UN Attacks Free Speech 842
newsblaze writes "The UN Human Rights Council assaulted free expression today, in a 23-11 vote that urges member states to adopt laws outlawing criticism of religions. The proposal came to the UN from Pakistan on behalf of the Organization for the Islamic Conference. There were 13 abstentions. South Korea, Japan, India, Mexico and Brazil, all strong democracies, allowed this to pass by abrogating their responsibility. While the resolution doesn't mention the online world, where does this subject get mentioned most, if not online?" The coverage is from NewsBlaze, which says its mission is to carry important news that other media are not paying attention to. There does not seem to be any other coverage of this vote.
Update: 03/29 00:48 GMT by KD : Reader kshade wrote in: "Actually this is covered by conventional media, even FOX news (Google News links). The absentees weren't there because they boycotted the proposal."
Update: 03/29 00:48 GMT by KD : Reader kshade wrote in: "Actually this is covered by conventional media, even FOX news (Google News links). The absentees weren't there because they boycotted the proposal."
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
There is coverage from other news sources... (Score:5, Informative)
...and it didn't happen today. Looks like Newsblaze wants a couple more pageviews or something.
http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=UN+Religion [google.com]
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/26/1004038/human-rights-body-passes-religious-defamation-resolution [jta.org]
http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71973&Itemid=2 [app.com.pk]
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
"It is individuals who have rights, not religions," Ottawa's representative told the body. "Canada believes that to extend (the notion of) defamation beyond its proper scope would jeopardize the fundamental right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of expression on religious subjects."
Go Canada !
Re:Little early... (Score:5, Informative)
Whoops. Doesn't look like it. [google.com]
Truly nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states, with a vote of 23 states in favor and 11 against, with 13 abstentions."
This was 'passed' by a forum, not the UN General Assembly. It is a non-binding resolution, which is another way to say, "We think this is an idea." That's all, now move along.
Re:Depends on the wording (Score:5, Informative)
I want to see the actual resolution. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on what exactly the resolution said.
I think they're referring to this, from http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/4C99B0F4E7BC7EE8C1257585007B5D90?opendocument [unhchr.ch]:
, except that the against and abstentions numbers seem to be reversed. The long version (further down that same page) is:
Here are some other sources: (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1277265220080312 [reuters.com] - Islamic states seek world freedom curbs: humanists
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE52O5QY20090325 [reuters.com] - U.N. urged to reject bar on defamation of religion
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iRHXSIoJJdXQpG3kPrRO2LWMnWTAD975TOK00 [google.com] - UN body OKs call to curb religious criticism
http://www.secularism.org.uk/108265.html [secularism.org.uk] - Defamation of religion passes at UN Human Rights Council again
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/03/26/the-slow-death-of-freedom-of-expression/ [indexoncensorship.org] - The Slow Death Of Freedom Of Expression
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/freedom-for-the.html [theatlantic.com] - Freedom For The Thought That We Hate
Lots more at http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=1320377548 [google.com]
I'm glad to see that Slashdotters are sceptical of what they read, but sometimes all it takes is a 10 second Google.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:1, Informative)
In related news, Tom Cruise and the Topeka School Board hosted a Sharia-themed gala.
Bzzzzt. Pick some other idiot celebrity. One who isn't a Scientologist.
Pick one or more from Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, or Harry Belafonte. They all love sucking up to commie dictators so bending over and grabbing their ankles for a murderous, misogynistic religion should be right up their alley.
Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide (Score:5, Informative)
A Finnish MP is being prosecuted [jihadwatch.org] because he had the temerity to point out that Mohammed had sex with a nine-year old girl called Aisha, whom he married when she was aged six - details here [wikipedia.org].
The fact is, he's right. From the JihadWatch article:
So, the man that is considered by Islam to be the ideal role model [helium.com], capable only of 'human errors in judgment in minor things with good intentions' [turntoislam.com], was also a child rapist.
The reason that Islamic groups worldwide are pushing for blasphemy laws - and using them when they're available - is to silence people who point out facts like that.
Re:Here are some other sources: (Score:4, Informative)
So they're note outlawing criticism, or attacking free speech, they're outlawing defamation.. which all civilised countries have outlawed anyway.
