“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them . . . [m]y carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
General Sir Charles Napier was a nineteenth century British soldier. He fought in the Peninsular War with Wellington and spent the later part of his career in India as Governor of Sindh (modern Pakistan) and Commander-in-Chief of India. The quote I have shared comes from his clash with local priests in Sindh over the practice of suttee, where a widow was immolated on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. The British were determined to stamp out this religious custom but it was defended by the local Hindu priests as part of their ‘culture.’ It is interesting to read this quote in 2019, crippled as many of the ruling class are by the morally bankrupt ideology of cultural relativism. Napier has the confidence to see that hanging those who would burn widows is ethically superior to those who would claim they should be allowed to burn women to death because it is part of their ‘culture.’
Human rights are for everyone. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 1…
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
And in Article 2…
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.” [My emphases]
There is no mealy-mouthed nonsense about ‘culture.’ The sad thing is that many in the West have lost sight of these noble ideas in a desperate effort to avoid offending anyone, anywhere, at any time. The problem comes when it is clear that some cultural practices are quite clearly inferior to others.
Take the disgusting Afghan practice of bacha bazi, literally ‘boy play.’ This involves adult men dressing up young boys in girls’ clothes, making them dance and then sexually abusing them. By any normal standard this is revolting, it is child abuse, it is rape. But after the US Army invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 2001 attacks, there were numerous allegations that American soldiers were ordered to look away from this rampant child abuse when it was being practiced (sometimes on US bases!) by Afghan allies. Once again, a ‘culture’ that excuses such as sexual crimes is inferior to the one that does not tolerate it
A strange idea has taken hold in some parts of the pseudo-left that Western civilisation is uniquely wicked – racist, misogynist, Islamophobic, homophobic, you name it. This is so far from the truth that it is beyond parody. I find it particularly ironic when commentators like Owen Jones defend an ideology that would see him thrown off the nearest skyscraper or ‘feminists’ defend restrictive clothing rules insisted upon by exclusively male clerics. Western civilisation, based on the inheritance of Greece and Rome not ‘Judeo-Christian’ values, is not perfect but it is better than many or most of the alternatives.
I’ll leave you with the thoughts of that well-known Trump supporter and white supremacist Bill Maher…
Mike's Place 
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