Tag Archives: Istanbul Process

U.S. Praises Sharia Censorship

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2012-634807128700938005-93By Deborah Weiss:

The United States is silent as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) passes its most recent UN Resolution that unravels global consensus to support freedom of speech.

From 1999-2010, the OIC succeeded in passing its “defamations of religions” resolutions, which ostensibly would protect Islam from all criticism, including true statements of fact.  Though the name of the resolutions indicated that it would pertain to all religions equally, in the OIC’s interpretation, it applied to Islam only.

Realizing the clash that this concept holds with that of free expression, the US State Department urged the OIC to produce an alternative resolution which would address the OIC’s concerns about “Islamophobia” and still protect free speech.

Accordingly, in March 2011, the OIC introduced the now infamous Resolution 16/18 to combat intolerance based on religion or belief, purportedly proposed as a replacement for the defamation of religions resolution.  It garnered wide-spread support and Western states touted it as a victory for free speech.  They believed that its focus marked a landmark shift from suppression of speech critical of religions to combating discrimination and violence against individuals based on their religious beliefs.

Over time it became clear that the OIC retained its long term goal to protect Islam from “defamation” and indeed to criminalize all speech that shed a negative light on Islam or Muslims.  Resolution 16/18 turned out to be a tactical move by the OIC to bring the West one step closer toward realizing its goal of achieving global blasphemy laws, by using language more palatable to the West, and open to interpretation.

Against this backdrop the US held the first conference to “implement” Resolution 16/18, the process now known as the “Istanbul Process.”

Unfortunately, America’s concern for the protection of free speech seems to have gotten lost as its focus moved closer to the OIC’s positions, and an emphasis was placed on protecting Muslims in the West from “Islamophobia.”

Some circles including free speech advocates, national security experts, and those concerned about the Persecuted Church, have beaten the drum against Resolution 16/18 and the continuation of the Istanbul Process.  Their efforts have been to no avail as the Istanbul Process continues.

However, while awareness of the perils of Resolution 16/18 is on the increase, news on Resolution A/HRC/22/L.40 has gone virtually unreported.  It retains the same title as Resolution 16/18, but has glaringly dangerous amendments.

To focus on just one, it asserts that “terrorism…cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group.”  This is obviously problematic.  The lumping together of these categories implies a false equation of immutable characteristics such as nationality and ethnicity with those that are subject to choice such as religion or belief.

Religions and belief systems come in all stripes.  To preclude the possibility that any of them might be ideologically associated with terrorism leads to a position based on an unexplored assumption rather than a conclusion based on fact.  Indeed, the assertion condemns the mere exploration of the facts a priori, a notion which is not only illogical but dangerous.

Read more at Front Page

 

Blasphemy and Islam

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Coptic Christian blogger Alber Saber

Coptic Christian blogger Alber Saber

By Andrew C. McCarthy

In Cairo on Wednesday, a Coptic Christian blogger named Alber Saber was convicted of blasphemy and “contempt of religion.” There’s a tragic irony: As any of the country’s Christians can tell you, contempt of religion is not merely permitted but encouraged in the new, post-Mubarak Egypt. What is criminal, what has become increasingly perilous, is any criticism of Islam.

Nor is truth a defense. Another Egyptian court recently upheld the blasphemy conviction of Makarem Diab, also a Coptic Christian. Diab had gotten into a discussion with a Muslim acquaintance, Abd al-Hameed, who, in the course of mocking Diab’s faith, insisted that Jesus was a serial fornicator. Diab countered Hameed’s baseless taunt with an assertion most Islamic scholars regard as accurate: namely, that Mohammed had more than four wives. Yet, because the context of Diab’s assertion evinced an intention to cast Islam’s prophet in an unfavorable light, Diab was prosecuted for “insulting the prophet” and “provoking students.” He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.

This is now everyday life in Egypt. It is also certain to be the future of Egypt. The overwhelmingly Islamist population, having first elected Islamic supremacists led by the Muslim Brotherhood to top leadership positions, is now poised to adopt a constitution that is founded on sharia, Islam’s totalitarian legal framework, and that expressly enshrines these blasphemy standards. But the problem is not just sharia in Egypt. Sharia is here.

