Tag Archives: resolution 16/18

The Alliance of Civilization Jihad

Posted on by
1

unaoc5 by , February 27, 2013:

As reported here early this morning, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations met today in Vienna to… well, to do whatever it is alliances of civilizations do.

Actually, the goal of this Alliance is quite clear, even if it is not stated explicitly: to impose the will of the United Nations on all Western countries, especially those that have not yet implemented laws against “defamation of religions” as demanded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

We are approaching endgame in the OIC’s long march through the major international institutions of Western culture. It began with the announcement in 2005 of the ten-year plan to end Islamophobia in the West, and the establishment of the Islamophobia Observatory shortly thereafter. These were obviously not enough to meet the Ummah’s needs, so it shifted its focus to other institutions. The OSCE must have also proved disappointing, as it is not high-profile and offers no prominent global platform.

The OIC has had better success with the General Assembly of the United Nations, taking virtual control of the organization by means of the votes of its 56 member states (57 if you count “Palestine”). However, this too is insufficient from the point of view of the embryonic World Caliphate. To establish full control, a permanent seat on the Security Council is an absolute necessity. The would-be Caliph — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who obviously aspires to an office higher than prime minister of Turkey — has made it clear that Islam must be granted such a seat.

The process now unfolding before us on the international scene mirrors the “Civilization Jihad” launched long ago by the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. With the installation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, the Ikhwan has now positioned all its American pieces on the board in preparation for the final takedown of Israel. To secure their international geopolitical position, the Brothers and the OIC need to complete their takeover of the United Nations.

Today it seems they are very close to achieving success in — what shall we call their operation?

Perhaps the “Alliance of Civilization Jihad” would be most fitting.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Henrik Ræder Clausen and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff were in Vienna to attend and report on today’s event, the 5th Global Forum — UN Alliance of Civilizations.

Read Elisabeth’s account at Gates of Vienna

aoclogo0

via Is The Alliance Of Civilizations A Pro Sharia Front? (libertiesalliance.org)

The 5th Global Forum of The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations takes place in Vienna today.  In our experience most UN initiatives these days have a pro-sharia twist.  The UNHRC for instance spends a lot of time criticising Israel but does not seem to adequately confront the human rights abuses elsewhere (1). Perhaps the UNHRCs work is corrupted because it gives membership to countries who are human rights abusers.  It produces UNHRC Resolution 16/18 but apparently does nothing to ensure that the member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) permit the religious freedom, a freedom that it purports to uphold.  In effect UNHRC Resolution 16/18 has become a pro-sharia document designed specifically to expand the reach of sharia.

We expect that the Alliance of Civilizations will be no different and will prove to be yet another mechanism to demonise sharia critics and facilitate the expansion of the zone of sharia compliance that already causes immeasurable misery around the world.  We will be watching the 5th Global Forum with great interest.

See Tundra Tabloids for updates.  Updates will also be posted below:

(1) Israel right to say ‘Enough!’ to grotesquely biased UNHRC inquiry (Haaretz)

—

Updates:

We are told from people on the ground at the event that the person who introduced the event suggested that they expected more harmony from this forum.  Below is a gist of what specific individuals talked about:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Suggested that anti-Muslim sentiment was commonplace. That Muslims are being vilified instead of being embraced.  That leaders need to speak the language of tolerance.  That the three most important issues that needed to be addressed by all speakers were:

1) The impasse between Israelis and Palestinians

2) The situation in Mali

3) The situation in Syria

Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Suggested that racist attacks are on the rise.  That the magnitude of the threat is threefold:

1) lack of information

2) Intolerance

3) Prejudice – he believes that we can eliminate the threat posed by prejudice.  He

mentioned that there are many good examples of people living in harmony and such societies are more successful – however he did not name any of these countries or societies.

He suggested that we witness harsh and insulting behaviour towards Muslims and that this is an unconscionable act.  Also that we need to act on prejudices and need to consider Islamophobia as a crime against humanity. He suggested that no religion would ever endorse violence, that Islam is a religion of peace and that the word ‘Islam’ means peace.

On behalf of turkey he asked whether the UN Security Council represented the whole world and he concluded that it did not. He asked whether it represented all religious groups.  He suggested that the fundamental problem is that the Alliance of Civilizations needs to establish and alliance with the Security Council.

