Human Rights between Universality and Cultural Conditioning

I - Introduction: Human Rights, Concept and Reality. 1- Violations of human rights are everywhere. They are not only in the countries of the Third World, but also in Western countries. Genocide occurs in Europe, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Palestinian persecution, in occupied Palestinian territories, occurs in Israel, ostensibly a model of a Western country in the Middle East, supported by the U.S.A. In South Africa, Apartheid is implemented by the British and the Dutch. In the USA, political assassinations of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy are done on the land of the champion of the Free World. Mounting fundamentalism is not only in the Muslim World but also in England, France and Germany, based on racism, or in the USA, based on religion. The dismantling of the Soviet Union into disputing ethnicities is the violations of human rights of individuals and peoples for the sake of purity of blood and in the name of the integrity of the nation. 2- Human rights can be approached in different ways, among them; historically, showing the socio-political circumstances behind the violations of human rights; legally, showing the implications of these violations for the legal status of individuals and nations and the necessity of international intervention through UN commissions on human rights. However, the conceptual approach must clarify in-depth the reason for human rights violations which lie essentially within the concept of man in every culture. The cultural approach is the most relevant one, especially in traditional societies where traditions are still living, providing the peoples with their Weltanschaungen and their norms of behaviour. It may help also in unveiling the cultural basis of the concept of human rights in the West. Perceptions and Worldviews are the real foundations of things and realities. 3- The Islamic Worldview goes beyond ethnicities. Asian Islam, African Islam, Arab Islam or Euro-American Islam all are particularities within Global Islam as World view. Some Western Institutions may work from an illusionary dichotomy between Asian Islam and Arab Islam. The first is more peaceful, more manageable, more understanding of the West and nderstandable by the West. While Arab Islam is more antagonistic, more radical and more.