About three weeks ago, another Egyptian court sentenced seven people to death after convicting them in absentia on blasphemy charges. Most of the seven are in the United States. Most of them are Coptic Christians; one is a Florida-based pastor who is a blistering critic of Islamic scripture. The charges relate to the defendants’ alleged involvement in “Innocence of Muslims,” an obscure amateur video that Islamists have frivolously cited as a pretext for their latest round of international mayhem — and that the Obama administration has fraudulently portrayed as the catalyst of a massacre in Benghazi in which jihadists killed four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya.

So how has President Obama responded to the Egyptian government’s human-rights violations, its failure to protect the Copts from persecution (indeed, its willing participation in that persecution), and its provocations against Americans — which now include ordering their killing, through a kangaroo-court process that flouts our due-process standards, over their engagement in activity that is expressly protected by our Constitution?

Well . . . the president has announced that not only will he continue funding Egypt’s Islamist government, but he intends to include in that U.S. aid the provision of 20 F-16 fighter jets. Moreover, Obama is continuing his administration’s collaboration with the 57-government Organization of Islamic Cooperation on the “Istanbul Process.” That is the OIC’s campaign to impose sharia’s repressive blasphemy standards.

The most recent aggression in this blasphemy enterprise — a years-long, carefully plotted OIC campaign to snuff out American free-speech rights under the guise of “defamation of religion” — is U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. It calls on Western governments to outlaw “any advocacy of religious hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Read more at National Review

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which was published by Encounter Books.

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New Movie Documents Islamist Threat to Free Speech–and Obama’s Support for It

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New York: On September 25, 2012, President Obama astonished many Americans by declaring, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” This is a sentiment espoused by radical Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Taliban and al Qaeda. Worse yet, his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, revealed the lengths to which the Obama administration is prepared to go to enforce this view when she told the family of a former SEAL killed last month in Benghazi that the producer of a video she falsely claimed precipitated that attack would be “arrested and prosecuted.” He was subsequently taken into custody and remains in jail.Now, the powerful documentary SILENT CONQUEST explains why these affronts to the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech are not isolated incidents. Rather, they are part of an ominous pattern of Team Obama’s submission to the stealthy Islamist effort to enforce in this country the supremacist doctrine known as shariah and its prohibition of any expression that “offends” Islam or its god, prophet or followers.The film features interviews with U.S. and foreign legislators, journalists, national security and other experts and Muslim, former Muslim and non-Muslim activists including:Best-selling author Mark Steyn; Rep. Allen West, Member of Congress; Geert Wilders, Member of the Dutch Parliament; Baroness Caroline Cox, Member of the British House of Lords; ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel; scholar and author Daniel Pipes; American Islamic Leadership Council founder Zuhdi Jasser; former Muslim and author Nonie Darwish; former Defense Department official Frank Gaffney; Lord Malcolm Pearson, Member of the British House of Lords; Naser Kader, Member of the Danish Parliament; author and financial terrorism expert Rachel Ehrenfeld; author Pastor Mark Durie, as well as others.

SILENT CONQUEST offers a frightening insight into the extent to which Europe, Canada and the United Nations have already succumbed to the restrictions of shariah blasphemy laws. Its stark warning about the Obama administration’s substantial efforts to accommodate them here, as well, is a wake-up call for every American.

The documentary was produced by Sanctum Enterprises, LLC.

For a limited time, SILENT CONQUEST can be viewed for free online at silentconquest.com.

For more information about the film and its subject matter or to arrange interviews with the film’s featured authorities, contact David Reaboi of the Center for Security Policy at 202.431.1948 and dreaboi@centerforsecuritypolicy.org or media@www.silentconquest.com.

 Frank Gaffney:

As Americans go to the polls, many factors may influence how they vote for  president. Among those — if not pre-eminent among them — should be the kind of  country they want to bequeath to their children. It is unlikely that most voters  would knowingly and deliberately opt for a candidate who appears determined to  make the United States a nation that does not respect and safeguard our most  foundational constitutional right: freedom of expression.

