You Could You Be A Criminal for speaking against ISLAM !!
HILLARY CLINTON AND HUSSEIN OBAMA Supports UN Anti-Free Speech Measure
Comment by Jim Campbell
Of
course this is absolute nonsense the US can’t participate in this
attempt at political correctness. This entire charade was cooked up by
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. You know this same ignorant lawyer
that believes the US could be bound by her favorite the U.N. Gun Ban
Treaty.
In March, the Obama administration thwarted the OIC’s attempt to
win United Nations Human Rights Council passage of a resolution calling
for criminal penalties for the “defamation of religions.” The following
month, Washington engineered Council passage of Resolution 16/18, a nonbinding measure which did not censor speech.
Our Motto: Cooperate or die.
The victory didn’t last long. In July, Secretary of State
Clinton revived the issue when she co-chaired an OIC session in Istanbul
dealing with “religious intolerance.” Clinton called on
countries to “counter offensive expression through education,
interfaith dialogue and public debate,” while emphasizing that speech
restrictions were unacceptable. She invited conference attendees to a
follow-up meeting to continue the dialogue.
OIC officials seized on Clinton’s offer by stepping up their campaign for blasphemy laws and speech codes.
So
here’s a quick refresher on the Constitution Mrs. soon to be
X-Secretary of State . It’s called the Constitution. Of course you
refuse to acknowledge the existence of the U.S. Constitution but it dose not bind the United States to any treaty or legislation that is Unconstitutional. I know you hate it but we still have the First Amendment and let’s not forget the Tenth Amendment either.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, I’m J.C. and I approve this message.
You
got to love it when those that oppose free speech as part of their
totalitarian cult demand it when others speak out against the atrocities
committed at the behest of a Seventh Century mad man.
Forbes Magazine
While you were out scavenging the Wal-Mart super sales or trying on
trinkets at Tiffany and Cartier, your government has been quietly
wrapping up a Christmas gift of its own: adoption of UN resolution
16/18. An initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
(formerly Organization of Islamic Conferences), the confederacy of 56
Islamic states, Resolution 16/18 seeks to limit speech that is viewed as
“discriminatory” or which involves the “defamation of religion” –
specifically that which can be viewed as “incitement to imminent
violence.”
Whatever that means.
Initially proposed in response to alleged discrimination
against Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11 and in an effort to clamp down
on anti-Muslim attacks in non-Muslim countries, Resolution 16/18 has
been through a number of revisions over the years in order to make it
palatable to American representatives concerned about U.S.
Constitutional guarantees of free speech. Previous versions of the
Resolution, which sought to criminalize blasphemous speech and the
“defamation of religion,” were regularly rejected by the American
delegation and by the US State Department, which insisted that
limitations on speech – even speech deemed to be racist or blasphemous –
were at odds with the Constitution. But this latest version, which
includes the “incitement to imminent violence” phrase – that is, which
criminalizes speech which incites violence against others on the basis
of religion, race, or national origin – has succeeded in winning US
approval –despite the fact that it (indirectly) places limitations as
well on speech considered “blasphemous.”
What’s worse, the measure codifies into the UN agenda support for the
very notion democracies now wrestle with, and which threatens to
destroy the very fabric of our culture: tolerance of the intolerant, or
rather, the question of whether a tolerant society must also tolerate
ways of life that are intolerant – that oppress women, say, or advocate
violence against homosexuals, or force strangers to marry against their
will. It is, in fact, this very concept that the OIC has long pressured
Western governments to adopt in other ways, and that those supporting
the adoption of Sharia law in the west have emphasized. Yet if we fall
into that trap – as it appears we are – we will have lost the very heart
of who we are.
The Good, The Bad…
Those who support the new measure rightly laud its recognition of the
importance of free debate. and the inclusion of new clauses that call
for “speaking out against intolerance, including advocacy of religious
hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or
violence” and “[foster ing] religious freedom and pluralism by promoting
the ability of members of all religious communities to manifest their
religion, and to contribute openly and on an equal footing to society.”
