We'll Take It

One Small Victory

Over the past ten years we have seen the unpalatable sight of Western nations kowtowing to Islamic interpretations of human rights. Much of the Islamic propaganda has focused upon free-speech rights--in the West. Like much of Islam in general, the argument has represented an inverted doppelganger of historical Western freedoms which, as Rodney Stark has shown in The Victory of Reason, are derived, from the doctrines and teachings of the Christ.

The Islamic propaganda campaign was kicked off by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran when he issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989, in which he called for "all zealous Muslims to execute quickly" Rushdie, the alleged defamer of Muhammad and the Koran. In the hands of Islamic strategists, this quickly morphed into a call for the West to uphold the general thrust of Khomeini's fatwa, by linking speech or actions which defamed religions with free speech rights. "How did that happen?" we hear you ask. By Islamic inversion--a tactic that has been oft employed.

The development of individual liberties in the West arose out of the Christian doctrine of man being created in God's image, which necessarily implied the fundamental equality and equal worth of all human beings. Out of this arose derived doctrines of individual rights and the sovereignty of the individual against institutions, governments, and ecclesiastical structures. Whilst the sovereignty of the individual was not absolute, it certainly meant that the individual had liberty of conscience and was free to believe and think as he chose--whilst acknowledging God would hold him accountable for it. Christ, not man, was Lord of the conscience.  Therefore, in the West, influenced by historical Christendom, individual free speech and liberty of conscience rights were increasingly recognised.

But the modern Islamic propaganda campaign inverted this to focus upon the free speech rights of corporate entities, rather than individuals. This campaign has been pushed aggressively in the West by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). It amounted to a demand that the West accept to some degree Islamic blasphemy laws into its own legal structures. Society had to protect--in particular--the free speech rights of Islamic minorities in the West, which meant Western nations had a duty to ensure that Islam and Islamic institutions were beyond criticism--for officially tolerated criticism of Islam implied official defamation of Islam. If Islam were defamed, it was tantamount to blasphemy against the prophet, which in turn violated the conscience of all Islamic people, thereby attacking their liberties of conscience and the liberty of Islam in the West. In a word, "hate-speech" was intolerable.

Yes, we know, the inversion throws up some mighty tortuous logic--but that is the way of it.

The sad part is that the powers and establishment, the media and the commentariate, the UN, national governments and so on pretty much bought this line of Islamic reasoning. They were gulled into it. It was a case of no longer believing in anything in particular, so the West fell for everything. Thus passes multi-culturalism.  The OIC focused upon the UN Human Rights Commission. Once its campaign gained traction there, the sentiments spread with lighting speed through the Western media, intellectual elite, and chattering classes. The OIC called for the Human Rights Commission to condemn any expression which could be construed as a "defamation of religion"--in particular, Islam.

The Human Rights Commission went along with this joyfully. Nina Shea takes up the narrative:

In 1999 and 2000, the anti-blasphemy resolutions were adopted by consensus, with, inexplicably, the U.S. joining in. In 2001, the West began to vote against them, but, as a “public” appointee to the U.S. delegation in Geneva in 2001, I was told by the State Department to stop debating the issue with my Egyptian counterpart, who led the drafting committee — it was just too sensitive. Without Western support, each year, until now, OIC resolutions to this effect have passed in what purports to be the premiere global human-rights forum.

The resolution’s popularity peaked with the 2005–06 Danish cartoon crisis. Speaking for the OIC, Pakistan typically introduced these resolutions, arguing in words calculated to appeal to Western liberals: “Unrestricted and disrespectful freedom of opinion creates hatred and is contrary to the spirit of peaceful dialogue and promotion of multiculturalism.” Non–OIC members, even democracies, voted for the resolution. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour signaled their support. Emboldened, the OIC began introducing the concept in other U.N.-sponsored fora, such as the General Assembly itself, where “defamation against religions” resolutions have easily passed.

Since 2007, however, support in the UN has declined--to the point where this year Pakistan did not even introduce the resolution to condemn "defamation of religion". Now, we are not at all confident that this is the end of the matter--probably, if truth be told, it more represents a respite. It will return with a vengeance into the refined and rarefied halls of the UN. But for the moment, we will accept the breathing space with thankfulness.

The coup de grâce for the resolution was the murder this month of Pakistan’s renowned minister of minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti, because he opposed his own country’s blasphemy laws. His murder followed that of Punjab governor Salman Taseer and the death sentence given for blasphemy to a Christian mother of five whom Taseer had defended. It was now impossible for even the Human Rights Council to ignore the disgrace of the blasphemy laws of Pakistan — the main sponsor of its blasphemy resolutions all these years.

It will come again--and it is still alive and well in Europe.

The defense of the right to speak freely in the West about Islam, and within Islam, is far from over — last month, an Austrian court convicted Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff of “defaming” the Islamic prophet Mohammad during a political-party briefing.

And then there is Canada where folk like Mark Steyn are under Star-Chamber-like sanction. But, nevertheless, as Elizabeth Bennett might say, recent progress at the UN does represent a small accomplishment.