It may seem unbelievable that anyone running for the presidency would even  consider such a betrayal of the oath of office governing that position, let  alone work toward that end. Yet, as a new film, “Silent Conquest,” makes clear,  President Obama, from his first months in office, has been enabling in this  country an insidious effort by Islamic supremacists to keep us from engaging in  speech, videos, training or other forms of expression that offend Muslims, their  god, prophet and faith.

The documentary opens with Mr. Obama’s astounding pronouncement at the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 25: “The  future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” This  sentiment could have been expressed as easily by the Muslim  Brotherhood, the Organization of Islamic  Cooperation (OIC), the Taliban  or al Qaeda. Unfortunately, it is but one of  many manifestations of an Obama policy approach that has brought U.S. diplomacy  and government practice into closer and closer alignment with the demands of  Islamists that such “slanders” be prohibited and criminalized.

Consider a few of the other examples “Silent Conquest” itemizes with help  from an array of U.S. and foreign legislators, analysts in national security and  other fields, and Muslim and non-Muslim activists (this columnist among  them):

The Obama administration co-sponsored in  March 2009 a resolution in the U.N.  Human Rights Council that basically endorsed the unacceptability of any  expression that offends Islam.

In Cairo in June 2009, Mr. Obama declared, as part of what Mitt Romney and  others have called his “apology tour”: “I consider it part of my responsibility  as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam  wherever they appear.”

In July 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton launched with  the OIC the Istanbul  Process, a multilateral effort to find ways to accommodate Muslim demands for  restrictions on free speech. On that occasion, she declared that among other  means put in the service of this dubious objective would be “old-fashioned  techniques of peer pressure and shaming.”

Mrs. Clinton evidently has  found such methods inadequate. In the aftermath of the murderous attack on our  diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, she joined Mr. Obama and others in  insisting — despite abundant evidence to the contrary — that it had been  precipitated by a “disgusting and reprehensible” act of free expression, namely,  a video denigrating Muhammad produced by a California man. According to Charles  Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, one of the former Navy SEALs killed while  heroically defending the CIA’s annex and his comrades, Mrs.  Clinton told him that the government was going to “arrest and prosecute” the  filmmaker. Shortly thereafter, the American who had given offense was indeed  taken into custody and will remain there, at least until after the election.

Then there’s this, just in: The man selected to perform the investigation  into the Benghazi debacle for the State Department — whose results will only  become available after Nov. 6 — seems committed to the Shariah blasphemy agenda  as well. As reported by syndicated columnist Diana West, in the course of his  Oct. 23 appearance on a panel at Washington National Cathedral titled “The  Muslim Experience in America,” retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering “made an  ominous call for ‘strong efforts  to deal with opinion leaders who harbor  [anti-Islam] prejudices, who espouse them and spread them.’” He went on to  endorse the characterization of another panelist, Islamist apologist James  Zogby, who claimed “the racism [of U.S. soldiers] was really intense.” Mr.  Pickering even seemed to suggest that the U.S. armed forces are “the enemy.”

Read more at Washington Times

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy  (SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for The Washington Times and host of Secure  Freedom Radio on WRC-AM (1260).

The Obama Doctrine? Censuring Free Speech

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By Publius:

If President Barack Obama was serious last week when he addressed the United Nations, then he just quietly declared war on the First Amendment.  If he was not serious, then he is pandering to murderous mobs who demanded that he denounce an obscure YouTube video critical of their faith.

The New York Times portrayed Obama’s remarks as a strong defense of free speech and a challenge to Arab leaders to reform. If only that were true.

Looking at the actual words Obama used reveals what could be called the “Obama Doctrine”– where the U.S. constitution does not permit the president to restrict speech before it is spoken, the president will punish speech, after the fact, by marginalizing the speaker.

“[I]t is the obligation of all leaders, in all countries, to speak out forcefully against violence and extremism. It is time to marginalize those who — even when not directly resorting to violence — use hatred … as a central organizing principle of politics,” Obama said.

