THE NATIONAL: NEW YORK - A Gulf diplomat has urged foreign governments to prosecute individuals who make offensive and defamatory statements against Islam and other faiths during a heated debate at United Nations headquarters. Speaking on behalf of members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Nasser Abdulaziz al Nisr, Qatar’s ambassador to the United Nations, told delegates at a recent meeting that “freedom of expression” should not permit the abuse of religions.
The GCC speech marked the latest episode in a fractious debate that was raging even before Sept 2005, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons satirising the Prophet Mohammed. Speaking in New York, Mr Nisr described blasphemy as unacceptable, while western governments allege leaders from the Islamic world are trying to stifle basic freedoms and infringe the rights of non-Muslims.
“Our countries categorically reject all forms of incitement, discrimination, hostility, violence, attempts to justify the distortion of religions and hostility-based incitement of religions in the name of freedom of expression,” Mr Nisr said this week. “The responsibility rests, therefore, with the governments to address such conduct by legal and executive possible means, including amending legislation that allows such practices in the name of freedom of expression and opinion.”
Mr Nisr was speaking in advance of a vote in the UN General Assembly’s committee on human rights on a draft resolution intended to “combat defamation of religions”. The draft resolution is supported by the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference and has passed every year since 2005. Although not binding in international law, the resolution sets a global moral standard. The most recent version of the resolution, which passed in December, emphasises that the freedom of expression “carries with it special duties and responsibilities” and may be “subject to limitations as are provided for by law”.
The cartoons in the Jyllands-Posten and their republication by a string of western newspapers provoked riots in parts of the Islamic world, boycotts on Danish goods and demands for prosecution of those responsible. Denmark’s justice ministry this week rejected the third bid by seven Muslim lobby groups to take the newspaper to the Supreme Court for publishing the cartoons. Other cited examples of defamation of religion have included Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 address at the University of Regensburg and Salman Rushdie’s controversial 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.
A coalition of countries that advocate free speech, including the United States, is trying to thwart the OIC resolution this year by persuading more moderate Muslim nations to vote against it. In publishing its annual report on global religious freedom last month, the US state department criticised the Muslim bloc for using the United Nations to “export” anti-blasphemy laws found in some of its member countries to the international level. >>> James Reinl, United Nations Correspondent | October 29, 2008
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