Hat tip to Jihad Watch and Act for America for sending me this article
Jihad Watch has brought us an update on the efforts of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to have the UN pass a resolution on defamation of religions and pressure nations to adopt legislation prohibiting such.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/08/secretary-of-state-clinton-says-state-department-will-coordinate-with-oic-on-legal-ways-to-implement.html
On the surface, this seems like a sound idea. Defaming one's religion is a form of hate speech. Expressing concerns about certain religious practices is not. Is it defamation to talk about the pedophilia scandal involving Catholic priests? I think not as long as you don't damn Catholics in general or say that all Catholic priests are pedophiles. Is it defamation of Christianity to talk about the Inquisition? Absolutely not unless you want to make the case that Christians in the 21st century believe in burning non-Christians at the stake.
The problem here is that the true intent of the OIC is to pass laws world-wide that would prohibit any criticism of Islam. Given the world-wide situation today, that's like prohibiting sports fans from talking about football. Sorry, but there are too many things that are worthy of discussion, like Islamic terrorists, like imams demanding that Islam rule world-wide, like honor-killings, and stoning women to death for adultery. It seems the OIC wants to shut down any discussion of those issues even when they are practiced in non-Muslim countries like the US against our own laws.
And of course, in the US we have that sticky little thing called freedom of speech. One of the down sides of that is that even true hate speech can be protected unless it directly incites violence against another.
Now comes our secretive little secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who once tried to ram through her version of universal health care behind closed doors, talking about holding meetings with the OIC on this issue and how to implement the OIC's agenda of prohibiting what they deem as hate speech.
Maybe she should remind the OIC members of the hate speech they practice against non-Muslims. Maybe she should remind them of what happens to Baha'i in Iran. Maybe she should remind them of what is happening to Christians in Egypt and Pakistan. Maybe she should remind them about how their mainstream media, newspapers and TV run blatantly anti-Jewish messages on a daily message. I didn't say anti-Israel-I said anti-Jewish.
Maybe she should ask them what they plan to do about that hadith that talks about the Day of Judgement when the Muslims are directed to kill every last Jew hiding behind the trees and bushes. Maybe she should remind them about the charter of the terror organization Hamas which repeats that saying. Maybe she should remind them about all those nasty references to Jews and Christians in the Qu'ran. Defamation? I can show you some defamation.
The only thing Clinton needs to do is assure the OIC that nobody is persucuted in the US because of their religion and that any acts of persecution are adequately covered under our laws. Frankly, I don't even think it is appropriate to engage in such a meeting.
Is this not the time for Hillary to hold a press conference and take questions from nosy reporters on just what she intends to do with the OIC, and how this proposed resolution would not go against own constitution??
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3 comments:
"Maybe she should remind the OIC members of the hate speech they practice against non-Muslims. Maybe she should remind them of what happens to Baha'i in Iran. Maybe she should remind them of what is happening to Christians in Egypt and Pakistan. Maybe she should remind them about how their mainstream media, newspapers and TV run blatantly anti-Jewish messages on a daily message. I didn't say anti-Israel-I said anti-Jewish."
All true -- particularly if she is careful to distinguish between criticism of Israel and denunciation of Jews for being Jews. There is a difference, and some of the narcissistic Jewish professors like Tammi Benjamin have clouded the difference.
But I do have the right to question the truth of Roman Catholic doctrine, to refute the claims of the Bishops of Rome to hegemony, to suggest to my fellow Methodists that maybe The Trinity is not a well-focused definition of the precise nature of God, but a fuzzy attempt by fallible human beings to explain the unexplainable, and, to deny that The God (al-Lah in Arabic, no matter what your faith is) ever called for a world wide Caliphate.
I don't, however, have the right to make Protestant, Catholic, Orthodix, Jewish, Muslim, or any other faith, per se, a litmus test for participation as citizens. No, I don't think the OIC understands that. Most of the politicians in the OIC are amenable to Islam as an officially recognized state religion, which is is in most of their nations, although not in Indonesia, the most populous of them all.
Its going to be a rocking interesting couple of decades, getting across that the experience of throwing off official state Christianity is a step forward, not a sign of weakness or lack of faith, and that Islam too can do very well without the "profane hand of the civil magistrate." They can even allow Jews back into government service, which the Caliphates found quite useful.
Closer to the home front, the Orange County Human Relations Commission released its annual hate crime report. In 2010, 56 hate crimes out of population of 3 million occurred in the OC. Out of 56 the OCHRC counted 18 of these crimes as simple assault. I would like to know the OCHRC definition of simple assault; a rude gesture, waving an indignant hand in front of someone's face? Out of 56 hate crimes three were aggravated assault and 2 were murders. Who died?
I wonder how letting a pig loose in
a) a mosque
b) a synagogue
would rate in this report?
Of course we would all want to be sure that either one was treated with equal severity.
I'm not sure we can make desecration, per se, a crime in this country, because you know what kind of slippery slope that would be.
Trespassing, vandalism, some kind of aggravation because the vandalism caused extreme emotional distress to the occupants based on their religion, and in this case, perhaps a reasonable enhancement for vandalism based on religious hatred?
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