What opponents (rightly) find distressing are calls to adopt
“measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on
religion or belief.”
(Additional clauses that call for countering religious profiling are
also questionable, however civil rights organizations may feel about
this, given the problems of Islamic terrorism in the real world. But
that’s another matter.)
Oddly, Human Rights First, which previously loudly opposed the
initiative for its limitation on “blasphemous speech,” is among those
who now praise the newer version. In a statement, the organization
opined:
Rather than imposing new restrictions on freedom of speech, which it
does not, the new consensus resolution opens the door to an
action-oriented approach to fighting religious intolerance. That is very
consistent with the U.S. policies and practices – combat violence,
discrimination and hatred without restricting freedom of speech.
Resolution 16/18 urges states to train government officials to address
religious tensions, to harmonize actions at local and national level, to
raise awareness of negative stereotyping of persons, to promote
interfaith and intercultural dialogue, to foster religious freedom and
to speak out against intolerance (among other recommendations). The only
limitation on speech that is in the operative part of the resolution is
incitement to “imminent violence”, which is in accordance with US law.
But others are less forgiving, noting, among other things, that the
resolution does nothing to prevent the continued use of anti-Jewish
materials in the schools of Saudi Arabia (where the Protocols of Zion
are treated as fact, thereby absolving Saudis of charges of “racism”) or
the ongoing persecution of Jews and Christians in numerous Muslim
countries. And yet, ironically,it was exactly those same countries who
initiated the motion, as put forth in its initial drafts by the General
Assembly, with expressions of concern for “cases motivated by
Islamophobia, Judeophobia, and Christanophobia.”
Indeed, as M. Zuhdi Jasser, an observant American Muslim and the
founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, remarked in an
e-mail, “Anyone who believes that Resolution 16’18 is some kind of a
breakthrough is sadly being duped by the most obvious Islamist double
discourse. The shift from ‘defamation’ to ‘incitement’ does nothing at
all to change the basic paradigm where Islamist nations remain in the
offen se, continuing to put Western, free nations on the defense.”
Rather, said Jasser, “We should be putting Islamist autocracies on the
defense and then simply reiterate that our First Amendment principles
already protect the rights of all minorities — whether Muslim or
otherwise — and that the best standard of free speech is the American
one. Beginning to categorize speech as ‘incitement’ is a slippery slope
that could open the floodgates for any post-tragedy analysis to indict
what would otherwise be free speech absurdly as incitement in some
far-fetched cause-effect analysis that would depend on proving that
speech causes violence.”
Exactly.
It is, indeed, galling to think that we would enter into negotiations
of any kind, with anyone, about the freedom of expression that is so
central to our very way of life and the core of the founding of America.
Ever.
The background to all of this, unsurprisingly, is an effort on the
part of Muslim countries to limit what they consider to be defamatory
and blasphemous speech: criticism of Islam, say, or insulting the
prophet Mohammed – which, as we’ve learned, can mean anything from
drawing a cartoon or making a joke in a comedy sketch to burning a
Koran. Such acts – according to some readings of the Koran and, indeed, according to law in some IOC countries
– are punishable by death. Hence the riots that met the publication of
the so-called “Danish cartoons,” the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the
murder of Theo van Gogh, and on and on.
… And The Deceptive
And here’s where Resolution 16/18 gets tricky.
Because who, exactly, arbitrates what is “incitement to imminent
violence”? Violence by whom? If drawing a caricature of the Prophet
incites violence by Islamic radicals to the tune of riots, arson, and
murder, all sanctioned by the IOC itself – then drawing such a
caricature (or writing a book like the Satanic Verses) will now
constitute a criminal act. And that is exactly what the OIC was aiming
for. It is also in direct violation of the principles of Western
democracy – and the First Amendment. (Though it is crucial to note that
any resolution passed by the General Assembly remains nonbinding, which
makes you sort of wonder what the point of all this is, anyway.)
Moreover, since many would claim that the persecution of blasphemers
is mandated by their religion, conflicts emerge between guarantees of
free expression and the guarantee of freedom of religion and the
practice of one’s faith. In othr words: your free speech allows you to
insult my prophet: my freedom of religion compels me to kill you for it.