What is "defamation"? If I say "fundamentalist Islam is a barbaric and misogynistic cult founded by a mass murderer", is your position that I should go to prison? I'm glad my country isn't "civilized".
Re:Here are some other sources: (Score:4, Informative)
ABSOLUTELY NOT, defamation is NOT free speech, any more than fraud is, or perjury.
A defamation is a *false* accusation intended to cause harm. Libel is a form of defamation. Slander is a form of defamation. Logically (I don't know about legally), defamation is a subset of fraud, in that it constitutes an attempt to gain something through false representation. In this sense, perjury, too, is a form of fraud.
Free speech refers only to speech which is 1. not verifiably false (i.e., that is true or that has no fixable truth value), or 2. causes no harm. True speech that causes harm is protected speech. False speech that causes no harm (for example, fiction, or bragging about the fish that got away) is protected speech. Opinion that no one can falsify is protected speech. Anything that you *think* may be true, and had reason to believe was true (for instance, because you thought you checked it), but turns out is not true, is protected speech.
Defamation is an untrue thing you have said with the purpose of harming a person or institution which either a. you know not to be true or b. that you have some reason to suspect is untrue, but choose to say anyway without making a reasonable effort to check to see if it is true.
If I recall correctly (I am not a lawyer) in US law, this is how libel is defined: if it is true, or if there were no malicious intent, or if the person who said it believed it to be true or at least made some reasonable effort to determine its truth and did not find good reason to suspect, it is not libel (and libel is a form of defamation).
See http://www.expertlaw.com/library/personal_injury/defamation.html
As I said, I am not a lawyer. I am also not a right-wing troll.
Pat Condell puts it best (Score:2, Informative)
It's no coincidence that this vote was made on behalf of the "Organization for the Islamic Conference." These are the extremist Islamic nations who are pushing their brainless mouthpieces in the UK, the Netherlands and the rest of Europe to rally all like them to a Jihad against Europe, the goal being to turn Europe into a "medieval theocratic hellhole" like the nations that constitute the "Islamic Conference."
When people are rallying in the streets shouting *threats*, which are not free speech, and which this vote aims to protect, like "Europe your annihilation is on its way!", "Take lesson with Theo van Gogh!" and "You will pay with your blood!" you really have to wonder wonder why they choose to live there in the first place. [youtube.com]
It's now completely apparent that the U.N. -- the "United" Nations -- are really just a bunch of idiotic morally bankrupt dickheads who are willing to allow themselves to be cowed into voting that the hateful, threat mongering, murdering minority of extremist Islamists should have a privileged position, immune from criticism -- criticism that they can't stand because at its core, such free speech is just the thing which would cause these movements to collapse.
Free speech represents one of the *pillars of human civilization.* The fact that the U.N. would engage in such slander of it is just more proof that the organization needs to be dissolved and replaced with something better -- there is no diplomacy in those halls, fear; hate and corruption apparently overpowered civilized and peaceful discourse long ago.
jdb2
Re:Which Muslims? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not just Bukhari though - as you can see from the quote from JihadWatch. AFAICT you can utterly reject Bukhari, and still come up with ages of 6 and 9.
(It's interesting to see that I've already been modded flamebait. Slashdot's equivalent to blasphemy, I guess :-) )
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:2, Informative)
I believe Ottawa objects to both the outlawing of religious criticism and the expression of hatred on the basis of religon. The former would make it impossible for one to express anything anti-religion and it would limit freedoms whose expression present no harm to others; the latter is mainly to prevent harm and hatred against religious people.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not so sure you are breaking the law. Your hate is directed against religions, not individuals. I think you cross the line when you get personal, that is, you advocate hate and / or violence and against persons having religious beliefs. That's why it's called "human rights", right? You can blast any organization as a whole, as long as you dont point to people who are part of it.
That said, I dont hate religions. I just wish they would get bored waiting for god to show up and trying to control the world meanwhile, and leave us all to play nicer games.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
Inciting hatred in Canada just means rendering it at all more likely that someone would be discriminated against or hurt.
So in fact your "criticism" could very well be "hate speech" in Canada, just if it was ruled to increase the chances that a Christian would be discriminated against or hurt.
