Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Abbas Beydoun: I think that dignity is a value that should not be classified into other groups of dignities. Dignity is a value against disgrace, making little of human being and attacking people's lives and private rights. I guess that the question is: why do not some people enjoy dignity? Dignity was not respected during the history and people were mistreated. If we talk about system which based on dignity, this system must be moral in laws and politics.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: I think that traditional or religious values are sacred in a determined culture, but I do think that humanity and its collectivity has also made good progress in the acceptation of those rights which should be unalienable and respected. I think that if globalization is conducive to something, than it is the resultant communication excess that gives us the chance to get to know each other better, to claim the progresses of other societies and so gives us the opportunity to enrich the development of our own society. I also think that there are some values that are universal, which is the respect towards human beings, or the respect towards the integrity of humans. Therefore I think that, although the line that differentiates in what extend one should respect certain traditional values that in another moment can be threatening the rights of a person is very thin; I think that we can find a way to integrate the respect towards certain basic rights in cultures; referring for example to the women that in many cases in certain societies are suffering from discrimination and have their rights alienated because of religious or cultural reasons. I think that this is one of the most difficult questions because how do we know in what extend it is legal that one society imposes its cultural and religious values on another society.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea:

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Andries Botha: This is a very interesting question. However, if traditional value systems have the ability of an individual to constantly re-interpret their own sense of worth, then I do believe that we have the right to expect those traditional values to be re-imagined. But on the other hand, the liberal value systems, especially Western ones, that are used as a yardstick from which other values are measured as worthwhile, is also problematic. I would say, the universal human right should have at its epicenter, the idea that an individual from which every cultural background can complete defiance and re-imagine. That they see themselves, that feeling that they have to subordinate themselves in any particular way to an existing cultural value system or traditional value system. There needs to be freedom, to feel that you can break the boundaries of traditional cultural values if you feel that they would impact on you in any way. This idea that there is an all-knowing truth or wisdom about what constitutes a human right must also be guarded against. There is always this idea, this inherent idea that there needs to be levels of governing, of containing, of holding, a place, a normative place from where all things are measured from.

by Andries Botha

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Frank, that is such an interesting question. Did you know that traditional religious values in the line of the human rights we’re trying to establish it’s not the religious, in my view anyway, the religious and traditional values which are in the conflict with the human rights. It’s the new thinking that you are better than the other. No, Frank, you and I we equal no matter where we come from. And thus, when you look at the old traditions they say that you and I we equal. They remember the circle in which we are sitting, we are all equal here. So when we are all equal and we cannot see each other’s backs, that means we cannot put each other down. And how can you put anyone down when you look only at their beauty. So thus, everyone’s right is recognized here. Everyone has the ability to speak and say what they want and how they say it. As long as it is not demeaning to anyone including themselves then they have the right to say so. So, when we say that religion is putting down human rights, no religion known to man has ever put down the human rights. It is the interpretation of the humankind which has put the limitations to those. Thus we create the human difficulty, human disasters, by saying “I am right and you are wrong.” Frank, I pray to God that you and I will be able to work together to make people aware that no religions on Earth, no spiritual belief on Earth puts anyone down. It’s the interpretation of those beliefs which causes the difficulty. Help me in achieving that, if you could. Kuyariyok.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Anthony Arnove: The question of religious rights, religious values, I’m sorry, conflicting with universal rights, I think, is a question that has to be interrogated in part in terms of the current dialog on religion, which has tended to have a rather simplistic understanding of the role of religion in our societies. And today, a lot of blame is being directed at religion for our political problems that we confront in our world today, blaming for example the religious right in the United States for a number of the ills we confront in the United States for -- possibly even for being a Christian fundamental [via singularism] for the US invasion of Iraq. I think the situation is far more complicated than that. And then, every religion is a conflictual domain. Every religion has within it social contradictions, political contradictions. So, for example, Catholicism as a religion can be a religion of oppression of women, oppression of gays, oppression of working class and poor people. But, at the same time, in Latin America, we have seen Catholic religious movements take up the ideas of liberation theology of social transformation, even revolution, and the religion can be contested. So, really the underlying broader question is how do we advance the struggle for universal human rights, which at certain points will come into conflict not just with the religious ideas but in other traditional ideas, but a series of ideologies, which have an interest in preserving exploitation, conserving relations of dispossession, whether they are religious or not.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Anuradha Koirala: We have to change the attitude of the traditional and religious society, creating awareness to understand and respect the universal human rights. I read it again. We have to change the attitude of the traditional and religious society, creating awareness to understand and respect the universal human rights.

