ethics, different customs and traditions. Some are good, some are bad, some are admirable and some are tragically warped, tragic or downright insane. They're just like people. Condemning the people and customs of an entire country, lock, stock and barrel, because of ONE aspect that it is most notorious for, makes you quite as bad as the ones you are condemning.

Help these people. Take a stand. But make sure that you really ARE helping them first.

Excellent point! We shouldn't condemn an entire society for a certain groups beliefs. In much the same way that some people assume that people who are Muslim are terrorist. Of all the things that are wrong to assume that is the worst of all because that kind of assumption is extremely discriminate. I've heard of people who are very educated and yet still are racist and believe in an all white society.

By all means stand up for what you believe in because that's what I do too, but also respect the beliefs of other and that society.

it's so imprtant to be careful how we word things. I've got into so much trouble because of people interpreting things in a way that was the furthest thing from my intent.

So while we're being critical of how Ann has phrased her comments, let's not forget that the incident did happen, and that it was not an isolated one. We can't overlook the horror of such incidents in an attempt to remind people of that fact that 'most people' don't act that way.

To downplay the incident itself comes perilously close to condoning it.

c.

Unfortunately I have to agree with several of your points, Hasini. The reason I gave money to that organisation in the first place was that I was so upset that the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan at all. Giving money to Afghanistan was, to me, a symbolic gesture which proved that I wanted the Soviet Union to lose in Afghanistan and not even think of invading other countries. And because I wanted the Soviet Union to lose, I also wanted Afghanistan to win.

But when I realized how women were viewed and treated in Afghanistan, I suddenly wasn't at all sure that I wanted Afghanistan to win. Perhaps the Afghan women would actually be better off if the Soviet Union won and took over their country? To my knowledge, the Soviet Union wasn't known to be extremely sexist.

I felt as if I was defending the Afghan system against the Soviet system if I gave money to Afghanistan in an ongoing conflict. And after I had been told about the mass suicides of raped Afghan girls, I just felt that I didn't want to do that. Bottom line, I felt that it had to do with me. I asked myself, what would have been most horrible to me? To be raped, or to have to feel that my parents, my friends, my entire society wanted me to die, to kill myself, because I had been raped? I knew the answer. I couldn't root for a system that would have demanded my death if I had been raped over a system that wouldn't have minded my continued existence.

Ann

I find this discussion interesting for several reasons. The one that keeps popping up, however, is an unstated apparent "knowledge" among all the participants that the punishing of women for mild "offenses" such as riding in a car with a man she she's not married to or killing a woman for talking to a strange man is absolutely wrong.

Don't misunderstand me: I agree that these horrible acts perpetrated against defenseless women are completely wrong. And I agree that a culture which not only allows such practices but promotes them is deeply flawed.

But I have read a number of people from different viewpoints (Hindu, atheist, humanist, feminist) agreeing on a moral issue. Please add Christian to the list. I am a Christian, and I deplore the practices outlined in this thread.

What strikes me is the thought that we're all taking a moral stance without appealing to a common moral code. We all seem to agree that there is an overriding moral code which states that certain practices and customs are wrong, irrespective of the culture in which they occur.

How can any of us state authoritatively that the practice of honor killing is wrong? We must do so on some absolute moral basis, but what is that basis? Is it common custom among all people? No, because there are societies today in which this honor killing is practiced regularly. Is it the laws of one or more countries? No, because laws differ between nations. Is it our personal preferences? No, because people all over the world have different preferences. Is it common agreement? Within the L&C community the answer would be "yes," but our community does not encompass the entire world.

Most of us seem to be appealing to a higher moral law than that of men (or women) or of nations or of community standards. The basis for the legal code of most of the Western world is the Bible, which states both in the Old and New Testament that the deliberate taking of human life is wrong. England and America both derive our legal roots from Scripture, and the similarity between English common law and that of other European nations leads me to believe that the Bible was also instrumental in the establishment of the legal codes there.

Ann, you quoted the law of Moses in an earlier post in an attempt to discredit the Bible. If you really knew the Bible well, you'd know that the law of Moses was given to the ancient nation of Israel and not to the entire world, nor was it intended to be the exact code by which people were to live today. We, today, are not commanded to kill witches, nor are we commanded to kill non-virgin girls at their weddings. To write as if we were so instructed betrays a lack of understanding on your part.

