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How can we reconcile respect for universal human rights when these rights conflict with traditional cultural and/or religious values? by Frank Davis |
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Simon Retallack: I think there isn’t always a conflict between traditional religious values and respect for human rights. I think it’s easy to paint traditional values as being very retrograde with regards to modern interpretations of human rights, barbaric even. But, in many ways, I think traditional communities in the past have shown a great deal more respect for people’s human needs than our current system -- capitalist system does if you look at it from a global perspective. Of course, I don’t think there has been a perfect ideal point in history or society. No system’s perfect. But I think, you know, if you look at some of the dominant religions today they’re not, they aren’t in necessary conflict with human rights. Think of Christianity. I think it’s obviously -- it’s overriding -- one of the most fundamental tenets of Christianity is to love your neighbor, to forgive, to show compassion and there’s absolutely no conflict whatsoever. In fact, it’s quite the opposite with human rights. Where there is conflict, between religions and [coaches] and respect for universal human rights, particularly rights of women, rights for self- expression, I think --it can’t – I think it’s very difficult for change to be imposed from outside. It has to come from within countries. It has to come from civil society, and that requires a change in awareness, a sense of confidence, inner confidence, that their own beliefs and values will not be undermined by respect… [audio ends] |
Sohrab Mahdavi: Conflicts are always there and I don’t think that human rights may conflict with other things, with tradition and religious values. But at the same time, in other readings and other interpretations, human rights as well as interpretations on religion and tradition, there maybe no conflict or conflicts may lay in other places. |
Song Kosal: I don't think that universal human rights are in conflict with religious values. by Song Kosal |
Stephanie Robinson: I’m not sure that universal human right is in direct conflict with traditional and/ or religious values. I suppose that what your question actually does is it begs several other questions. What are traditional rights? What are religious values? To which religion does your question refer to? There are all these questions that I think that your question actually begs but my impression of that which is religious that if we properly understand and situate religion that it values the well being and humanity of all human life, universal human life. I think that it becomes a problem in fact when we experience religious and ethnic groups when they claim some sort of superiority to status of other groups which in turn authorizes them to mistreat the non believer and that’s where I think you see the problem. The bastardization, quite frankly, of religion not with what I think is in the core of what real religious beliefs and traditional religious beliefs have to offer. So I think that it is not necessarily in conflict I think that it becomes in conflict when you have the misinterpretation and the utilization of religion as a tool to really be able to either suppress or really be able to be a tool that’s divisive and continues to separate and to categorize people into certain categories that really distinguishes or distances and disconnects us as all humans. I also would add, to answer the question about traditional values, I think that if in fact progressives are able to recapture the definitions of traditional values, the definitions of family values and embrace religion around the world. That we all will understand that we are really much more alike than we are different and then you will see the idea of what we call universal human rights really, really, really complimentary with religious rights. |
Steve Earle: Well I don't think we can. But I think throughout history traditional values and religion are--religious values are traditional values; they are the agreement of a society about--determining the difference between spirituality and religion is important because I'm someone that believes in God but isn't particularly keen on the idea of religion. But I think the way I arrived at that and the way that the people that I read and influenced me to arrive at that sort of idea of believing that there is a power greater than me but not believing that my ideas about that and my agreement with other people about that should influence the society in any sort of civil way that I live in. In other words that's where the separation of church and state comes from. That whole concept is based on the idea of--it's not just about individual religious freedom it's also about the fact that we're constantly revising our ideas about human rights and those have been evolving. And believe it or not the world is a less brutal place than it was 1000 years ago, as brutal as some of the things that we see happening in our world now. And I think separating church and state is something that we arrived at as a practical matter because we discovered that we needed to be free. We needed to free our decision-making processes about the society that we live in from values that were set by people generations and generations before us. by Steve Earle |
