manshimajin Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 'Right' and 'wrong' are very much subjective standards, but we can judge a legal system by some very basic ideas of how people should be treated which i believe to be absolute. You might call them western liberal standards and say that they should not be enforced on cultures so drastically different from ours, but i think they are fundamental rights of people everywhere. The right to drink beer is one of them, and so is the right not to be whacked with a big stick. We can argue a generality that Sharia Law is selective and does not match our more liberal standards. Or a specific, if people know what the punishment for an offence is to what extent should they object to its application if they flout that law? If you go to Saudi and drink alcohol you will be in deep trouble, if you import drugs into Singapore you will be hanged or if you are Muslim in Malaysia and drink alcohol you get caned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 23, 2009 Author Share Posted August 23, 2009 Vulgarian - So muslims in these countries do not necessarily assent to Sharia law removing their rights, making those courts little different to plain old secular barbaric justice systems. I think I agree with that. Lao - they are not equal, yet different theories for the rules that a society should live by.while both may be flawed, they are not on the same level and should not be treated as such. I don't know what you mean by 'on the same level and not be treated as such'. Does sharia rule and law not operate as the laws in those countries? Is the point you are trying to make is that the laws in this country are a standard or design that cannot be compared well with Sharia? I would have to ask why if so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lao Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 I don't know what you mean by 'on the same level and not be treated as such'. Does sharia rule and law not operate as the laws in those countries? Is the point you are trying to make is that the laws in this country are a standard or design that cannot be compared well with Sharia? I would have to ask why if so. ???? that was a little hard to understand, if its any help my position is similar to that of vulgarian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 23, 2009 Author Share Posted August 23, 2009 Oh ok, well I kinda agree with Vulgarian too. Is it a shame that people are so nuts to assent to being punishment for sins that a God (who is almost certainly fictional) has told them to be punished for. But then again, the mentality is equally the same with people going to confessional or making prayers of forgiveness, except that for Muslims in these countries they are happy to be punished more harshly and are more strict in their beliefs. Who is to judge which legal code and punishment system is right and which is wrong? I do not like the idea of Sharia Law but aren't most religions intertwined with codes of behaviour? Was this lady ignorant of the law in Malaysia when she drank alcohol? Religion is intertwined with codes of behaviour, but in terms of Christianity, Islam, and Judaiism I believe that most of the codes and beliefs are deeply immoral. And there is so much about these faiths were are far apart from modern moral standards or what I would consider good ones. And yes, we can definitely just whether the punishment system and legal code is wrong. It doesn't make a ha'penny of difference whether it is a different country and culture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted August 23, 2009 Share Posted August 23, 2009 And yes, we can definitely just whether the punishment system and legal code is wrong. It doesn't make a ha'penny of difference whether it is a different country and culture. I am a bit confused as to whom you think should decide what is right and what is wrong. Is it what you think is right is right and what you think is wrong is wrong? Or do you have some different method of assessment? For example, Singaporeans think it is a good idea to execute drug smugglers - is that OK as they have decided that this is appropriate in their society? Or do you want to impose some external system on them as happened here with birching? Some folk here seem to think that it would be a good idea to have kept it and resent the external interference in Manx issues. Probably the Singaporeans would resent outsiders telling them what their legal and punishment systems should be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 23, 2009 Author Share Posted August 23, 2009 Well I am not making any argument for an extra-national legal systems to supplant national ones. I could discuss that and I would actually think I would have little problem with an external authority supplanting a national religious one. But bit of a tricky topic. Simply because a different country has people of a different culture doesn't mean that their ways of doing things and their state structures can't be condemned or criticised because we use a different value system. I can condemn their value system. And you refer to 'their ways' and 'their legal system', but what do you mean? Simply that it is the law in their country? That would be obvious. Or do you mean that it is a legal system that the people actually have control over and is determined by them? I don't even find that legal systems in countries with an elected government have justification. Nevertheless, in many countries that have no democratic processes or very poor ones, these laws can certainly not be said to be related to the people's desire as to how to be governed. And although different people have different cultures, many of those cultural behaviours can be criticised. Hypothetically speaking, If an elected government wanted to punish thieves by cutting off their fingers and then setting the person on fire, would we have to be all right with that because it is 'their' law? I have little problem with the UK threatening to legislate in place of the Manx government as it did with birching and homosexuality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted August 24, 2009 Share Posted August 24, 2009 LDV I think it's easy for us to say from here that laws in another country are not OK - that they don't match our impeccable standards. However if you visit that country it makes sense to adhere to their laws. Scotland have a similar situation with Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi's release. The SNP say that the decision is based solely on the laws of Scotland. The US says they don't like the decision and have clearly a low level campaign in place to slur the decision. I am sure