ICLA Comment: Our prediction of that the Alliance of Civilizations is a pro-sharia front seems to be coming true based on much of what has been reported above.  The focus seems very focused on issues that are seen as important to Islamic countries.  Nothing has been said about the persecution of non-Muslims in the Islamic world.  It seems from what Mr Erdoğan was saying about the Security Council that there should be permanent Islamic representation on that body.  This perhaps is an indication that Islam has political objectives.  It must be remembered that the Security Council is not a religious assembly.

We have a further update.  It appears that human rights issues have not been raised at this event though the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was mentioned twice.  Much has been said with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the plight of the Palestinian.  There was a round of applause when Palestine’s receipt of UNESCO status was mentioned.

Outgoing High Representative of the Alliance of Civilisations, Jorge Sampaio

He emphasized that we should not be talking but doing.  He raised the issue of successes and achievements of the Alliance of Civilizations but did not mention a single one.  He suggested that we need common ground and minimum standards of behivaiour, though he never mentioned what this might mean in practice.  He spoke about his desire for a world conference hosted by the Alliance of Civilizations with goal being to address the need to go back to zero with a bold vision and measurable goals.

Incoming High Representative of the Alliance of Civilisations, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser

He referred to the prevalence of intolerance and xenophobia.  He emphasised the importance of the role of the Alliance of Civilizations to enhance international cooperation to advance a vision and ensure responsible leadership and good decision making.

ICLA Comment: It is clear that the Alliance of Civilizations is nothing more than a tool for totalitarian tyrants to impose their will on the rest of the world.  Dictatorships just want to impose their tyrannical rules on the rest of the world. When the free world says that it will not tolerate despotic rule, these dictatorships say that it is an insult to their culture. 

OIC Ramps Up ‘Islamophobia’ Campaign

Posted on by
1

kaffash20130201102509687-450x332By : The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has long been on the forefront of the Islamist mission to establish the equivalent of Islamic blasphemy laws in the West.  Now, during its 12th Islamic Summit held in Cairo February 7-8, 2013, the OIC set forth new and creative ways to silence, and ultimately criminalize criticism of Islam.

The OIC is a 57-member state organization that claims to represent 1.5 billion Muslims around the globe.  As the second largest international organization in the world, behind only the UN, and as the largest Islamic organization in the world, it is obviously quite powerful.  Though it is arguably the largest voting block in the UN, most people have never heard of it.

One of the OIC’s primary aims for at least the last fourteen years has been the international criminalization of speech that is critical of any Islam-related topic, including Islamic terrorism, Islamic persecution of religious minorities and human rights violations committed in the name of Islam.

Since 1999, the OIC has set forth UN resolutions that would “combat defamation of religions.”  These resolutions condemned criticism of religion, but in the OIC’s interpretation, it applied only to Islam.  True statements of fact constituted no exception.

Support for the resolutions declined once the United States and other Western countries caught wind of the true meaning of “defamation of religions” and its inevitable chilling effect on freedom of expression.

In 2011, at the State Department’s request, the OIC drafted an alternative resolution that was intended to retain freedom of expression and still address the OIC’s concerns about alleged Islamophobia.  The result was Resolution 16/18 to Combat Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief.

The US State Department and numerous Christian organizations were elated, believing that the OIC had abandoned its mission to protect Islam from so-called “defamation,” and instead replaced it with the goal of protecting persecuted religious minorities from discrimination and violence.  In other words, many assumed a paradigm shift away from providing legal protections to a religion and toward legal protections for people.

But the OIC had some very creative interpretations of the language embodied in the new resolution.  By its manipulation of words such as intolerance and incitement, giving new meanings to what many thought was plain English, the OIC made it clear that it had not dropped its ultimate goal of protecting Islam from “defamation.”

Read more at Front Page

Blasphemy and Islam

Posted on by
5
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.