Later in his speech, Obama offered an example of those whose opinions should be marginalized:   “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. Yet to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated…”

“Slander” is speech.  “Hate” usually takes the form of speech, too.  Is Obama calling on world leaders to join him in ridiculing non-violent people whose speech he does not like?  Or by “marginalization” does he mean something worse than tough words from the bully pulpit?

Obama’s new doctrine is frightening in two senses.  His call to “marginalize” those who “slander” or “hate” encourages the autocrats of Iran, Syria, and other regimes to punish dissidents while also threatening to shrink the free speech rights of Americans.

Let’s be honest: The only way to police hatred is to police speech. Governments cannot read hearts or minds, but they can read blogs, tweets and texts, and punish what they find disagreeable there. This is what Obama’s “marginalizing” of “hatred” looks like.

At first, governments ban only a few “hateful” words. But we know where this ends.  Every time such broad power is given to the powerful, they determine that everything critical of their power is “hate” and therefore banned.  Over time, free speech is lost.  U.S. presidents and judges have never bestowed this power upon themselves, nor can they under U.S. law, and this is why the country remains free.

Obama’s words signal a sharp departure.  For generations, presidents have defended the rights of individuals to say unpopular things, as long as they avoided imminent violence.  Obama told the UN that even non-violent speech — if he considers it hateful — should be punished through government sponsored marginalization.  This rewrites two centuries of First Amendment law.

Has an American president ever called for government action, at home and abroad, to “marginalize” peaceful, non-violent citizens whose opinions he disfavors?  On the subject of religion?

Bad speech should be countered by good speech, and that is the job of the citizens, not the government. The government may not pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas.

Read more at IB Times

Islamic Scholars: American Muslims Must ‘Prosecute Those Who Offend Islam’

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by: Dave Reaboi

The most prestigious group of Sunni Islamic scholars and jurists in the world called on American Muslims to “immediately start legal action to prosecute those who offend Islam” and called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to wage lawfare against those who insult Islam and its prophet.

The statement—issued in Arabic this past weekend on the website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), and signed by the Arab world’s leading shariah authority, Yusuf al-Qaradawi—sheds light on the cause of riots around the Muslim world, and illustrates the importance of mainstream Islamic law as a cause of the rancor generated by the YouTube video “Innocence of Muslims.”

The IUMS’s statement, as well as Qaradawi’s influential imprimatur, is a significant escalation in the Islamic world’s offensive to institute shariah globally and criminalize criticism of Islam.

The Islamic governments of Egypt, and Iran—as well as Muslim clerics both abroad and in the United States—have since echoed the essence of the IUMS statement, and called for legal action against those responsible for the video which, “should be considered a violation of the rights of Muslims and an attack on Islamic symbols and holy sites.”

Understanding the Islamic legal reasoning on which this statement is based is essential. In the context of Islamic law, Innocence of Muslims constitutes an encroachment on shariah’s clear prohibition against blasphemy or slander against Islam, its prophet or on shariah itself. Furthermore, the phrase “violation of the rights of Muslims” is a 20th Century Islamic legal convention; according to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (served at the UN in 1990), “human rights” is understood as shariah only. According to that definition, the video is a violation of “human rights.”

The statement also urges the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation—which has already taken steps to implement a Ten Year Programme to curtail speech considered blasphemous toward Islam through international law—to “adopt lawsuits” aimed at circumscribing free speech rights in non-Muslim countries.  Alarmingly, the Obama State Department has already indicated its willingness to participate in discussions along these lines, in a series of high-level meetings called the “Istanbul Process.”

Wednesday, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the OIC, pressed again for what would, in effect, be shariah anti-blasphemy laws, calling on the international community to “come out of hiding from behind the excuse of freedom of expression” and adopt  “an international code of conduct for media and social media to disallow the dissemination of incitement material.”

The 86-year-old Qaradawi, whose notorious exhortations to jihadist violence against Jews and Americans are widely available on YouTube, is an international Islamic phenomenon; he is known as the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief jurist and, as the host of al Jazeera’s “Shariah and Life,” his sermons reach an estimated 60 million viewers worldwide.

