Appeal to UN Sec'y General to condemn fatwas to kill in the name of God

An appeal from the Association for World Education, the Association of World Citizens, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union:

APPEAL to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN High Commissioner Louise Arbour

To Condemn Clerical Calls and Fatwas to Kill in the Name of God

Your Excellencies,

At the recent informal meeting of the Council on Human Rights in Geneva Pakistan’s Ambassador Masood Khan delivered a statement on behalf of the OIC in which he raised a delicate question, and asked whether “there is a disconnect between the Secretary-General and the Council.” He also suggested that the Islamic States would like to see a more “predictable relationship” between the OIC and the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Such attempts to impose censorship have become common at UN bodies and might explain why our constant calls to the Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission – and to the OIC and the Arab League – to condemn unequivocally all those who kill or incite to kill in the name of God or religion were ignored.

More indiscriminate jihadist attacks are anticipated daily. A policy of silence on this ideology of Jihad by Muslim spiritual and secular leaders, the OIC and Arab League – as well as the inter-national community – implicitly condones this evil, an evil that should be condemned unequivocally by senior Muslim theologians as a “defamation of Islam,” and certainly not condoned as was done on 4 April 2002 by the Great Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradhawi on Qatar TV on 25 February 2006 – and by others since then. If this policy of complicity is accepted – not only by senior Muslim theologians but by the international community – the future for humanity will be bleak.

In face of this cult of hate, death and destruction against “the other” – we are appealing to you to condemn all calls to kill in the name of God or religion – any religion.

We are making available here:

– Our joint written statement to the last 62nd session of the Commission on Human Rights titled, Calls to Kill in the name of God or Religion: E/CN.4/2006/NGO/231.
[http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G05/149/20/PDF/G0514920.pdf?OpenElement]
It contains documentation on Islamic religious leaders and clerics, and others who justify these crimes against humanity, as well as some of those courageous Muslim moderates such as Amir Taheri who regularly warn of “the real battle against the enemy of mankind.”

– Our joint invitation for a Parallel NGO Conference on: Victims of Jihad: Muslims, Dhimmis, Apostates and Women, held at the 61st session of the UNCHR on 18 April 2005, which lists the twelve participants. Also the Opening Statement to the above Conference of joint NGO sponsors by Roy W. Brown, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

– Our oral joint statement (with full notes) delivered on 26 July 2005 to the 57th session of the Sub-CHR by David G. Littman, a representative of the Association for World Education. It contains a full list of the 15 NGO written statements (with UN references) that relate directly to this Conference, and to the ideology of Jihad which Prime Minister Tony Blair – speaking in the House of Commons on 13 July 2005 – rightly called an “extreme and evil ideology.”

– AWE’s written statement on Judeophobia Today: anti-Judaism / anti-Zionism / antisemitism: A Growing ‘Culture of Hate’ (E/CN.4/2004/NGO/5), with an Appeal to the then Acting High Commissioner Bertrand Ramcharan, and a 1971 text by D.F. Green that analyses the genocidal dangers of racist hate – well illustrated by the Proceedings of the 1968 Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research, Al-Azhar University (Cf. Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel, Editions de l’Avenir, Geneva, 3rd edition, 1976 – with many passages on Jihad).
[http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G04/107/82/PDF/G0410782.pdf?OpenElement ]

For 40 years this ongoing campaign of hate through Jihad, Judeophobia and anti-Zionism has become endemic in the Arab/Muslim world and is creeping into Europe and others countries.

All of humanity is concerned by these assaults on our common values enshrined in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. We are calling on you – in your capacities as UN Secretary-General and UN High Commissioner of Human Rights – to raise your voices on this very grave matter. The poet John Donne’s ominous words are a reminder to us all:

“And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

* * * * *

René V.L. Wadlow / David G. Littman / Roy W. Brown (Representatives: UNO, Geneva)
Association for World Education: Case Postale 205 – 1196 Gland – Suisse
International Humanist and Ethical Union, 1 Gower St, London WC1E 6HD, UK.

Posted by Robert at August 11, 2007 7:21 AM
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