Leave Allah out
I re-read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this morning, to confirm that it’s as secular as I remembered. It is. This is crucial.
If you look at the preamble of the UDHR, you will see that there is no mention of any religion. All religions and cultures are assumed to be equal…But in the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (hereafter called the Cairo Declaration), we can detect a completely different tone. Right from the first paragraph of the preamble, the Cairo Declaration confidently asserts the superiority of Islam by referring to the Islamic Ummah as the “best nation”…This is no implication, unlike in the UDHR, that all cultures and religions are equal. Indeed the rest of humanity is supposedly confused and in need of guidance from the “best nation”.
And the guidance tells it that the only rights it can have are those that ‘the Shariah’ allows. Which is not a generous package.
Take note the word “men” instead of “human beings” was used. In Islam, men and women are seen to have different obligations and responsibilities. Men of course can have four wives but women cannot have four husbands. In the UDHR, gender-neutral terms such as “everyone” or “human beings” are always used.
David Littman takes a close look.
Although traditions, cultures and religious background may be different, human nature is universally the same. The aim of those who drafted and approved the UDHR was precisely to affirm this universal human identity, separating it from particular and religious contexts, which introduce and sanctify differences and discriminations. Any attempt to bring in cultural and religious particularisms would simply remove the specifically universal character of the UDHR. Neither the UIDHR nor the CDHRI is universal, because both are conditional on Islamic law which non-Muslims do not accept. The UDHR places social and political norms in a secular framework, separating the political from the religious. In contrast, both the UIDHR and the CDHRI introduce into the political sphere an Islamic religious criterion, which imposes an absolute decisive and divine primacy over the political and legal spheres.
To be continued.
O.B the U.N declaration is no better than this Cairo declaration, because none of the rights it lists can be granted if they conflict with the goals and purpose of the U.N. bearing in mind that populations in the free world are growing at less than half the rate that they are in the moslem world the make up of the U.N will change drasticly along with its ethos,so what will the future goals and purpose of the heavily moslem U.N be? I think that this Cairo declaration is a glimpse into the future for the U.N.
Serious question O.B? do you ever loose heart with this free speech battle?
The case for the UDHR, alas, is not strengthened when people make baseless assertions like “human nature is universally the same. The aim of those who drafted and approved the UDHR was precisely to affirm this universal human identity” as if they were statements of fact.
If we recognised the UDHR as a set of ethical aspirations, which it is, we might get further than if we pretend, against all the evidence, that it is a codification of reality.
When you can give me a set of human behaviours that is comprehensively divided into two lists of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’, then we can talk about the facticity of such claims. In the meantime they remain emphatically in the realm of ethical aspiration: a belief in a human essence which is more than a mere fact of biological capacity for interbreeding – the [loose] definition of a species. It’s a *good* ethical aspiration, but that’s all it is.
When you start your list of attributes by saying “The moral presumption is that the person opposite you has the same basic needs for social relationship”, you have already a] placed the question as one of ethical suppositions, not verifiable facts, and b] simultaneously asserted an evident falsehood. Some people are socio-phobic; others are sociopaths. It may be ethical [or just polite] to behave on first encounter *as if* they aren’t, but some are.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the spirit behind the UDHR, but its fulfillment is not aided by assertions which are palpably false.
Human nature is NOT universally the same. I am NOT a believer, of any sort, and while I respect the right of others to believe whatever they want, I do not respect their need to “improve me” by making me conform to their ideas of morality and justice. This is really a difference that is significant, because LOTS of people with strongly-held beliefs are absolutely convinced that they are absolutely correct, and the rest of us are damned to hell for not believing the same. They do not respect my non-belief. And they are not going away.
It is these extremists, of all religions, who are driving this debate, and they cannot be allowed to get away with this sophistry.
“Its universality lies in the claim that no one has a moral right to treat another person as of a different nature from himself. Would you like to describe the reality that is in conflict with that claim?”
The problem is that these believers do want to trest me in the same way that they treat themselves, and I don’t want to be treated as such. They want to make me conform to their ideals, just like they force themselves to c onform to those ideals. I want to be allowed to make my own moral decisions without reference to rules laid down by “gods”.
Hey Richard, have you ever heard of the “spirit” (pardon the woolly supernaturalist term, but this is one place where no one has come up with a better one yet) of a document? I’d certainly much rather live in a society that the holds the ideals embodied in the UDHC as a goal to strive for, than a society that holds the ideals of the CDHRI as a goal.
Dave, I think you misunderstood me. When I said that the moral presumption is that the person opposite you has the same basic needs for social relationship, respect, food, shelter, sex, etc., and that no one should be treated in a way that denies his or her sameness in these respects with you, I did not say that every person desires or must seek all of these things. But there is no reason to suggest that the presumption that they have such needs is an evident falsehood. Nor does it mean that this is only a moral aspiration. I am saying that, in some fundamental respects, everyone should be assumed to have the right to access to the satisfaction of certain basic needs. Obviously, the kinds of access available will differ with the need. The need for sex can be satisfied in different ways, but ought to be, if not an experience of sex by oneself, between consenting adults, say. But there is no reason to suppose that these are not, presumptively, at least, needs that we all share, and have a right to satisfy.
This goes for things like believing, thinking and other mental acts and their expression. The failure to recognise these needs — as frequently happens when religious people get hold of an idea that they think, falsely, is universalisable — is, in fact, an offence against the rights that people possess by virtue of their shared humanity.
This does not mean that we will not meet up with various pathologies, and the need to protect ourselves against them. Religion is one of those pathologies, and is now intending to override our basic rights which derive from our shared human nature. I do not see why these fundamental human needs should not be thought, appropriately, to ground the universal possession of rights by human beings.
Of course, there may be derivative rights, applicable to beings who are not human, animal rights, in fact, based on similar grounds, insofar as animals resemble humans and deserve to be treated, in those respects, with equal respect. What these rights are is disputed, because the difference between human nature and the nature of (different) animals, so far as our moral regard for animals is concerned, is in dispute. But there is no reason for thinking that, if we could settle the relevant respects in which human and animal nature are morally relevant, there is no ground for making this determination.
The second ‘relevant’ in the penultimate line of the last paragraph should read ‘equivalent’.
d.z.d I hadnt thought about the spirit aspect, of course everything will be o.k Syria is on the human rights commision to monitor human rights so what could posibly go wrong?
I posted a brief comment last night, but it seems not to have made it through. Eric – not sure I misunderstood you or not, but your position has clearly moved on from the original statement I was critiquing, viz. “human nature is universally the same.”
Richard, do you work at being this obtuse, or does it come naturally?