1. United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (http://www.uscirf.gov)
(1) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 21, 2009
Testimony of Leonard A. Leo Before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC)on Implications of the Promotion of “Defamation of Religions”
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this hearing on this important and timely issue. For a number of years, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has been monitoring closely, and speaking out against, the campaign by some countries to create a global blasphemy law through the passage of UN resolutions against the so-called “defamation of religions.”
While they may sound tolerant and progressive, these resolutions do not solve the very real problems of persecution and discrimination suffered by the adherents of many religions around the world. Rather, they exacerbate these problems. The “defamation of religions” concept promotes intolerance and human rights violations, creating wide latitude for governments to restrict free expression and religious freedom. In addition, the concept deviates sharply from the historically rooted object of international human rights protections by addressing the interests of religious institutions and interpretations, rather than the rights of individuals.
The “defamation of religions” resolutions have been sponsored annually by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or OIC, in the UN Human Rights Council and its predecessor since 1999, and in the General Assembly since 2005. At the Human Rights Council in Geneva, these efforts have been led by Pakistan. Egypt has played a leading role at the General Assembly in New York. The OIC’s publicly-stated goal is the adoption of a binding international covenant against the so-called “defamation of religions.”
Although the “defamation” resolutions purport to protect religions generally, the only religion and religious adherents that are specifically mentioned are Islam and Muslims. Aside from Islam, the resolutions do not specify which religions are deserving of protection, or explain how or by whom this would be determined. The resolutions also do not define what would make a statement defamatory to religions or explain who decides this question. For its part, the OIC appears to deem any criticism of Islam or Muslims to be religiously defamatory speech—a view that goes well beyond the existing legal concept of defamation, which protects individuals against false statements of fact that damage their reputation and livelihood.
In terms of states’ practices, there is no universal international approach toward “defamation of religions.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights conducted a survey in 2008 and found no common understanding of the concept among those countries that said they had laws on the issue. Instead, the laws surveyed addressed “somewhat different phenomena and appl[ied] various terms such as contempt, ridicule, outrage and disrespect to connote defamation.”
What should we glean from this narrow focus on Islam and the ambiguity of the applicable legal standard? For the Commission, it signals that the “defamation of religions” resolutions are a poorly veiled attempt to export the repressive blasphemy laws found in some OIC countries to the international level. Under these laws, criminal charges can be levied against individuals for defaming, denigrating, insulting, offending, disparaging, and blaspheming Islam, often resulting in gross human rights violations. In Pakistan, for example, the domestic law makes blasphemy against Islam a criminal offense subject to severe penalties, including death. Extremists have abused these broad provisions to intimidate members of religious minorities, including members of disfavored minority Muslim sects, and others with whom they disagree, and unscrupulous individuals have found them to be useful tools to settle personal scores. Blasphemy allegations in Pakistan, which are often false, have resulted in imprisonment on the basis of religion or belief, as well as vigilante violence resulting in the death of accused individuals.
The “defamation of religions” resolutions usually come before the UN General Assembly in the fall and the UN Human Rights Council in the spring, and they continue to pass each year in each body. Yet there is some good news to report: the international community is starting—though I would stress only starting—to understand the problems with these resolutions. The last three times they were considered the votes in favor decreased from a majority to a plurality of members. At both the March 2008 and March 2009 Human Rights Council sessions, as well as the December 2008 General Assembly, the combined number of no votes and abstentions outnumbered the yes votes, although the resolutions still passed. The Commission hopes that this trend will continue when the expected “defamation of religions” resolution comes before the General Assembly later this fall. To that end, we are working on a number of fronts, including with various Members of Congress, to encourage UN member states to oppose these resolutions. The Commission welcomed Secretary Clinton’s recent remarks in New York affirming the United States’ continued opposition, and we urge the State Department to continue vigorously to engage all governments to urge them to vote no.
Like any smart tactician that detects a weakening of support, the OIC is diversifying its push for banning certain forms of speech by reaching into other venues and masking its objective through other language. The OIC sought, but failed, to insert language against the “defamation of religions” in the outcome document of the April 2009 Durban Review Conference. Instead, a compromise was reached to include a phrase deploring “the derogatory stereotyping and stigmatization of persons based on their religion or belief.” This is a somewhat better approach because it focuses on individuals, not religions, and does not attach legal prohibitions or punishments.