Read more at Breitbart

When Criticizing Religion (Read: Islam) Becomes a U.S. Criminal Offense

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by:  Meira Svirsky

While testifying to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez refused to say that the U.S. would never advance a proposal that criminalizes the right to free speech in regards to criticizing religion.

When asked over and over again the question by Rep. Trent Frank (R-AZ): “Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?” Perez balked at answering any such question.

Here’s the background:

For ten years, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) pushed for a U.N. resolution to make defamation of religion a criminal offense. The Saudi-based, 57-member group’s purpose was to make an international law that would criminalize freedom of speech and freedom of expression when it comes to matters deemed critical of or offensive to Islam or Muslims. Standards for the resolution were (naturally) drawn from Islamic, Sharia, law.

In March, 2011, the OIC finally got their way (partially) when the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted by “consensus,” but without a vote, Resolution 16/18. The resolution is titled, “Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against persons based on religion or belief.”

Although the resolution doesn’t mention any religion in particular, it’s intention remains that of the OIC: To curb criticism of Islam. The resolution is part of the so-called “Istanbul Process,” and aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam.

The Obama administration fully supported the resolution, whose mandate also calls for “a strong effort to counter religious profiling, which is understood to be the invidious use of religion as a criterion in conducting questionings, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures.”

Putting its full weight with the OIC, in December, 2011, the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted a closed-door conference in Washington titled, “Expert Meeting on Implementing the U.N. Human Rights Resolution 16/18.” The purpose of the conference was to establish international standards for criminalizing “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief.”

Recognizing that the resolution has no weight unless backed by the West, OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu praised the role played by the Obama administration in adopting the resolution: “I particularly appreciate the kind, personal interest of Secretary Clinton and the role played by the U.S. towards the consensual adoption of the resolution.”

The European Union, was quick to jump on the bandwagon and offer the next international summit on the subject. According to OIC’s Ihsanoglu, the EU’s recent offer to host the next summit  represents a “qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia,” according to the International Islamic News Agency (IINA), the OIC’s official news and propaganda organ.

The Assistant Attorney General’s refusal to answer Rep. Frank’s question, which would guarantee Americans their constitutional right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression, is a reflection of where this international resolution is heading.

To understand more fully the implications of the statements by the Assistant Attorney General, see the following articles by RadicalIslam.org.’s Senior Fellow Clare Lopez:

Criticism of Islam Could Soon Be a Crime in America

Islam Unplugged

Muslim Brotherhood Takes Charge of FBI Counterterrorism Training

Sharia Compliancy Forced on Citizens in Britain, Comply or Be Prosecuted

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Paul Weston

 Right Side News:

The citizens of Britain must comply with Sharia or face prosecution and possible prison. Paul Weston, Chairman of the British Freedom Party, speaks about this issue and the terrorizing of British citizens by their own government’s compliance to Sharia.

Video: Paul Weston on Sharia in Britain and the Istanbul Process. In this speech Paul Weston addresses the issue of the ongoing growth of the sharia state in Great Britain. Sharia law is operating in Britain but it is not calling itself sharia.

Today in Great Britain people are going to prison for not being sharia compliant. This will only get worse if Western governments bow, as expected, to the whims of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation when the EU hosts the ‘Istanbul Process’ later this year.

Vlad Tepes Blog has the video 12 April 2012

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/paul-weston-london-april-7-2012

Interpol Being Used as International Shariah Police

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Fred Grandy warns of Interpol’s possible new role as an international enforcer of Shariah blasphemy laws. Combined with the OIC’s efforts to enforce international blasphemy laws through the UN and President Obama’s executive order 13524 the groundwork is being laid.

Go To Blue Ridge Forum for the 8 min. audio.

Shariah’s Police?

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Center for Security Policy | Feb 13, 2012
By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Over the weekend, a drama with potentially horrific consequences for freedom-loving Americans played out half-a-world away.

