Good news from the UN

Advocates for freedom of thought and expression have a reason to celebrate: the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has failed to gain UN support for its call to outlaw blasphemy and insults to religion. Muslim member states of the OIC have been pushing for a UN-backed ban on blasphemy for almost 14 years. They suffered a serious setback last year when the UN General Assembly omitted any mention of outlawing “defamation of religions” in a statement condemning religious intolerance.

But after all these years, the OIC has finally given up trying to ‘legitimately’ gag those who criticise or mock their faith. Of course, it’s those horrible American and European spoilsports who stymied the OIC’s plan to silence all criticism of religion (and by ‘religion’, we know the OIC means Islam), whether valid or odious, eloquent or crass. Its Turkish secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, is apparently unimpressed by Western notions of free speech:

The long dispute highlighted differing views of free speech in Western and Muslim countries. Ihsanoglu said Western states had a “strange understanding” of free speech if it could be abused to hurt and insult others.

Well Mr Secretary General, us Westerners believe that no one has the right to not be insulted, let alone the right to expect the state to punish those who have given offense. This is a fundamental aspect of free speech. It is your understanding of free speech that is truly strange; one is free to express oneself except when one offends others for totally arbitrary reasons. How can such a conception even be considered free speech? Your country’s prime minister also seems to share your peculiar understanding.

Ihsanoglu may wring his hands over the potential abuse of free speech, yet blasphemy laws are just as susceptible to abuse, with arguably more sinister consequences:

But while editorialists and religious leaders have renewed calls for a worldwide blasphemy ban, few national leaders have actually ended their rhetorical reactions with that demand.

One who did at the United Nations last month was President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, whose own national blasphemy law has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad as open to widespread abuse against minority Christians.

Ihsanoglu, speaking at the conference on a panel with Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan, encouraged countries with blasphemy laws to apply them against insults to Islam, and then quickly added: “not particularly the one in Pakistan”.

I find it quite telling how Ihsanoglu isn’t very keen on the logical conclusion of enforcing blasphemy laws.

The creator of Jesus and Mo weighs in with this cartoon:

17.10.12

Blackford on the UN’s new stance regarding ‘defamation of religion’

The UN, to paraphrase Churchill, can always be counted on to do the right thing – after it’s tried everything else. For the first time since 1998, the UN General Assembly didn’t qualify its latest call for religious tolerance with the expectation that states ban all forms of expression perceived to be critical or insulting towards religion.

No prizes for guessing which brand of sky-fairyism was largely behind the anti-religious defamation ban: of all the major religions, Islam is arguably the only one that has state-sanctioned anti-blasphemy tendencies that often manifest in violent, murderous ways. Until recently, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which comprises 57 Muslim-majority countries, was successful in pushing through annual UN resolutions on “combating defamation of religions”. But the OIC’s decade-long winning streak has finally been broken.

Russell Blackford’s new book Freedom of Religion and the Secular State explores the relevant issues of freedom of speech and freedom of religion in depth. Blackford wrote the following comments on his blog, which touch on the salient aspects of the UN’s position, past and present, regarding religious defamation:

It is one thing for the UN to condemn actions to provoke inter-religious hatred. No one wants to see the world’s societies riven with hatred, though it is worth remembering that much of the hatred comes from religious conservatives who refuse to tolerate sexual freedom (especially that of women), female emancipation, and any expressions of erotic love outside of heterosexual monogamy. Even in Western societies we see this in the emotive opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. It’s another thing to become so focused on this issue that important kinds of speech are stigmatised and even prohibited. There is a public interest in scrutiny of religion, and it should be a fair target for criticism, denunciation, or satire.

At any rate, we should always err, if err we must, on the side of freedom of speech. Whatever lines are drawn in the area should allow bold speech that might offend – and this includes various forms of anti-religious criticism and satire. Such a liberal attitude to speech might permit some ugly speech, but the long-term effect would be to reinforce a valuable lesson: ideologically opposed groups of whatever kind – religious, political, or philosophical – must make their own way, enduring criticism, and even satire, from their opponents, without asking the state to interfere.

