Recently in Organization of the Islamic Conference Category

Obama is in the White House and endorses their efforts. The OIC has tried for years to compel Western states to restrict free speech and outlaw truth-telling about Islam, and now it is pressing on toward final victory. Apparently OIC top dogs are not satisfied with the current rate of compliance of the dhimmi mainstream media, even though it is almost total: the media constantly ignores, downplays, and obfuscates the ways in which Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, the Islamic character of honor killings, and more. Yet the OIC thinks that there is a "smear campaign against Islam in newspapers and media institutions in the West" -- in other words, the truth is still getting out, because Muslims keep committing acts of violence in the name of Islam and it is hard even for the media to cover it up totally. So...time for another media workshop.

"OIC To Hold Media Workshop To Address Smear Campaign Against Islam," from Bernama, February 13:

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 (Bernama) -- The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is to hold a media workshop in Brussels on Feb 15 to 16 pertaining to the smear campaigns against Islam in newspapers and media institutions in the West.

The objective of this first-of-its-kind workshop is to develop media-related mechanisms to address the smear campaigns, the OIC said in a statement.

It said the workshop will discuss at length the reasons behind and the results of the Western media's offensive campaigns against the symbols and sanctities of Islam and Muslims, which it added still occur from time to time.

"The workshop will represent a quantum leap in media action, as it discusses, beyond rhetoric, the practical steps to address the phenomenon of Islamophobia," the OIC said....

I am not in favor of laws restricting the freedom of speech, but this response from the OIC is consistent with its own attempts to restrict truth-telling about Islam and jihad under the guise of criminalizing "religious hatred." Note also that by labeling the French law an example of "Islamophobia," Ihsanoglu is tacitly admitting that the Armenian genocide was an Islamic jihad action; otherwise, what would Islam have to do with this law at all?

"OIC: Adoption of genocide law sign of Islamophobia in France," by A. Taghiyeva for Trend, January 24:

The adoption of the law criminalizing the denial of the so-called "Armenian Genocide" is a sign of Islamophobia in France, Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told Trend on Tuesday.

"This law contradicts three fundamental principles of democracy -- equality, freedom and brotherhood. It is a sign of growing Islamophobia," Ihsanoglu said.

He called the law unacceptable, non-complying with historical facts and demonstrating double standards.

After a nearly eight-hour debate, the French Senate adopted the bill. Some 127 senators voted in favor, while 86 senators voted against on Jan.23.

The lower house of the French parliament adopted a bill criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" on Dec.22. Some 45 out of 577 French MPs voted with 38 voting for and seven against the adoption of the bill.

The bill demands a year's imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euro for denying the so-called "genocide." In response to the decision, Turkey announced that it has frozen all diplomatic relations with France.

MPs from the French president's Union for Popular Movement (UMP) party, which has the parliamentary majority, proposed the bill aimed at criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" to the legislative committee of the National Assembly in early December.

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that the predecessor of the Turkey - Ottoman Empire had committed the 1915 genocide against the Armenians living in Anadolu, and achieved recognition of the "Armenian Genocide" by the parliaments of several countries.

No one is in favor of actual "stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion." The problem is that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is driving this resolution, considers any truthful speech about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism to be "stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion." This is an attempt to quash truth-telling about Islamic jihad so that the West stands mute and defenseless before its advance. And now the Obama Administration, fresh from a secret meeting with the OIC on just this topic, joins in.

Free Speech Death Watch Alert: "U.N. Adopts ‘Religious Intolerance’ Resolution Championed by Obama Administration," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, December 20 (thanks to Wimpy):

(CNSNews.com) – The U.N. General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution condemning the stereotyping, negative profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion, and urging countries to take effective steps “to address and combat such incidents.”

No member state called for a recorded vote on the text, which was as a result adopted “by consensus.”

The resolution, an initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), is based on one passed by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council in Geneva last spring. The State Department last week hosted a meeting to discuss ways of “implementing” it.

Every year since 1999 the OIC has steered through the U.N.’s human rights apparatus a resolution condemning the “defamation of religion,” which for the bloc of 56 Muslim states covered incidents ranging from satirizing Mohammed in a newspaper cartoon to criticism of shari’a and post-9/11 security check profiling.

Critics regard the measure as an attempt to outlaw valid and critical scrutiny of Islamic teachings, as some OIC states do through controversial blasphemy laws at home.

Strongly opposed by mostly Western democracies, the divisive “defamation” resolution received a dwindling number of votes each year, with the margin of success falling from 57 votes in 2007 to 19 in 2009 and just 12 last year.

This year’s text was a departure, in that it dropped the “defamation” language and included a paragraph that reaffirms “the positive role that the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information can play in strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance.”

The nod to freedom of expression won the resolution the support of the U.S. and other democracies, with the Obama administration and others hailing it as a breakthrough after years of acrimonious debate.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the opportunity of the State Department-hosted talks with foreign governments, the OIC and other international bodies last week to stress the importance of freedom of speech in the U.S. She argued that “the best way to treat offensive speech is by people either ignoring it or combating it with good arguments and good speech that overwhelms it.”

Saudi initiative singled out for praise

Nonetheless, the resolution adopted in New York on Monday does contain elements that concern some free speech and religious freedom advocates.

It calls on states “to take effective measures to ensure that public functionaries in the conduct of their public duties do not discriminate against an individual on the basis of religion or belief.”

Governments also are expected to make “a strong effort to counter religious profiling, which is understood to be the invidious use of religion as a criterion in conducting questionings, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures.”

“Effective measures” to counter cases of religious stereotyping and stigmatization include education, interfaith dialogue and “training of government officials.”

And in the worst cases, those of “incitement to imminent violence” based on religion, the resolution calls on countries to implement “measures to criminalize” such behavior....

All such things are in the eye of the beholder, meaning that the enforcement agency will decide what is offensive and what is incitement, and silence people accordingly.

Pamela Geller has the incredible story here: "Emulating their Sharia Partner, the OIC, State Department Detains Andrea Lafferty as 'Threat,' 'The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me'":

The Obama administration is harassing and detaining law-abiding patriots.

SIOA and the Traditional Values Coalition have been carefully monitoring the anti-constitutional collusion of Obama's State department and the global Islamic supremacist org, the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation). Today, SIOA partner and TVC president, Andrea Lafferty, was detained by the State department as a "threat" merely for covering the secret event....

On Monday, I wrote in the American Thinker, the respect and deference that the United States is paying to the OIC amounts to surrender in installments. The call for "respect and empathy and tolerance," coming from the most brutal and oppressive ideology on the face of the earth, reminds me of the "peace and equality" that was promised in Hitler's campaign posters for the Nationalist Socialist Workers (Nazi) party.

How prescient:

Andrea Lafferty Targeted, Detained By State Department Security Personnel as “Threat”

Washington D.C. (December 15th, 2011)-- Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) president Andrea Lafferty was targeted and detained by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security personnel this Wednesday during the closing event capping the three day closed-door conference advancing the implementation of U.N. Resolution 16/18.

“For weeks we have been asking whether the true aims of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and U.N. Resolution 16/18 would be used to apply “old fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to chill and coerce those critical of the Islamist agenda,” said Lafferty.

“Hillary Clinton was as good as her word,” said Lafferty.

Lafferty was circled by several members of Secretary Clinton’s staff before being approached by a member of the security detail, demanding Lafferty follow him. When asked why she was being removed from the reception hall, the security detail announced that a phone call had identified Lafferty as a “security threat” to Secretary Clinton.

“I was shocked and angry at the pressure and shameful intimidation tactics our State Department put on, even to the point of identifying me as a threat to Hillary Clinton.”

Secretary Clinton in a June 2011 conference in Istanbul, Turkey remarked how certain comments from those concerned about Islamic fanaticism have been deemed as “incendiary” and looked to sympathize with efforts that would criminalize certain speech that is “an incitement to imminent violence.”

