Regarding her criticism of the Taliban, she
was quite explicit that she was comparing them to her personal values. She's
allowed to have personal values, isn't she?
Well, that raises the definition of relativism, doesn't it? Certainly she's allowed to have personal values with regard to her own life. But when she says other peoples' behaviors don't accord with her values, she's judging them by her standard, not theirs. I think a true relativist wouldn't do this. She would say "until I have been raised as a Taliban child, in a Taliban culture, believing the things a Taliban believes, I can't say whether what they are doing is right or wrong, and then I can only say it as a Taliban." It is quite clear that X doesn't believe that the worst thing that can happen to a person is not to go to Heaven, that all our life here on earth is directed toward that single end, that it is far better to suffer death than to risk not going to Heaven, and that female immodesty risks condemning not only the woman but the male members of her household to not going to Heaven. Within that belief structure, plus other aspects of the Taliban belief, if my limited understanding of their beliefs is even remotely correct, it makes perfect moral sense to stone women who come out into public immodestly dressed. A relativist would, IMO, say that, and say that there is just as much virtue in their policy of stoning such women as there is in our Western policy of oogling them in their string bikinis on the California beaches. |