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Anuradha Mittal: Universal human rights are about ensuring human dignity, and no religious value or traditional value wants to deny human dignity. In my country India, it is basically home to the largest number of children who work as child laborers. Now there is no Asian or religious value to basically condone that. When we talk about the violation of workers rights, it is no Asian value to say, “No, we don’t respect human rights or we don’t respect workers rights.” So I think it is a total myth when we try to hide behind the cultures of religious backgrounds to say that it’s respect for human rights is basically violating our customs, our traditions because none of the religions or traditions or customs actually preach violation of any of these rights. Which religion would say to take the life of another is okay? Which tradition would say to violate and exploit somebody else and their resources is okay? Which religion really says that exploitation of women or selling of women is okay? Which religion would say that the ability to express yourself goes against the traditional right? There’s been none whatsoever. So it’s been a total myth and it’s been a way of denying communities, of denying women, of denying the most marginalized in society, the right to be able to fight back, to struggle for the basic rights. So, we have to accept the fact that human rights are universal, i.e. standards of human rights which have been accepted by the international community of states apply to the Western world countries like the United States, they apply to countries like India and China, they are universal. And second is human rights are indivisible, i.e. you cannot separate your civil and political human rights from the economics or social cultural rights. Do you have the right to food? You cannot really fulfill your right to vote on an empty stomach. So you cannot divide the two; and that is every time it’s a challenge, it’s a myth; but human rights are universal and they are indivisible.

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Ashok Gangadean: I find this question very interesting, and I would like to question what we mean by traditional religious values because traditional religious values rightly understood have been universal. The traditional values of the heart of Judaic religion, for example, or Christianity love one another, love the other as yourself or of traditional Buddhist teaching of compassion for all beings, Hindu ethics in terms of what’s taught in the Vedas or in the Bhagavad Gita, the sacredness of all life and the connectivity of all human humanity, the true traditional values of our great traditions and our indigenous traditions have been universal and global and really are bringing out global wisdom -- the collective wisdom of a planet, have really recognized that these global universal values have been deeply seeded in our great traditions. And Islam, for example, which means surrender to God, Islam surrendered to God and the great values that come out of love and compassion taught in Islam. Also, that there is a deep sense of our religious traditions and of our great traditions that have had the seeds of these global universal values. But, alas, we also have the ego-centric ways of misappropriating our religious cultures and traditions. So, again, and as I responded in earlier questions, to the extent that the ego-mental mind, the ego-mental culture which deforms and distorts and corrupts the primal teachings that may already be in our great religious traditions, we are going to find that we are going to develop ego-centric patterns and habits and cultures and values that maybe appear to be at odds with the global universal rights and sacredness of all life that comes in our great traditions. So, I would rather restate the question in terms of how can we reconcile respect for universal human rights with the distorted egoised values of ego-centric traditions rather than our global whole traditions. And, if you look at it that way and recognize that these universal rights are already deep in our religious traditions, then there is a different way of reconciling it. The question is, how can we overcome the egoisation and the egomental distortion of our traditions.

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: Aspect of universal human rights implies that it is supreme to values that may be particularized, whether in a religious organization or within the codification of any government or country that ultimately may be violative of those rights. And so therefore when we recognize that these human rights are fundamental, then we have to apply them regardless of whether these rights may be in conflict with certain religious values or traditional values. So we, if we recognize that you have a right to freedom, then whatever the laws of any, for example, the laws of any country may be that will ultimately infringe upon those rights, then we must recognize that the universal right to freedom is a higher right than the codification of any country's law that will seek to infringe upon that freedom. And the same would be true if there is a religious tradition that seeks to infringe upon that freedom. Then we would say the person's universal right to freedom is greater than the organized religion's ability to be able to divest that individual or the group of people of their freedoms.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Benson Venegas:

by Benson Venegas

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Beverly Schwartz:

by Beverly Schwartz

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Bianca Jagger: Answertext will be available soon.