Related articles

Video: Free Speech vs. Anti Blasphemy: The Frontline Battle of 2012

Posted on by
4

The David Horowitz Freedom Center held its 17th Restoration Weekend November 15 – 18, 2012 at The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Here is the panel discussion on Free Speech vs. Anti Blasphemy:

 

Robert Spencer:

 

Pamela Geller:

 

Deborah Weiss:

 

Brooke Goldstein:

 

Question and Answer:

State Dept. Official to Attend OIC Meeting Today on Banning ‘Defamation of Islam’ UPDATE: OIC scrubs website, screenshot added, cover-up begins

Posted on by
6

PJMedia: by Patrick Poole

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t last long. Earlier this morning before I posted this item the OIC press release noted that US Consul General in Jeddah Anne Casper would be attending the OIC’s meeting:

The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General. It will be chaired by Ambassador Ahmad Taib , Director General of the Branch of the Saudi Foreign Ministry, Makkah Al-Mukarrammah region. It will also be attended by Sergey Kuznetsov, Consul General of the Russian Federation and Anne Casper, US Consul General in Jeddah.

But within the past few hours that mention has been scrubbed. The press release I linked to earlier now reads:

The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General and members of the Jeddah diplomatic community and other invited guests.

No more mention of Anne Casper attending today’s OIC session on banning ‘defamation of Islam’. Let the cover-up begin!

Here’s a screenshot of the earlier version noting Casper’s attendance at today’s meeting (click to enlarge):

ORIGINAL POST: After the disaster of trying to blame an obscure YouTube video for the attack on the CIA operation in Benghazi and Obama’s prophecy at the UN that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” Hillary Clinton’s State Department appears to be taking another run at the First Amendment free speech rights of American citizens.

A notice was posted yesterday on the website of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) about a symposium to be held today at the OIC headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on “Defamation Acts Against Islam.” And one top U.S. State Department official will be in attendance:

The headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will host a symposium on “Defamation Acts against Islam: conflict dimensions and perspectives of co-existence between Islam and the West” on Monday 19/11/2012.

The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General. It will be chaired by Ambassador Ahmad Taib , Director General of the Branch of the Saudi Foreign Ministry, Makkah Al-Mukarrammah region. It will also be attended by Sergey Kuznetsov, Consul General of the Russian Federation and Anne Casper, US Consul General in Jeddah.

The OIC has made no secret of its intentions to use the UN and international law to criminalize what they consider to be “defamation of Islam.” For example, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu gave a speech last Friday on “An OIC Approach for Combating Discrimination and Intolerance against Muslims,” in which he gave a road map of how they plan to do it:

OIC’s position has all along been entrenched in international legal instruments and we need to build on this tradition. We must emphasize that there is no hierarchy of human rights whereby a single right can trump others. Freedom of opinion and expression is among the fundamental rights.It does not include a licence to hate mongering. Freedom of expression does not mean the right to vilify. Our position must also be rooted in history and culture. Having indicated our seriousness at building consensus, we must seek to be reciprocated in the same spirit. We need to seek multi-stakeholder support for an international discourse seeking an intercultural solution – A solution that acknowledges that denigration of symbols and personalities sacred in Islam must be viewed as a matter of identity. It inflicts the psyche of Muslim all over the world. It is in that context that we seek an end to the systematic pattern and increasing frequency of events that contribute towards stereotyping, stigmatization and alienation of Muslims. Such events constitute an affront to human dignity violating the whole range of human rights of victims.

Coinciding with that “brainstorming” session during the OIC’s annual meeting of foreign ministers, the OIC released its Fifth Annual Report on Islamophobia, which is primarily directed at acts of free speech committed in the United States.

Hillary Clinton’s complicity with the OIC towards these ends is no surprise either, since she met twice with the OIC last year as part of the “Istanbul Process,” including her vow to use “old fashioned techniques of peer-pressure and shaming” to target “Islamophobia.”

Those meetings played out last December when the State Department backed the OIC-drafted UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. Check out the membership of the UN Human Rights Council.

No word on when Hillary Clinton intends to press the OIC about the pandemic racism and “kafirphobia” of the Muslim world.

Patrick Poole is a national security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia. Follow me on Twitter.

2012 Tipping Point?

Posted on by
2

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures. William Shakespeare

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

History is replete with examples of strategic miscalculations in which an over-reach – usually born of contemptuous disdain for a foe – led to disaster for the aggressor.  Think Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.  Or Hitler’s of the Soviet Union 131 years later. We may look back at September 11, 2012 as the kick-off date for such a tipping point in our time.

