Islamic Sharia law should not trump a treaty the Saudis signed. Or at least if they think it does, they should stop lying about it. "U.N. body calls for Saudis to end male guardianship," by Stephanie Nebehay for Reuters (thanks to D. C. Watson):
GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations human rights body called on Saudi Arabia on Friday to immediately end its system of male guardianship which it said severely limits the basic freedoms of women in the kingdom.The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in its first scrutiny of Saudi Arabia's gender equality record, said Islamic Sharia law should not trump an international women's rights treaty that Riyadh signed in 2000.
The committee's 23 independent experts urged Saudi Arabia to "amend its legislation to confirm that international treaties have precedence over domestic laws," and "enact a comprehensive gender equality law."
They also said that Riyadh should "take immediate steps to end the practice of male guardianship over women" and work to eliminate "negative cultural practices and stereotypes" which discriminate against women. [...]
But the Saudis, in full-bore "War Is Deceit" mode, say there's no problem:
A report submitted by Riyadh on its compliance with the treaty said that generally there was "no discrimination against women in the laws of the kingdom."A Saudi delegation led by Zeid Bin Abdul Mushin Al Hussein, vice president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission, told the committee during a recent debate: "Human rights in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia are based on Sharia law." [...]
The U.N. committee urged Riyadh to withdraw its proviso that Islamic law take precedence over the women's rights treaty, particularly as Saudi authorities have given assurances that there is "no contradiction in substance" between the two.
Join the educated, civilized world, and toss away your desert laws.
Would that be the ISLAMIC declaration of "human rights", or the ones the rest of the world uses, meaningly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
It's worth noticing what was the Muslim reaction to the UDHR:
And how did the Muslims answered the free world? Did they ammended their 7th century laws in order to keep with the civilized world? Oh no. They made up their own "declaration of human rights":
Errr...right.
Posted by: Crusader
Join the educated, civilized world, and toss away your desert laws.
Talking about Arabs and education
In a report, bank officials said Arab states had to make improving education their top priority, because it went hand-in-hand with economic development. The region had not seen the increasing literacy and school enrolment witnessed in Asia and Latin America, they said. Djibouti, Yemen, Iraq and Morocco were ranked the worst educational reformers
http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2008/02/arab-education-falling-behind-by-dale.html
The UN can call for all the human rights it wants, but islamic nations will always put sharia first. And if the UN doesn't actually do anything about it, why should they ever change?
I have never understood we financially support an institution that so consistently put out absolutely toothless pious resolutions. The big question in international "treaties" (this is technically signatories to a "convention") is
Or else what?
The text of the matter does not provide the answer, just refers failures of arbitration to the International Court of Justice.
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm#article23
The articles to which the Saudi's expressed "reservation" at the time of ratification
Article 9
2. States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.
Article 29
1. Any dispute between two or more States Parties concerning the interpretation or application of the present Convention which is not settled by negotiation shall, at the request of one of them, be submitted to arbitration. If within six months from the date of the request for arbitration the parties are unable to agree on the organization of the arbitration, any one of those parties may refer the dispute to the International Court of Justice by request in conformity with the Statute of the Court.
2. Each State Party may at the time of signature or ratification of the present Convention or accession thereto declare that it does not consider itself bound by paragraph I of this article. The other States Parties shall not be bound by that paragraph with respect to any State Party which has made such a reservation.
3. Any State Party which has made a reservation in accordance with paragraph 2 of this article may at any time withdraw that reservation by notification to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
http://asiapacific.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGIOR510092004?open&of=ENG-KWT
"The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in its first scrutiny of Saudi Arabia's gender equality record, said Islamic Sharia law should not trump an international women's rights treaty that Riyadh signed in 2000."
-- from the article above
But of course the Shari'a, the Holy Law of Islam, trumps not only an "international women's rights treaty." It trumps everything.
What does the U.N. Committee "on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women," what does the U.N., what does anyone anywhere who studies Islam and the practices of Muslims, think the "Muslim" version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that is the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, is all about?
Every single course on human rights at every law school or college in the Western world, ought at some point to require the students to set side by side those two docuemnts -- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, and see if the students can detect the differences, and then to hold those differences up for close discussion, and analysis.
What does "free exercise of religion" mean in countries ruled by Muslims? Start, say, with a comparison of India with Pakistan, and go from there.
What does the concept of "free speech" mean, or to what extent is it modified, in the West? In Muslim countries?
What does the concept of gender equality, as now recognized under the law, mean in Muslim lands, those under Shari'a, and those for whom the Shari'a serves as an inspirational guide?
And so on.
It's the most important exercise that can be conducted, these days, at a law school. And those leading such exercises should be well-prepared, well-prepared by a grounding in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and in the doctrines of taqiyya and kitman, too, as well as in the actual state of individual rights, over the past 1350 years, and today, that one can observe by learning the history of Islamic conquest and the observations of Western students of Islam, those who wrote before the Great Inhibition set in.
Be prepared, because it takes only a few Muslim students in the audience to scare some professors into quietly avoiding the subject, or not dealing with it as soberly, without modifying their findings or their tone for the sake of those students (of whose presence they may be keenly aware, and keenly eager not to offend).
No. Act as if those Muslim students are not even present, for your duty is only to one thing: to the truth, unmodified by fear or embarrassment or a diseased understanding of etiquette. You are in a classroom. You must teach.
What does "freedom of speech" mean
Pesky Sharia Law.
In order for it to be an equitable legal system, the law should applied to all equally. That's strike one against Sharia.
The ability to amend or repeal a law that is no longer applicable, enforceable or onerous. Oh, strike two.
Laws must be made and enforced by the consent of the governed.
Dang, strike three and Sharia Law is out!
In 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition"
If only our divided West could see as clearly what this Iranian Muslim sees: that our human rights (and by extension our modern constitutions and laws) are neither exclusively Judaeo-Christian (as our simple-minded, mostly American, Christians would maintain), nor exclusively secular (as our equally simple-minded atheists and agnostics insist) -- but they are inextricably both.
Modern Western secularism did not fall from the blue sky to land in the lap of a Diderot or a Voltaire (or an Enlightened Jefferson or Tom Paine): No. It grew organically out of Christendom -- not without a good deal of debate, rancor and even political violence along the way, to be sure; but then what birth of anything good is painless?
That said, 21st century Christians need to stop denigrating modern Western secularism as some kind of corrupting aberration, when, in fact, it is the heir, bastard though she may be, of Christendom. That secularism has flaws and faults is no excuse for throwing the baby out with the bathwater.