From FiveFeetOfFury I learn of this report. It seems that a UN “human rights council” has passed a resolution “urging passage of laws around the world to protect religion from criticism.” Of course they have one particular religion in mind here: yes, they want to ensure that if Osama bin Laden blows up your home in the name of Allah, and, emerging from the wreckage you utter some contemptuous phrase about him and his god, then the police will arrest you. Nice!
I’m a Christian. I don’t want laws that treat ideas as if they were people, and endow them with “rights”. Such laws are always used to persecute real people. It was in the name of “diversity” that the student union, backed by the university, orchestrated a ban on Exeter Christian Union, seized its assets, and attempted to distribute them to the donors, set up a mock “trial” with a tame QC, in order to try to drown them in legal bills, and so on. Only widespread publicity defeated the nasty little game, and as far as I know the perpetrators were never brought to justice. Similar attacks have taken place on Catholic societies. What happens in our universities today happens in society tomorrow.
So imagine how this new idea would work. Would I myself end up getting arrested for posting Isidore of Pelusium’s letters about the sleazebag bishop Eusebius? After all, who’s to say that this wouldn’t amount to “criticism”? Would large and rather corrupt church denominations like the Episcopal Church of America start employing lawyers to sue any church member who dared to object to their policies? (They do already, but only to seize property). “Calculated to incite hatred of the <insert name here> church”, or some such charge? The effect would be to chill discussion, for fear of the consequences.
Do we care what the UN says? Not much; but it shows how the wind blows. We need to fight for freedom of speech, and we need to do it now.
Here’s a case from Amsterdam: a mosque spreading a leaflet through my neighborhood, in which it argues that Christians are wrong because they believe Jesus changed water into wine. Given the fact that the mosque is also the place where several people went for prayer who were later convicted for terrorism, I can not exclude that pretty soon, Catholic crucifixes will be attacked because Jesus did not die on the cross.
On the other hand, although this mosque is around the corner, it is not really representative of any Muslim I have ever met, both in Holland and in Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya, et cetera.
Interesting: this is how facts are manufactured on the ground; one concession leads to another, and so on.
Of course we can’t blame the Moslems. They’re doing what anyone would do, and taking advantage of the situation. In any normal times, their demands would be rebuffed and that would be the end of it. It is the fifth-columnist within who works with them that is the danger; the bent judge, the crooked politician, the twisted journalist.
We must recognise that this is not happening by accident. It is these people in positions of authority — usually unelected, invariably without a democratic mandate — who are making it happen. This is the real problem. We must find ways to hold these selfish people accountable.