Once again, let me insist that I condemn the deliberate enslavement or persecution or murder of any part of humanity in any way, whether men or women or boys or girls or unborn infants. My point is that if we are appealing to a higher moral standard to support our views, should we not admit that a higher moral standard must therefore exist, and that it transcends our human reason and preference? I think so. In fact, I think we must do so.

Interesting point, Terry. I don't have time to properly reply right now but this especially caught my attention

Having a strong deja vu flash here of the works of John Locke and T.H. Green. Think we often 'reinterpret' our personal religious beliefs with more modern belief systems - in this case liberalism (hope I haven't offended mbs Americans with this word). We overlay the old beliefs with newer ideas.

So, for example, we have changed what we mean by being "human" - *who* is fully human. For example, It's only in that last century or so that western societies have, in law, defined women as 'persons' rather than as chattel. (Notoriously, in Canada, the first woman to be appointed to our Senate was disqualified by the Courts on the grounds that, as a woman, she was not a "person" and so was ineligible.

Okay to bring this back to Terry's example. I'm not sure that religious beliefs are completely behind our acceptance of some kind of higher moral order. Nor am I sure that an evolving moral code is the consequence of religious beliefs.

The 10 Cs is similar to other behavioural codes that originated in the Middle East - that of the ancient Babylonians for example.
Some of the tenets are similar to codes in other societies that represent attempts to impose some sort of 'order' on an unruly community - thou shalt not steal, etc or lust after your neighbour's wife (spouse? ) or his *** ( i do not take that as an anti-gay exhortation but rather don't be lusting after his sports car.)

edit: just noted that the actual word in the King James version of the bible has been bleeped out.


c.

Terry, I know very well that the law of Moses was given to the ancient nation of Israel. I'm very well aware that you can very easily argue that the law of Moses doesn't apply to us at all. In his letter to the Romans, Paul passionately argued that people gain salvation not by obeying the law of Moses, but by accepting Christ as their personal saviour. However, those words of Paul's didn't stop people in Europe from using that particular part of Scripture and the law of Moses to legitimate witch hunts in Europe in the 16th and 17th century. Back in those days, in spite of the Renaissance and in spite of Paul's letter to the Romans, Europe was still more than willing to use the law of Moses to justify the killing of presumed witches. (And sometimes the law of Moses was used to justify the killing of young women who were not virgins on their wedding nights, too.)

That's why I'll keep insisting that the reason why we don't burn witches in Europe today is not because we have all read Paul's letter to the Romans. No, it's because it just isn't possible to equate the Bible with the law in our part of the world any more. It has become impossible in most of Western civilization to use the Bible to legitimate any sort of killings. Indeed, in much of Europe it has become impossible to use the Bible to legitimate any sort of harsh measures against people.

Terry, you are absolutely right that the Bible has been extremely important for the development in Western civilization of concepts like right and wrong. However, it is also true that certainly since the eighteenth century and the Age of Enlightenment, the Bible has been questioned and criticized in our part of the world. I would say that our concepts of right and wrong have been created because we have read the Bible and agreed as well as disagreed with it.

In Sweden, we generally say that it is the UN Declaration of Human Rights from December 10, 1948 that is the foundation for our sense of morality and of right and wrong. I know one thing: according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, it must be unquestionably wrong to commit honour killings, or to sentence a woman to 200 lashes because she has been in the company of an unrelated male, or to sentence a woman to public gang-rape because someone disapproves of her brother's behaviour, or to try to force victims of rape to kill themselves. All that is absolutely wrong according to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Whether it is absolutely wrong according to the Bible is something I really can't say.

Ann

Your post caught my eye too, Terry.

My question would be-- why? I approach the above point with hesitation because while we can all agree that the murder of innocents is wrong from whatever vantage point you take, it can quickly become much more complicated. For instance, is it okay to commit murder if you were wronged badly enough? The answers don't necessarily line up so easily then for everyone across beliefs and cultures. This makes me wonder what use it is to talk about universal moral standards outside such clear cut examples (like that of an innocent victim).