“This language -- “incitement to imminent violence” -- has been used time and time again to close events here in the United States concerning the impact of Islamic shariah law, detain law-abiding Christians elsewhere, and now even target and detain as security threats people from State Department events,” said Lafferty.

“The very restriction on free speech the UN Resolution was pushing is exactly what they used against me,” said Lafferty.

“I had warned previously how members of the U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton have pointedly remarked that part of the implementation of U.N. Resolution 16/18 will be an effort to utilize “techniques of peer pressure and shaming” to silence critics of Islamic shariah,” said Lafferty. “Little did I realize how quickly Clinton and her Islamist friends were set to make examples out of law-abiding Americans."

Read it all.

"Terrorism" is ultimately not much of a signifier. It refers to a tactic of war that has been used by different groups throughout history. The caveats that the OIC countries make here are telling enough, and in any case their condemnations of terrorism will be utterly void of meaning unless they specifically include Islamic jihad violence within them. But they will never do that. "Islamic Bloc Declines to Condemn All Terrorism," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, September 12 (thanks to Wimpy):

(CNSNews.com) – In a statement marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the bloc of Islamic states on Sunday reiterated a stance that has stymied efforts at the United Nations for well over a decade to develop a global convention against terrorism – the insistence that any definition of terrorism should make an exception for “resistance” against foreign occupation.

As long as the loophole exists, critics say, it provides cover for violent attacks by Palestinians against Israelis, by jihadists fighting Indian control of part of disputed Kashmir, and by groups who portray the U.S. and coalition military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan as “occupation.”

Some of the Islamic countries that have themselves suffered the most from terrorism, notably Pakistan, are among the most determined in refusing to back down on the “occupation” exception – even though that stance has since 1996 held up the drive to formulate an international, legally-binding terrorism convention.

On the eve of the 9/11 anniversary, U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said in Australia on Friday he regretted the fact that the goal of a comprehensive convention has not been achieved, attributing the failure to “some disagreement among member states.”

In its 9/11 anniversary statement the 56-country Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said that it “joins the international community in remembering the horrendous and cowardly act of terrorism and the tragic loss of thousands of innocent human lives.”

“The OIC seizes this opportunity to reiterate its firm position of condemning terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and to underscore that terrorism is a repugnant malady that seeks to destroy the fundamental ethos of humanity,” it said.

But the statement then added that the OIC’s position on terrorism is “clearly stated” in a document adopted in 2005, the OIC Ten Year Program of Action.

That document states that the OIC members condemn “terrorism in all its forms, and reject any justification or rationalization for it,” but then adds that they “distinguish it from the legitimate resistance to foreign occupation, which does not sanction the killing of innocent civilians.”

The OIC's 9/11 statement also drew attention to another initiative, the OIC Convention on Combating Terrorism, approved in 1999.

The OIC Convention on Combating Terrorism includes a definition of terrorism. Article One defines the phenomenon as “any act of violence or threat thereof notwithstanding its motives or intentions perpetrated to carry out an individual or collective criminal plan with the aim of terrorizing people or threatening to harm them or imperiling their lives, honor, freedoms, security or rights or exposing the environment or any facility or public or private property to hazards or occupying or seizing them, or endangering a national resource, or international facilities, or threatening the stability, territorial integrity, political unity or sovereignty of independent States.”

Article Two of the Convention, however, states, “Peoples’ struggle including armed struggle against foreign occupation, aggression, colonialism, and hegemony, aimed at liberation and self-determination in accordance with the principles of international law shall not be considered a terrorist crime.”

Moving rapidly to criminalize telling the truth about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to encourage violence and supremacism. Free Speech Death Watch Alert, and an update on this story: "OIC/Islamophobia: OIC Observatory warned since 2009 against the growth of the extreme right in Europe, Washington plans to host a meeting on resolution opposing defamation of religions," from the International Islamic News Agency, August 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):

JEDDAH, Ramadan 1/Aug 1 (IINA)-During the next few months, Washington plans to host a coordination meeting to discuss with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) how to implement resolution no. 16/18 on combating defamation of religions, and how to prevent stereotypes depicting religions and their followers; as well as disseminating religious tolerance, which has been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council last March, in agreement with Western countries. The resolution was adopted after lengthy discussions held between the OIC and countries in which the phenomenon of Islamophobia is in the rise.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had announced the intention of the U.S. State Department to organize a coordination meeting during her participation in the meeting which she co-chaired with the OIC Secretary General, Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Istanbul on 15 July 2011. The meeting issued a joint statement emphasizing the dire need for the implementation of resolution 16/18.

According to informed sources in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the two sides, in addition to other European parties, will hold a number of specialized meetings of experts in law and religion in order to finalize the legal aspect on how to better implement the UN resolution.

The sources said that the upcoming meetings aim at developing a legal basis for the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution which help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.

On the other hand, the OIC Secretary General, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, stressed that the crime committed recently in Norway was a result of the rise of the extreme right in Europe and its easy mobility in political circles. He said that the OIC had warned several times against of what might be called institutionalization of the phenomenon of Islamophobia through the involvement of the European extreme right in government institutions and political action....

Western powers, often driven by political correctness, bend over backwards to speak in generalities about fighting "intolerance," "stereotyping," and "discrimination" in order to appear principled and even-handed, even at the expense of acknowledging specific, pervasive cases of all of the above. The EU's document of "stuttering timidity" in response to the violent persecution of Christians in the Muslim world is one such example.

For its part, the Organization Formerly Known as the Organization of the Islamic Conference has long spoken in vague generalities and platitudes about such principles with the expectation that uninformed listeners will project their own understanding of the concepts of "tolerance," "justice," and "fairness" onto the discourse. Thankfully, others in the West have seen through this tactic, blocking the OIC's quest for a "legally binding institutional instrument" with which to prosecute speech deemed offensive to Islam, and blocking resolutions against "religious defamation" at the UN. The language is vague, but the purpose is specific.

This time, Hillary Clinton and the EU have fallen for the OIC's game, in an update on this story. "OIC, West pledge to combat intolerance," from Arab News, July 17 (thanks to Chris):

ISTANBUL: In what can rightly be described as a seminal step in relations between the Muslim world and the Western world, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the leading nations of the Western world led by the United States and the European Union agreed Saturday to take concrete steps to combat intolerance, negative stereotyping and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief.

The high-level meeting was held at the historic Yildiz Palace in Istanbul. It was attended by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Cathrine Ashton along with foreign ministers and officials from France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan, the Vatican, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Arab League and African Union. The meeting was co-chaired by OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Ever since he took office, the OIC secretary-general has been working on formulating ways and means to stop acts of religious intolerance.

“It was during my address to the 15th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva that I outlined a new approach toward evolving a consensus against incitement to violence and intolerance on religious grounds that could endanger peaceful coexistence and must be viewed as a direct contrast to the very notion of a globalized world,” said Ihsanoglu. “I am glad that the eight points in the proposed approach found resonance with all the negotiating partners. They formed the basis of the consensus reflected in Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. The importance of the consensual adoption of this resolution should be duly recognized.”

He said challenges remain.

“However, the test would lie in the implementation. Having been successful at consensus building, we must now act in concert to build on the consensus. The adoption of the resolution does not mark the end of the road. It rather signifies a beginning based on a new approach to deal with the whole set of interrelated issues,” said Ihsanoglu. “Resolution 16/18 provides a good basis for concerted action by states, at both national and international levels and must be utilized accordingly. Otherwise, we would be faced with the unaffordable risk of the agenda being hijacked and set by radicals and non-state actors.”

Ihsanoglu said there was a delicate balance between freedom of expression and incendiary speech.

This recalls his declaration that there are "red lines" which speech must not cross.

