This is fine news indeed, especially since he says he is giving up in the face of immovable opposition from the U.S. and Europe. But with so many recent calls for the imposition of Islamic blasphemy laws in the West under the guise of "hate speech" laws, and with many of them coming from Western journalists, we're not quite out of the woods yet in regard to Islamic supremacist assaults upon the freedom of speech.
"West's free speech stand bars blasphemy ban - OIC," by Tom Heneghan for Reuters, October 15 (thanks to David):
(Reuters) - Western opposition has made it impossible for Muslim states to obtain a ban on blasphemy, including anti-Islamic videos and cartoons that have touched off deadly riots, the Islamic world's top diplomat said.Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), said his 57-nation body would not try again for United Nations support to ban insults to religion, but appealed for states to apply hate-speech laws concerning Islam.
"We could not convince them," said the Turkish head of the 57-member organisation which had tried from 1998 until 2011 to get a United Nations-backed ban on blasphemy.
"The European countries don't vote with us, the United States doesn't vote with us."
Western countries see the publication of such images and materials as a matter of free speech....
Ihsanoglu told a conference in Istanbul at the weekend that the OIC had failed to win a ban at the United Nations and would not revive its long diplomatic campaign for one.
Asked about recent media reports that the OIC wanted to resume the campaign for a blasphemy ban, he said: "I never said this and I know this will never happen."...
Ihsanoglu's statement clarified the OIC stand at a time when Muslim religious leaders have stepped up demands for an international blasphemy law and politicians have accused Western states of spreading anti-Muslim hatred under the protection of their free-speech laws.
Starting in 1998, the 57-nation OIC won majorities in U.N. rights bodies and at the U.N. General Assembly every year for non-binding resolutions on "combating defamation of religions" that Western states opposed as potential threats to free speech.
But support for these texts steadily fell to just over 50 percent by 2010, because of strong Western and growing Latin American opposition, and the OIC opted for a weaker resolution against intolerance towards all religions last year.
That more general resolution, drawn up with the United States and the European Union, passed unanimously.
The long dispute highlighted differing views of free speech in Western and Muslim countries. Ihsanoglu said Western states had a "strange understanding" of free speech if it could be abused to hurt and insult others....
Muslim politicians have stepped up their denunciations of Western free speech policies following the video and cartoons lampooning Prophet Mohammad. Muslims consider any criticism of him as highly offensive and beyond free speech protection.
"We cannot accept insults to Islam under the guise of freedom of thought," Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told the Istanbul conference.
"We Muslims want the same respect shown to Jewish culture, which we support," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
But while editorialists and religious leaders have renewed calls for a worldwide blasphemy ban, few national leaders have actually ended their rhetorical reactions with that demand.
One who did at the United Nations last month was President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, whose own national blasphemy law has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad as open to widespread abuse against minority Christians.
Ihsanoglu, speaking at the conference on a panel with Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan, encouraged countries with blasphemy laws to apply against insults to Islam, and then quickly added: "not particularly the one in Pakistan".
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The Westerner may choose to believe a Muslim, but such is done at his/her own peril. Hudna is an Islamic concept of truce. "Lets all just say we stop fighting for a spell of, lets say, 10 years." [Why 10 years? To the surprise of no one who knows Islam: Because Mohammed, Islam's "perfect man," set the example in terms of his (Mo's) fighting with the Quraysh tribe. (Ever notice how Mohammed was always fighting with someone?) "If Muslims are weak, a truce may be made for ten years if necessary, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) made a truce with the Quraysh for that long, as is related by Abu Dawud" ('Umdat al-Salik, o9.16).]
Muslims aren't going away, either quietly or noisily, on the freedom of speech issue. They're seething about it. It will come up again, and again, etc.
For us, our course is clear: Stay on the ramparts and stay alert. "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." John Philpot Curran (1750–1817).