Published: 12:27 AM 12/13/2011 |
Updated: 6:13 PM 12/13/2011
By Neil Munro
A
young Afghan girl covers her face as she is pictured next to burqa clad woman
in Kabul on October 10, 2011. AFP PHOTO / ADEK BERRY (Photo credit should read
ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images) Welcome to
Freedom Islamic style.
The State Department began a
three-day, closed-door meeting Monday to talk about U.S. free speech rules with
representatives from numerous Islamic governments that have lobbied for 12
years to end U.S. citizens’ ability to speak freely about Islam’s history and
obligations.
Free speech advocates slammed the
event as an effort to gradually curb public criticism of Islam, but it was
defended by Hannah Rosenthal, who heads the agency’s office to curb
anti-Semitism.
The meeting is a great success, she
said, because governments in the multinational Organisation for Islamic
Cooperation have dropped their demand that criticism of Islamic ideas be
treated as illegal defamation. Member countries include Pakistan, Iran, Saudia
Arabia and Qatar.
In exchange for dropping the demand,
she said, they’re getting “technical assistance [to] build institutions to
ensure there will be religious freedom” in their countries, she told The Daily
Caller.
“That’s a joke,” said Andrea
Lafferty, a conservative activist who was repeatedly denied information about
the meeting.
Rosenthal’s claim that the OIC is
accepting freedom of speech and religion implies revolutionary changes in
Islamic countries, she said. That’s because Islamic texts set myriad laws for
behavior, and sharply restrict non-Muslim religions, free speech and women’s
rights, said Lafferty, who is president of the Traditional Values Coalition, a
conservative advocacy group.
If the OIC countries are giving up
on their religious obligation to ban criticism of Islam, she said, “does this
mean that Pakistan is no longer going to kill Christians and kill religious
minorities? … Are women in Saudi Arabia going to vote, to drive, to live free
lives?”
“We hope so,” said Rosenthal, who
added that such progress will not occur rapidly.
The more realistic explanation for
the three-day event, Lafferty said, is that administration officials,
progressives and OIC officials are tacitly cooperating to gradually stigmatize
speech that is critical of Islam.
Lafferty pointed to a July statement
by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in which she said that free speech will
be protected, but the U.S. government will “use some old-fashioned techniques
of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the
support to do what we abhor.”
Clinton’s statement was issued at
Istanbul, where the United States and the OIC launched the joint project to
combat “religious intolerance.”
Prior to the launch, OIC officials
spent 12 years lobbying for a U.N. resolution that would declared criticism of
religion to be defamation. U.S. officials strongly opposed this measure as a
restriction on free speech and a barrier to Internet services.
In March, the OIC dropped the defamation
resolution in exchange for passage of a resolution in the Human Rights
Committee, dubbed 16/18.
The new resolution was titled
“Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and
Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on
Religion or Belief.” It urges all governments to counter “Islamophobia,” and
declares opposition to “derogatory stereotyping, negative profiling and
stigmatization of persons based on their religion or belief.”
However, it also urges states to
promote tolerance of all believers, and to promote “a wider knowledge of
different religions and beliefs.”
This week’s State Department meeting
is intended to begin implementing the 16/18 decision. The meeting is titled
“The Istanbul Process for Combating Intolerance and Discrimination based on
Religion or Belief.”
Another meeting is slated for
February or March, said Rosenthal.
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