To be sure, the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Islamists – notably, al Qaeda franchises throughout the Middle East and beyond, other so-called “Salafists,” Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and the mullahs of Iran – were becoming increasingly aggressive towards us even before last week’s mayhem in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, etc.  Team Obama (notably in the person of its hapless and overexposed UN Ambassador, Susan Rice) and its running dogs in the elite media would nonetheless have us believe that the upset is the by-product of an amateurish short video that disparages Mohamed.

In fact, as most sentient beings have realized by now, that film is but the latest pretext for Islamists to demand our adherence to what they call shariah blasphemy laws.  [Such laws are but a part of the larger, brutally repressive Islamic political, military and legal doctrine that prohibits any expression that offends, or otherwise is unhelpful to, their faith.]

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has repeatedly conveyed a willingness to accommodate – or at least tolerate – this threat to one of our most fundamental constitutional liberties: freedom of speech.  That willingness is part of a pattern of submissive behavior that has encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies to believe that America is in retreat and that shariah’s inevitable, divinely-directed and global triumph is at hand.  Their response, predictably, is to redouble efforts to make us, in the Quran’s words, “feel subdued.”

Examples of such behavior abound.  Consider just a few of the more telling cases-in-point (for more, visit www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com):

  • In May 2009, President Obama insisted that Muslim Brotherhood representatives be in the audience for his first speech directed at the Islamic world.  It was delivered at Cairo University and freighted with apologies for past U.S. policies and efforts to associate himself with the beliefs and priorities of his audience.
  • Interestingly, Mr. Obama had already operationalized that policy approach two months before, by having the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Council co-sponsor with Egypt a resolution drafted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).  The object of the exercise was to further the OIC’s longstanding objective of forcing UN member nations to prohibit and criminalize expression that offends Islam.
  • In July 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched a formal effort with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation dubbed the “Istanbul Process” to explore ways in which our First Amendment rights could accommodate shariah blasphemy laws.  (Some of those playing an influential role in this exercise are discussed in a booklet about “The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration” I just published with the David Horowitz Freedom Center: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-obama-administration/.)
  • In December 2011, the Istanbul Process achieved an ominous milestone:  The odious UN Human Rights Council adopted, with strong U.S. support, Resolution 16/18 committing member nations to adopt “measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief.“  Lest anyone think this a clever finesse, more or less in alignment with current U.S. law, the OIC’s secretary general made clear that his organization did not view it as “the end of the road.”  And, indeed, developments of the past week – both here and abroad, official and non-governmental – suggest that Team Obama is prepared to go farther, too.

Given such encouragement, it is not surprising that the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies would respond by demanding further accommodations to them and their shariah agenda.  What is a surprise, though, is that they are acting out their ambitions at this juncture – not after November 6th, when President Obama will, in his words, “have more flexibility.”  It suggests that the Islamists have reached their tipping point, propelled to seek decisive domination by President Obama’s perceived weakness, irresolution and submissiveness.

In the face of our enemies’ overreaching aggressiveness, however, the American people now face a tipping point of their own.  If they arrive at the only sensible conclusion – namely, that four more years of the Obama administration’s malfeasance with respect to jihadism of both the violent and the stealthy, pre-violent kind – they may just respond by refusing to re-up a presidency that enables and emboldens our foes and undermines our liberties and friends.  And should such a tipping point be realized, it will be one of truly epic historic proportions and prized by freedom-loving peoples forever.

The Alice In Wonderland World Where Sharia and Human Rights Are Compatible

Posted on by
1

By  at Liberties Alliance:

It seems that the push towards sharia is continuing in the United Kingdom.  A meme is being put forward by UK barrister Sadakat Kadri that sharia and human rights are compatible.  The Guardian reports:

“A leading barrister has called for the UK to become more sharia-literate, while arguing that Islamic law can be compatible with the toughest human rights legislation.” (Guardian, 16 January 2012)

This is not really the case if the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is used as the yardstick, otherwise why would the Islamic alternative to the UDHR, the ‘Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam’, have been necessary?  This latter document does not really protect human rights, but only gives people ‘…freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with the Islamic Shari’ah’ (bold added by the author for emphasis).  The highlighted text above is a very big get out clause when it comes to real human rights, and this proviso is used throughout the document to nullify any real human rights provisions that may exist in the document to misinform and mislead the gullible.

