That's the theme of an editorial in the Yemen Times making the blog rounds today. The underlying theme: international human rights organizations subvert the religious, social and moral norms of Islamic families.

Even if you're opposed to domestic violence (which, just for the record, I am, in case you were wondering), the core argument is one to be reckoned with. Today's post-colonial world increasingly privileges local standards over the imposition of external values. Are we reaching a point where international human rights are obsolete, the relic of an idealized twentieth-century vision of abstract universal values? Moreover, since 9/11 it's become fashionable in the West to characterize parts of religious practice with which we disagree as "not real Islam" or "not real Christianity," but is that really ours to decide? And does such a normative judgment help us understand why believers carry on offensive practices?

Just as a reminder that this sort of issue doesn't only arise in Yemen, here are a couple links featuring the institutionalization of violence in the U.S. The first: the rules for dress and jewelry from Christian Domestic Discipline, a site where we learn that "the husband has authority to spank the wife" but "the wife does not have authority to spank the husband." And here are the dress code and rules for corporal punishment of children in a California Christian school.

I know, I know--the Islamic guy is talking about domestic violence, but that's not what happens when Christians hit their wives and children.

Riiiiiiiigggghhhhtttttt.