In fact, there have been fundamentalist types who have been prosecuted for hate speech for simply posting anti-homosexual selections from the Bible. They'll just make a post like this: "Homosexuals should read Book of Whatever verse whatever which says [homosexuality is an abomination whatever, homosexuals will go to hell]."
Mark Steyn was prosecuted for quoting and agreeing with a Norwegian mullah who said that Muslims would eventually take over Europe. He was cleared though, but probably only because of the huge media pressure.
Re:Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. And Pharohs married their sisters, ancient Spartan's were all pederasts and George Washington kept slaves.
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. And don't think the future will be much different.
Re:Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. For example this is the definition of "statutory rape": "sexual intercourse with a person who is below the statutory age of consent"
So, if there's no statutory age of consent, there's no rape. Simple as that. What you want to say is that is "bad" regardless of law, you only use the word "rape" because is a loaded word. That's OK with me, just make sure you don't confuse the concepts in you head, that's worse than just trying to confuse other people using words that don't apply.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, there's a difference.
The Canadian law is not about "hatred" per se, in that it's not really about feelings. It's about deliberately inciting others to take directly discriminatory actions toward a particular class of people. That would include a broad range of statements such as, "Don't hire Catholics!" or "Kill all Muslims!"
Criticism is rather different, in that one can, for instance, easily say, "Sharia law is sexist" without deliberately inciting any kind of anti-Muslim action. Et cetera.
Re:Here are some other sources: (Score:1, Informative)
I forgot to add, religion is defamation of logic and reason. Which is why it would also have to be outlawed.
Demonstrably false. Christianity for example draws heavily on the thinking of Aristotle and others who greatly prize reason.
What you claim might be true of a non-Hellenized religion, I can't really speak to that. But many western religions, such as Catholicism, will reject certain theological notions simply because they are logically absurd.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:5, Informative)
What part of the UN proposal does Ottawa object to?
Ottawa's representative told the body. "Canada believes that to extend (the notion of) defamation beyond its proper scope would jeopardize the fundamental right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of expression on religious subjects."
In Canada, advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any 'identifiable group' is an indictable offense under the Criminal Code of Canada with maximum terms of two to fourteen years. An 'identifiable group' is defined as 'any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.' It makes exceptions for cases of statements of truth, and subjects of public debate and religious doctrine.
Re:Here are some other sources: (Score:3, Informative)
The essence of any religion, including Christianity, is that logic and reason are less important than faith. There's no question that when convenient, religion would like to go along with logic and reason. The problem is when they conflict with faith, the religious are supposed to go with faith.
Re:mod parent up (Score:1, Informative)
What nonsense is this?!?! Exactly when or where has the UN has been instrumental in making the world stable independently of the United States? I was pretty astonished that having a secretary general from Africa didn't involve more activity in Africa allowing genocides and numerous wars to start or continue.
The lack of a major war? I guess that depends what you mean by a major war. Let's consider the Second Congo War in the former country of Zaire that ended up killing 5.4 million people and displaced millions more. It started in 1998 and was supposed to end in 2003, but fighting still continues. Yeah, the UN has been REAL effective in preventing and defusing conflicts.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:1, Informative)
You are misusing the word 'hate' here.
You need to remember there is a specific legal defination of 'hate' as in 'hate crime'.
If you go around bashing somebodies religion with no more fervour than you would a movie or politician you hated its not a hate crime, and your not inciting hatred. You can sit there and point out the logical inconstancies in a religion all day long, you can even get angry about it. Its still not a hate crime.
The point is that its free speech, you don't have to like what somebody has to say, thats kind of the point. Not silencing dissenting opinions.
Re:Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide (Score:3, Informative)
So why are people being prosecuted for bringing it up?
Because various Islamic groups and authorities - as well as individual radicals - want to prohibit the examination of the religion by the West.
There are several reasons for this, but the primary political motivation is stealth jihad [frontpagemagazine.com].
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:2, Informative)
Hating someone (which doesn't really affect anyone but yourself) and inciting hate (where one act upon the hate to jeopardize another person's life) is different, just like people who thought of murdering and actually murdering someone is different.
Surely, you have freedom to think whatever you want, but idea have consequences, and thus you need to take responsibility of idea you vocalized/published. But certainly, there need to be a balance.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:4, Informative)
Unlike western systems where the laws are held in a single repository.