Articles 24 and 25 of the Cairo Declaration, to make the philosophy behind it clear and to cut through the circumlocution and doublespeak inherent in many of the preceding articles, makes it crystal clear that the purpose of the document is not to protect human rights but to, with a nod and a wink to those who want a worldwide Caliphate, attempt to institute sharia globally.

 ARTICLE 24: “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah”

ARTICLE 25: “The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of the articles in this Declaration.”

(bold added by the author for emphasis)

Go to Liberties Alliance for the rest of the article

Islam’s OIC: The World’s Thought Police

Posted on by
Reply

by Mudar Zahran at Stonegate Institute:

On December 19, 2011, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning the negative stereotyping and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urged member states to take effective measures towards addressing and combating “such incidents.” This resolution, based on an initiative from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), was supported by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted a closed-door three-day meeting – apparently one of many in a series called the “Istanbul Process”– in Washington D.C. with OIC representatives to discuss ways to implement the resolution.

What might sound like a step toward “tolerance,” however, is in reality an assault on freedom of speech: a UN-endorsed violation of human rights, co-sponsored by the US, and prompted by the OIC, an organization of 57 Muslim nations, most of which hold the world’s worst records on freedom of speech.

The OIC initiative for a UN resolution against “defamation of religion” is not new; the OIC has been promoting it for the last 13 years despite earlier opposition from Western countries. What changed recently was dropping the word “defamation of religion” and stressing “freedom of speech”– something about which Secretary of State Clinton seems to be enthusiastic.

What resulted, however, from this new “Resolution 16/18,” as it is called, is a US-endorsed UN proposal that urges the restriction of freedom of speech by using a vague terms, such as combating “religious profiling” – a term that can be interpreted by anyone any way he likes.

Placing such language into an international legal context forces people to have to think twice before practicing their constitutionally-secured right of free speech – in the US, at least — when it comes to discussing religion.

What is also alarming, even to me as a practicing Muslim, is the fact that the resolution seems to revolve around just one religion: Islam. But will the OIC countries implement any resolution for themselves, taking measures against their government-sponsored demonization of the Jewish faith and the systematic proliferation of anti-Semitism?

Does Resolution 16/18 mean that Muslims will still be free in their textbooks to call Jews the sons of swine and monkeys — perhaps on some trumped-up excuse that that a such a remark is not religious but “only” racial?

Will the Palestinians’ highest religious authority, the Mufti, Muhammad Hussein, still be able to say, as he did in early January at a Fatah (not Hamas) event to celebrate the 47th anniversary of its founding, that the destiny of Muslims is to kill Jews [sic], and, quoting a Hadith [a saying attributed to the prophet Mohammad] that “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews… come and kill [them]” – and then have Palestinian TV repeat it?

Will the Egyptian police still run over unarmed Christians with armoured vehicles and burn down churches, as has happened in recent weeks? Or will Resolution 16/18 simply evolve as it has now in Egypt, where the Egyptian courts prosecute only Christians in “contempt of religion” cases, loosely based on Facebook or twitter postings of cartoons deemed to be “insulting to Islam” [AINA: Double Standard in Application of Egyptian Law], but constantly fail to prosecute members of the security services who mow down Christians with armored vehicles or torch churches?

Since the Jews have already been ethnically cleansed from most of these countries, the Christians are next in line. As they say in Arabic, “Saturday’s job first, then get to Sunday’s job.”

Will the Palestinian Authority, an OIC member, remove the signs banning Jews from entering areas under its control that are labeled “Type A-areas” and that read “Israelis [Jews] are not allowed”? Would Jordan stop banning the entry of “visible Jews” with “Jewish prayer items”?

Worse, the resolution, if implemented, would hinder the efforts of those seeking further to understand Islam, or even discuss it in an un-self-censoring way– including Muslims seeking to bring it out of its often brutal tribal roots. The values of Islam, for example, encourage the military conquest of non-Muslim nations. Although this value is within my religion, as a Muslim, I would like to see it being dropped—Now, is that a defamation of my own religion?

Is Obama’s, Clinton’s and the US’s current message that some religions are “more sacred” than others?

There is more here


Related articles

Freedom of Speech & Human Rights Under Sharia (video)

Posted on by
Reply

h/t creeping sharia

‘Muslim Mafia’ Targeting Free Speech?

