For now. We will see this business again when they think they have an opening and the time is right. At the moment, they may have decided they have bigger fish to fry, with opportunities emerging to install Islamic regimes in multiple countries (under the pretense of democracy). They will also try to leverage that situation with regard to Israel, as we have already seen renewed attacks on Israel aimed at drawing it into a conflict for which it will then be roundly condemned in the Wide World of Useful Idiots, who will appeal, of course, to the U.N.
And for that matter, Islamic groups need at this moment to be able to appeal to concepts like freedom of speech to advance their agenda across North Africa, Yemen, and beyond. Making a fuss over insults right now might look a bit funny.
Even so, they have left themselves a loophole: "However, diplomats from Islamic countries have warned the council that they could return to campaigning for an international law against religious defamation if Western countries are not seen as acting to protect believers."
And you know which "believers" they mean. "Islamic bloc drops U.N. drive on defaming religion," by Robert Evans for Reuters, March 25 (thanks to Alexandre):
(Reuters) - Islamic countries set aside their 12-year campaign to have religions protected from "defamation", allowing the U.N. Human Rights Council to approve a plan to promote religious tolerance on Thursday.
Western countries and their Latin American allies, strong opponents of the defamation concept, joined Muslim and African states in backing without vote the new approach that switches focus from protecting beliefs to protecting believers.
No one wants to name names, as with the EU's document of "stuttering timidity" against the persecution of Christians by Muslims.
According to a report by the British Catholic group Aid to the Church in Need, 75% of religious persecution in the world is committed against Christians. And the report shows how much of that is Muslim persecution of Christians, just over a span of two years. But because protecting Christians does not make for a hip, fashionable cause, the world yawns.
Since 1998, the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) had won majority approval in the council and at the United Nations General Assembly for a series of resolutions on "combating defamation of religion".
Critics said the concept ran against international law and free speech, and left the way open for tough "blasphemy" laws like those in Pakistan which have been invoked this year by the killers of two moderate politicians in Pakistan.
They argued that it also allowed states where one religion predominates to keep religious minorities under tight control or even leave them open to forced conversion or oppression.
But Pakistan, which speaks for the OIC in the rights council, had argued that such protection against defamation was essential to defend Islam, and other religions, against criticism that caused offence to ordinary believers.
Note the perfunctory mention of "other religions." But, no thanks, some of us have thicker skin than that.
Islamic countries pointed to the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in Denmark in 2005, which sparked anti-Western violence in the Middle East and Asia, as examples of defamatory treatment of their faith that they wanted stopped.
Whose prophet? Partial credit for the lower-case "prophet," at least.
However, support for the fiercely-contested resolutions -- which the OIC had been seeking to have transformed into official U.N. human rights standards -- has declined in recent years.
The new three-page resolution, which emerged after discussions between U.S. and Pakistani diplomats in recent weeks, recognises that there is "intolerance, discrimination and violence" aimed at believers in all regions of the world.
Omitting any reference to "defamation", it condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that amounts to incitement to hostility or violence against believers and calls on governments to act to prevent it.
That will be in the eye of the beholder, and can still potentially cause problems.
The U.S.-based Human Rights First campaign group said the new resolution was "a huge achievement because...it focuses on the protection of individuals rather than religions" and put the divisive debates on defamation behind.
However, diplomats from Islamic countries have warned the council that they could return to campaigning for an international law against religious defamation if Western countries are not seen as acting to protect believers.
I wonder if drawing Muhammad from islamic sources descriptions, is considered "defamatory"?
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/05/drawing-muhammad-dessiner-mahomet.html
" it condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that amounts to incitement to hostility or violence against believers and calls on governments to act to prevent it."
Oops.
Note that the Islamic websites claim that JihadWatch and other anti-Islamic websites promote hatred towards Islam. It is not too much of a stretch to imagine CAIR bringing charges against Jihad Watch on the grounds of promoting "hostility...against believers".
The UN resolution obviously is totally incompatible with the US Bill of Rights. It's one or the other.
The European countries, generally with a weaker constitutional system, have almost totally ceded their sovereignty to the European Union, run by faceless, bureaucratic socialists. It is in the nature of things that the UN bureaucrats will try to bring the US government under its purview. The UN, having evolved from an instrument of world conflict resolution, is now a direct threat to American rights and freedoms.
Secular and Godless organization like UN shouldn't even get close to making decisions in religious matters. Once this madness begun already is time for all freedom loving nations to bail out of that corrupt entity or soon they will not have any freedom. .The Antichrist has been revealed, is not a person but the organization. The UN.