A Saudi newspaper columnist named Hamza Kashgari was detained in Malaysia, reportedly on the basis of an alert by the International Criminal Police Organization, better known as Interpol.  Reuters quotes a Malaysian police spokesman as saying that, “This arrest was part of an Interpol operation which the Malaysian police were a part of.” It was apparently mounted in response to a “red notice” (or request for help apprehending an individual) issued by Saudi Arabia.  Kashgari was then sent back to Saudi Arabia where he faces almost certain death.

Mr. Kashgari’s crime?  He criticized the founder of Islam, Mohammed, on his Twitter account.  According to press he reports, he addressed the man Muslims call theProphet directly, writing: “ I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you. There is a lot I don’t understand about you….I will not pray for you.”  

The reaction in Saudi Arabia has been characteristically over-the-top when it comes to such alleged “blasphemy” against Islam.  Clerics have denounced Kashgari for apostasy, a capital offense under the totalitarian Islamic code known as shariah.  And tens of thousands of his countrymen have expressed indignation, with some 13,000 signing an online petition calling for the columnist’s execution.  

Interpol is basically, an international coordination mechanism for national police authorities that is supposed, as Jago Russell, the chief executive of the British NGO Fair Trials International told The Guardian, “to respect human rights and free speech” and steer clear of “religious or political cases.”  So why, if the Malaysian police are telling the truth, did it apparently violate all such guidelines?

An Interpol spokesman insists that his organization had nothing to do with Hamza Kashgari’s apprehension in Malaysia and involuntary return to Saudi Arabia.  What is clear at this point is that the Saudis sought help apprehending the man who fled their not-so-tender mercies.  It seems likely that the Saudi red notice to Interpol provided the Malays a pretext for intercepting and extraditing a columnist who dared to exercise free speech.

If Interpol is now being used, in effect, to enforce shariah blasphemy laws, it is not just somebodyelse’s problem.  It is ours.  

After all, in a December 2009 executive order unveiled on a Friday afternoon in the run-up to the Christmas holidays, President Obama issued Executive Order 13524.  It amended an earlier order by President Reagan that conferred on Interpol some – but not all – of the privileges of a foreign diplomatic mission.  

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and one of the finest legal minds and essayists of our time, wrote on the occasion that Obama’s amendments would have the effect of establishing here “an international police force immune from the restraints of American law.”  He added that, thanks to the Obama executive order:

“This international police force (whose U.S. headquarters is in the Justice Department in Washington) will be unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law while it operates in the United States and affects both Americans and American interests outside the United States.”

There has been a lot of anxiety across the country lately about the possibility that provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act could be used to have the military arrest American citizens and detain them indefinitely without due process.  Like  Andy McCarthy and Charles Stimson, the author of a new study from the Heritage Foundation on the subject, (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/02/facts-about-the-national-defense-authorization-act-and-military-detention-of-us-citizens), I believe such concerns to be unfounded.  

It appears, however, that pursuant to President Obama’s directive, “red notices” issued by foreign powers against U.S. citizens could result in their apprehension by or with the help of Interpol, and perhaps lead to their surrender to hostile foreign powers. Whether something similar happened in this instance to a Saudi citizen remains to be clarified.  But we need toknow:  Could the carte blanche inexplicably given Interpol by Mr. Obama lend itself to such abuse against Americans in a future case?

What makes all this particularly worrying is that the Obama administration is currently helping the Saudis and the multinational lobby they host in Jedda, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in a longstanding campaign to criminalize expression that offends Muslims.  The so-called “Istanbul Process” is inexorably translating into legitimization of shariah blasphemy laws – and a threat to those not only in Muslim nations but in Europe, Canada and even the United States, who flout them.  

The more the so-called “international community” accedes to clearlyanti-constitutional restrictions on freedom of expression, the more an international police force is empowered to act in extra-constitutional ways, the more certain it becomes that the Constitution of the United States risks becoming a dead letter.  Or at least our Constitution will no longer be “the supreme law of the land,” as its Article VI declares.   Instead, we will have conceded an equal, if not superior, place to shariah and put at risk all who dare toresist its tyranny.

