The war against free speech is advancing rapidly: Associated
Press reported Thursday that “Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent
Islam from being criticised during debates by the UN
Human Rights Council.” Council President Doru-Romulus
Costea explained that religious issues can be “very
complex, very sensitive and very intense…This council is not prepared to
discuss religious matters in depth, consequently we should not do it.”
Henceforth only religious scholars would be permitted to broach them.
“While Costea’s ban applies to all religions,” AP
explained, “it was prompted by Muslim countries complaining about references to
Islam.” The ban came after a heated session on Monday, when the representative
of the Association for World Education (AWE), in a joint statement with the
International Humanist and Ethical Union, denounced female genital mutilation,
the penalty of stoning for adultery and child marriage as sanctioned by Islamic
law.
Imran Ahmed Siddiqui,
the representative from Pakistan, echoed the ever-echoing refrain of all
Islamic apologists in the West, when he complained that Littman’s initiative on
genital mutilation, stoning and child marriage amounted to an “out-of-context,
selective discussion on the Sharia law.” He asked that Littman not be allowed
to speak: “I would therefore request the president to exercise his judgment and
authority and request the speaker not to touch issues which have already been
debarred from discussion in this Council.” The representative from
The representative from
After more discussion, a recess, and another warning from the representative
from
At this point
The representative from Germany asked: “Mr. President, I would kindly,
through you, ask the Egyptian delegation and its representative if I did
understand in his last intervention…he seemed to have said, and I quote, and I
apologize if I did not understand this correctly – my understanding was, quote:
“Islam will not be crucified in this Council”. And I would like this statement
confirmed and if it is confirmed I would ask you, Mr. President, whether you consider
this appropriate with regard to the question of mentioning religion and its
symbols?” But
Yet an Islamic legal manual endorsed by Al-Azhar
states that circumcision is required “for both men and women” (‘Umdat al-Salik, e4.3). And Tantawi himself has said, according to Geneive
Abdo, author of No God But
God:
Littman continued, noting that “the stoning of women for alleged adultery
still occurs regularly in
Yet as of September 2007, eight
women in Iran were awaiting stoning for adultery charges.
In sum, then, what Littman was saying was accurate, and the Egyptian,
Pakistani and Iranian representatives consistently characterized these truthful
statements as insults to Islam, and moved to have them suppressed. Not only
does this shameful episode bode ill for the human rights of women in the
Islamic world; it also represents another victory in the war against free
speech that Islamic supremacists have been pursuing with particular energy
lately, calling on Western authorities to prosecute Dutch politician Geert Wilders for his film Fitna
and Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for his
drawing of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, and in general to outlaw what
they perceive as insults to Islam.
They have won at the UN Human Rights Council. That will not be the only battle
of this war. But it remains to be seen whether any governing official in the
West has the courage and the clear-sightedness to stand up to this challenge
before it’s too late – before we are required by law to stand by as mute
witnesses to our own conquest and Islamization.