Islamic Nations Seek Legally Binding Way to Counter Criticism of Islam

Thankfully non-Muslims of the world are slowly waking up to the threat that Islam brings to freedom loving nations. While most of the readers of this site are obviously happy with this, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is not. They are now pushing forward in attempt to try and make it against international law to criticize Islam. As they know that if we cannot name our enemy, we cannot defeat it. In the past the OIC was able to get the United Nations to ban all criticism of Islam in regards to human rights. Will they be able to pull this off? With the UN involved, this is very possible.

Hat tip to The Religion of Peace.

Islamic Nations Seek Legally Binding Way to Counter Religious ‘Defamation’
Monday, November 16, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor

(CNSNews.com) – As support wanes for its campaign to secure controversial but non-binding “defamation of religion” resolutions at the United Nations, the Islamic bloc is pushing ahead with an alternative route – one that would carry the weight of international law.

The OIC is now attempting to have a key U.N. panel amend an existing international treaty to encompass supposedly religiously defamatory speech.

Unlike the resolutions, changing the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) to cover religion would be legally enforceable.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has for the past decade overseen the passage of non-binding resolutions at the U.N. General Assembly and human rights bodies.

Last week, the most recent effort passed in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, cultural, and humanitarian issues. It will go before the full General Assembly for a vote next month, but the committee vote indicates a continuing, measurable decline in support.

Eighty-one countries voted for the resolution, 55 opposed it and 43 abstained. The result showed less support for and more opposition against the resolution than for those introduced by the OIC over the last three years. (see graph)

As in past years, most support came from the 57-member OIC (although two members, Burkina Faso, and Cameroon, abstained) plus non-Muslim allies in the developing world, led by China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela.

Comparisons of voting records from 2006 to date reveal a continuing erosion of support in Latin America. Chile, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay all voted against the OIC-led resolution this year, having abstained in 2008. Elsewhere, Lesotho and Sri Lanka were among those who moved from supporting the resolution in 2008, to abstaining this year.

The OIC argues that religion needs to be protected from “defamation” – acts such as the publication of newspaper cartoons satirizing Mohammed, or the suggestion that the Koran promotes violence against non-Muslims.

Although its resolutions purport to cover all religions, Islam is the only one cited by name. The text passed by the Third Committee voices concern that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”

The OIC campaign has been confronted by freedom of expression advocates who say the bloc is trying to shield Islam, its teachings, practices, institutions and leaders, from legitimate criticism or scrutiny.

Critics say defamation prohibitions should cover individuals, not religions. They charge that resolution proponents are trying to introduce in Western societies similar restrictions to those enforced in some Islamic countries, where converts from Islam or those with dissident views risk trial for apostasy or blasphemy.

‘Binding normative standards’

Unlike the nonbinding U.N. resolutions, the OIC’s alternative strategy proposes to develop “new binding normative standards relating to religious ideas, objects and positions,” including “legal prohibition of publication of materials that negatively stereotypes, insults or uses of offensive language on matters regarded by followers of any religion or belief as sacred.”

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