The mere idea of an international blasphemy law, sorry, anti-defemation of religion law should serve as a warning to all internationalists. In a borderless world the central government will look much like the UN today, except for veto power. The large Muslim global minority (globally all are minorities, but of different sizes) that is likely to become the largest global minority, together with its allies in the third world and elsewhere, will set the course of such a global state.
That's what will happen also if the West will continue indefinitely with mass immigration. There are far more Mulsims in the world than Europeans and North Americans combined, and their numbers are growing. With a constant influx of Muslims and a higher birth rate they are bound to become a majority in the West. The debate about the time frame - 30, 50 or a 100 years - is meaningful only to people who don't have children and don't intend to have any. The basic calculation is that the young Muslims will take care of them when they are old and then they'll pass away and leave the country to the Muslims. No harm done. Even if the Muslims were contributing to the welfare system as much as they should for that to happen, what about those Westerners who do have children? Don't they care about the quality of life of their children and grandchildren in the future? Living in a Muslim majority country means there will be a blasphemy law even without the central government of the UN.
And BTW, why aren't the people asked how much of their country's sovereignty they are willing to surrender to the UN? It's nice the OIC gave up on this for now, albeit conditionally, but the potential still exists, and I'm not willing to have the OIC or the UN force a blasphemy law on my country and my people. Is that what the UN exists for?
Freedom of speech is the biggest weapon, as taught by our Lord Jesus Christ, to fight against any evil injustice and slavery, including the slavery of women and children. Thus is why, Islam and its Arabic Pedophile rapist creator, Mohammed hated such precious teaching - and did everything he could, contrary to any Judeo-Christian teachings that include rebelling against the Ten Commandments that founded modern civilized Western laws, and for Mohammed amidst his savage Arabic culture, to be able to continue enslaving women/children (both girls and boys) as sex-slaves. Thus is why Mohammed mass murdered the Jews in the first racial Genocide of the Jews, in order to create supremacist and savage Nazi-like Arabic Empire, hence creating Islam and its blood-thirsty god to justify such savage mass murder (besides raping their women and children and keeping them as sex-slaves)!
OT, for DDA:
There is a wonderful interview of Jerry Pournelle your husband will undoubtedly enjoy (and if he's never heard Pournelle's voice before). Some things I didn't know about him before.
See http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=86&load=5084
The problem w/ any international blasphemy laws is that to determine whether blasphemy has been committed, priests from the religion being 'offended' would have to adjudicate at least as a 'jury' to determine whether blasphemy has occurred or not. That itself is a huge morass of an issue.
At what level does one define 'blasphemy'? Would it be higher on the taxonomical scale i.e. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, et al? Or would it be at lower levels - Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, Shia Islam, Episcopalean, Mahayana Buddhism, et al? After all, some things may be considered verboten in one sect of a particular religion, but not in another.
The next issue is that who selects the people who are to adjudicate whether blasphemy has occurred? Would it be a majority of the adherants? And who would have a valid vote here - all nominal members of that religion, or just practicing ones? Would Agnostics be counted in the religions that their families belong to? Or would they be excluded?
The other issue is that while a number of the religions have established head of religions, like the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury (Again, if blasphemy is considered to be against an entire religion, rather than a sect or sub-group, then who represents the religion? Like who would represent Christianity? The Pope? The Archbishop of Canterbury? The head of the Russian Orthodox Church?) there are religions like Hinduism that have no recognized head. So what does one do there - arbitarily decide what is blasphemous to that religion, or just leave it blank so that it's okay to insult the religion in question?
These are just some of the issues. At the end of the day, no religious group is as uptight about being blasphemed as Islam is, so effectively, only the Muslims will be pursuing International blasphemy cases. In the meantime, Muslims can damage churches in Cairo, leave cow heads outside Hindu temples in Dhaka and commit any number of outrages against other religions, and nobody will pursue them in such courts since they'd have better things to do, or alternatively, be too timid to do anything about it.
I wonder if someone has told the Islamic countries that their Holy Writ is defaming other religions from beginning to end and that a rethink is much needed.
The U.S.-based Human Rights First campaign group said the new resolution was "a huge achievement because...it focuses on the protection of individuals rather than religions" and put the divisive debates on defamation behind.
But surely, current Human Rights legislation already exists that supposedly protect "believers", despite the fact that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is routinely ignored in Muslim majority countries the rules do already exist. What the Muslim states want is legislation that puts their believers above other believers.
Good thinking! If they do introduce this resolution, about 5.5 billion of the people on earth can start suing each and every Muslim for the Koran.
Wow, you really thought things through, LOL.
