Back in November 2008, United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann declared to the world “Yes, I believe that defamation of religion should be banned.” This was in response to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference’s  calls for  “all countries to pass laws prohibiting “defamtion of religion” in a vote of 85-50 succesfully passing.

The United Nations Human Rights Council president Doru Romulus Costea has already declared “that criticism of Sharia law will not be tolerated by the UNHRC, based on the complaints and pressure by Islamist delegates.” But that’s not enough, the UN is hellbent on taking it’s anti-blasphemy stance one step further towards a global platform.

In a nutshell 57 Islamic countries got together and decided enough was enough, the world had to stop slagging off religion and it was high time blasphemy was made universally illegal. The North Gazette article continues;

The irony, of course, is that the chief sponsors of the U.N. resolution are the very governments with anti-blasphemy laws that protect only the majority faith and ban all religious dissent. Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, an independent human rights group, charges that the resolution legitimizes “the criminalization of free speech in countries like Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.”


The irony doesn’t stop there though the OIC backed resolution contradicts the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms itself, specifically Articles 18 and 19;

Article 18 states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Article 19 states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In the UK it is already a “hate crime” to try and convert Muslims from Islam and in most muslim dominated countries alternative religions are squashed and given little to no representation or equality. Fox News has five examples that illustrate blasphemy laws are alive and kicking in OIC member countries;

– An Afghan student is on death row for downloading an article about the role of women in Islam, FOXNews.com also reported.

– In December 2007 “a court reportedly sentenced two foreigners to six months in prison for allegedly marketing a book deemed offensive to Aisha, one of the Prophet Muhammad’s wives,” the U.S. government said.

– A British teacher was sentenced to 15 days in jail in Sudan for offending Islam by allowing students to name the class teddy bear Muhammad in November 2007.

– In February 2007 in Egypt an Internet blogger was sentenced to four years in prison for writing a post that critiqued Islam.

– In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered after the release of his documentary highlighting the abuse of Muslim women.


Further examples are given in the “Muslims Against Sharia Blog“;

1. Saudi Arabia continues to use bigoted textbooks, and export them to American Islamic schools despite promises to change.

2. Iran sponsored a Holocaust cartoon contest in retaliation for the Danish cartoons of Muhammad in 2005. Yet, Jews had nothing to do with the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

3. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws attack Christians as a pretext for personal disputes.


If anti-blasphemy is alive and well why is there such a need to seek UN approval in the name of justifying such actions? Well as the Calgary Herald points out,  it’s all part of “a 10-year action plan the 57-state Organization of Islamic Conference launched in 2005 to ensure “renaissance” of the “Muslim Ummah” or community.”

Great, that’s all we need… a 10 year action plan from fundamentalist Islamic states pushing for pro-religious mandates in the United Nations. You know, because it’s not like religion causes any suffering or conflict in the world or anything.

The natural instinct with this resolution is that free speech as we know it (or take for granted as it were in Australia) will be over if countries start taking notice of calls by the UN for signed members to act on resolutions such as this.

The youtube clip below from CNN’s Lou Dobbs perfectly illustrates such behaviour. Be warned whilst the first few minutes are relatively interesting the clip is pretty bland to watch in it’s entirety, especially as Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens and Lou Dobbs attempt to repeatedly talk over each other.


Geez Lou, when was the last the US actually took anything the UN recommended seriously?

From Kyoto to Afghanistan to Iraq time and time again the US continues to ignore the UN so I think your free speech is pretty safe. To be fair though it’s not just the US, what country pays any attention to what the UN says these days anyway?

I mean cmon, the UN has been calling for “an end to hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel since 2006, and we all know how effective that has been.

Here in Australia we don’t have any protection of freedoms. Free speech as it is known in the US doesn’t exist and it’s widely taken for granted that we can go around saying what we like. So theoretically, how much of an effect does a UN anti-blasphemy resolution hope to have on our day to day life?

The answer isn’t found in a measurement of effectiveness, the correct answer is “it doesn’t need to”. Thanks to the Bracks government it’s already technically illegal to publicly criticise religion in Victoria. The controversial law has already spawned three cases since it’s introduction;

On the 17th December 2004, The Islamic Council of Victoria won a case over Catch the Fire Ministries. The Islamic Council of Victoria argued that speakers at a seminar sponsored by Catch the Fire Ministires used their speech “vilify Muslims, rather than to discuss Islam itself.”

In 2005, Ararat Penitentiary inmate Robin Fletcher took the Salvation Army to court claiming that “the Salvation Army’s ‘Alpha Christianity’ course, offered in jails, discriminated against him on the ground of his Wiccan religion”. He lost the case.

In 2005 again, “books promoting Islamic holy war and the killing of non-Muslims who insult the prophet Muhammad are being examined for possible breaches of the Crimes Act following complaints from the Australia-Israel Jewish Affairs Council.”

Apparently bookshops in Melbourne were selling pro-Islam hate books and “the council referred the publications to Victoria Police’s security intelligence unit. The Jewish Community Council said it could seek an order preventing the sale of the books under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.” The council never took the case to court.


As you can see, the laws are well and truly in place to take people to court for religious vilification. It isn’t all one sided though, the Anglican church has recently come out and said it supports the decriminalisation of blasphemy in the country, George Conger writes;

The church also supported the “abolition of the common law offence of blasphemy and the repeal of any laws creating the offence of blasphemy.”


Does religious vilification = blasphemy though? Well as of yet there isn’t a precedence explicitly ruling on the exact definition. Certainly the UN doesn’t help by entertaining the world with it’s anti-blasphemy nonsense but lets try and put things into perspective. It was only a year ago Rudd managed to drag Australia kicking and screaming  into singing the Kyoto protocol, ten years after it’s original conception.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve got a ways to go yet before Australia starts taking the UN seriously enough for laws like this to have any effect on our legal system.

Still it is rather worrying that there are certain countries who will no doubt see this as UN sanctioning of their existing stranglehold on free speech and hey, why not even make it an excuse to “upgrade” existing laws.

I mean the UN are the good guys and if they support it surely killing free speech has some merit right?

1. Australia needs free speech, and we need it now.
2. Hizb ut-Tahrir: Time to ban these morons in Australia
3. Observing Muslim holidays in Australia is a crap idea
4. Islamic states set to hijack UN racism conference, again.
5. Gad Amr: A positive example for Muslims in Australia