The OIC also has attempted to include the “defamation of religions” concept into UN resolutions dealing with the freedom of expression. At the most recent UN Human Rights Council session, the United States worked with Egypt to jointly sponsor a compromise freedom of expression resolution that sought to find common ground between the “defamation” proponents and opponents. Like the Durban II Conference document, this resolution does not mention “defamation of religions,” but rather focuses on negative religious stereotyping, thereby rightly keeping the focus on individuals rather than belief systems. It also does not call for any laws against such stereotyping, but instead expresses concern about it.
However, many in the human rights community were surprised by the United States’ co-sponsorship of this resolution because it condemned “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence” and called on states to “take effective measures, consistent with their international human rights obligations” to address such advocacy. Having just returned from Commission delegations to the European Union and Holy See, I know that many of our EU partners were equally surprised. The language on advocacy of hatred constituting incitement is taken from Article 20(2) of the International Civil and Political Rights, or ICCPR. Article 20(2) also requires states to enact laws against such incitement—a requirement on which the United States has placed a reservation to the extent that doing so would violate U.S. constitutional free expression guarantees. To be sure, the U.S./Egypt resolution does not expressly call for legal prohibitions, and therefore does not run afoul of the U.S’s reservation, and the U.S. previously has supported UN resolutions on religious intolerance and discrimination that condemned incitement but did not require laws against it.
But the Commission is concerned that this use of the incitement language is a Trojan Horse for the “defamation of religions” efforts. The United States and other supporters of free expression therefore must remain vigilant against attempts to conflate “defamation of religions” and Article 20(2) incitement. In addition to seeking a new anti-blasphemy norm through the “defamation” resolutions, the OIC has argued in various UN contexts that speech insulting or criticizing religions is outlawed under existing international law norms against incitement—citing ICCPR Article 20(2).
Article 20(2) has always been and should continue to be a limited exception to the fundamental individual freedoms of expression and religion meant to protect individuals from violence or discrimination, not to protect religious beliefs from criticism. The United States should recognize that the defamation proponents’ efforts to redefine and significantly broaden this provision are of serious concern.
National or international laws purporting to ban criticism or “defamation” of religions are not the solution to the very real problems of religious intolerance and discrimination. In fact, such prohibitions do more harm than good, as evidenced by the human rights abuses perpetrated under them in countries such as Pakistan. The United States should continue strongly to oppose, and urge other UN members to oppose, both the “defamation of religions” resolutions and all efforts to reinterpret ICCPR Article 20(2) to encompass allegedly religiously defamatory speech.
(2) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 11, 2009
The Dangerous Idea of Protecting Religions from “Defamation” A Threat to Universal Human Rights Standards
WASHINGTON, D.C. - In advance of the upcoming vote on this issue in the UN General Assembly, USCIRF today issued the following Policy Focus explaining the problems with the idea that religions should be protected from "defamation."
Executive Summary
Over the past decade, countries from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have been working through the United Nations system to advance the problematic idea that there should be laws against the so-called “defamation of religions.” Although touted as a solution to the very real problems of religious persecution and discrimination, the OIC-sponsored UN resolutions on this issue instead provide justification for governments to restrict religious freedom and free expression. They also provide international legitimacy for existing national laws that punish blasphemy or otherwise ban criticism of a religion, which often have resulted in gross human rights violations. These resolutions deviate sharply from universal human rights standards by seeking to protect religious institutions and interpretations, rather than individuals, and could help create a new international anti-blasphemy norm.
In addition to seeking a new norm through these resolutions, OIC countries have argued in various UN contexts that existing international standards prohibiting advocacy of hatred and incitement already outlaw “defamation of religions.” However, the provisions on which they rely—Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)—provide only limited exceptions to the fundamental freedoms of expression and religion. These provisions were intended to protect individuals from violence or discrimination, not to protect religious institutions or ideas from criticism, and they should not be expanded to cover allegedly religiously defamatory speech. Such an expansion, which unfortunately may have been lent support by new language on negative religious stereotyping and incitement in a recent UN Human Rights Council freedom of expression resolution, would undermine international human rights guarantees, including the freedom of religion. It also would undermine the institutions that protect universal human rights worldwide.