Personally, I follow the UN human rights for these situations as that "higher moral standard" if you will--I have my own religious beliefs of course, but I feel these are deeply personal. They are a metric for myself that I don't feel comfortable imposing on others, but the statutes of human rights more or less mirror my own general moral outlook. I think for these situations the framework of human rights is the best we can do to try to cross cultural and national borders, given the participation of truly diverse groups. But even as that "higher moral standard," what's important to me is that I consider work on human rights a work in progress (I mean women's rights didn't even get added to it until relatively recently) that is constantly subject to revision and healthy critique. Not a perfect rigid system, but what is?

alcyone

PS And I would absolutely love not to have to constantly disclaim what seems self-evident in here, but there are people on this thread who (persistently) are quick to misread my arguments (and that of others) into a defense of something abominable.

Now if we could only see all the members of the UN Human Rights Commission applying the UN Charter to each of the signatory nations.

One step at a time, I guess.

c.

I've been waiting for someone to respond with a couple of obvious questions and some historical notes, but it hasn't happened yet. So I'll jump in.

Carol Malo wrote:

The Ten Commandments (and the additional 600-plus civil and religious laws included) are indeed similar to those from other cultures, like the code of Hammurabi. But even that code prescribed different punishments crimes committed against different levels of society. For example, if a commoner killed a high-ranking noble, the commoner's life was forfeit, but if that same noble killed that same commoner, the noble was fined or had to pay reparations to the commoner's survivors.

This wasn't because human life was equated to money and the commoner obviously lacked the funds to repay the noble's family. It was because justice wasn't applied evenly throughout their society. The law of Moses prescribed the same punishment for a particular crime without regard to the social standing or the personal fortune of the lawbreaker.

It also limited the punishment to fit the crime. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is often viewed by today's society as violent and cruel, but it is instead a limiting factor. If you started a fight with another person and knocked out that other person's tooth, the punishment could not be altered by taking into account the social position or wealth or political influence of the loser of the tooth. It was a fixed penalty unalterable by anyone. In this regard, it was unique among the ancient legal codes.

I do not object in the slightest to using the UN Declaration of Human Rights as a basis for an ethical position or even a moral position. But I have two questions for you.

First, if this declaration is the basis for a moral system, what was the basis of morality before this declaration was published? Second, if this is a firm and basic declaration of morality, where did the concepts contained in it come from?

Let me address the second question first. In reading over the thirty articles contained in the declaration, they strongly resemble both the Constitution of the United States (especially in the bill of rights) and New Testament principles enumerated by Jesus in the book of Matthew chapters four through seven (often called the "Sermon On the Mount"). It also resembles in part documents produced by the 1789 French revolution and sections of the English Magna Carta of 1215.

I'm sure that's not an exhaustive list, just what came to mind while I was writing this. So the UN declaration isn't original. It was based on (and modeled after) other historical documents from other nations. It isn't a direct copy of any of them, of course, but its heritage is easily traced.

Therefore, the first question is answered by the second. A basis of morality existed prior to the publishing of the UN declaration, both in religious writings and in the founding legal documents of many nations. It is a distillation of a number of important documents with some modern updating. In fact, let me quote one section for you.

With this entry, I am manifesting my religion and my belief in teaching and practice. I also realize that this same section gives others the right to disagree with me and to believe differently. No problem, at least not for me. My purpose is not to offend anyone, but to state my views and the reasons behind them. I hope that this thread contains more reasonable discussion of these issues as we go forward. Thank you for reading.

You are absolutely right about this, Terry. The UN declaration isn't original. It is a distillation of thousands of years of thoughts and discussions about morality.

To me, the idea that the UN declaration isn't original isn't a problem at all. In some parts of the world, particularly in some - not all!!! - Muslim countries, there has been an attempt to return to the laws of the Koran, which were written in the 7th century. There is nothing wrong about the 7th century as such, but haven't we learnt anything since then?

Imagine that we were to do the same thing with science. Imagine that we suddenly had to get back to the scientific ideas that were accepted back then and accept them as the "gospel truth" today. I can imagine just the kind of strange ideas we would have to accept about astronomy.