“We continue to be particularly disturbed by attitudes of certain individuals or groups exploiting the freedom of expression to incite hatred by demonizing purposefully the religions and their followers. Though we respect their freedom of opinion and expression, we find these attitudes politically and ethically incorrect and insensitive.”

At the meeting, Clinton discussed how to build on a UN Human Rights Council resolution passed on March 24 that calls for promoting tolerance and respect for diversity of beliefs, without restricting legitimate free speech.

Clinton agreed to pursue a new religious tolerance agreement, which respects free expression of religious beliefs in order to resolve debates over religion between the West and the Islamic world.

“Together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of religion,” Clinton said. “We are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs.”....

The Christians in Eqypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Muslim world are waiting. Asia Bibi is waiting, Madam Secretary. As are Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Ahmadis, Baha'i, atheists, agnostics, and ex-Muslims.

Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir has made abundantly clear his intentions for the remainder of the country after South Sudanese independence became official: a plan of cultural and linguistic Arabization, and the imposition of Sharia. Bashir is already wanted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, and the U.N. says he has now unleashed a "devastating" campaign against the Nuba people in what is now the south of Sudan.

Despite his past crimes, he has been defended and protected not only by the African Union, which has its own vested interests in not setting a precedent for African rulers to be tried, but the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (until recently, the Organization of the Islamic Conference).

We hear time and again of Islam's supposed egalitarianism on the matter of race, as Muhammad once patronizingly said, "You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin" (Sahih Bukhari 9.89.256). Those claims, used heavily in Islamic proselytizing, ring hollow as an "Arab" leader (more below) again slaughters darker-skinned Africans with impunity, while the OIC and Arab League look the other way.

"UN mission accuses Sudan of shelling and torturing civilians in Nuba war," by Julie Flint for the Guardian, July 16:

The full horror of the campaign of violence that the government in Khartoum has unleashed against the black African Nuba people of Sudan has been laid bare in two confidential reports by the UN peacekeeping force that the Observer has obtained.

The accounts of "devastating" daily aerial bombardment of civilians, "indiscriminate shelling" of crowded civilian areas, summary executions and deliberate targeting of dark-skinned people are contained in a 19-page report requested by the UN security council. A second report details how "active obstruction by state authorities (in South Kordofan) has completely undermined the ability of the peacekeeping force, UN Mission in Sudan (Unmis), to fulfil the most basic requirements of its mandate" in the Nuba region.

In any North American town, Bashir could easily be described as a black man; Nicholas Kristof discussed Bashir's background in this 2007 editorial. If not for the gravity of his crimes in the name of Islamic and Arab supremacism, his self-hatred of his African ancestry would be comical, reminiscent of Dave Chapelle's black Klansman.

The report says the humanitarian assistance and protection provided by Unmis have become "inconsequential" as it prepares to leave Sudan, at Khartoum's insistence, by 31 July. Unmis officials say privately that they have been "deaf and blind" in South Kordofan ever since war broke out on 5 June and cannot even estimate how many people have been killed and displaced by the fighting – widely perceived as a first step towards President Omar al-Bashir's stated goal of suppressing ethnic and cultural diversity in favour of a rigid Arab-Islamic regime, following South Sudan's decision to separate from the North.

The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Valerie Amos, said on Friday that 1.4 million people were affected by what she called "skirmishes" in South Kordofan, which borders the now independent Republic of South Sudan, and by Khartoum's refusal to grant "unhindered access" to them. Causing fury among hard-pressed colleagues on the ground, who have been crying out for much stronger support from the security council, she appeared to cast doubt on their reporting, saying: "We do not know whether there is any truth to the grave allegations of extra-judicial killings, mass graves and other violations in South Kordofan."

The Nuba Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) – formerly allied with the South, but now seeking a northern alliance to overthrow the Bashir government – claims that more than 400,000 people have been displaced and 3,000 killed or disappeared. One Unmis staffer, quoted in one of the documents seen by the Observer, reported seeing the bodies of approximately 150 Nuba lying in pools of blood in just one of the many army barracks in the state capital, Kadugli.

Khartoum and the SPLA have accused each other of starting the fighting, after a ceasefire that began in 2002. Unmis's report for the security council, prepared by its human rights section, notes that the SPLM/A refused to accept the results of disputed state elections in May, but says there is no evidence that it initiated military operations. Rather, it says, the fighting may have been triggered by an ultimatum for Nuba fighters to move to South Sudan by 1 June – an order that was tantamount to "disenfranchising them of their citizenship", given the promise of partition in July.

The report suggests that the "especially egregious" crimes committed by government forces justify referral to the international criminal court. It argues that "the international community cannot afford to remain silent in the face of such deliberate attacks by the government of Sudan against its own people".

Deploring the "gross contempt" and "violent and unlawful acts" of government forces towards Unmis – including execution of a staff member, assaults, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and ill treatment "amounting to torture" – the report says: "Condemnation is insufficient… The international community must hold the government of Sudan accountable for its conduct and insist that it arrest and bring to justice those responsible."....

In the current state of affairs, in a way, they can, but not in the way the Secretary of State meant in her comments to the Organization Formerly Known As The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OFKATOIC). Islamic groups continue to press their demands while their spokesmen engage in deliberate deceit about the limitations of Islamic tolerance. They speak of "tolerance," "justice," and "human rights" with the expectation that Western listeners will project their own understanding of the terms onto what is being said.

Much of the West, for its part, operates on the article of faith that those values are shared and do fundamentally match, because all cultures are supposed to be based on the same values and vision of the future. It is on that gelatinously shaky ground that they tend to come into agreement, and it is to the benefit of organizations like the OIC.

Clinton's defense of free speech is not unwelcome, of course, but the OIC will say "yes, thank you, that's very nice," and press on with its agenda. "Clinton: Islam, West can agree on tolerance," by Matthew Lee for the Associated Press, July 15 (thanks to Kenneth):

ISTANBUL — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she's hopeful that a religious tolerance agreement between the West and Islamic countries will end efforts to criminalize blasphemy that threaten freedom of expression.

Talk of a "tolerance agreement" threatens to dignify the OIC's position with a response, when no response is warranted except an intensified refusal to compromise on free speech.

Clinton said Friday in Turkey that an initiative by the U.S., the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference will promote religious freedom without compromising free speech.

The Associated Press seems to have missed the memo on the OIC's great re-branding as the equally awkward-sounding "Organization of the Islamic Cooperation."

Many Muslim nations have laws that punish perceived insults to Islam. As a way to rationalize those laws, those countries have long sought U.N. action condemning the defamation of religion.

"Rationalize" is an odd word, and doesn't seem to fit. All of the global initiatives are simply an extension of the same supremacist impulse that drives those laws on the national level.

The U.S. and others were concerned that such a step could stifle legitimate debate. Earlier this year, the U.S. brokered an agreement that removed defamation language from a U.N. resolution and focused instead on ending religious discrimination.

The OIC has just recently re-branded itself, changing its name from the awkwardly-worded Organization of the Islamic Conference to the still-awkward Organization of the Islamic Cooperation. Perhaps something like the "Organization of the Islamic Nations' Cooperation" might sound smoother, but the abbreviation would create some issues of its own.

It has also changed from a busy logo laden with Arabic script including "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is greater") to a streamlined crescent engulfing a globe. On one hand, it looks a bit like a stylized Pac-Man eating a power pellet. On the other hand, the supremacist symbolism speaks volumes.

What the organization stands for, including jihad against Israel and the destruction of free speech, has not changed, and the West has no interest in "cooperation" in its own destruction. "Baroness Warsi becomes the first British Government minister to address the Organisation of the Islamic Conference/Cooperation," from the blogger Archbishop Cranmer, July 1 (thanks to Alan):

And they'll be a bit miffed that the Baroness got their name wrong. Or, at least, wasn't quite properly briefed by her staff that the bloc of mostly Muslim-majority states has a new name (and logo). At a meeting in Kazakhstan this week, foreign ministers of the 42 year-old 'Organisation of the Islamic Conference' (OIC) decided to change the name of their group to the 'Organisation of Islamic Cooperation' (OIC).

