The Obama administration joined forces with 57 Islamic states last month to support a UN resolution that, critics fear, may result in criminalizing the criticism of Islam.

During three days of meetings hosted by the American State Department, representatives from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) talked with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about ways to implement a UN resolution that condemns religious stereotyping.

Resolution 16/18 was passed by consensus last March and by a U.N. General Assembly committee in November after having been strongly supported by Barack Obama. It includes the statement that, “The Human Rights Council…expresses deep concern at the continued serious instances of derogatory stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of persons based on their religion or belief”.

Sharia Creep

Although the United Nations did not define what is meant by ‘derogatory stereotyping’, scholars are concerned that many will interpret criticisms of Islamic theology to be an instance of such stereotyping. The worst case scenario would be that the resolution could introduce into the United States and Europe provisions similar to the blasphemy laws currently operative in Muslim-majority states.

In an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Turley raised concern about the core purpose behind the resolution. Turley, who is professor of public interest law at George Washington University, warned that

“Although the resolution also speaks to combating incitement to violence, the core purpose behind this and previous measures has been to justify the prosecution of those who speak against religion. The members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, have been pushing for years to gain international legitimacy of their domestic criminal prosecutions of anti-religious speech.”

OIC nations already do not permit criticism of Islam, in addition to having a ban on most non-Islamic religious expressions, so why have they been so concerned to get this UN resolution approved? As Jordan Sekulow, Executive Director for the American Center for Law and Justice commented, “The countries pushing this resolution — their populations are 90-99% one single religious group. What is the problem here with the 1% speaking out and why is that such an issue that needs to be handled at the international level?”

The answer can only be that the OIC nations would like to see non-OIC nations adopting similar standards to those that exist under sharia law. It is, in fact, one more instance of what Robert Spencer has called ‘sharia creep.’

The True Goals of the OIC

The OIC has been called a ‘multi-national Muslim mafia’ by Frank Gaffney, president of the American Center for Security Policy. A coalition of 57 Islamic states, the organization has never made any secret of its virulent opposition to free speech, at least when verbal liberty results in citizens uttering sentences critical of the prophet Muhammad and Islamic theology.

In March 2008, the OIC put forward an agenda for crafting a “legal instrument” that would make the criticism of Islam illegal. “Islamophobia,” one of their company declared, “cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but (through) a robust political engagement.” That, as Robert Spencer reminds us in his book Stealth Jihad, is a careful euphemism calling for restrictions on freedom of speech.

It’s important to emphasize that the OIC’s agenda has nothing to do with limiting criticism of Islam in Muslim majority nations. On the contrary, nations governed by Sharia law already have provisions in place to deal with those who speak out against the state religion. Rather, the OIC is entirely concerned with limiting the criticism of Islam in non Muslim nations.

We get an idea of what this looks like in practice by considering what happened in June 2008 at the United Nations Human Rights Council, when David Littman presented a joint statement from the AWE and THEU under agenda item 8: Integrating the Human Rights of Women throughout the United Nations system. Littman raised concern about Islamic atrocities such as female genital mutilation, execution by stoning and child marriage. Littman also suggested practical steps the Human Rights Council could take to combat these outrages. Unfortunately the discussion was continually stonewalled by representatives from OIC member countries. As is clear from the video of the meeting, the representative from Pakistan urged the council’s president to ban Mr Littman from speaking. Littman’s offence: he was presenting information about Islamic practices like burying women up to their waists in pits and using blunt stones to increase their agony in death. The Islamic delegate from Egypt and other OIC nations eventually bullied the council into dropping discussion of these and other crimes since it involved references to Islamic law. (To learn more about this, see Robert Spencer’s report ‘Free Speech Dies at the UN.’)

Representatives from OIC member countries went a lot further than merely urging the UN Human Rights Council to ban inaccurate criticisms. Rather, they urged that all criticisms of Islam be shut down, regardless of whether the  criticisms were justified. One Senegalese diplomat made a report to the UN Human Rights Council urging that even to quote the Koran in the context of criticizing Islam is itself an act of bigotry and “Islamophobia.”

The council president eventually capitulated and prohibited all discussion of Islam in the council chamber. Think about that for a moment: an international body dedicated to promoting human rights is now prohibited from discussing the fact that Islamic theology provides the basis for people to mutilate female genital organs or to stone people to death.

The OIC was not content with this victory. For over a decade they have been laboring to mainstream sharia blasphemy laws under the category of ‘defamation of Islam.’ They recently changed this to the more innocuous sounding category of ‘religious defamation.’ Every year the OIC brings this up for a vote at the United Nations Human Rights Council and the General Assembly, and every year it is rejected. Curiously, however, the OIC recently dropped their advocacy of an instrument against ‘religious defamation’ and switched to supporting Resolution 16/18 instead.