Sulak Sivaraksa: I think one has to be careful. Religious values, if you go deep to the fundamental teachings of any religion, obviously, it would respect human rights, human dignities. But sometimes religious values have been handed down disputed. For instance, Buddhism regard men and women as equal, but unfortunately there is so much male chauvinism in Buddhism also, we have to challenge that skillfully. So, again, in many traditions, sometime the elders make use of the younger. Of course, in the old days the elder may know more, but nowadays the elder must also learn to respect the younger. It also means that the younger people must also respect the elders. Don't regard the elder as old fashioned, they realize the modern world. So, in fact, human rights goes along with human dignities, go along with harmony, go along with respect. It doesn’t mean human rights you have to demand for my rights. Rights must go along with responsibility, with compassion, with wisdom, with harmony. Then, I think if it will not be just a mere wasted approach of human rights. It's could really be more universal. |
Susan George: We can't reconcile the two when religious values are unreconcilable with certain rights. The immediate that comes to mind is the rights of women and one thinks of extremes, one thinks of clitoridectomies, which is certainly against the rights of women, done at an age where women are not in a position to protect themselves and often done by women -- usually done by women, older women to younger women. And, this is certainly a violation of human rights. Cloistering women is a violation of human rights Not allowing them to work if they want to work is again a violation of human rights; not allowing them to vote, that's against their political and civil rights. So, religion is, I think, make myself unpopular, but religious values are not just peace and love, they have often been used as a way of pressing and of making particular groups of people subservient. Think of the untouchables in India. Is this a religious right, a religious value? It’s nothing I would call religious if we limit religion to the notion of loving one’s neighbor which seems to be a basic value in many religions; do not kill, do not do onto others what you would have not done unto you. But, there are religions, Hinduism, for instance, which work on the basis of some castes, some classes which are not fully human. I think religion, as people practice it, has often become one of the greatest dangers that we have to face today; and I would much rather have the society based on human rights values than on religious values. by Susan George |
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by Swami Pragyapad | 0 votes | 
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Swami Pragyapad: Answertext will be available soon. |
Sydney Possuelo: Our contradictions are terribel and we need to correct them. I think that we are talking about this in the sense of finding a totality of values that can be accepted by everybody. And this is a difficult task. It is as variabel and distinct as forms, flavours, colours and different traditions. I still think that those changes can only be fullfilled by changing ourselves. I think that we help to revolutionize the world when we insert these values or when we begin to think of this kind of questions: How can we reconciliate things that are so different and contradictory like the questions of values, ethic and moral values, of when is it right and when not? How do we arrange a point of balance, would this point [] exist between these values? Or would there be an absolute and universal value that hovers above all things? I don’t know. I know that we have to ask us about this respect and that we have to work for this, these religious or not religous values. That is it. |
Takashi Kiuchi: We do not have to reconcile respect for universal human rights with any other values because any other values, traditional or religious values, should be maintained by any reasons. Universal human rights are a totally different thing. And my prediction is that a time will come when we put, or reevaluate, the traditional and religious value. |
Tamas St. Auby: We can reconcile respect by accepting all diversities except, or better to say, including the one which does not want to be accepted. |
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by Tania Bruguera | 0 votes |
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Tavis Smiley: To the extent that human rights conflict with traditional or religious values, then those traditional or religious values are worthless, absolutely worthless. Human rights, basic fundamental human rights, must not be in conflict with any religious or traditional values. We must respect all faiths, all beliefs, but those faiths, those beliefs, those religions, those customs, must value the right of every human being to be loved, to be respected. And when those values are in conflict, then we need to rethink those traditional values. Maybe, you know, it’s time to bring some traditions to an end, if in fact that’s the case. And those religious values—I have not come in contact with many religions at all that are in conflict, whose belief systems are in conflict with basic fundamental human rights. To the extent, again, that they are, we need to rethink those faiths, those traditions, and those values. by Tavis Smiley |
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by Tegla Loroupe | 0 votes |
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Tegla Loroupe: Answertext will be available soon. |
