Are Human Rights Just a Christian Thing?

Some leaders in predominantly Muslim countries have complained so.

They say when westerners complain about their appalling human rights abuses, like circumcising young girls, and chopping off people's arms for stealing a loaf of bread, we are looking at those abuses thru Christian eyes.

Is that really true, though?

I know some human rights movements, like in revolutionary France, for example, were even rather anti-christian, in outlook and approach.

And in the United States we have a clause in the Bill of Rights, the opening sentence in fact no less, that forbids an establishment of Christian or other religion.

So what's the conclusion? Is human rights just a Christian thing, like some people say and complain?

 

You seem to equate christian with western.

 

It is and then it isn't. You have to adopt a certain amount of cultural relativism to really understand their culture from their perspective. But I would say that, despite cultural relativism, female circumcision ought to be considered human rights abuse pretty universally.

 

I know plenty of westerners have incorrect ideas and generalizations about other countries.. I don't know how Muslim view us in a religious sense.. maybe they have an outdated perspective?

 

Outdated by who's standards?

As i understand the majority of muslims doesn't practice female circumcision.

 

Yea. That's true. I think it's a minority of them in Northern Africa that do that, but I'm not sure. Absolutely barbaric though if you ask me. I don't agree with it and fully see it as a human rights abuse despite my leanings toward multiculturalist views.

 

Female circumcision has nothing in particular to do with Islam. Some non-Muslim Africans like the Kikuyu in Kenya practice it, and there's nothing in the Qur'an and the hadith about it. Mindless cruelty is mindless cruelty, not just a matter of taste--and in my opinion, fair game for criticism. As for amputations, that goes on in certain Muslim countries: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Northern Nigeria. It is most characteristic of the Hanballi school of Sharia, associated with the extreme conservatism of Wahabi-Slafi Islam. Amputation is more than just a custom. I think human rights is a human thing, and barbaric practices should be condemned.

 

Our own, as in we don't assume everyone in the west is Christian.

 

Think it’s more of an instinct to look out for one’s self and others. Not really a religious thing.

 

Not everybody in the west cares about human rights either. But yeah, what I ment with that question is that claiming something is outdated or 'not of this time' anymore is rather subjective. I guess it has more value when its about something of our own culture/in our own environment/society. But claiming it about a different one on a different continent that didn't went through our steps of progression is simply wrong and even a bit pathetic imo. It's like there's some global planning and the societies who are not on 'our level' are behind schedule.

 

Human rights---human construct. The only human rights in many countries are those granted by leaders with the most "guns ", the most goons to operate the "guns ",and the relative greed of those leaders. Definitely a modern concept.

 

Wish the Western world would castrate, chop off arms and do what the Muslims do in their own countries when they committ their offenses instead of getting immunity in western countries.

But that's none of my business.

 

The idea of respect to other humans predates Christianity. Both Buddhism and Hindu sim are older by centuries and both encourage love of your fellow man.

Islam is about 6 centuries younger than Christianity. What would a Christian goverment do a thief or women who cheats in 1418? Probably some very Islamic things. You must punish sin on Earth it is the right thing to do. Maybe even the kindest since the punishment on Earth will perhaps east the punishments of Hell.

So when I look at the modern Middle East I am disappointed but I also see a religion at a different point in it's growth.

 

I don't think the idea of human rights is a "Christian" thing as much as it is a product of seventeenth-eighteenth western secular/deist Enlightenment values carried into the global arena in response to the atrocities of World War II. Western Europe was "Christian" for many centuries before that, and its human right record wasn't noticeably better than that in other parts of the world. It was the behavior of Nazi westerners in a nominally "Christian" country that brought the issue to the forefront. The question seems to be whether respecting the dignity and worth of every human being is a good thing or just a western custom like wearing neckties and pants. I think it's a good thing, but can always stand improvement.

