{"id":580,"date":"2009-02-17T14:04:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T19:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=580"},"modified":"2009-02-17T16:07:13","modified_gmt":"2009-02-17T21:07:13","slug":"580","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2009\/02\/17\/580\/","title":{"rendered":"Respecting Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the Independent (UK), Johann Hari asks the question: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/opinion\/commentators\/johann-hari\/johann-hari-why-should-i-respect-these-oppressive-religions-1517789.html\">Why Should I Respect Oppressive Religions?<\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.anniehogan.com\/storage\/eroosevelt.jpg\" alt=\"un declaration\" width=\"330\" height=\"265\" \/> You know he&#8217;s on to a hop topic because the comments section is 10 pages long!  In the article, he lays out a distinction between the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.un.org\/Overview\/rights.html\">U.N. Declaration of Human Rights<\/a> that emphasizes the preservation of freedom for the individual and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alhewar.com\/ISLAMDECL.html\">Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights<\/a>, a document that subsumes or contextualizes (you pick your favorite term) freedom to the dictates of shar#ah law.  Hari quotes a key passage from the Islamic declaration:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>the limits set by the shar#ah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The question I pose to my students and others is whether and\/or how the Islamic declaration is &#8220;wrong&#8221;?  The philosopher <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alasdair_MacIntyre\">Alasdair McIntyre<\/a> claims that liberalism is unable to provide us with a working morality because there is no agreed upon definition of justice.  In modernity there exists a protection of rights, but no framework for what should be done with those rights?  We are left to ultimately seek out a framework on our own with differing levels of success.  Why should the rights in the Universal Declaration be considered absolute?  Do we have a ethical or moral imperative to enforce their universality?  I encourage you to read the Hari article and reflect upon our obligations if we truly adhere to the UN declaration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Independent (UK), Johann Hari asks the question: Why Should I Respect Oppressive Religions? You know he&#8217;s on to a hop topic because the comments section is 10 pages long! In the article, he lays out a distinction between the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights that emphasizes the preservation of freedom for the individual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1067,1068,1069,1066,1065],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-human","tag-islam","tag-liberalism","tag-rights","tag-un-declaration"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}