U.S., E.U. Spearhead Islamic Bid To Criminalize Free Speech

Posted on by
5

By Soeren Kern at Stonegate Institute:
The European Union has offered to host the next meeting of the so-called Istanbul Process, an aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international crime to criticize Islam.

The announcement comes less than one month after the United States hosted its own Istanbul Process conference in Washington, DC.

The Istanbul Process – its explicit aim is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or Islamic Sharia law – is being spearheaded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries.

Based in Saudi Arabia, the OIC has long pressed the European Union and the United States to impose limits on free speech and expression about Islam.

But the OIC has now redoubled its efforts and is engaged in a determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18, which calls on all countries to combat “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief.” (Analysis of the OIC’s war on free speech can be found here and here.)

Resolution 16/18, which was adopted at HRC headquarters in Geneva in March 2011, is widely viewed as a significant step forward in OIC efforts to advance the international legal concept of defaming Islam.

However, the HRC resolution – as well as the OIC-sponsored Resolution 66/167, which was quietly approved by the 193-member UN General Assembly on December 19, 2011 – remains ineffectual as long as it lacks strong support in the West.

The OIC therefore scored a diplomatic coup when the Obama Administration agreed to host a three-day Istanbul Process conference in Washington, DC on December 12-14, 2011. In doing so, the United States gave the OIC the political legitimacy it has been seeking to globalize its initiative to ban criticism of Islam.

Following the Obama Administration’s lead, the European Union now wants to get in on the action by hosting the next Istanbul Process summit, tentatively scheduled for July 2012.

Up until now, the European Union has kept the OIC initiative at arms-length. But Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the OIC, says the EU’s offer to host the meeting represents a “qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia,” according to the International Islamic News Agency (IINA), the OIC’s official news/propaganda organ.

According to the IINA, “The phenomenon of Islamophobia is found in the West in general, but is growing in European countries in particular and in a manner different than that in the US, which had contributed to drafting Resolution 16/18. The new European position represents the beginning of the shift from their previous reserve over the years over the attempts by the OIC to counter ‘defamation of religions’ in the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

The IINA report continues: “Officials in the Cultural Affairs Department of the OIC said that the European Union’s offer to host the third meeting (the first was in Istanbul in July and the second in Washington, DC in December) is considered a promising new possibility of solving this problem. The ‘Istanbul Process’ will have an added momentum by holding the meeting in Europe, which is more affected by the phenomenon of Islamophobia and hostility towards Islam.”

The OIC is especially angry over its inability to silence a growing number of democratically elected politicians in Europe who have voiced concerns over the refusal of Muslim immigrants to integrate into their host countries and the consequent establishment of parallel Islamic societies in many parts of Europe.

According to the IINA, “Ihsanoglu said that the growing role of the extreme right in politics in several European countries has become stronger than the capacity of the Organization [OIC], explaining that the extreme right, who [sic] hates Muslims, became leverage in the hands of politicians. He added that the rise of the extreme right through elections has become an issue that cannot be countered, considering the democratic way in which these extremists reach their positions. He pointed out to the referendum held in Switzerland, as an example, which resulted in suspending the construction of minarets there following a vote by the Swiss people.”

In other words, the OIC is now seeking the support of non-elected bureaucrats at the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels to enact pan-European hate speech legislation to limit by fiat what 500 million European citizens – including democratically elected politicians – can and cannot say about Islam.

To be sure, many individual European countries that lack First Amendment protections like those in the United States have already enacted hate speech laws that effectively serve as proxies for the all-encompassing blasphemy legislation the OIC is seeking to impose on the European Union as a whole.

In Austria, for example, an appellate court in December 2011 upheld the politically correct conviction of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a Viennese housewife and anti-Jihad activist, for “denigrating religious beliefs” after she gave a series of seminars about the dangers of radical Islam. The ruling showed that while Judaism and Christianity can be disparaged with impunity in postmodern multicultural Austria, speaking the truth about Islam is subject to swift and hefty legal penalties.

