People are humans before being people of culture and before being people of faith. Having said that, can people of this world have a universal “code” for human values and ethics? Can they create a code that crosses the boundaries of different belief systems and different cultures in this world? The president of the Institute for Global Ethics, Rushworth M. Kidder, has written on finding an ethical common ground for this world. He wrote an article that includes interviews with people from different backgrounds and ethnicities. 

Once asked about the values of her people, a Maori woman in a New Zealand village says, “This is God’s country! Only, we the people running it must be doing something wrong.” Rushworth does not stop here; he includes another response from a leading Sri Lankan journalist in the United Nations. The journalist was asked what will happen if the world enters the twenty-first century with the ethics of the twentieth. “I feel it will be disastrous,” she replies simply.

Rushworth states that these interviews and many others included in the article show “an underlying moral presence shared by all humanity – a set of precepts so fundamental that they dissolve borders, transcend races, and outlast cultural traditions.” He continues, “There is a pressing need for shared values in our age of global interdependence without consensus.” Rushworth mentions some values that he believes should be universal. The values are love, truthfulness, fairness, freedom, unity, tolerance, responsibility, and respect for life.

 I predict the reaction of some zealous people from the Middle East regarding an initiative of unifying human values. Many would respond by saying, “only the ‘immoral’ West needs to find and unify values; we already have values and ethics in our Islamic culture.” Islam has offered humanity a way of life and a way to interact with fellow human beings. Islam has offered guidance and paved a path. However, when I look at our “Islamic” cultures, I can barely see one of the aforementioned values.

 Do we find the respect for life? Knowing the way humans are treated in the Middle East and knowing the quality of life, I doubt we have this value. Do we find freedom? Knowing the restricted freedom of speech or rather the lack of freedom of speech, I doubt it, too. Do we find tolerance – whether religious or ethnic tolerance? No comment. Do we find fairness and truthfulness? Responsibility? I rest my case. Finding and agreeing on an ethical common ground will help in restricting and minimizing the numerous violations against the people of the Middle East. But we are often met with deaf ears, passive attitudes.

 According to Rushworth, agreeing on a common ethical ground will “give us a foundation for building goals, plans and tactics, where things really happen and the world really changes. It unifies us, giving us a home territory of consensus and agreement.”

 Let’s hope we, people in the Middle East, catch up with such benevolent movements that are trying to make this world a better place to live in. Otherwise, our world is falling into an endless, slippery slope.

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