The head of OIC has made clear that Resolution 16/18 has the same aims as the earlier instruments. The only difference is a tactical one. As Jonathan Turley commented, “The OIC has hit on a winning strategy to get Western countries to break away from their commitment to free speech by repackaging blasphemy as hate speech and free speech as the manifestation of ‘intolerance.’”

This background is crucial in interpreting Resolution 16/18. Indeed, if it were not for the OIC’s support of the resolution and the remarks they have made about it, it might be possible to interpret the language of the Resolution in a more benign, if not positive, light. This is because it contains many statements safeguarding freedom of expression and “affirming… freedom of opinion.” Unfortunately, however, when we look more closely at the actual language of the Resolution, we see that such freedom of opinion is heavily qualified.

(A detailed history of the Resolution, can be read at Elizabeth Kenda’s ‘Religious Liberty Monitoring‘ blog)

Resolution 16/18 In Its Own Words

In addition to criminalizing ‘derogatory stereotyping’, Resolution 16/18 also calls on states to register concern for “the negative projection of the followers of religions”.

Could statements about the connection between Sharia law and forced marriage be construed as “negative projection of the followers of religions”? Given the way the UN Human Rights Council has already handled these issues (see above), the answer clearly seems to be yes. Jonathan Turley was right when he called Resolution 16/18 “the disingenuous effort to justify crackdowns on religious critics in the name of human rights law.”

Resolution 16/18 says that the Human Rights Council is “Concerned about actions that willfully exploit tensions or target individuals on the basis of their religion or belief.” Could this include evangelism? These questions are worth asking since in many Muslim majority nations evangelists are killed and sometimes even tortured on the grounds that they are exploiting religious tensions.

Resolution 16/18 also calls on nations to make “a strong effort to counter religious profiling, which is understood to be the invidious use of religion as a criterion in conducting questionings, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures.” If this advice is followed, then when police are searching for a suicide bomber their search must not be weighted among Islamic communities. Rather, they must spend just as much time looking for the culprit among other Buddhists, Christians Hindus, etc.

Resolution 16/18 “Condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, whether it involves the use of print, audio-visual or electronic media or any other means…” If one reads that sentence quickly it sounds like the Resolution is simply condemning religious hatred and violence. However, on closer inspection it becomes clear that the target of the condemnation are those who incite the violence and discrimination, not those who perpetrate it. This should concern us, for as Jonathan Turley pointed out in his op-ed piece, OIC member countries have a very low threshold for what constitutes anti-religious speech that incites people. Turley draws our attention to the fact that in September, a Kuwaiti court jailed a person “for tweeting a message deemed derogatory to Shiites.” Turley also notes that “In Pakistan last year, a doctor was arrested for throwing out a business card of a man named Muhammad because he shared the prophet’s name.” The cold truth is that anything from having a cross outside your door to giving a PowerPoint presentation on the life of Mohammed can incite Muslims to hostility. What Resolution 16/18 fails to recognize is that in such cases the problem lies with those who become violent and not with those who have incited them.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told delegates that Resolution 16/18 sought “to build those muscles” needed “to avoid a return to the old patterns of division.” However, to quote again from Mr Turley’s excellent article,

“Those ‘old patterns’ include instances in which writers and cartoonists became the targets of protests by religious groups. The most famous such incident occurred in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. The result were worldwide protests in which Muslims reportedly killed more than 100 people — a curious way to demonstrate religious tolerance.”

Turley’s comments were echoed by religious liberty analyst Elizabeth Kendal, who pointed out that “the strategic shift from defamation to incitement actually advances the OIC’s primary goal: the criminalization of criticism of Islam…”

Consequences

Although Resolution 16/18 is non-binding, it does significantly shift the judicial framework for understanding the free exchange of thoughts. It is part of an evolving corpus of laws and precedents aimed at protecting abstract ideas rather than individuals.

In the OIC’s journey from blasphemy laws to ‘defamation of Islam’ to ‘religious defamation’ to Resolution 16/18, their basic agenda has not changed in the slightest. Their agenda remains what it has always been: silencing the critics of Islam.  This should come as no surprise. After all, we know that Muslims can be like (oops, pardon the derogatory stereotyping). What is really troubling, however, is the way the Obama Administration has joined forces with the OIC to find ways of implementing the new provisions. The consequences of this was put succinctly by Nina Shea, author of the book Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide. Shea said, “They are asking the West to enforce criminal punishments for blasphemy against Islam within Western borders against their own citizens…”

The key issues will be when it comes to implementation. And that is what the Obama administration and the OIC were discussing in Washington last month. Unfortunately, because the meetings took place behind closed doors, we do not yet know what the results will be. Only time will tell.

(This article will be appearing in the monthly magazine of Christian Voice, a UK ministry whose website is http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/. The article is reprinted here with permission.)

Further Reading

Review of Stealth Jihad

Review of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)

A Strange Alliance

‘Muslim Mafia’ Targeting Religious Freedom?