Please click here to download USCIRF Policy Focus - The Dangerous Idea of Protecting Religions from “Defamation”(http://www.uscirf.gov/images/stories/pdf/uscrif_policy_focus_final.pdf)
USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. USCIRF’s principal responsibilities are to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and Congress.
To interview a USCIRF Commissioner, contact Tom Carter, Communications Director at tcarter@uscirf.gov or (202) 523-3257.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief abroad, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, Secretary of State, and Congress.
Leonard A. Leo, Chair • Michael Cromartie, Vice Chair • Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Vice Chair
Don Argue • Imam Talal Y. Eid • Felice D. Gaer • Richard D. Land
Nina Shea • Knox Thames, Acting Executive Director
800 NORTH CAPITOL STREET, NW SUITE 790 | WASHINGTON, DC 20002 | 202-523-3240 | 202-523-5020 (FAX)
2. Christianity Today (http://www.christianitytoday.com)
Clinton Criticizes Religious Defamation Laws as UN Prepares to Vote
The Obama administration opposes anti-defamation laws because they would restrict free speech, 28 October 2009
by Sarah Pulliam Bailey
International religious freedom observers mostly praised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's opposition to anti-defamation policies because such restrictions would limit free speech.
The United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote soon on a pending anti-defamation resolution sponsored by the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion," Clinton said at a press conference on Monday. "I strongly disagree."
"The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions," Clinton said. "These differences should be met with tolerance, not with the suppression of discourse."
Experts consider the UN anti-defamation effort mostly a reaction to the 2005 publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicted the prophet Muhammad. Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors USA, is lobbying against the resolution this week because he fears people could be criminalized for converting from Islam or speaking against Islamic teachings.
"The United States is making an unequivocal statement while defining the rights of individuals versus religious beliefs," Moeller said. "You cannot provide a religious belief system the same level of protection that you do for a human."
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom of the Hudson Institute, expressed concern over another Human Rights Council resolution on freedom of opinion and expression passed in early October: "[The council] expresses its concern that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world … and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human rights law, to address and combat such incidents."
The resolution, proposed by the United States and Egypt, does not include the term "defamation of religion," but Shea worries that such language could criminalize preaching that another religion is false.
"They're introducing language about religious hatred or negative religious stereotyping that is quite new and immediately seized upon by some of the restrictive governments in the world," Shea said.
Shea welcomed Clinton's Monday speech, but wonders why the administration has not appointed an ambassador of international religious freedom.
"Especially when you look at the different czars and envoys that have been appointed in all areas, it doesn't signal religious freedom as a priority," Shea said. "Hillary Clinton spends a few minutes on a press conference, but who's following this day in and day out?"
In her speech on Monday, Clinton said that the best antidote to intolerance is a combination of legal protections against discrimination and hate crimes, government outreach to minority religious groups, and defense of freedom of both religion and expression.
Religious Freedom Offenders
Clinton made her remarks while releasing the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom, which highlighted several countries "where violations of religious freedom have been noteworthy" over the last year: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Laos, Malaysia, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen.
But in some of those countries have also seen positive developments, the report said. Following Clinton's remarks, Assistant Secretary Michael Posner used China as one example.
"One of the encouraging things to me in China is that there is a growing, rapidly growing Christian community," Posner said. "A percentage, but not a majority, are in churches recognized by the state. But somewhere between 50 and 90 million people practice Christianity in unrecognized churches that are not registered in many cases. And so what we're trying to do is encourage the Chinese Government to recognize and allow people of faith, of various faiths, to practice."
Thomas Farr, the first director of the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom, praised Clinton's remarks and the report but called for more policy specifics.
"The report is excellent in identification of the problem. Where it's uneven and often quite weak is in describing U.S. policy in solving those problems," Farr said. "For example, we should be working with the Chinese not only to pressure them to stop persecution, but advancing religious freedom through the academy, the law—the mechanisms that are important to the Chinese."
Clinton's speech also highlighted interfaith efforts, such as Jordan's dialogue between Christians and Muslims. The report highlighted Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Jordan where he stressed peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims.