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev describes the OIC as 'the UN of the Islamic world'. It may have a new name and a new logo, but the agenda remains the same - 'Palestine' (ie the eradication of Israel) and 'religious defamation' (ie a global blasphemy law).

The old logo featured an aggressive red crescent with the rather assertive and alientating Arabic phrase 'Allahu Akhbar' (God [Allah] is greater). The new logo sports the more eco-friendly green crescent, with an innocuous representation of the Ka’aba – the cube-shaped structure in Mecca which Muslims believe to have been constructed by Abraham (and his favoured son Ishmael) - at the centre of a globe: ie, the holiest shrine in Islam is at the centre of the world. The subtle name change, from introspective 'conference' to accommodating 'cooperation' is something of a ruse - especially where 'Palestine' is concerned: the goal remains the 'liberation' of Jerusalem. It remains their objective to prohibit all criticism of Islamic teachings and authorities, effectively to roll out across the free world the blasphemy laws of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia....

Read it all. Warsi's speech in Kazakhstan follows.

New sheath, same scimitar. "New Name, Same Old Focus for Islamic Bloc," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, June 30 (thanks to Sayyid):

(CNSNews.com) – The bloc of mostly Muslim-majority states has a new name and logo but, despite the momentous upheavals across the Arab world, “Palestine” and religious “defamation” continue to top its agenda.

Meeting in Kazakhstan this week, foreign ministers of the 42 year-old Organization of the Islamic Conference endorsed a decision to change its name to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Also being dropped is the OIC logo featuring a red crescent and the words “Allahu Akhbar” (Allah is greater) in Arabic. In its place is a green crescent, a globe, and a representation of the Ka’aba – the cube-shaped structure in Mecca which Islam says was built by Abraham and Muslims revere as their religion’s most sacred site.

The OIC called the move “a drastic positive change in the performance of the organization to uplift its effectiveness as an international system dealing with political, economic, cultural and social development issues.”

The summit host, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, described the OIC as “the U.N. of the Islamic world.”

I thought the UN of the Islamic world was the UN.

Despite the rebranding, however, OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu’s speech to the gathering made it clear that the key focus remains unchanged for an organization established in 1969 with “liberating” Jerusalem as its primary goal.

Leading the list of situations around the Islamic world addressed in the speech was the Palestinian issue. Ihsanoglu condemned Israeli policies and appealed for all countries to support an initiative at the U.N. in September to secure recognition of a Palestinian state “on the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The OIC head had more to say on the Palestinian question than he did on any other country situation – the civil wars in Libya and Yemen, political turmoil in Syria and Bahrain, the imminent division of Sudan, the conflict in Afghanistan, or calls for reform from Morocco to Jordan. Iran received not a single mention.

Also receiving much attention at the meeting in Astana was the issue that has dominated OIC activism at the U.N. in recent years – “Islamophobia” and the associated campaign to outlaw religious “defamation.”

Ihsanoglu in his speech reaffirmed that it was “a matter of extreme priority for the OIC.”

“Islamophobia represents a contemporary manifestation of racism and the phenomenon must be addressed in that context,” he added, alluding to the OIC’s drive to amend an existing, binding anti-racism treaty, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, so that it also covers religion.

Islam isn't a race, but they're trying to make it one.

Should the campaign succeed, the amended convention would place legal restrictions on “matters regarded by followers of any religion or belief as sacred.”

In other words, it will become illegal to speak about Islamic jihad and Islamic supremacism.

Critics say this would silence legitimate criticism of Islamic teachings and authorities, further endanger non-Muslim minorities, and amount to enforcing blasphemy laws similar to those in place in OIC member state like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

During the meeting in Kazakhstan, an OIC body called the “Islamophobia Observatory” released its fourth annual report, stating that the 12-month period ending in April had seen an increase in the frequency and intensity of “Islamophobic events, acts and utterances.”...

And there will be more, too, in the future, as long as the jihad continues.

Priorities. This is what you use the United Nations for: stopping a private entity in a distant country from republishing some drawings in a book. Under any other circumstances, the absurdity would be obvious and rightly laughed off, but, of course, double standards abound. "Tajikistan urges UN to try to stop republication of Muhammad cartoons," from Interfax, May 6 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

Dushanbe, May 5, Interfax - Tajikistan has urged the United Nations to take measures to stop a Norwegian firm from republishing a book containing cartoons satirizing the Muslim prophet Muhammad that set off global turmoil in 2005.

A letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon "expresses anxiety over the fact that the Norwegian printing press Cappelen Damm plans to republish the book Tyranny of Silence in May 2011," the Tajik Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "This book contains cartoons that blaspheme the name of the Islamic prophet."

Action must be taken. This urgently needs a response, from UNHCAAYPI, the United Nations High Commission on Asking "And Your Point Is?"

Tajikistan, which currently presides in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, had the text of the letter approved by all the other 56 member states of the OIC.

The 12 cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005 first sparked protests in the Danish Muslim community, and were then condemned at an OIC summit in December 2005 and set off mass anti-Danish demonstrations in Muslim countries resulting in numerous fatalities.

Good news, albeit after so many years of damage already done by the OIC-initiated report. Muhammad said it himself: "War is deceit." "Israel urges UN to nullify Goldstone Report on Gaza war," from BBC News, April 2:

Israel has called on the UN to cancel a report that said it possibly committed war crimes during its 2008-2009 military offensive in Gaza.

The report's author, South African judge Richard Goldstone, said on Friday that new accounts indicated Israel had not deliberately targeted civilians.

He said that if he had known what he knew now, "the Goldstone Report would have been a different document".

Israel's prime minister said the remark meant the report "should be buried".

Operation Cast Lead was launched in response to repeated rocket attacks on Israeli territory by militants in Gaza. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including hundreds of civilians, as well as 13 Israelis.

Hamas criticised

The Goldstone Report, published in September 2009, concluded that both the Israeli military and militants from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, had committed potential war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the offensive.

The UN-appointed expert panel led by Mr Goldstone accused Israel of using disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, and using people as human shields.

The report also accused Hamas of deliberately targeting civilians and trying to spread terror through by firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities.

Israel refused to co-operate with the investigation, accusing the panel of being biased, and rejected its accusations. It did, however, conduct independent investigations into more than 400 allegations of misconduct.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Friday, Mr Goldstone wrote that his conclusions about Israel appeared to have been wrong.

He said the Israeli investigations, which were recognised by a UN committee, indicated that "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy".

"We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war," he explained. "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: "Everything we said has been proven to be true.

"Israel does not purposely target civilians and its investigative institutions are competent, while Hamas intentionally fires at innocent civilians and does not investigate anything.

"The fact that Goldstone has backtracked means the report should be buried once and for all."

Mr Goldstone also noted that Hamas had "done nothing" to examine its rocket attacks, which were "purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets".

There was no immediate response from Hamas.

Back in the 80s and 90s I used to joke that there was no real need in the world for papal infallibility, since we had the ACLU. Whatever stand they took on any issue, you could infallibly say the opposite, and you'd be dead right, every time. From their origins as a front group for the Communist Party, USA, to their defense of antiwar extremists in the 60s and violent felons, their “First Amendment” defense of kiddie porn but disdain for pro-life demonstrators, right up to their sick espousal of the “right” of Neo-nazis to march past and mock Holocaust survivors... they had a perfect record: Wrong about everything. Then the Bush administration came along, and in its well-meaning but ham-handed War on Terror it took actions that seemed to many of us to violate real (as opposed to fictitious) civil liberties, and the ACLU was ruined for me: On occasion, if only by accident, it was right.