that many people might wonder in view of the US attitude how the Captain of the USS Vincennes got decorated rather than court-martialled after shooting down a civilian aircraft killing 290 people. It depends where you are observing from. A number of states incuding the US, Japan, China, Iran, feel capital punishment is OK. 103 have it on their statute books in total which means roughly half the countries in the world feel it is an acceptable and appropriate form of punishment. There are different standards all over the place - not one universal code of right and wrong (except our own personal ones). That you and I can say that caning for drinking is not appropriate is expressing our own perspectives - it is wrong to us - the Malaysian authorities obviously disagree with us otherwise they woud ban it and Sharia courts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulgarian Posted August 24, 2009 Share Posted August 24, 2009 ...Singaporeans think it is a good idea to execute drug smugglers - is that OK as they have decided that this is appropriate in their society? Or do you want to impose some external system on them... You seem to assume that Singaporeans, or the people of any other country, have assented to the judiciary system that they are subject to, and agree with it. It is not the people but the government who decides what constitutes a crime and what form punishments will take, and its decisions are not always ethical or in the interest of the people but are sometimes made for other reasons like the suppression of opposition, the continuation of its own rule, persecution of a particular group or whatever. There are plenty of contemporary examples of this sort of thing taking place. That a country has a democratic political system does not mean the people have any say in the form their laws take. That is all the more reason why there should be common international standards in criminal justice to prevent governmental abuse of its people, enforced by economic sanctions maybe. You can say that we should not be interfering in the affairs of other countries because their values are different but there have to be some fixed global standards when it comes to the law and how humans should be treated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 24, 2009 Author Share Posted August 24, 2009 LDV I think it's easy for us to say from here that laws in another country are not OK - that they don't match our impeccable standards. However if you visit that country it makes sense to adhere to their laws. It does make sense, I have said that throughout this thread. I am not talking about no obeying their laws nor about replacing these laws. I talking about assessing these laws on the basis of how just and fair they are. I am sure that many people might wonder in view of the US attitude how the Captain of the USS Vincennes got decorated rather than court-martialled after shooting down a civilian aircraft killing 290 people. It depends where you are observing from. Many people might! Bit of a different issue here though. I see this as an act of terrorism. The only reason why it is so insignificant to the West and why the captain was decorated is because in terms of foreign policy the majority of people in the West do not apply the same moral standards to dealing with people in other countries than they do to themselves. A number of states incuding the US, Japan, China, Iran, feel capital punishment is OK... As Vulgarian explains, I think you are completely ignoring the fact that the law in a country is not necessarily a reflection of the people's will or values. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted August 24, 2009 Share Posted August 24, 2009 You seem to assume that Singaporeans, or the people of any other country, have assented to the judiciary system that they are subject to, and agree with it. It is not the people but the government who decides what constitutes a crime and what form punishments will take. That is all the more reason why there should be common international standards in criminal justice to prevent governmental abuse of its people, enforced by economic sanctions maybe. You can say that we should not be interfering in the affairs of other countries because their values are different but there have to be some fixed global standards when it comes to the law and how humans should be treated. Vulgarian your assertion that it is governments that decide what constitutes a crime and what form punishment will take is, at the strictly legislative level, correct. But one only has to look at how careful most politicians are to be seen as strong on 'law and order' to think that maybe voters are more redneck than the politicians. I do not know for sure but I would suspect that the majority of Singaporeans support the death sentence and the same in the USA in States that have it. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a wonderful document that should address many of these issues but half or more of the world's government sign it then and take no notice of it. Outside of Europe I really can't see countries being willing to make their legal systems subordinate to an international authority. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La_Dolce_Vita Posted August 24, 2009 Author Share Posted August 24, 2009 I understand what you mean (I think). The people do want see no crime or have it dealt with, but their understand of what constitutes a crime and how it is dealt with is moulded largely by how the government/state has dealt with it in the past. Up until recently my understanding of crime was such to think that the wrongdoers are simply bad people and that imprisoning and fining people was correct. However, that understanding comes from an 'indoctrination' and an specific understanding from living in a society where things are dealt in this way. The same is true in other countries. If Muslims in Saudi Arabia have always known that certain 'wrongdoers' are given the death sentence and are told by their brainwashing religious leaders, media, and the state that this is good and ok then they will think that too. Nevertheless, it still doesn't mean the people have control over their legal system. And in any case even if the majority think that certain acts should be punished in a particular fashion it does not mean that it is the correct thing to do, even if the people have an significant input into government. If the majority of the population thought it was right to stone an adulterer to death and have voted on retaining this law, is it something that we should not criticise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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