What was that about “incitement to violence”?
Whose violence?
This is how the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation plays “Gotcha.
This is how the American government, however unwittingly, subsumes
its own Constitution in deference ot the demands of the Islamic state.
It’s a dangerous game.
True, the Human Rights First position on the issue is significantly more optimistic:
“The U.S. will always enforce its own standards on freedom of
expression; these are enshrined in this country’s Constitution. But its
legal exceptionalism on freedom of spee ch does not necessarily mean
that the U.S. administration needs to be diplomatically isolated when it
comes to promoting globally the principles of freedom of speech and
freedom of religion, which many in the U.S. perceive to be core and
founding American values. On the contrary, since the U.S. joined the
U.N. Human Rights Council, the Obama administration has openly expressed
its ambition to exert leadership within the U.N. body.
The U.S. demonstrated that leadership by securing the passage of
Resolution 16/18 at the Human Rights Council and by moving immediately
to show through the Istanbul Process Conference that states have tools
at their disposal to combat violence, discrimination and hatred without
restricting free speech.”
But note that word: “combat.” That same word appears in Resolution 16/18, which states “Understanding the need to combat
denigration and negative religious stereotyping of persons, as well as
incitement to religious hatred, by strategizing and harmonizing actions at the local, national, regional and international levels through, inter alia, education and awareness building.” (Emphasis mine.)
“Combat” implies warfare. Is that the language we want here? Is that one of the options under the vague and wide-open term “inter alia”?
And are the “tools at their disposal” – education, interfaith dialogue,
and debate — really going to “combat” hatred, especially when that
hatred is disguised as proper adherence to one’s faith? When racist
myths are taught as historical fact to children across a large swath of
the globe?
As for that “faith” thing: it strikes me that those of no faith –
atheists – are not addressed anywhere in t his resolution. Are they also
to be protected from hate crimes? Is atheism among the ideas to be
debated and taught in these awareness-raising sessions? If so, why is
that not so stated? If not, why not?
Then there is the ongoing whimpering about the “targeting” of Muslims
in non-Muslim countries. Actually, that “targeting” is largely
mythical, or at the very least, heavily exaggerated. Throughout the
world, from France to the Netherlands to Germany to the United States of
America, the majority – by a large margin – of those hate crimes and
incidents of discrimination perpetrated on the basis of religion target Jews. (another resource available here) And in virtually every case, the “extremism” in question has been Islamic extremism. (Though recent reports of the despicable behavior or ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel puts a new perspective on the matter.)
The Bigger Picture
But here’s the biggest problem: when the exercise of free speech
leads to violence far beyond our control. It’s called “terrorism.” And
neither the U.N. General Assembly nor the United States of America has
the power to stop it. More importantly: by agreeing to curb speech that
could lead to “imminent violence,” we in essence accept the blame for
any terrorist acts against America (and the West). We agreed not to
provoke, after all.
This, of course, is an unacceptable paradigm, and one we cannot allow to stand.
Integral to the greatness of America is the simple fact that no other
country in the world places so sacred a value on free speech – indeed,
on free expression – as does the United States. Holocaust denial, for
instance, is verboten in Germany. Mein Kampf is banned
in the Netherlands. France last week criminalized the denial of the
Armenian genocide in Turkey (an act that resulted in widespread
condemnation by the OIC, whose Secretary General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu,
had the audacity, days after the ratification of 16/18, to bluster that
those who defend cartoons that mock Mohammed as “freedom of thought and
expression” have no business limiting the speech of those who deny the
Armenian genocide. “This is an indisputable and unacceptable paradox,”
he declared). And so on.
Yet in all of this, America has stood strong in its defense of free
speech – even blasphemous, hateful, racist, sexist, Pentecostal,
homophobic, and ignorant speech. We must continue to do so, no matter
what pressures we may face. Because in the end, limiting our rights to
self-expression and – above all – the questioning of religious beliefs –
will never help to make the world more peaceful – or more free.