by Bianca Jagger

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Bill Joy: I think if religion or a culture or tradition doesn’t respect basic human rights, universal human rights like you’d see in the universal declaration of human rights then if you have the opportunity I think people of conscience might choose to leave such situations. We had a situation, the company I started where in the ‘80s we were having to decide what to do about South Africa. Many of us felt that Apartheid was unacceptable and so we chose not to do business with South Africa. A point of view would be that you’re harming people there, even the people who are oppressed by not doing business with them. But I think the view that I held and the view that I think was the majority view was that it was worse to tolerate the behavior of the regime by essentially trading with them. So we chose to leave the situation to not participate. I think over the long term one would hope that traditions and religions can evolve. They clearly do evolve. And hopefully they will evolve in a way that is more respectful of universal human rights. But one of the values in the universal declaration of human rights is freedom of religion, freedom of choice of religion. And clearly some religions would prefer to view themselves as the one way, the true way. That’s not uncommon in monotheistic religions. So essentially they’re recruiting for people in the religion is that their religion is the right way. And I think we recognized hundreds of years ago that that’s a source of enormous conflict. So religions which have evolved to have such principles are not in conflict with human rights.

by Bill Joy

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Bora Cosic: From this question we can see nicely that this conflict can't be discussed about general human rights, about universal rights of every human being, if we live in the society that is traditional, religious in over dimension, colored with high dimensions of nationalism. First of all we must get rid of this elephantiasis, nationalism etc., and then we can start to think about rights of every human being.

by Bora Cosic

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Brian J. Weller: Okay, so I guess a key word here is “respect.” The word respect, of course, comes from the Latin spectari; spectacles, to see, to see again, re-spect, to see; back to our original state. So I think one way of looking at this question to how to reconcile conflicts over human rights with traditional religious values is to go back to the original principles and charters of countries and constitutions and religions. I mean, for example, in 1948, governments adopted the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights, declaring that we should have to promote standards of living adequate for health and well being; including food, clothing, housing and medical care, necessary social services, the right to security, the right to work. These were basic human rights declared in 1948. Government subsequently negotiated two covenants; political or civil rights and also economic, social and cultural rights. I’m also reminded, of course, of the U.S. Bill of Rights. So, these guiding principles really need to be the criteria for populations to select their leaders. In other words, we should hold our leaders accountable for these original declarations, which are the founding principles of a good culture. I’m also thinking about water rights. You know, water probably is one of the most important if not “the” most important resource for human beings and the planet as a whole. All living things require adequate water and water, of course, is being commodified and it’s being privatized for sale; you know, left to the squandering nature of market forces. This is not right. So reconciling these rights, yeah, let’s go back to the core.

by Brian J. Weller

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

Catherine David: First of all, I am not really sure that there are systematical oppositions and if they exist, I am pretty often surprised to remark that they are only pointed out, intensified, contested when these conflicts come from traditions or non-european religions. It seems to me that in our own circumstances, under our eyes, the cases of violations of the human rights do not miss. It seems to me extremely problematic that these violations of the universal human rights only struck us, if this problem happens in some Arabic or Muslim country or other, in some tradition or other where we quickly tend to feel uninvolved or still like strangers. We should look at our societies a bit. It seems to me that holding back strangers at the airports, beating children of families without papers are evidently violations of the human rights, too; which do not have anything to do with traditions and exotic religions.

by Catherine David

Sep 9, 2006 11:25:00 AM cite

China Keitetsi: I think it is important to know the age, if it is a child. We shouldn't look at the religion or values or character. And I think the religion should in the first place not taught in school. It should not be in public places. Religion should not be in politics. I think religion should be private. [] religion can be discussed in homes or in the churches or in the mosques or in synagogues and so on. For example, there are little girls who cut some parts of their vagina. This is something which we shouldn't look at the religion; we should stop it right away. And also there are tradition which could damage a child. This we shouldn't accept either. But if those who are already 18 can choose to do such a thing; for example, in Denmark when you are 14, then you can be baptized. Before then you can't because they want to give you a chance to decide whether you want to be baptized or not. This I find very good. And there are tradition, for example, where you're forced to get married, where they force you to get married. This should be looked at as against the law because some of these girls are still young. They're not even the age of 18, so there are things which we shouldn't accept as tradition or religion.

by China Keitetsi