Gender equality is a fundamental right?

Recent online images recently showed a 17-year-old girl in Pakistan’s Swat Valley being flogged in public for going outdoors with a man not her father, a violation of Islamic practice. In Afghanistan, a proposed law would severely restrict rights of Shia women, forbidding a wife to leave the house without her husband’s consent and condoning marital rape. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the United States, are signatories of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which forbids sex discrimination. For us, gender equality is a fundamental value. But we also profess tolerance for other people’s culture and religion. Which principle should prevail? Should we respond to these developments with tolerance? What do you think?http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/limited-tolerance/