Any ideology, religious or otherwise, that requires force and coercion to propagate reveals itself to be insecure, flawed, and tyrannical. You have to threaten, torture, jail and execute people to make them accept the validity of absurd ideas. True and good ideas on the other hand are self-evident to all reasonable people.




22.12.11

“If the battle is waged on a level playing field, our victory is assured”

Secularism is on the rise, and religious groups aren’t happy about it. A favourite pushback tactic of theirs is to cry discrimination, that their rights are being trampled on by the godless. If they’re referring to their right to be bigots, to be shielded from criticism, to be accorded special privileges like tax-exempt status and unelected political power, and above all to be unquestioningly respected, then yes, such ‘rights’ should be denied to them. Religious groups demand these pseudo-rights because they understand – and fear – the consequences of not having them: they would be forced to compete with more liberal, rational, progressive and humane ideas on equal terms.

A level playing field in the great social debate humanity has with itself is a prospect that frightens the religious. Daylight Atheism’s Adam Lee makes this clear in his post on the worried reaction of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler to the recent same-sex marriage law passed in New York State. Likewise, the UN gay rights protection resolution passed two weeks ago was condemned by Muslims, who would prefer an international climate more conducive to their religiously inspired homophobia. The sacred task of shaming, assaulting and killing gays becomes noticeably more difficult to execute when global opinion is most emphatically not on your side.

Atheists, humanists and freethinkers know that they have a better than good chance of winning in a fair ideological fight. Religious groups and their accommodationist allies are aware of this, so they try to silence their opponents either by force or by the more subtle yet no less deplorable method of tarring them as supposedly strident, aggressive, militant, arrogant, simplistic polemicists. As Lee writes:

In their furious hushing of atheists and demanding that we be more respectful, in their efforts around the world to pass bills punishing speech that insults or denigrates religion, we see that what the major religious groups and their allies want is to silence dissent. Again, they don't want to compete in a marketplace of ideas; they want society to be their parishioners, sitting in enforced silence while they alone stand in the pulpit and preach.

There's a lesson here for freethinkers: to win the debate, we just have to show up. If we can speak freely and make our case, we've already won. If we can successfully claim the same rights and the same privileges as religious people, we've already won. If ordinary people have friends and family who are atheists, and know that they have friends and family who are atheists, we've already won. If the battle is waged on a level playing field, our victory is assured, because we know that in an open and fair debate, our arguments are the better ones and will carry the day. It's only coercion and prejudice that can hold us back, and both those obstacles are weakening and falling one by one.

Yes, our arguments are indeed the better ones, for they are based on reason, evidence and universal compassion. Which is why the religious would rather we didn’t voice them.




30.6.11

Apparently it isn’t Islam’s fault

I can understand why there are some who think it necessary to point out that the murder and mutilation of UN staff in Afghanistan isn’t entirely the fault of Islam. Political correctness isn’t always a pejorative label; it can simply refer to the admirable impulse for fairness and truth. And these people are right. Islam isn’t the only cause of violent acts where innocent people are killed simply for being perceived as somehow connected to an incident in a faraway country that insulted the Muslim faith.

But it’s a cause nonetheless.

Referring to the murders in Afghanistan, the Heresiarch reminds us that “such events occur when several factors come together in a largely unpredictable way, and are usually connected with local politics and personalities on the ground.” That is certainly correct, but he also claims that the barbaric killings were “not the fault of Islam.” Now this is political correctness of the pejorative sort. How can it not be the fault of Islam – among other factors – that a group of people feel sufficiently moved to commit murder because of the burning of a book? How can it not be the fault of Islam when it is this religion that asserts the sacredness and infallibility of that very book, thus turning it into an object beyond reproach, much less physical insult? How can it not be the fault of Islam when it is its mortal spokespeople who, claiming to speak on behalf of a deity as manifested in Islamic ideology, incite their fellow religionists to kill?

Iran denied seat on UN Women board

Iran added another mark of shame to its national image when it recently failed to get a seat on the executive board of UN Women, a newly formed UN agency for gender equality and women’s rights. This is the second time this year that Iran has been denied a place in a human rights organization. In April Iran withdrew its bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, presumably due to pressure exerted by liberal UN members who saw the utter ridiculousness of having an egregiously human rights-abusing nation like Iran on the council.