Congress needs to enact legislation countermanding Executive Order 13524 and servingnotice that America remains the home of those free to speak their minds, and brave enough to resist Interpol’s – or anybody else’s – efforts to keep them from doing so in what amounts to submission to shariah.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.

The OSCE: Yet Another Avenue for Islamists to Control Speech

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by Andrew E. Harrod and Adam Turner Feb 3, 2012 at the Legal Project:

Although more attention goes to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation‘s (OIC) prominent attempts to police speech in Western nations regarding Islam-related topics through the UN and the “Istanbul Process“, Muslim and Islamist desires to restrict critical speech concerning Islam-related topics and promote a positive image of their religion have also played a role in yet another international organization’s efforts to address the debate about Islam and Muslims. On October 28, 2011, a conference, titled: “Confronting Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims in Public Discourse,” was held at the Vienna headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE is an international grouping encompassing 56 states from North America (Canada and the United States), Europe, and the former Soviet Union. At this conference the Danish-Pakistani general-secretary of the Initiative of European Muslims for Social Cohesion (Die Initiative Europäischer Muslime für Sozialen Zusammenhalt or IEMSZ), Bashy Quraishi, called for ”guidelines against Islamophobia in public discourse” and stated that “freedom of speech in Europe entails responsibility, something often forgotten by political leaders and journalists.” Also, General Quraishi as well as numerous other participants at the conference extolled the civilizational contributions of Islam – and Muslims – to humanity. Perhaps not too surprisingly in this politically correct world, in the end the OSCE seemingly acceded to Quraishi’s desire to protect Muslims from insulting speech and promote a positive view of Islam.

This fact is clearly visible in the resulting OSCE booklet titled – Guidelines for Educators on Countering Intolerance and Discrimination against Muslims: Addressing Islamophobia through Education (available online in PDF format). The OSCE’s booklet focuses heavily on fighting “Islamophobia,” a problem that even some surprising figures find clearly exaggerated. It claims that the “media” and “some political discourse” has “contributed” to a belief that Muslims are “extremists who threaten the security and well-being of others” and has resulted in a “range of discrimination.” The booklet also contains many politically correct, and sometimes undocumented, statements. In countering “recurring stereotypes in public discourse about Muslims” such as “their religion advocates violence” or their being “irrational and violent” and a “security threat,” the guidelines recommended a variety of “educational responses.” The booklet asserts that there is “much diversity within Islam” and that Muslims have a “great deal in common” with “people with different religious or cultural backgrounds.” It also says that “various religious or cultural communities, including Muslims, Christians, Jews and others, can and do have positive impacts on each other, and frequently work and live together in close co-operation and partnership.” Finally, it singles out “Islamic cultures and civilizations” for their oft-claimed, yet disputed, “substantial contributions over the centuries to science and technology, the arts and architecture, and law, ethics and philosophy.” Meanwhile, the booklet ignores, aside from general references to “radicalism and extremism,” the more unsavory issues of Islamist terrorist violence in its various forms and the imposition of radical Islamic norms, such as sharia, making many headlines today in reference to Islam.

Revealingly, the booklet references the OIC, in the section “Resources and Information Tools,” as just one institution among others concerned with human rights and freedom of speech. As followers of the LP know, the 57-member state (including, somewhat dubiously, Palestine) OIC has pursued a longstanding international agenda of attempting to legally curb criticism of Islam in general and Islamist groups in particular under the guises of “religious defamation” and “Islamophobia.” Further, the OIC contains no developed democracies with protections for human rights and free speech among its member states. Tellingly, OIC-headquarters host Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy that bans the proselytization and practice of non-Islamic faiths as well as “blasphemous” remarks against Islam or the Saudi monarchy, punishes homosexuals with death, and prevents women from voting or driving cars. (For specific examples of OIC member nations’ poor records of respecting human rights, please peruse the reports of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.) To place the OIC on an equal footing with international institutions committed to equality of all before the law is ridiculous, if not perverse.

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