Still, they do their best. The ACLU has partnered up with the terrorist-friendly CAIR on a regular basis, and it opposes even sane and necessary domestic security measures, border control.... Give those guys credit, they're wrong about almost everything!

Now they have to go and confuse me again. The ACLU has stumbled, surely inadvertently, onto the right side of an issue, as the Mansfield News Journal reports:

MANSFIELD -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio expressed disappointment and concern over a decision by Mansfield City Schools to withdraw permission for a controversial speaking event that had been scheduled Monday at a school building.

The event, organized by the Mansfield North Central Ohio Tea Party Association, included a presentation by Usama Dakdok, characterized by some as "anti-Islam."

"While we might disagree with the message of the speaker, they have a right like any other group to fully air their views without interference by government officials. Public officials -- sheriff and superintendent included -- have a duty to provide a safe venue for all speakers. Shutting down an event because some individual or group does not like the message is dangerous to free society and the democratic process," ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Christine Link said in a written statement Tuesday.

Mansfield City Schools Superintendent Dan Freund announced Monday the school would not host the evening event organized by the tea party group, citing safety concerns about the number of people who would turn out to support or oppose Dakdok.

Freund said the presumed content of the speaking event was not a factor in the decision.

A coalition of advocacy groups opposed to the message of the keynote speaker was scheduled to host a press conference later that morning. The groups, including the Mansfield branch of the NAACP, applauded the school district for not allowing the event to happen.

Bonnie Oleksa, an organizer with the tea party group that invited Dakdok, said she was disappointed with the district's decision.

"We don't deserve this treatment," she said. "We paid to rent (space in) that school, we had a contract for that school and we put out radio spots advertising the event."

Oleksa said the district was pressured to cancel the event. She said the tea party group will be pursuing legal action in response to the school district's decision.

"I don't want this to happen to us again," Oleksa said.

She said she was grateful for the ACLU's words of support.

The tea party group is scheduled to host several future events at Mansfield Senior High School, including a mayoral candidate's forum and a rally commemorating the founding of the tea party movement. The ACLU expressed concerns whether the group would be allowed to hold the events at the school.

"Shutting down the venue for one speech does not eliminate the message. Censorship is counterproductive for all groups, as it lays the groundwork for the government to suppress future messages of the very groups protesting," Link said. "Speech must be protected for all, or ultimately it will be available to no one."

Freund said the school district has not discussed whether it will allow the tea party group to hold future events on school grounds. He said the district's decision to withdraw permission for the Monday event was the right move. Freund consulted with Mansfield police before making the call.

"We think we followed our policy and did what was best to protect our children, who are in and around our building in the evening," he said.

Police Chief Dino Sgambellone said allowing the event to be held on school property presented a potentially dangerous situation.

"It was just unknown if 20 people would attend or 500," he said. "When you have passionate people coming together on both sides of an issue, I would hate to see something tragic happen.

"It's not that people don't have the right to protest, but let's do it at a venue that doesn't present a possible danger for children."

The tea party group was able to arrange an alternate location for the Monday speaking event, an office complex at 1456 Park Avenue West. More than 350 people crowded into the space to hear Dakdok. Tea party members receptive to the lecture bumped elbows with concerned listeners from the local branch of the NAACP and the Islamic Society of Mansfield.

No one was observed protesting outside during Dakdok's 150-minute lecture. The Christian evangelist's interpretations of Islam and the Koran drew mixed reactions from the crowd. The meeting included a few outbursts, but was otherwise orderly.

In the past we've seen the Organization of the Islamic Conference herding U.N. delegates from all their godforsaken countries to demand a global ban on “religious defamation” (which would only apply to anti-Muslim speech—since if it covered Muslims it would ban the hateful, anti-pagan, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian Qur'an). It seems for now they'll have to settle for a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council “combating religious intolerance and negative stereotypes [and] stigmatization” as a first step.

It's grimly amusing to see the lead country opposing intolerance is... Pakistan, where “blasphemy” is punishable by death and government ministers are murdered with impunity for opposing such laws. But the OIC's agenda is out on the table: They want the world body to solemnly impose the equivalent of blasphemy laws... on the world as a whole. This flows as predictably as arithmetic from the fundamental Muslim belief that Islamic sovereignty, like Allah's, is universal.

So CAIR, the creature of the Muslim Brotherhood, is using American leftists to ban “blasphemous” speech in American schools—using the ludicrous canard that criticism of Islam could lead to violence and endanger children. The grotesquerie of this effort, the crass menagerie of distortions and hypocrisy proved too much even for the professional destroyers of social order who staff the ACLU. Maybe it gave them a too acute glimpse into the future.

I know better than to see in this a sign of hope that American liberals are waking up to the threat we (that even they) face. To people like this, every policeman is still a cossack, every Western flag bears the swastika, every pushback against an aggressive minority making outrageous claims is another Dred Scott decision. Some ideologies really are impervious to new information, and cannot be reformed. How ironic that a world-view which claims the honorable old title of “liberalism” (a word once associated with freedom lovers like Frederic Bastiat) should decay into a mirror of the old joke about the Bourbons: “They learn nothing, and they forget nothing.”

Pakistan's ambassador to the UN condemned "this reprehensible act" as "the work of extremists." He didn't mean, of course, any of the recent jihad attacks or plots. What he had in mind was the burning of the Qur'an in Florida, which, as you can see in this story, the OIC is exploiting to renew its jihad against the freedom of speech in the West. The OIC is bent on compelling Western states to criminalize criticism of Islam, which will criminalize any honest examination of the ways in which jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to recruit for jihad among peaceful Muslims, thus preempting the formulation of any effective strategy to counter that use.

"OIC to ‘send’ strong condemnation," from the Daily Mail (Pakistan), March 27:

NEW YORK – Reposing complete confidence in Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, the OIC decided that the Ambassador of Pakistan along with Ambassadors of Tajiskistan (OIC chair), Morocco (OIC Coordinator for Human Rights), Iran and Egypt would meet with the UN Secretary General to convey OIC’s strong condemnation and ask him to take the lead towards promoting inter-faith harmony.

It was decided in OIC ambassadorial meeting which convened here the other day to discuss the recent desecration of the Holy Quran in Florida last week.

The meeting approved the proposals of Ambassador Haroon and his Iranian counterpart that OIC Chair and Observer Mission will draft a strong condemnatory letter on behalf of OIC with the assistance of Pakistan and Morocco to be sent to the UN Secretary General, President UN General Assembly, High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) with the request to circulate it as an official document....

Reiterating the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari's clear expression of sentiments of the people and extreme provocation and seriousness of the issue, and his call to the United Nations to take immediate action on the subject, Ambassador Haroon the first Speaker from the member states voiced strong condemnation of this sacrilegious act.

He assured that Pakistan would continue playing its active and constructive role in promoting inter-faith harmony and peaceful co-existence.

On March 22, Ambassador Haroon had written a letter to the UN Secretary General, where he drawn UN attention towards this despicable act of desecration of the Holy Quran by Wayne Sapp and Terry Jones in Florida.

He voiced Pakistan's profound regret and deep concern at the increasing acts of "Islamophobia and growing trend of intolerance and hatred towards Muslims as well as insults to their religious symbols and personalities".

The letter further said, "While this reprehensible act is the work of extremists and is evidently designed to provoke dissent and discord among communities and peoples across the world, such sacrilegious acts also go against the very concept of inter-faith harmony and threaten the multicultural fabric of the societies and the brotherhood of the United Nations".

The Ambassador urged the United Nations to play its important role in ensuring peace and harmony among peoples of the world. He said Pakistan has full confidence in the UN's leadership and hoped that it would take all steps to fight such tendencies and promote intercultural and inter-faith harmony that is basic to coexistence of mankind.

Recalling Pakistan’s initiative on Interfaith Dialogue and participation in the Alliance of Civilization, Ambassador Haroon stated that Pakistan has always stood for promoting peace and harmony among people and nations of the world.