Ahahahhaha. Right. Single repository. Well, first of all, Most nations use civil codes for their law, and I guess that makes things easier for them, but all Commonwealth nations, and the United States, use the common law system, which is built on, you guessed it, precedent. As for them being all in one place, no. Basically what happens is that each trial results in a decision, which may or may not be written. If the decision is written, then it gets passed along to the reporters, who decide whether it's important enough to be reported. If it gets reported, it's precedent. Note that each country might have several different reporters, any one of which might report the case. For a long time in England, the cases were reported in the newspapers, and those papers were for a long time the main place records were kept.
Of course, a case that's reported may end up being overturned by a higher court later, and on up to the Supreme Court of that jurisdiction, creating three separate cases. Only one will generally end up being precedent (the top one) but sometimes the high court will refer to something the trial court said, so we have to keep all the decisions around.
To complicate things further, different jurisdictions follow their own precedents, so that you could have, in theory at least, a different interpretation of a law for each State and one for the United States, and they would all be precedent, depending on where the disputed harm occurred, and which constitution or statute, state or federal, is being invoked. Now this would be exceedingly rare and unlikely, to have 50+ different precedents on the same matter, as usually the best decisions will sooner or later be adopted by most or all of the states, but it's possible. (I don't know if this situation has ever happened, I'm studying law in Canada)
In the Commonwealth, it can get even more tricky, because even though a case in your own jurisdiction is precedent, cases from other jurisdictions can be persuasive. So in Ontario, Canada, a House of Lords decision from England might have more weight than a lower court decision from Saskatchewan. And in Canada, for a long time, the House of Lords in England was the supreme court, so older English decisions are binding. The oldest English decision I've read in school so far was in Property law, and the decision was from 1210 I believe. It's still good law.
And finally, the trend in most countries, whether they use the common or the civil law, is that they are slowly evolving into hybrids of both. Common laws can always be superceded by statute, and in civil law countries, more and more they are starting to track the decisions made by judges in interpreting the civil codes.
Re:Little early... (Score:3, Informative)
23 countries voted for the motion. The UN has over 200 members. The UN as a whole hasn't ratifed this and I'm sure never will.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:3, Informative)
You're not encouraging people to injure members of a religion, and that is the key difference. There's a world of difference between:
"Religions are delusions that only ignorant people follow."
and
"We should burn down a church so they'll have nowhere to pray!"
Even in the second part, you'd have to show an intent to incite the act of arson. The arson itself would be a crime on its own, but by making it about religion, it becomes a hate crime. Your role as the inciter exposes you to persecution.
Serious shortage of RTFA... (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's become something of a sport here to criticize the editors, but talk about being asleep at the wheel here...
If you do about 90 seconds of research here (which is about what I did), you would see that:
1) this is a non-binding resolution. i.e. it doesn't mean jack.
2) a similar resolution has been proposed (by Pakistan) and passed (by the so-called human rights council) every year since 1999
3) the number of countries supporting the resolution has actually decreased significantly every year for the past few years.
In other words, in terms of the actual effect this will have on anyone at all, this is about as non-news as it gets. If there is any news here at all, it is that this type of proposal has been rapidly losing support on the world stage lately. In particular, almost every major religious group except for Islam (and even many subgroups of Islam) have spoken out against such a measure.
Re:Here are some other sources: (Score:2, Informative)
OK, I was gonna mod you 'troll', but I decided it would be best to counter your facile PAEDOPHILE!!1ONE jab with a couple of points of interest to, you know, give a little bit of context:
1. I assume you're talking about Aisha here, right? You cannot in all seriousness judge people who lived 1400 years ago by today's societal mores. Times change, history doesn't.
2. Educate yourself on the Age Of Consent in various countries today. For example, the AOC in Spain and Japan is currently 13, 12 in Mexico, and puberty in Bolivia. Ironically, in Saudi Arabia (Mo's birthplace) there are motions to establish 14 as the minimum age for marriage (extra-marital sex is illegal).
While #2 above might be an affront to your white Christian Western sensibilities, it has absolutely nothing to do with paedophilia.
