[This is a cross-post from my column at Examiner.com]
Last month, I bemoaned that the US media was keeping pretty silent about the passage of an anti-blasphemy resolution in the UN's poorly-named Human Rights Council. As the blog GetReligion.org noted, "It is probably no surprise . . . that the lead up to the passage of this resolution garnered only modest mainstream media notice." That is putting it mildly. About a week and a half has passed since then, and some mainstream media opinion has trickled in, the issue remains largely off the radar in the United States.
The latest in a long line of non-binding resolutions seeking to codify criminalization of the criticism, rejection, or lampooning of religion, its symbols, and its tenets, it strengthens the foundations for anti-blasphemy language to be enshrined into binding, official UN human rights law.
What is garnering more attention of late is President Obama's plan to seek a seat for the US on the Human Rights Council, and as mainly conservative outlets and opinion makers recoil at the idea, sometimes the "defamation of religions" resolutions are cited as one of the many reasons they see the council as a lost cause. But in this context, the anti-blasphemy moves are just one (important) bit of fodder in larger arguments, while the issue itself is not really examined.
The Christian Science Monitor published a piece from Freedom House's Paula Schriefer that hammers the issue hard:
. . . the very idea that you can defame a religion at all flies in the face of both fundamental rights of expression and belief. A religion, like all ideas and beliefs, must be open to debate, discussion, and even criticism. For this reason, religions themselves do not have rights. Rights belong exclusively to people. Nonetheless, these resolutions present a win-win scenario for OIC [Organization of the Islamic Conference] countries.
Schriefer also recognizes what the stakes are; not simply informal-if-distasteful words on an obscure document, but real, enforceable statute:
. . . the OIC is not satisfied with the legitimacy it gains from the passage of nonbinding UN resolutions. Supporters of the "defamation of religions" concept have insidiously begun using language from existing international human rights law, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to pervert international human rights norms.
The only other metropolitan paper I have found publishing on the issue has been the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which ran an op-ed by Colleen Carroll Campbell (who I must assume is referred to by her friends as "Three-C" or "C-cubed"). Campbell distills the issue thusly:
An attack on human rights couched in the language of human rights, the "defamation of religion" resolution essentially would abolish free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion in any country that adopted it.
She goes on to further attack the council as an "international joke," and laments the inefficacy of the US's potential presence in a sentiment echoed by many:
One more nay ballot from the United States would not prevent the passage of such measures as the "defamation of religion" resolution, which won by a double-digit margin. Rather than spurring reform, America's presence on the council may only legitimize its sham proceedings.
But guess what, folks. That's it. The list I posted of the major US news outlets that have not covered this issue since it occurred on March 26 has not changed. Happily, the UK-based Economist took a two-pronged look at the issue (other non-US outlets have examined this as well). In one piece, it calls for "good manners, please; not censorship," emphasizing common sense over legal restrictions:
Western governments, and decent people everywhere, should try to ensure that the things they say do not entrench religious prejudice or incite acts of violence; being free to give offence does not mean you are wise to give offence. But no state, and certainly no body that calls itself a Human Rights Council, should trample on the right to free speech enshrined in the Universal Declaration.
The second piece, covering the Human Rights Council more broadly, takes a look at the endgame for the OIC. As the International Humanist and Ethical Union's Roy Brown noted to the paper, the aim is to enshrine the 1990 "Cairo declaration" (an Islamist "interpretation" of human rights) into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
. . . the Cairo document carries the huge rider that the application of all human rights should be subordinated to sharia law. It also affirms the illegitimacy of "exercising any form of pressure" on Muslims to quit their faith "for another religion or for atheism"—in terms that seem to deny the individual’s freedom to change religion, and to justify the penalties for "apostasy" and blasphemy that many Muslim states impose.
Surely this is a story worth covering inside and out, and not just in the context of Obama's wisdom in seeking a seat on the Human Rights Council, for indeed, it is an act that at least acknowledges that active reform needs to happen in one way or another. I don't know how I feel about the wisdom of this move, but I wonder if the conservative opponents of Obama's decision would care so much about the "defamation of religion" resolutions were they not Islam-centric, or if they included wording specifically mentioning the delusional notion of Christianity-under-assault in the US. I hope we never have to find out.