Thenmozhi Soundararajan: I think this question has an enormous assumption and I think part of that assumption is that human rights only operate in a secular context and that the main tension with human rights is with religious values. My tension with human rights is I think that human rights as a doctrine is an important organizing point and at a grassroots level is profoundly empowering. But, I think that the way human rights is applied is that most countries in the North unevenly apply military force to countries that are violating political rights and very conveniently ignore the other economic, cultural and social rights that are guaranteed within the universal human rights doctrine. So, what I am more concerned about is that uneven application. I also think that there is a great deal of hypocrisy because of that military intervention. For example, with the United States being a great violator of political rights of both its citizens in the United States; like what we see in the conditions of prisoners both local like in Guantanamo Bay, but also in terms of its own communities, as well as like what we see in its bombing and its military intervention in Iraq. I think if we want a human rights doctrine that’s going to work and we want to see human rights evenly applied, countries in the North need to play by the same rules that all countries are expected to. I think that’s one way to really look at -- that to me is the true clash around human rights, not human rights versus secularity and fundamentalism. I think that’s kind of a mock conversation and to me is an assumption based upon the question, but isn’t really truly what’s at play and what I see happening in the world around me. |
Tu Weiming: Human rights especially after the – since the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations as universal rights have become important feature of value orientation of the modern age. That’s the reason why human rights are characterized as universal values - universal rights. Yet we need to nuance what do we mean by human rights. There have been three generations of human rights, political rights, the rights to freedom, rights to assembly, right to religion, and these are important rights, but also the economic rights, rights to fresh water, to basic food, to shelter, to minimum economic standards. But the social rights, cultural rights they are also group rights. Each one of them is universalizable. Even though they originated since the Second World War, they represent the consensus of the post-Second World War mentality of some of the most brilliant minds. However, in order for human rights as minimum conditions of human flourishing to fully developed in different culture traditions. It’s important to consider human rights as minimum requirements for human flourishment. They have to be integrated in to the thick descriptions of many culture traditions, for example in the fusion tradition it’s possible to underscore the importance of the responsibility of the leaders as a condition for the development of the human rights for old people, especially the marginalized and disadvantaged and it is possible for the Christian, the Judaic, the Islamic, and Hindu traditions to develop human rights. Obviously, they are features of human rights that are not embodied, that are not fully developed in these societies and they have to be critiqued. by Tu Weiming |
Udi Aloni: I really feel that so many questions here take for granted that this, the Western discourse and I just try to fight against it. And we should question the questions sometimes. It's really put in the conflict tradition in human rights. When the big abuse of human rights is in the non-traditional society itself. So we all the time we adopting the discourse of the power and then we arguing with it. Not thinking that from the beginning there is a fault in the discourse itself. I think it's so beautiful to be with my umbrella, to see my umbrella against the sun and try to be serious about something that it is serious. But yet, I have to feel a little bit ridiculous here. Tradition against human rights--who are the biggest abusers of human rights? The West that invented the human rights. So it's time for us to understand the concept or not between us and them; between tradition and progressive. In each concept there is a way to deal with the right. And each place build together the right and the fight against the right. And there are tradition societies that before they were influenced by the West, gay could live very simply there without the control of the power. Or women in the Jewish tradition, Jewish place, were in many time better position than all the slavery of women and so-called modern societies. So if we have to end the exception of the division that they, I don't know how I should call them, the discourse, the Western discourse create. The question itself is already prejudiced. The question itself already doesn't understand the conflict with human rights, it's a women rights, it's in the Western discourse itself. And I think it's time to rethink the questions. by Udi Aloni |
Valentina Melnikova: In my opinion not all traditional and religious values come into conflict with human rights. A lot depends on interpretation of a particular religious tradition but for example many basic human rights are supported with the commandments of e.g. Christian faith. The most important thing is respect for all kind of people’s faith if it doesn’t cause trouble for other people. And it’s impossible to confront religious convictions, faith with the importance of preserving and protection of life and respect for human dignity. The Union of Soldiers’ Mothers Committees said from the beginning that it would help people regardless of their religious views or their national traditions, because the object of our efforts is to preserve life and human dignity of Russian young people who have to do their military service. Only through mutual dialogs, a kind of mutual side by side existence, discussions and acceptation of other people’s point of view and its comprehension could help to avoid conflicts concerning religious opinions. Humanity is globalizing itself, and many people protect themselves from this sort of evening out, while trying to keep strict religious traditions. But it shouldn’t be allowed to cultivate faith or civil rights of human being by force. |
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by Vesna Pesic | 0 votes |
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Vesna Pesic: Answertext will be available soon. by Vesna Pesic |
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