And consider medicine. For a long time it was believed that illnesses were caused by an "imbalance of the bodily fluids", and one such fluid was mercury. People were sometimes made to ingest mercury, which is incredibly toxic, in order to cure their illnesses.

We know more about science now than we did hundreds or thousands of years ago. What reason do we have to believe that our understanding of morality was perfect in the year 4,000 B.C., or, say, 670 A.D., and that it has since declined? What reason do we have to believe that we have learnt nothing since those times hundreds or thousands of years ago, and that we must return to the roots, to the beginning, to know what is right and wrong again?

Discussing the roots of morality is a great idea, if you ask me. Studying old laws and documents can only be a good thing.

But when a Swedish king of the 17th century - that would have been Charles X, I imagine - decided that he would copy the words from the Bible about not suffering a witch to live, and then insert those words into Swedish law, making witch hunts legal, I don't think the level of morality was raised in seventeenth century Sweden.

Ann

Interesting. Love these discussions

My comments were specific to the 10 Commandmets only and not to Mosaic law as it evolved over the centuries. But I do want to add that the 10 C's was limited by the social and cultural context in which it was applied.

So for example 'Thou shalt not commit adultery" did not mean the same thing for everyone equally. Men were polygynous and also had concubines - commiting adultery was not so limiting. But for a woman it would have be really tough - since she might be getting only a fraction of a man she's condemned by that stricture as are the single men who've been cut out of the wife accumulation game by the wealthy males.

Think about the commandment "Thou shall not covert thy neighbour's wife'. That tells us that the 10 C's were focused more on men than on women, too. (this is the King James version of the Old Testament. I should add)

But all these codes are a start. Like the Magna Carta - it would not accept the testimony of a woman witness in a court of law, but nevertheless it did spell out in writing what common law practise had been for centuries, and that's a step forward.

IMO, anyway, although I know a lot of historians have criticised the Magna Carta for being a tad reactionary. For example, the guarantee to a "jury of one's peers" meant nobles only in some cases.

As for the UN Charter of Rights - I see that as a new kid on the block - put into the UN Charter by the creators of that organization - so it reflects the historical experiences of the Europeans and Americans at the end of WW2. They put together a liberal document that could be as acceptable to the Americans with their Bill of Rights, the British with theirs, and the French with Their Declarations of the Rights of Man, etc.

As for the anti-witch laws, those laws were on the books in many European countries at that time. And even spread to the New World. Salem

Although to be fair to the Europeans in this regard, many cultures have had strictures against witches.

I'd better stop now.

c.

Ann wrote:

It's not a problem for me either, and I apologize for leaving the impression that it was. I had no intention of denigrating the UN declaration, only to point out that the ideas contained in it had historical precedent. The American Constitution has historical precedents, too; the ideas and concepts in it were not at all original. What was original, however, was the way it was put together and the way it was to be put into practice. At the time, no other nation had ever tried something like that.

Carol wrote:

Carol, I think you're referring to what is often called Pharisaical law instead of the law of Moses. Over the centuries, practices and customs and restrictions not in the original commandments came to be enforced by the Jewish religious leaders as strictly as the original code. And the Ten Commandments were never intended to stand alone in Israel, but were only the introduction to the entire code. To refer to the first 10 and not to the other 600-plus commandments is to make an artificial separation between the two. All of them comprise the law of Moses.

To return to the original post in this thread: I deplore the excessive and uneven legal punishment of women over men. The law must apply to all persons equally, or it becomes an instrument of oppression and not an instrument of justice. A culture or a society which deliberately uses laws to separate a portion of its population from the rest simply because of skin color or gender or height or religious affiliation any other measure may have many redeeming qualities but is still fundamentally flawed.

I say this because I believe that there is a higher law, a higher morality which transcends anything man can assemble or enforce. There is an absolute standard of right and wrong which cannot be changed, no matter what our personal preferences or societal customs. Deliberate murder of another human being is wrong. Excessive punishment of a young woman for speaking to a stranger and giving him directions is wrong. Torturing another person only because of that person's stated beliefs is wrong.

Standing up for the rights of others is right. Stopping such outrages as described in other posts in this thread is right. Protecting the innocent and restraining evildoers is right. Saving lives which are threatened by evil people is right.

Do you agree?