Also in Austria, Susanne Winter, an Austrian politician and Member of Parliament, was convicted in January 2009 for the “crime” of saying that “in today’s system” the Islamic prophet Mohammed would be considered a “child molester,” referring to his marriage to Aisha. Winter was also convicted of “incitement” for saying that Austria faces an “Islamic immigration tsunami.” Winters was ordered to pay a fine of €24,000 ($31,000), and received a suspended three-month prison sentence.

In Denmark, Lars Hedegaard, the president of the International Free Press Society, was found guilty by a Danish court in May 2011 of “hate speech” for saying in a taped interview that there was a high incidence of child rape and domestic violence in areas dominated by Muslim culture.

Hedegaard’s comments, which called attention to the horrific living conditions of millions of Muslim women, violated Denmark’s infamous Article 266b of the penal code, a catch-all provision that Danish elites use to enforce politically correct speech codes. Hedegaard has appealed his conviction to the Danish Supreme Court, where the case is now pending.

Also in Denmark, Jesper Langballe, a Danish politician and Member of Parliament, was found guilty of hate speech in December 2010 for saying that honor killings and sexual abuse take place in Muslim families.

Langballe was denied the opportunity to prove his assertions because under Danish law it is immaterial whether a statement is true or false. All that is needed for a conviction is for someone to feel offended. Langballe was summarily sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 Danish Kroner ($850) or spend ten days in jail.

In Finland, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, a politician and well-known political commentator, was taken to court in March 2009 on charges of “incitement against an ethnic group” and “breach of the sanctity of religion” for saying that Islam is a religion of pedophilia. A Helsinki court later dropped the charges of blasphemy but ordered Halla-aho to pay a fine of €330 ($450) for disturbing religious worship. The Finnish public prosecutor, incensed at the court’s dismissal of the blasphemy charges, appealed the case to the Finnish Supreme Court, where it is now being reviewed.

In France, novelist Michel Houellebecq was taken to court by Islamic authorities in the French cities of Paris and Lyon for calling Islam “the stupidest religion” and for saying the Koran is “badly written.” In court, Houellebecq (pronounced Wellbeck) told the judges that although he had never despised Muslims, he did feel contempt for Islam. He was acquitted in October 2002.

Also in France, Brigitte Bardot, the legendary actress turned animal rights crusader, was convicted in June 2008 for “inciting racial hatred” after demanding that Muslims anaesthetize animals before slaughtering them.

In The Netherlands, Geert Wilders – the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party who had denounced the threat to Western values posed by unassimilated Muslim immigrants – was recently acquitted of five charges of inciting religious hatred against Muslims for comments he made that were critical of Islam. The landmark verdict brought to a close a highly-public, two-year legal odyssey.

Also in The Netherlands, Gregorius Nekschot, the pseudonym of a Dutch cartoonist who is a vocal critic of Islamic female circumcision and often mocks Dutch multiculturalism, was arrested at his home in Amsterdam in May 2008 for drawing cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. Nekschot (which literally means “shot in the neck,” a method used, according to the cartoonist, by “fascists and communists to get rid of their opponents”) was released after 30 hours of interrogation by Dutch law enforcement officials.

Nekschot was charged for eight cartoons that “attribute negative qualities to certain groups of people,” and, as such, are insulting and constitute the crimes of discrimination and hate according to articles 137c and 137d of the Dutch Penal Code.

In an interview with the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, Nekschot said it was the first time in 800 years in the history of satire in the Netherlands that an artist was put in jail. (That interview has since been removed from the newspaper’s website.) Although the case against Nekschot was dismissed in September 2010, he ended his career as a cartoonist on December 31, 2011.

In Italy, the late Oriana Fallaci, a journalist and author, was taken to court for writing that Islam “brings hate instead of love and slavery instead of freedom.” In November 2002, a judge in Switzerland, acting on a lawsuit brought by Islamic Center of Geneva, issued an arrest warrant for Fallaci for violations of Article 261 of the Swiss criminal code; the judge asked the Italian government either to prosecute or extradite her. The Italian Justice Ministry rejected this request on the grounds that the Italian Constitution protects freedom of speech.

But in May 2005, the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, filed a lawsuit against Fallaci, charging that “some of the things she said in her book ‘The Force of Reason‘ are offensive to Islam.” An Italian judge ordered Fallaci to stand trial in Bergamo on charges of “defaming Islam.” Fallaci died of cancer in September 2006, just months after the start of her trial.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.