THE JERUSALEM POST: The Islamic states circulated a new resolution at the current session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that would criminalize defamation of Islam as a human rights violation and encourage the imposition of Shari'a.
According to the nonbinding governmental resolution, titled "Combating Defamation of Religions," anything deemed insulting to Islamic sensitivities would be banned as a "serious affront to human dignity" and a blatant violation of religious freedom.
The resolution would attempt to influence "local, national, regional and international levels" to incorporate such guarantees of this perceived freedom in their "legal and constitutional systems."
"It is a covert package coordinated by Pakistan against the West," said Leon Saltiel, director of communications at the Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch, on Thursday. "They think there is too much liberty and freedom of expression in the Western world, which therefore defames religion."
This resolution is part of the ongoing campaign of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a powerful bloc of 56 states at the UN, which began to introduce annual resolutions in 1999 to ban the "defamation of Islam."
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said during an address to Radio Free Europe in December that "Islamic states pursued the diplomatic battle with a vengeance" because of the post-9/11 war on terror and the controversy ignited by the cartoon of their prophet published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.
"The resolutions pose a major threat to the premises and principles of international human rights law and harm Muslims as much as non-Muslims. International law already protects victims of religious discrimination," for instance via the 1984 Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, declared Neuer.
The resolutions fail to address human rights violations of Muslim countries, notably Iran's persecution of Baha'is, Saudi Arabia's banning of all religious practice aside from Islam, and the persecution of Christian communities in Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq.
The latest resolution is "not really trying to protect individuals from harm," but rather attempting "to shield a set of beliefs from question or debate and to ban any discussion of Islam that may challenge state orthodoxies or offend Islamic sensibilities," Neuer said. >>> Maya Spitzer | Thursday, March 12, 2009
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