She also praised faith-based organizations in the United States.
"Religion provides a cornerstone for every healthy society," Clinton said. "It empowers faith-based service. It fosters tolerance and respect among different communities, and allows nations that uphold it to become more stable, secure and prosperous."
・Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today.
3. The SUN (http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=40104)
Religious groups cannot intervene in Herald case, 11 November 2009
by S.Tamarai Chelvi
KUALA LUMPUR : The High Court today set aside its own order in allowing eight parties to intervene in the matter relating to the use of the word "Allah" in the weekly publications of the Herald catholic weekly.
High Court (Appellate and Special Powers) judge Datuk Lau Bee Lan allowed the application by a Catholic church to set aside the order in chambers.
This means the nine religious bodies are no longer interveners to the judicial review application.
The order was set aside on the grounds that the High Court had no jurisdiction following a recent Federal Court ruling.
Last month, Lau allowed Islamic religious bodies from seven states and Wilayah Persekutuan together with Malaysia Chinese Muslim Association to be interveners.
(The Islamic religious bodies argued that they had legal interest as they are advisers to the head of state, Sultan or Yang di-Pertua of states. The Malaysia Chinese Muslim Association also argued that they had legal interest.)
The Catholic church had applied (before the same judge) for a recall and to set aside the order which allowed the religious bodies to become interveners after a recent Federal Court ruling on the position of the interveners in a judicial review proceedings.
The judicial review will be heard on Dec 14, 2009.
On Feb 16, 2009, Archbishop Tan Sri Murphy Pakiam, as publisher of the Herald, filed for a judicial review to quash the decision of the respondents, Home Ministry and the government dated Jan 7, 2009, that the applicant's publication permit for the period Jan 1, 2009, until Dec 31, 2009, is subject to the condition that he be prohibited from using the word "Allah" in the Herald.
He is also seeking to declare that the decision of Home Ministry and the government of Malaysia was illegal and ultra vires the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984.
4.The Malaysian Insider (http://themalaysianinsider.com)
Islamic groups ejected from Allah suit，11 November 2009
by Debra Chong
KUALA LUMPUR – It will be a straight fight between The Herald and the Home Minister in the High Court here next month over the right to publish the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God.
Judge Lau Bee Lan from the High Court’s Appellate and Special Powers division fixed hearing for Dec 14 after ruling in favour of the Catholic Church’s bid to strike out interveners in their challenge against the Home Minister’s ban on publishing the word “Allah” in a non-Muslim context.
Lau retracted her decision, made three months ago, to allow eight state Islamic councils and the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association (Macma) to intervene in the suit, on the basis that they were advisers to the rulers who are heads of Islam.
“The order on the 3rd of August was made on the grounds the High Court had no jurisdiction, following the order from the Federal Court,” counsel for the church, S. Selvarajah told reporters after leaving the judge’s chambers.
The Federal Court, led by Chief Justice Tun Zaki Azmi, had earlier this year made a landmark ruling barring the Selangor Islamic Council (Mais) from intervening in a dispute between the Shah Alam City Council (MBSA) and Bong Boon Chuen and 150 landowners over Islamic burial land in neighbouring Selangor.
The top court’s decision set the example for other lower courts to keep interveners out.
Selvarajah also said the issue of “justiciability” – whether the courts had the power to decide on the use of the word “Allah” – which had been raised by lawyers from the Attorney General’s Chambers representing the Home Minister, would be argued during the hearing proper.
He noted that The Herald’s annual publishing licence would expire on Dec 31.
The priest-editor of the Catholic weekly, Reverend Father Lawrence Andrew, smiled brightly at the court’s decision.
“It’s good. It’s the thing we’ve been waiting for,” a much-relieved Andrew told The Malaysian Insider. “We hope it can be settled within the year.”
The Herald, which is read by 14,000 subscribers, was first banned from publishing the word “Allah” last year.
Under threat of having its licence revoked, it filed a suit challenging the Home Minister’s ban for going against the Federal Constitution, but the dispute failed to be resolved then because its licence had expired.
It was forced to file another application earlier this year, based on the existing publishing licence.