Re:Little early... (Score:1, Informative)
My favourite part about this is how all the democratic countries abstained from voting instead of using their freedom of speech to oppose it. The problem is not the UN but its impotent members.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:3, Informative)
I do not know the law in Canada, but there is a difference between hating religion and hationg religious people.
Now, I, for one, despise religions, and barring some exceptions, I hold religious people in fairly low regard. Then again, barring some exceptions, I hold most people in low regard. Call me an elitist asshole, or at least a mysanthrope; it's fine by me.
However, all this does not mean I would ever go on to hate crime. I would not go and beat up Catholics just because of all the evil, immoral and even unconstitutional things the Catholic Church is getting away with in my country (raped retarded children in a Church-managed orphanage; religion taught in secular schools, to name but a few).
I cannot imagine anyone being convicted just because he uttered the words "you should hate religions". I can imagine and do support people getting convicted because they utter the words "all religious people should be burned at a stake".
Ceterum censeo, all extremists should be taken out and shot.
Re:Sorry, but I have to consider the source (Score:4, Informative)
Saying "Islam is evil" is fine. It doesn't fall under the hate speech laws, because you do not direct hate against individuals.
Saying "Islam is evil, and so are all Muslims - go kill 'em all" is hate speech.
I hope the difference here is obvious.
Re:Pat Condell puts it best (Score:3, Informative)
It's no coincidence that this vote was made on behalf of the "Organization for the Islamic Conference." These are the extremist Islamic nations who are pushing their brainless mouthpieces in the UK, the Netherlands and the rest of Europe to rally all like them to a Jihad against Europe, the goal being to turn Europe into a "medieval theocratic hellhole" like the nations that constitute the "Islamic Conference."
Your words make it sound as if OIC represents only a small subset of Islamic countries. I'm not sure whether it's intended effect or not, but either way that's not true. OIC covers [wikipedia.org] the majority of Islamic countries in the world. If it's extremist, it only goes to show what the underlying basis for that extremism is...
Free speech represents one of the *pillars of human civilization.*
Not really. Free speech represents one of the pillars of Western civilization - which is no small reason why said civilization now rules the globe. Unfortunately, UN, which was also originally a westernized creation, was handed over to the likes of OIC, which keeps subverting the original idea. The original Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still one of the more important and valuable UN contributions, but that was during the West-run UN period. Which is precisely why OIC hates it, and drafted their own version, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam [wikipedia.org], without those pesky "Judeo-Christian influences" such as freedom to choose one's religion and denounce others, and gender equality.
Yawn! (Score:3, Informative)
Yet another right-wing anti-UN media beat-up that has suckered the sleeping Slashdot editors in. The OIS have had this same motion passed every year for the last 10 years and it hasn't made a blind bit of difference because ITS A RECOMMENDATION and everyone ignores it!!! Nothing out of this talk-shop is ever binding, and never will be. Get a life and worry about something real.
That took all of 3 minutes research to find out. Some editor, I think his personal bias is showing...
Re:Little early... (Score:1, Informative)
It gets worse. Obama wants to bring the US closer, and it laws "more in line" with the UN.
Re:In technical terms (Score:3, Informative)
Atheism is a religion, at least in terms of a being a system of beliefs that governs a person's actions.
Atheism isn't "a system of beliefs". It's simply a lack of one belief - specifically in that of a deity (or deities).
(The old "atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby" is still the best way to put it.)
Re:Islamic groups are pushing censorship worldwide (Score:4, Informative)
WTF? Seriously? Have you not read the news - eight year old girls filing for divorce in Saudi Arabia, & Imams throughout the world fighting Governments that are trying to introduce minimum ages of consent?
A few seconds' Googling turned up this gem [asianews.it]:
Sanaâ(TM)a (AsiaNews) - Some Yemeni religious figures have launched a "fatwa" against the law recently approved by Parliament that sets the minimum age for marriage at 17. The statement, signed by the rector of Al-Eman University, Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, and by representatives of the party Islamic Islah, is aimed at eliminating the minimum age limit.
The question of the minimum age for marriage in Yemen was brought to the attention of world public opinion last April, following the case of Nojud Mohammed Ali, an 8-year-old girl who requested and obtained a divorce after being forced to marry a 30-year-old man.
I fear you've been drinking the 'moderate Islam' kool-aid, Mart.