Pakistan and the other nations that have banded together in the Organization of the Islamic Conference have been leading a remarkably successful campaign through the United Nations to enshrine in international law prohibitions against "defamation of religions," particularly Islam. Their aim is to empower governments around the world to punish anyone who commits the "heinous act" of defaming Islam. Critics say it is an attempt to globalize laws against blasphemy that exist in some Muslim countries — and that the movement has already succeeded in suppressing open discussion in international forums of issues such as female genital mutilation, honour killings and gay rights.
The campaign gives a new global context in which to view Levant's ordeal and other recent attempts to censor or punish Canadian commentators, publishers and cartoonists. Human rights cases were brought against this magazine for the October 2006 publication of an excerpt of a book by Mark Steyn that, the complainants alleged, "subjected Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt." David Harris, a former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was sued for remarks he made on the Ottawa radio station CFRA linking a Canadian Islamic group to a controversial American organization. And in May, a Nova Scotia Islamic group filed complaints with Halifax police and the province's human rights commission against the Halifax Chronicle-Herald for a cartoon it considered a hate crime.
Pakistan brought the first "defamation of religions" resolution to the UN Human Rights Council in 1999 — before the attacks of 9/11 and a resulting "backlash" against Muslims. That first resolution was entitled "Defamation of Islam." That title was later changed to include all religions, although the texts of all subsequent resolutions have continued to single out Islam. The resolutions have passed the UN Human Rights Council every year since the first was introduced. In 2005, the delegate from Yemen introduced a similar resolution to the UN General Assembly, and it passed, as it has every year since, with landslide votes. In March, the Islamic nations were successful in introducing a change to the mandate of the UN's special rapporteur on freedom of expression — an official who travels the world investigating and reporting on censorship and violations of free speech — to now "report on instances where the abuse of the right of freedom of expression constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination." The issue is expected to be a focal point of the UN World Conference Against Racism next year in Geneva (a gathering Canada plans to boycott after the 2001 meeting in Durban devolved into acrimonious exchanges over Israel).
The trend has rights advocates worried for numerous reasons, beginning with the language used. If the notion of "defaming" a religion sounds a little unfamiliar, that's because it is a major departure from the traditional understanding of what defamation means. Defamation laws traditionally protect individual people from being materially harmed by the dissemination of falsehoods. But "defamation of religions" is not about protecting individual believers from damage to their reputations caused by false statements — but rather about protecting a religion, or some interpretation of it, or the feelings of the followers. While a traditional defence in a defamation lawsuit is that the accused was merely telling the truth, religions by definition present competing claims on the truth, and one person's religious truth is easily another's apostasy. "Truth" is no defence in such cases. The subjective perception of insult is what matters, and what puts the whole approach on a collision course with the human rights regime — especially in countries with an official state religion.
This fascism must be fought, perhaps ultimately Crusade-like if it becomes thusly unavoidable. Even radical leftists should join the fight, for they're gravely threatened, too, even if they're in denial that there's any danger from powerful Islamofascists and the "United Nations" international criminal organization which they've successfully, along with international communists/socialists/dictators, hijacked for their evil agenda.
Clearly, the rational person can no longer have any doubt that fundamentalist, fascist, supremacist, imperialist Islam (as opposed to moderate, non-threatening, non-fascist, reformist Islam, such as that represented by our friends, the Muslims Against Sharia) is an extraordinarily powerful, dangerous force (like Nazism and like the old USSR "Evil Empire", and actually historically closely connected/associated therewith) that must be unyieldingly opposed for the sake of the survival of humanity. Climate change as a threat pales in comparison, and I'd rather face natural disaster than submit to evil organizations.
There's also no reasonable doubt left that the "United Nations" has been completely hijacked by evil-led nations for evil, inhuman purposes. The Free World definitely needs to abandon the UN and create a United Democratic Nations organization instead of continuing to lend false legitimacy and credibility to that massive, butcherous, hatefully evil criminal organization that was once, long ago, a force for good, but no longer.