He regretted that while OIC has always supported peace initiatives in all regions of the world including tolerant and constructive engagement during last year’s Islamophobic incidents i.e. threats to burn the Quran and opposition to construction of Islamic Center in New York, attacks on Islam, its symbols and holy personalities continue unabated.

The Ambassador proposed that the OIC group should write a letter to the UN Secretary General (UNSG) asking him to issue a strong condemnatory statement and take concrete action to protect multiculturalism and promote peace and harmony in the world....

No one supports actual religious discrimination, but the OIC is dedicated to quashing all honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacism under this rubric. Hence their happy reaction to this resolution. More on this story. "OIC commends resolution on religious discrimination," from Arab News, March 26:

JEDDAH: The UN Human Rights Council unanimously adopted a new resolution on the elimination of forms of discrimination and violence based on religious beliefs.

The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), which represents the Islamic group at the council participated in the March 24 discussion. The United States and the European Union too were represented.

Informed sources in the OIC General Secretariat here said that the new resolution related to combating religious intolerance and negative stereotypes, stigmatization, discrimination, and incitement to violence, and violence against individuals based on religion and belief is not a substitute for an earlier resolution adopted by the UN on combating defamation of religions, which the Human Rights Council had adopted many times in the past several years.

The sources stated that the new resolution is a qualitative breakthrough because it was adopted unanimously, adding, it gives the widest margin of freedom of expression, with the rejection of discrimination and incitement and stereotypes used by the other or against the symbols of the followers of religions.

The sources emphasized that the OIC approved the new resolution from a position of strength, particularly after the adoption of the Human Rights Council resolution on defamation of religions over the past four years with a clear majority.

However, the sources stressed that the issue of acceptance of the new resolution comes as a goodwill gesture by the organization in order to reach the necessary consensus, bridge the gap, and partner with the West in addressing the anti-Islam sentiments that prevailed in some Western communities toward Muslims.

There is no discussion in this context of Islamic jihad terrorism and supremacism as having something to do with the alleged "anti-Islam sentiment" in "some Western communities." That connection is precisely what the OIC is trying to obscure.

The new resolution came after the OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu proposed last year, a number of proposals on the possibility of reaching a common ground toward a solid platform for its adoption.

According to informed sources, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had invited the OIC to lead, along with both Washington and the European Union, the efforts to draft a new resolution to ensure the foundations adopted by the previous resolution, giving a wider margin of freedom of expression.

The sources confirmed at the same time that the decision regarding defamation of religions has not been abandoned.

This is the most contentious of the resolutions, because in countries with strong protections on speech and other forms of expression, the idea that a religion can have the same defamation protections as living individuals is considered an affront to individual rights.

But the OIC is dedicated to overcoming that obstacle.

Another crucial point: "Americans were once proud to declare that their unalienable rights came from their Creator, the God of Judeo-Christian scripture. Today we sometimes seem embarrassed by this fundamental conceit of our founding. We prefer to trace our conceptions of liberty, equality, free will, freedom of conscience, due process, privacy, and proportional punishment to a humanist tradition, haughty enough to believe we can transcend the transcendent and arrive at a common humanity."

Many more instructive observations follow below, in an articulate analysis of the reality of the Islamic supremacist vision that still seeks to dominate the globe, and of the roots and folly of foreign policy based on wishful thinking. "The OIC and the Caliphate: The Islamic agenda is not coexistence, but dominion," by Andrew C. McCarthy for the National Review Online, February 26 (thanks to Ken):

The Organization of the Islamic Conference is the closest thing in the modern world to a caliphate. It is composed of 57 members (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority), joining voices and political heft to pursue the unitary interests of the ummah, the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. Not surprisingly, the OIC works cooperatively with the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s most extensive and important Islamist organization, and one that sees itself as the vanguard of a vast, grass-roots movement — what the Brotherhood itself calls a “civilizational” movement.

Muslims are taught to think of themselves as a community, a single Muslim Nation. “I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini famously said of his own country in 1980, even as he consolidated his power there, even as he made Iran the point of his revolutionary spear. “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah.” Muslims were not interested in maintaining the Westphalian system of nation states. According to Khomeini, who was then regarded by East and West as Islam’s most consequential voice, any country, including his own, could be sacrificed in service of the doctrinal imperative that “Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

Because of that doctrinal imperative, the caliphate retains its powerful allure for believers. Nevertheless, though Islamists are on the march, it has somehow become fashionable to denigrate the notion that the global Islamic caliphate endures as a mainstream Islamic goal.

It was only a week ago that close to 2 million Muslims jammed Tahrir Square to celebrate the triumphant return to Egypt of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, a Khomeini-esque firebrand who pulls no punches about Islam’s goal to “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” Yet, to take these threats seriously is now to be dismissed as a fringe lunatic, a Luddite too benighted to grasp that American principles reflect universally held truths — truths to which the ummah, deep down, is (so we are told) every bit as committed as we are.

The caliphate is an institution of imperial Islamic rule under sharia, Muslim law. Not content with empire, Islam anticipates global hegemony. Indeed, mainstream Islamic ideology declares that such hegemony is inevitable, holding to that belief every bit as sincerely as the End of History crowd holds to its conviction that its values are everyone’s values (and the Muslims are only slightly less willing to brook dissent). For Muslims, the failure of Allah’s creation to submit to the system He has prescribed is a blasphemy that cannot stand.

The caliphate is an ideal now, much like the competing ideal of a freedom said to be the yearning of every human heart. Unlike the latter ideal, the caliphate had, for centuries, a concrete existence. It was formally dissolved in 1924, a signal step in Kemal Atatürk’s purge of Islam from public life in Turkey. Atatürk, too, thought he had an early line on the End of History. One wonders what he’d make of Erdogan’s rising Islamist Turkey.

What really dissolved the Ottoman caliphate was not anything so contemporary as a “freedom agenda,” or a “battle for hearts and minds.” It was one of those quaint military wars, waged under the evidently outdated notion that Islamic enemies were not friends waiting to happen — that they had to be defeated, since they were not apt to be persuaded.

It was, I suppose, our misfortune in earlier times not to have had the keen minds up to the task of vanquishing “violent extremism” by winning a “war of ideas.” We had to make do with dullards like Winston Churchill, who actually thought — get this — that there was a difference worth observing between Islamic believers and Islamic doctrine.

“Individual Muslims,” Churchill wrote at the turn of the century, demonstrated many “splendid qualities.” That, however, did not mean Islam was splendid or that its principles were consonant with Western principles. To the contrary, Churchill opined, “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” Boxed in by rigid sharia, Islam could only “paralyse the social development of those who follow it.” Reason had evolved the West, but Islam had revoked reason’s license in the tenth century, closing its “gates of ijtihad” — its short-lived tradition of introspection. Yet, sharia’s rigidity did not render Islam “moribund.” Churchill recognized the power of the caliphate, of the hegemonic vision. “Mohammedanism,” he concluded, remained “a militant and proselytising faith.” [...]

Muslims, of course, understood the implausibility of achieving such dominance in the near term. Still, Hurgronje elaborated, the faithful were “comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms.” So even as the caliphate lay in ruins, the conviction that it would rise again remained a “fascinating influence” and “a central point of union against the unfaithful.”

Today, the OIC is Islam’s central point of union against the unfaithful. Those who insist that the 1,400-year-old dividing line between Muslims and non-Muslims is ephemeral, that all we need is a little more understanding of how alike we all really are, would do well to consider the OIC’s Cairo Declaration of 1990. It is the ummah’s “Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” proclaimed precisely because Islamic states reject the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights promulgated by the United Nations under the guidance of progressives in the United States and the West. That is, the leaders of the Muslim world are adamant that Western principles are not universal.

They are quite right about that. The Cairo Declaration boasts that Allah has made the Islamic ummah “the best community . . . which gave humanity a universal and well-balanced civilization.” It is the “historical role” of the ummah to “civilize” the rest of the world — not the other way around. [...]

