Temporary victory: Muslim’s anti-blasphemy resolution not introduced at UN

Posted on April 4, 2011 by creeping

 

via An Anti-Blasphemy Measure Laid to Rest – Nina Shea – National Review Online.

A long-term campaign by the U.N.’s large Muslim bloc to impose worldwide blasphemy strictures — like those in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — was given a quiet burial last week in the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s main human-rights body. At the session that ended in Geneva on March 25, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), sensing defeat, decided not to introduce a resolution calling for criminal penalties for the “defamation of religions” — a resolution that had passed every year for more than a decade. This is a small but essential victory for freedom.

The lessons in how this campaign rose and fell will be important in protecting the international human rights of freedom of expression and religion against other threats, particularly as the U.S. engages with the new order in Egypt and other Arab states.

The OIC’s anti-defamation effort was inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s infamous 1989 fatwa, directing “all zealous Muslims to execute quickly” the British author Salman Rushdie and others involved with his book TheSatanic Verses. While not explicitly embracing vigilantism, the Saudi Arabia–based OIC, an organization of 56 member states, quickly endorsed Khomeini’s novel principle: that Western law should be subject to Muslim measures against apostasy and blasphemy.

The OIC worked to institutionalize this principle within the United Nations. By 1999, it began introducing resolutions annually in the Council’s predecessor (the now-discredited Human Rights Commission) to condemn any expression that could be construed, however broadly, as “defamation of religions” — but meaning, specifically, criticism of Islam.

…in 2006, the Bush administration took the lead in defending free speech, energetically pressing Council members to oppose the resolution. The EU also became engaged, emphasizing the need to protect individuals, who “should not be viewed as mere particles of homogeneous and monolithic entities.” Until then, the West member states had been unfocussed and unwilling to push back on a controversial, religiously framed issue.

The Western bloc’s support gave traction to the persistent lobbying efforts against the resolution by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, members of Congress — notably Representatives Chris Smith (R., N.J.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Trent Franks (R., Ariz.), and Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.) — and a broad array of non-governmental organizations, from the Becket Fund to Human Rights First.

…

The defense of the right to speak freely in the West about Islam, and within Islam, is far from over — last month, an Austrian court convicted Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff of “defaming” the Islamic prophet Mohammad during a political-party briefing. But what happened last week at the Council was not simply a tempest in a teapot. America could not afford to lose this debate — not over a universal human-rights code that reflects our values, and not in an international forum that we disproportionately fund. It showed that America, when it finds its voice, can still exert diplomatic influence in the defense of fundamental ideals concerning human rights and freedoms — even in a notoriously difficult international context.

Don’t let dhimmi’s like Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham submit the U.S. to Islamic blasphemy laws.

[From Creeping Sharia]