Rights and Double Standards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FxvWM8VgK_k#!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/18/egypt-naked-blogger-aliaa-mahdy

Watching this video made me wonder what has been crossing my thoughts frequently for a while. Where are we headed with this attitude? What do we wish to prove by finding faults in others? This trend of telling others how lowly they really are has now gained substance. Whenever someone tries to show us the mirror, or an incident forces us to reflect on what we are and have been doing, we revert to abusing the 'western world of all evil'. I don't doubt the statistics provided by the scholar in the video above. But I do wish to ask him: should we continue to be evil just because there are others who are worse than us? As a scholar, isn't it your job to correct the misconceptions and wrong doings of other Muslims who don't know as much as you do? Why defend their actions by telling them that they don't equal the west in killing and raping women? Does lying behind the west makes their actions tolerable?

Our problem, it seems, is our feeling of self-righteousness and self-importance which has led us to have double standards. As people who believe in one God, we should be the humble ones who respect everyone's rights and do not justify anyone's crime by baseless accusations and defenses. But noo, we consider ourselves superior in every right so much so that we dig out our own rules and regulations and definitions of freedom and rights in religion and outside it. We don't want to see or accept that fault lies with us even if the facts lie glaring in our face. And in our arrogance we go on to practise our self-defined rights and rules and justify them to the world. 

The young lady mentioned in the article shared is the most relevant example of what I said above. Only she represents the other side, i.e, all those who believe in God are root of all evil, the scholar's opposite. The difference is: one case it's the scholar who derails non-Muslims, western non-Muslims to be more specific, while insisting that Muslims are the purest of all and in the second case the young lady deems all Muslims as animals by implying how they challenge everyone's right to freedom of speech. What I don't understand is that why has the definition of freedom become so limited? Why have we restricted our freedom to the way we dress (or don't)? And just because our freedom is limited why do we try to restrict others' freedom to match ours? Why don't we let the others stay the way they want to? If some people mind when others criticise them then maybe they should just let other people be and spare them of the behaviour they so detest when it comes their way. The main root of most of the problems we are facing as a community today is not the absence or presence of religion or faith; its bigotry and hypocrisy.