The Declaration makes abundantly clear that this civilization is to be attained by adherence to sharia. “All rights and freedoms” recognized by Islam “are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah,” which “is the only source of reference for [their] explanation or clarification.” Though men and women are said by the Declaration to be equal in “human dignity,” sharia elucidates their very different rights and obligations — their basic inequality. Sharia expressly controls freedom of movement and claims of asylum. The Declaration further states that “there shall be no crime or punishment except as provided for in Shari’ah” — a blatant reaffirmation of penalties deemed cruel and unusual in the West. And the right to free expression is permitted only insofar as it “would not be contrary to the principles of Shari’ah” — meaning that Islam may not be critically examined, nor will the ummah abide any dissemination of “information” that would “violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and ethical Values, or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society, or weaken its faith.”

Americans were once proud to declare that their unalienable rights came from their Creator, the God of Judeo-Christian scripture. Today we sometimes seem embarrassed by this fundamental conceit of our founding. We prefer to trace our conceptions of liberty, equality, free will, freedom of conscience, due process, privacy, and proportional punishment to a humanist tradition, haughty enough to believe we can transcend the transcendent and arrive at a common humanity. But regardless of which source the West claims, the ummah rejects it and claims its own very different principles — including, to this day, the principle that it is the destiny of Islam not to coexist but to dominate.

We won’t have an effective strategy for dealing with the ummah, and for securing ourselves from its excesses, until we commit to understanding what it is rather than imagining what it could be....

Read it all.

It is, as always, all someone else's fault. "OIC Slams Islamaphobia In West," from Bernama, January 12:

ISLAMABAD, Jan 12 (Bernama) -- The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) has termed the institutionalisation of Islamophobia in the western countries as a major challenge, as it was becoming the political agenda in some countries, reports Iranian national news agency, IRNA, Wednesday.

The OIC Secretary General, Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in his meeting with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, called for political support of all the member states to OIC for reversing their negative trend.

The Secretary General termed Pakistan as the founder and one of the most important and proactive member states of OIC which has always taken the lead role in assisting the Muslim world and promoting their causes.

He assured the Prime Minister that OIC Secretariat is mindful of any particular concern that Pakistan might have at International Contact Groups meeting and it will not allow anything to happen Pakistan's interest....

Reassuring!

The OIC Secretary General thanked the Prime Minister for government of Pakistan's complete support to OIC and for Pakistan's vital role in furthering the Muslim causes around the world.

Pakistan's vital role in furthering the Muslim causes around the world.

No, Ihsanoglu. Mohamed Mohamud is spreading "Islamophobia," if it really exists at all. Nidal Hasan is spreading "Islamophobia." Faisal Shahzad is spreading "Islamophobia." Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad is spreading "Islamophobia." Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is spreading "Islamophobia."

But Ihsanoglu will never admit that. If he can convince the Western political elites that "Islamophobia" is really the fault of greasy Islamophobes like Spencer, then he can make it impossible for Western government and law enforcement to speak honestly about and formulate realistic responses to the jihad threat.

"OIC Secretary-General Warns of Western Plots against Islam," from the Fars News Agency, November 29:

TEHRAN (FNA)- Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said that the West has hatched plots to spread Islamophobia in a bid to block growing conversion to Islam, and demanded the Muslim nations to take collective action to defuse these plots.

Speaking in a meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki here in Tehran on Monday, Ihsanoglu cautioned that spreading "Islamophobia, insulting Islamic values and sparking and spreading hatred for Islam are high on the agenda of the West, and urged the entire Muslim states to take established, and institutionalized collective measures" to confront the western plots in this regard.

He further elaborated on the OIC's activities and plans to counter Islamophobia, insult to Islamic values and resolve Muslim issues such as Palestine, and called Iran's supports and activities in these grounds as "highly crucial".

The OIC chief also appreciated the Islamic Republic of Iran for its continued supports for the OIC and its valuable role in different OIC plans and programs....

The Organization of the Islamic Conference is already the largest voting bloc at the UN, but a place on the Security Council would cement its control. "Kashmir removed from UN list of disputes," from Rediff, November 15 (thanks to Ravi):

In a significant development, Jammu and Kashmir has been removed from the UN list of unresolved disputes, giving a setback to Pakistan which has been asking the world body to intervene on the issue.

The omission of Jammu and Kashmir from a list of disputes under the observation of the UN Security Council was noticed by Pakistan whose envoy has lodged a protest.

"Jammu and Kashmir dispute was not mentioned in the context of unresolved long-running situations," said Amjad Hussain B Sial, Pakistan' acting envoy to the UN.

"We understand this was an inadvertent omission, as Jammu and Kashmir is one of the oldest disputes on agenda of the Security Council," he added.

Sial was speaking at the UN General Assembly session, which was discussing the functioning and reform of the Security Council. It was organised by the UK that holds the presidency of the Security Council this month. [...]

Pakistan, which objects to India being on the Council, argued that the new council should include a few large states, a number of medium sized States and a majority of smaller States.

"We support the position of the Organization of Islamic Conference demanding adequate representation of Muslim Ummah in the Security Council," said Sial.

Here for the umpteenth time, the OIC chief tries to depict "Islamophobia" as some out-of-the-blue manifestation of racism and bigotry. He says nothing, of course, about all the jihad plots carried out by Muslims motivated by Islamic texts and teachings, or about the supremacist attempts to assert the primacy of Islamic law over American law. "OIC slams pandemic of Islam vilification," from AFP, November 6 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

The head of the world's largest Islamic group came down heavily on growing Islamophobia saying that while US leaders resisted it, Europeans abetted the trend for political gain.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said xenophobia directed at Muslim immigrants was taking hold, especially in Europe. Vote-seeking politicians were advancing extremist groups behind the anti-Muslim sentiment.

"This issue has become a political agenda item," the Turkish head of the 58-member OIC said in an interview, while stressing that Islam was also a European religion.

"What worries me is that political authorities or political parties, instead of stopping this, or fighting this, some of them are using this for their political ends, to gain more popular support in elections," he said.

"I'm afraid that we are going through a process like the beginning of the 1930s of the last century, when an anti-Semitic agenda became politically a big issue (together with) the rise of fascism and Naziism... I think now we are in the first stages of such a thing."

A "pandemic of Islam vilification" is rising steadily, he warned, as documented by the OIC's newly-established office to monitor Islamophobia around the globe. Ihsanoglu pointed to the protests in the US against the "Ground Zero" Islamic centre in New York City, to the anti-burqa movement in Europe, to physical attacks on Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic.

The problem which most concerned him was the institutionalisation of anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, citing Switzerland's ban on minarets atop mosques and the movement to ban Muslim women's "burqa" full-face veil.

"This burqa business is really a sad story, it's only a few people who are doing this (wearing the burqa) ... It's just part of old habits of certain tribes in certain countries, it's not at all to do with Islam." Yet countries like France, Spain and Holland were reacting with legislation. The OIC chief predicted that time would take care of problem issues such as the burqa, as Muslims from less-developed cultures reach "a modern way of life".

But focusing on assimilation was the wrong approach. "Why assimilation? If Europe and the West are advocating the rights of minorities all over the world, why then when it comes to Europe do we speak about assimilation? Again, that shows the double standard." "Europe has to understand the reality of Islam today, and the reality that Islam is not an alien religion of Europe. Islam is a European religion, and Europe has to come to terms with Islam."

Mustachioed, with the erudite bearing of a scholarly British diplomat, Ihsanoglu is an expert in Islamic cultural history and the history of science, with a long career as a professor and department head at Istanbul University. Born in Cairo in 1943, Ihsanoglu has led the Jeddah-based OIC since 2005. Ihsanoglu spoke before the massacre of more than 50 Christians by Al Qaeda in a Baghdad church on October 31. In an official statement, he has vehemently condemned the killings as a "criminal and terrorist act".

