FleaInNYCbanner.jpg

? Local colour | Main | McQueensberry Rules ?

January 28, 2009

Blasphemy commissions

Johann Hari on the subversion of the United Nations - and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - for the ends of religious censorship. Human rights commissions are the vehicle through which individuals, communities and now whole countries are told to remain silent or face prosecution for blasphemy.

Here is a random smattering of events that have taken place in the past week in countries that demanded this change. In Nigeria, divorced women are routinely thrown out of their homes and left destitute, unable to see their children, so a large group of them wanted to stage a protest – but the Shariah police declared it was "un-Islamic" and the marchers would be beaten and whipped. In Saudi Arabia, the country's most senior government-approved cleric said it was perfectly acceptable for old men to marry 10-year-old girls, and those who disagree should be silenced. In Egypt, a 27-year-old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman was seized, jailed and tortured for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah.

To the people who demand respect for Muslim culture, I ask: which Muslim culture? Those women's, those children's, this blogger's – or their oppressors'?

Exactly. Remember this the next time some progressive claims you are "racist" for defending freedom of speech. No, progressives are racist for preventing hundreds of millions of people from enjoying the same freedoms earned for these progressives by generations of better men. The left denies, say, Arabs freedom of (and from) religion both because the left believes non-Westerners cannot enjoy or do not deserve our liberties and because they are opposed to our liberties in the first place.

Hari claims it is not only a bevy of Muslim dictatorships who have attempted to place "religion" beyond criticism at the United Nations but "the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists." Can anyone confirm or deny this claim? This may be only a rhetorical fig leaf he needed to convince Independent editors to run an article critical of Islam. But if our own religious leaders are working hand in hand with the enemy, we have to add the fact to a long list of our civilization's failed institutions.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at January 28, 2009 06:23 AM

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in. Now you can comment. (sign out)

(This comment system is not reliable. Half the time it won't let me comment on my own blog. Please don't take it personally if it does not work for you. Alternative suggestions would be welcome but best remember I am technologically incompetent. Thanks for your patience.)


Remember me?