General Discourses on Relating Honor Crimes to Islam and Muslim World： Implications of Cultural Relativism and Essentialist Approach

If women ＂violate＂ the unwritten laws and codes of honor, which are supposed to ＂damage＂ the social reputation of the family in the community, they are killed in the name of honor, in order to restore the perceived ＂lost honor＂. This paper explores the phenomenon of honor killings by examining the general discourses and scholarly critiques, regarding the implications for associating honor crimes with Islam and restricted to the Muslim-dominant societies, which of course create a binary between ＂superior＂ West and ＂backward＂ East. Scholarly research on honor crimes pinpoints the great debate on associating such crimes to culture and especially to Muslim culture. The current study attempts to identify the implications of essentialist approach of honor killings that portraits women as ＂helpless＂ and ＂passive＂ victims and men as ＂powerful＂ and ＂dominant＂ perpetrators. This paper discusses as well how cultural relativism is used to blame Muslim immigrants as responsible for honor crimes. In conclusion, the researcher argues that by holding such a view has its implication since it portraits ＂East＂ as an oppressive culture where the brutality of such crimes is justified by tradition, religion, cultural and customary norms and laws. Therefore, in order to avoid these implications, the paper discusses another approach that considers honor killings as gendered violence, perpetuated by the kinship and marriage structures of patriarchal societies.

The Pathway to Legitimacy and Universality of Human Rights from a Cross-Cultural Perspective——A Brief Review of An-Na'im's Theory of Human Rights Legitimacy and Dialogue

Within the international human rights circle,Abduliahi AhmedAn-Na’im is regarded as a representative of Southern voices."Under such a circumstance that the confrontation between the West and non-Western countries on human rights has become a routine reality,An-Na’im advocates a contingent universality of human rights or"contingent universality of human rights,"and insists that the universality of human rights be based on the cultural legitimacy of human rights.While he sees the internal dialogue of human rights in all non-Western countries,including Islamic ones,as a basic way to ensure the international human rights standards be accepted gradually,he also believes the cross-cultural dialogue among different societies can eventually lead to the reconstruction of the legitimacy of international human rights standards or even the standards themselves.An-Na’im’s theory of moderate cultural relativism points a way to achieve universality of human rights for developing countries,but there are a few questions that need to be further addressed.

The Definition of Pornography and Avoiding Normative Silliness： A Commentary Adjunct to Rea＇s Definition

Many definitions of pornography implicitly involve begging the question concerning its moral value. One exception to this is Michael Rea＇s 2001 definition. The present paper identifies some counter-intuitive consequences of this definition of pornography and seeks to amend it. The aim of the paper is to separate a definitional understanding of pornography from a normative understanding of pornography in order to lay the foundations for future, coherent moral thinking on the subject.

Different Conceptions and a General Concept of Human Rights

In this study, I show that human fights are historical projects. They are legal inventions and institutional structures and respond to historical injustices and serious atrocities suffered by people, or which threaten them. It is useful therefore to first distinguish, both historically and systematically, different conceptions of human fights from a concept of human fights. I will distinguish three conceptions： national, international and transnational. Included in national conceptions are the human fights declarations of North America （1776） and France （1789）. The starting event of the international conception is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations after the Second World War in 1948. And it can be argued that a transnational conception of human fights that better fits the globalised world and the already global developments in intemational law and governance is needed.

Theories of Culture

"Culture" is such a broad concept which is understood and defined differently by different people and has been remaining a focus for research.Some view culture as skills,values,understandings,knowledge or ways of being achieved as members of society and it is acquired and transmitted over generations;some regard culture as meaning which is established and constructed in practice and it is the context of production of new meaning and constraint of action.In this article it will focus on two theories of culture,namely,Cultural Relativism and Cultural Structuralism,and will illustrate the general ideas,main representatives and their arguments of these two theories.

Individual Human Rights and Obligations Towards Communities

Tensions and oppositions between the individual and community have accompanied the discourse on human rights from the beginning. I want to first recall how in the UDHR （1948） and in the major human rights treaties, the rights and obligations of individuals are regulated towards communities. I then want to investigate whether the talk of ＂collective human rights＂, understood as ＂third- generation＂ rights, are of equal value to be set with individual human rights. Against communitarian arguments for the primacy of community-related duties one can stress an expansion of a liberal concept of human rights by the inclusion of justice demands and social human rights. To show that special community needs can be protected and promoted through individual human rights and national col- lective rights, I used the example of the protection of minorities. Finally, I will explain why human rights are not a comprehensive theory of the good and illustrate with this the limits, and also the original strength of human rights. We should not overestimate human rights, but also we should be aware that a sober understanding of human rights is philosophically reasonable, legally possible and politically of great importance.