First some history. The notion of universal "human rights" as a legal concept is a post-World War II phenomenon, embedded in Art. 55 of the UN Charter of 1945 and fleshed out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Not only was the UN established in that year, but the Allies were conducting the Nuremberg trials holding the Nazis accountable for war crimes. These included "crimes against humanity", defined to include "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime." Holding officials of a defeated power accountable for crimes that hadn't been defined as such until after the war was admittedly controversial. U.S. courts would regard it as ex post facto law. But that didn't get the defendants off the hook, and the norm is now established international law. The idea of "crimes against humanity" was not exactly new, it having been invoked in 1915 by Britain, France and Russia against the government Ottoman empire and its officials declaring that they would hold them responsible for acts of genocide. In 1994,the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda dropped the requirement that crimes against humanity must be linked to an armed conflict, but added instead that the inhumane acts must be part of a “systematic or widespread attack against any civilian population on national, political, ethnic, racial or religious grounds." The idea of univeral human rights adds the idea that humans enjoy rights as individuals, just because they're human.

The UN Charter and Nuremburg trials happened in 1945, when the Allied powers were running the world and mostThird World countries were their colonies. By 1948, that was beginning to change, with the independence of India and Pakistan. The UDHR was drafted by people from a diversity of backgrounds, including a representative of the Arab League. Thanks mainly to interests outside the industrial West, UDHR recognizes socioeconomic rights to social security (Art. 22, the right to work (Art. 23), the right to rest and leisure (Art. 24), the the right to an adequate standard of living (Art.25), the right to education (Art.26) and the right of benefits of science and culture (Art.27). Conservatives in the U.S. were outraged at what they regarded as anti-capitalist heresy, or "pink paper", as the American Bar Association called it. When it came time to translate the principles of the Declaration into practice, two separate covenants were negotiated; one dealing with civil rights and another dealing with these social, economic and cultural rights. The U.S. is one of a handful of countries that hasn't ratified the latter. It isn't only the Muslims who question the notion of rights to those things essential for human flourishing.

 

You are right, and some parts of Islam are more rigid, such as the Salafi. And these call for strict interpretation of what they inherited from the old testament of the Bible, like eye for an eye. The Bible itself got the law of the 10 Commandments from Hamurabi's law in Iraq, which was written around 2500BC. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled during the years before Cyrus The Great sent the Hebrews back to Jerusalem around 323AD. A lot of scholars believe the Talmud was put together after 705BC, after Senachrib of Assyria invaded Jerusalem and took the Hebrews into slavery. Islam has some harsh punishment and so does the Old Testament, which calls for killing of a gay son in Leviticus. And by the way, Leviticus is a part of the Koran. Both Hamurabi's law and the 10 Commandments have provisions for adjudicating a situation where your brother's ox gores your neighbor's donkey. Both sets of law spell out the dealing with adulterers, one calling for stoning the other for drowning. It's all historic BS today. Other branches of Islam are very peaceful, like the Sufi and Bahai. In the USA the Jehovah's Witness believe only a 144,000 are going to be allowed into heaven. The Mormon men believe they will be reincarnated into gods. Preachers like Ted Haggerty think they can snort meth off the back of a male prostitute.

 

(thanks Okiefreak) The Rights to social security= The Right to work, the Right to rest and leisure, the Right to an adequate standard of living, the Right to education, the Right to benefits of science and culture. What the hell--no wonder repubs/conservatives were outraged! Who do the masses/drones think they are??

 

No idea what christianity has to do with this. Christians used to do these things also. And their missionaries in 3rd world countries aren't far off.

 

I don't know... One could make the argument that it was Christianity that influenced our social mores, but I certainly am not a Christian. I just think not beheading people and cutting up girls' vaginas is like, the way things should be. So I think the clerics and what not are wrong about that. I think whoever represents the US should just be like, "No, we're all pretty much like that."

 

Well, today Trump used the military to kill 62 Somali Muslims. Maybe he got the idea from Mohammad Bin Salmon or Nothingyahoo.