USA Africa Dialogue Series - Answering Serowa

"Why is it right for the west to impose their
way on others by entering a soverieng nation on false pretenses and
yet it is not okay to defend one 's soveriengty? " ( Serowa, Jun 19,
4:03 am )

This can be rephrased thus: "So you think that Gaddafi is not entitled
to diplomatic immunity, no matter what he deems fit to do to his own
people within his sovereign Libyan territory? Human Rights my foot!
What right does Western Civilisation have to interfere when he
declares that he is going to exterminate the opposition in Benghazi on
that fateful night when his troops were poised to enter the city?"

It is not only the passivity of Western Civilisation and the Brothers'
keepers mentality that was at stake – Gaddafi himself like other
brutal dictators before him has been seen to be undermining
superlative Islamic ethics which these dictators tend to trample under
their feet as if Amr bil Maroof and Nahi Anil Munkar, does not exist.

It's a given that Gaddafi is no Saddam (the Butcher of Baghdad) – but
had NATO not declared a no-fly zone just the same night that
Gaddafi's forces were poised to enter Benghazi to fulfil their
genocidal mission, Gaddafi would have henceforth been known as the
Butcher of Benghazi.

" The evil that men do lives after them
the good is oft interred with their bones"

And so it would have been with Gaddafi.

This, "what right does the West have, to interfere" is an oft-
recurring argument used by the defenders of all kinds of human rights
transgressions – and this defence is usually based on specious
arguments on behalf of that dubious concept of " ethical relativism"
used to justify some palpable evil in this day and age, as if they
don't know what time it is: the twenty-first century, according to the
Gregorian calendar.

And the second World war? Should Hitler have been left to his own
devices?

Rwanda?

Ibn Warraq takes Muslim apologists to task for their specious
arguments based on "ethical relativism" - not only about norms that
were prevalent in dar al-Islam fourteen hundred years ago, but wanting
to perpetuate and to justify similar barbarities even today and they
seem to think that
"ethical relativism" is a heavenly argument and to hell with "The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and other almost absolute
standards that we all more or less agree upon, as civilised standards
and to which not all of them have subscribed. And so child marriage
should be as OK as paedophilia, in societies that would like to permit
such relationships, whilst homosexuality should merit the death
penalty? And slavery? Normative relativism? And the apologists of
course want us to believe that moral relativism is in itself
absolutely true?

http://www.google.com/search?q=Ibn+Warraq++on+ethical+relativism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Indeed, it is the normative relativists who argue that the West/ NATO
should not interfere because what was happening in Libya – and your
moral judgements about what was about to happen in Libya, should be
seen as being relative to the entity called Libya and Libya alone,
which should be left to itself for Gaddafi to do as he please to his
people – without interference from you.

Ditto with wife-beating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2rlx42H8A8

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