Well, officially we are talking about defamation, not blasphemy. Defamation is by definition presenting something in a bad light, but it also has to be false presentation. Calling a pedophile a pedophile isn't defamation, but calling a non-pedophile a pedophile is. So we will need experts to determine if the expression under investigation is a true or false representation of the religion or of things partaining to the religion. Who will be the experts and who will appoint them? Will every country appoint its own set of experts for every religion or will there be internationally accepted experts appointed by the UN?
The question about denominations is also very important since, for instance, Orthodox and Reform Jews can sue each other from here to the hereafter for all they say about each other's faiths.
The only thing religious in islam is "The Holy Spigot" --OIL!
Otherwise, they exist as idolaters of the big stone-the "worshipful" rock of Mecca and a crazy pagan and his concoction. Everyone, it seems, yields to the concept that a blood cult of hate and hateful, deceitful, lieing can be a religion just because people call it a religion. What weakness. What absurdity! islam embodies almost totally the precepts and principles of the mafia and mostly nazism, combined. A very bad cult, indeed.
islam is a cult, having absolutely no positive loving goodness whatsoever, none that I've ever had honestly pointed out, sans taqya, and embodying virtually all possible negatives, against the principles of a modern civil life.
People must start calling a spade a spade, not a trowel.
islam has far more in common with the ancient practices of pagan tribes of the America's, with all their atrocities, than with any modern actual Religion.
It is sad indeed,that the vast majority of muslims, who are born into islam, the cult of everything that doesn't go their way is to be smashed by god, have absolutely no concept how bad their life is compared to freedom from all their wastes, and pain, and lack of experience of a truly rich existence--called a life!
They have been so brainwashed since birth, their power of imagination of true freedom, with respect of others rights, with the ideas of doing good, of practicing the ten commandments or most of them at least, not doing and dreaming of harm to others, with high mindedness even as a possibility.
The concept of harming others is fundamental to the practice of islam, even to others of professed similar cult beliefs. There exists no concept of live and let live. That is alone, blasphemy, to them. Why can seemingly no one, in the free world, understand that any professed religion, that requires harm to others by a so called god, and equally fake prophet and thief (mo was indeed a thief, too), and requires the killing of those who change their mind (apostates), or simply grow up and see the truth to leave islam and become converts to some alternative belief, even if it is atheism, is simply an evil cult!
It is only because the islams represent a clear and present danger again in the world, due to their resurgence and requirement to conquer the world, and their atrocious and inexcusable behaviors, that the world must get down and dirty with such an absurd lieing, primitive, pagan, people as the people of islam.
There is no blasphemy, islam is as evil as their book commands them to be, that they are. It is what it is. Cause them to wake up to the fact of what they are and always will be until they turn their backs and run away from their fake evil cult, that yet exists as the opposite to the world of decency and decent peoples.
For Muslims, it's defamation when the people doing the defaming are outside their jurisdiction, like, say, British anti-Muslim activists, and blasphemy when they are within their jurisdiction, like Paki Christians.
Besides, the Paki outrage against Pastor Terry Jones for burning a Qur'an was an attack on blasphemy, nor defamation, since the pastor did something no Muslim is supposed to do - desecrate the Qur'an. That's blasphemy. W/ all other religions, blasphemy only applies to adherents. For instance, as a Hindu, if I make false statements against Hindu gods, it's blasphemy. But if I deny that Jesus Christ was son of God, it wouldn't be regarded as blasphemy by Christians since I'm not one. But if I made a statement that Mohammed was a fraud, Muslims would accuse me of blasphemy despite the fact that I'm not a Muslim.
Poor Hillary. First she tried socialist healthcare and got stomped for her trouble. The she tried was bombing an historic ally's capital and that got pretty bloody, but the good part was we got a new Moslem nation out of the effort. But still nobody's happy with her performance. She signed the OIC agreement to make it a crime to criticze religions, even though the only one religion that needs to be openly discussed and openly criticized. None other, just the "faith" of the skull caps.
But Hillary, don't despair. Lookit, just last week we conceded decades of security in the Suez. That's change. And next we're gonna be facing a huge arc of Islamic republics from Persia all the way over to the Maghreb. That's gonna be a real big change. One we'll have no choice but to believe in.
You'll probably get a Nobel Peace Prize for that one.
Yes, what he says this time, and in fact most of the time is right. Still, like Breitbart, we need to lose him. We must be on the offensive, not the defensive. We simply don't have the time to waste fighting rearguard actions.
e. & j.
OT, to Eastview - thanks for the heads-up about the Pournelle interview. Will pass it on.