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United Nations Human Rights Commission hears complaints from Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Jihad Watch Advisory Board member Ibn Warraq. "Europe 'weak on Islam rights,'" from Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:
GENEVA - The main global humanist organisation and a group of former Muslims on Monday accused European countries of ignoring violations of human rights in their Islamic communities to preserve "multi-culturalism".In a presentation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and at a separate news conference and a seminar, they also argued that Muslim countries were trying to use the body to quash any discussion of their own rights record.
"Western society tends to turn a blind eye to the plight of European Muslim women and girls because 'Muslim culture is different'," Roy Brown, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), told the 53-member Commission.
"Yet in Europe many women find themselves subject to domestic violence, undergo forced marriages or are even killed by family members because of some belief that they have tarnished the family honour," Brown declared.
That view was echoed later by three ex-Muslims and self-described atheists -- Somali-born Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Iranian exile rights activist Azam Kamguian and historian of Islam Ibn Warraq -- and French sociologist Caroline Fourest.
Hirsi Ali, who fled to the Netherlands in 1992 to escape an arranged marriage, told the news conference she condemned "the moral relativism in Europe whereby women from Third World countries do not enjoy the same freedoms as native European women enjoy."
Many Muslim women and girls "are forced to marry, have their genitals mutilated, are taken by their parents to their countries of origin against their wishes, sometimes even killed," she declared.
UPSIDE-DOWN RACISM
Liberal democratic governments did not interfere out of a concern to maintain a policy of "multi-culturalism" -- encouraging immigrants from other parts of the world to maintain their traditions while integrating into their host society.
Kamguian, a former political prisoner and women's activist in Iran, who now lives in London, said this "cultural relativism" in Europe and Canada "was upside-down racism" which denied the universality of human rights, especially for women.
The United Nations estimates as many as 5,000 women a year are killed worldwide in so-called "honour killings".
London police said last year they were reviewing more than 100 deaths and disappearances of women in the last 10 years that could be related to "honour killings". There have been a number of high-profile prosecutions in Europe over such cases.
Fourest, author of several books on religious extremism, told the seminar on the fringes of the commission that sexism and oppression of women "are the main values shared by fundamentalists of all three monotheist religions."
Sure. That's why you see so many honor killings in the Bible Belt.
She told the news conference a resolution from Islamic states on "defamation of religion" passed by the commission last week was in line with efforts by the Catholic Church and other faiths to protect religion from criticism.
Posted by Robert at April 19, 2005 7:50 AM
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"She [Caroline Fourest] told the news conference a resolution from Islamic states on "defamation of religion" passed by the commission last week was in line with efforts by the Catholic Church and other faiths to protect religion from criticism."
I am unaware of such efforts, outside of Islam, to "protect religion from criticism." What efforts are these? Or was Caroline Fourest , not an ex-Muslim but a non-Muslim, unable to see what defectors from Islam easily see, which is that the ferocity of Islam, the Total System of Islam, the complete control of the political and the social lives, as well as of the individual worship, of its adherents (who cannot leave once they have been born into, or recruited into, the Army of Islam), is not similar to, but quite different from, other religions and other "fundamentalisms," a word now used on every conceivable and inconceivable occasion to create false symmetries that are so soothing for some to postulate and then dwell upon.
Too bad she felt the need to imagine the same kind of ferociousness toward critics in other religions or belief-systems today -- when such do not exist.
As far as one knows, such immortal works of art as "The Pissing Christ" have not led to Christian fatwas against their makers. No one who makes fun of any religion other than Islam is in danger of anything.
But there are strokes -- of the cane, the whip, and even worse -- for different folks, if those folks make fun of Islam.
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 19, 2005 9:15 AM
I understand the purpose of this post, and Ali Hirsi's and Ibn Warraq's mission, but the Reuters headline "Europe 'weak on Islam rights,'" is absurd. What per centage of Europe's recently immigrated Muslim population are claiming refugee status because the government back home is cracking down on Islamists, crying that they will be tortured if sent back.
Europe is doubtless guilty of turning a blind eye to all sorts of grievous human rights violations within its borders in an exercise of reverse racism (and not enlightened, genuinely liberal thinking), but infinitely more egregious human rights violations are occurring in Muslim countries and the UN has been worse than useless at addressing that, doubtless because the Arab/Muslim block, with its "non-aligned" friends, keep the place tied up passing anti-Israel resolutions.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at April 19, 2005 11:05 AM
It's very encourageing to see the problem of moral cowardice exposed and condemned out in the open.
Posted by: Mike at April 19, 2005 6:16 PM
I don't understand the intent of the Reuters' writer Robert Evans' Headline:
"Europe 'weak on Islam rights'"
And the body of the article is so full of 'loaded' phraseologies and selected emphases, that the point becomes lost in talk about 'atheists' and it veering into an oblique critique the "three monotheisms'" similar 'shared' abuses.
What the author was trying to say: that Europe is weak on applying its declared 'Universal Human Rights' to members of Islam, in a kind of culturally patronizing contempt, appears to have gotten lost along the way.
What one is left feeling is: atheists oppose Islam. And all three major religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are the same in their abuses of women. Plus, Catholicism ("and other faiths"--???) is joined with Islam in supressing any criticism of religion.
In all, a mess of a piece.
Probably on purpose by the author, to confuse the issues, and to posit a moral equivalence between Islam and Judeo-Christianity that the creed of the sword does not deserve. And imply that only the 'godless' really oppose Islam.
Who is this Robert Evans?
(It ain't the producer of "The Godfather" and author of "The Kid Stays In the Picture", that's for sure. He can write.)
And what the hell is his agenda?
Posted by: BigSleep at April 20, 2005 12:44 AM
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