5. Deccan Herald (http://www.deccanherald.com)
Thinking aloud: Clash of loyalties , 12 November 2009
by Sunanda K Datta-Ray
Having treated American soldiers repatriated from the war theatre, Major Hasan was familiar with the trauma of the conflict.
The wonder is not that an Arab-American army officer ran amuck but that it didn’t happen earlier. This is certainly not to justify Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous spree in the world’s biggest military camp, but to suggest that many Muslims who are apparently completely assimilated in western life have profound reservations about the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was to assuage their fears (and those of the moderate Islamic ummah) that President Barack Obama made visiting Egypt a high priority and delivered a thought-provoking address at Cairo’s Al Azhar university. But many Arabs saw it as a ceremonial gesture in contrast with US refusal to back the demand for a freeze on Israel’s illegal settlements in the conquered West Bank or Washington’s pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to endorse the United Nations’ finding that Israel was guilty of war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
Such actions have to be considered in their totality in judging the impact on men like the 39-year-old Major Hasan or the British-Pakistani boys born and bred in Yorkshire responsible for the mayhem in London in which they also blew themselves up.
European and American opinion-makers have been busy in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre upholding the ‘loyalty’ of Muslims who have taken up various professions in the West, including joining western armed forces. That’s the wrong way of looking at the challenge. Of course, French, British and American Muslims are as loyal as anyone else to the countries they live in. But secular loyalty is separate from religious commitment. Any administration with some understanding of human psychology avoids pitting one against the other.
The US has something to learn in this regard from Chinese-majority Singapore with its Malay Muslim minority and delicate relations with Malaysia next door. Initially, Malay Singaporeans were exempt from military service which was compulsory for everyone else. When Malays protested that this was a form of discrimination, they were admitted to the armed forces but generally not into sensitive services that might expose them to unnecessary temptation.
Lee Kuan Yew cannot have missed the message of a little-noticed First World War memorial in the heart of Singapore recalling the mutiny by British Indian troops when they were ordered to embark for Europe to fight Turkey. The mutineers were captured and executed: they were all Muslims.
The authorities failed in their task by not paying adequate attention to recent warning signs. Aden’s British-trained police ambushed and killed seven British soldiers long before the young Yorkshire jihadis. The American authorities claim to have foiled a terror plot by six foreign-born men who were planning to blow up Fort Dix in New Jersey.
Betrayal
The FBI accuses Najibullah Zazi, an airport van driver, of planning bomb attacks using hydrogen peroxide. In another case, Hosam (Sam) Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian-American, tried to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.
Like the Indian soldiers in Singapore or the Aden policemen, these trusted protégés of the western powers turned against their mentors. Not all such instances are made public. One that could not be suppressed involved an Afghan national police officer, referred to only as ‘Gulbuddin,’ who shot dead five British officers at Nad-e-Ali in Helmand province. Some of these men may be al-Qaeda or Taliban plants. Others are converts to Islamic fundamentalism. Some question the justice of the two wars, as do a number of British soldiers who have become conscientious objectors or gone AWOL (Absent without official leave).
Major Hasan, whose Palestinian parents migrated to the US before he was born, may have had two other motivations. As a trained psychiatrist who treated American soldiers repatriated from the war theatre, he became familiar with the trauma of the conflict in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Secondly, his cousin, Nader Hasan, confirms that the major suffered “some harassment from his military colleagues” because of his ‘West Asian ethnicity.’
In other words, they taunted (or discriminated against) him for being Arab. It must have seemed the height of western Christian injustice to a man who had been born and brought up in the US and insisted on joining the American army despite parental opposition because he felt he ought to do something for his country.
Wearing salwar, kameez and a cap when off duty, regularly attending the mosque and distributing copies of the Quran need not have amounted to repudiating his country. After all, Major Hasan knew no other. Besides, American multiculturalism should offer space to minority manifestations.
The Christian ethic might be dominant but the supreme court did rule against the cross that had been erected at Pearl Harbour to commemorate the beginning of the Second World War. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban might dub all westerners Crusaders, but the late President Ronald Reagan failed to make Bible-teaching compulsory in schools. The US remains a secular country.
The parting of the ways came when Major Hasan became convinced that the country he regarded as his own had unfairly opened hostilities against his world of the spirit. It is a clash of loyalties that no Muslim should have to suffer.
(End)