While such violent attacks feed anti-Islamic hate, he argued Islamophobia arose separately from them.

"I think we have to keep extremism out of this discussion, which is a different topic."

The real issue, he insisted, was how anti-Muslim sentiment was included in high-level policy debate in some European countries.

In the United States, he said, Islamophobia was not as virulent. One reason was that Muslim immigrants to the US were better-educated and fitted in more easily.

A key difference was how Washington had consistently resisted admitting anti-Islamic emotions into public policy. "For instance, this marginal pastor who wanted to burn copies of the Holy Quran. The (US) government took responsibility and talked to him and convinced him not to do that."

While he advocates cultural compromise, Ihsanoglu draws the line at certain things, like the blasphemous Danish cartoons that sparked outrage among Muslims worldwide after they first appeared in 2005.

"Asking us to accept the cartoons is asking to accept insults as a norm. How can people ask us to accept the cartoons? This is indecent," he said, adding a warning that radicals on both sides should not be allowed to set the agenda....

Notice that he is all upset about cartoons, and says nothing about Muslims massacring Christians in churches or other Muslims in mosques. That is not something he apparently finds as difficult to accept as a norm.

The OIC, remember, is the organization that is leading an international campaign against the freedom of speech in the West, trying to compel Western states to criminalize criticism of Islam -- i.e., honest discussion of the motives and goals of jihad terrorists and Islamic supremacists. "U.S. envoy to travel to Mali to boost ties with Muslim world," from Xinhua, November 4 (thanks to Twostellas):

U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain, will travel to Mali Wednesday to launch the U.S. partnership with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on maternal and child health, the State Department announced in a statement.

"He also will meet with government officials, local religious leaders, and NGOs to discuss the President's framework for engaging Muslim communities around the world," the department said.

Hussain was appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama in February as special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). As an American attorney, Hussain is a Muslim of Indian heritage. In his role as an envoy, he has advised the Obama administration on issues related to Islam.

The better to nuke Israel with, doncha know. "OIC backs Iran nuclear program," from PressTV, November 1 (thanks to Javad):

The Organization of the Islamic Conference strongly supports Iran's nuclear program, says OIC deputy head for humanitarian affairs.

"The OIC in all of its resolutions has voiced support for Iran's peaceful nuclear program as a basic right," said OIC Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Ata al-Manan on Monday....

Of course it isn't, because the OIC is not after partial submission to its demands that free speech become subject to Sharia. So, a book about the cartoons that doesn't condemn them as the worst crime against humanity in the past 100 years, and that even reproduces a reduced-size version of the front page of Jyllands-Posten from the day the 'toons were printed, still leaves a lot to be suppressed as far as the OIC is concerned.

And do remember that the OIC wants the UN to develop "a legally binding institutional instrument" to put an end to free speech that could offend Islamic sensibilities.

As shown below, they push their agenda by portraying anything offensive to or critical of Islam as "incitement." Never mind the fact that the people getting hurt in the wake of the cartoons have been in danger from Muslims threatening and attacking the artists and publishers, or from rampages by Muslims in the streets of Muslim countries.

But unless and until the OIC can corral enough sympathizers and useful idiots at the UN to get its way, there's much bullying to be done of individual countries -- in this case, Denmark.

An update on this story. "OIC condemns publication of Danish book," by Habib Shaikh for the Khaleej Times, October 2 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

JEDDAH -- The Organisation of the Islamic Conference has condemned the publication of the book Tyranny of Silence in Denmark.

The book, containing blasphemous caricatures, hit the stores in Denmark on Thursday amid concerns over a backlash from the Muslim world.

The cartoons were first published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, resulting in condemnation from Muslims around the world.

Note the incredible sense of entitlement to order around the Danish government:

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu expressed his dismay and disappointment at the release of the book despite the fact that he, and some leaders of Muslim countries, had personally written letters to the foreign minister of Denmark, urging the Danish government to stop the publication of the book because of its highly provocative and inciting content.

Incitement to what? Laughter at the cartoons? Smiles? Nods of approval as one proceeds through the book?

He reiterated this position when he met the foreign minister of Denmark recently on the sidelines of the 65th session of the UN General Assembly.

Emphasising the moral responsibility of the political leadership of Denmark, Ihsanoglu said the publication of the book was a deliberate attempt to incite prejudice and animosity. This would undermine the ongoing efforts of the international community to promote understanding and peaceful coexistence among people of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds.

Referring to a statement issued by the Danish foreign ministry, he said the publication constituted a flagrant violation of the stipulation of Article 20 of the 1966 International Convention on Civil and Political Rights.

It's always ironic to hear the OIC talk about civil and political rights. What's the priority here? A Muslim's right not to be offended by a cartoon.

He added that in addition the Danish Criminal Code, in section 140, stipulates that people's religious feelings should be protected against mockery and scorn; and in section 266, stipulates that groups of persons should be protected against scorn and degradation on account of their religion, among other things.

If that law is correct as he quoted it, it certainly never anticipated the abuses and agenda of Islamic law. Danes might do well to modify it in response.

He said the publication of the book substantiates OIC's argument that certain groups and individuals are abusing freedom of expression laws to fuel hatred towards Islam and Muslims in some parts of the Western world.

All criticism, all concerns, all expressions of disagreement with Islamic teachings must reflect an upwelling of seething, bilious hatred, you see. And all those hurt feelings from satire and parody: you're committing feeling-cide with malice aforethought!

You're a feeling-cidal maniac, you monster!

As if the OIC didn't already largely control the UN. "More UNSC seats for Muslim states: Iran FM," from the Ahlul Bayt News Agency, September 27 (thanks to Twostellas):

Ahlul Bayt News Agency ; Iran's foreign minister has stressed the necessity of allocating more permanent and non-permanent seats in the UN Security Council to Islamic countries.

"In the past two decades the UN has faced important challenges and has lost its efficiency to effectively respond to the needs of the modern world," Manouchehr Mottaki said at the Organization of the Islamic Conferences (OIC) Foreign Ministers Annual Coordination Meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Sunday.

The OIC, which was established in 1969, is the second-largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations and has 57 member states spread over four continents.

"Therefore, continuing the process of revising the structure of this organization (the UNSC) with the aim of strengthening its capabilities and enhancing its capacities... is an unavoidable necessity," IRNA quoted Mottaki as saying.

The Iranian foreign minister added that the UN decision-making process should be more democratized and its activities more clear.

Mottaki referred to the mounting trend of Islamophobia as the Islamic world's main challenge in the West and called for the cooperation of all Muslim countries and the adoption of collective measure to effectively counter the phenomenon....

"Collective measure," that is, not including fighting against jihad terrorism.

In "OIC and the Modern Caliphate" in the American Thinker, September 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller), the world's leading scholar of Islamic antisemitism, dhimmitude, and the Islamization of Europe, Bat Ye'or, exposes the Organization of the Islamic Conference:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is a religious and political organization. Close to the Muslim World League of the Muslim Brotherhood, it shares the Brotherhood's strategic and cultural vision: that of a universal religious community, the Ummah, based upon the Koran, the Sunna, and the canonical orthodoxy of shari'a. The OIC represents 56 countries and the Palestinian Authority (considered a state), the whole constituting the universal Ummah with a community of more than one billion three to six hundred million Muslims.

The OIC has a unique structure among nations and human societies. The Vatican and the various churches are de facto devoid of political power, even if they take part in politics, because in Christianity, as in Judaism, the religious and political functions have to be separated. Asian religions, too, do not represent systems that bring together religion, strategy, politics, and law within a single organizational structure.

Not only does the OIC enjoy unlimited power through the union and cohesion of all its bodies, but also to this it adds the infallibility conferred by religion. Bringing together 56 countries, including some of the richest in the world, it controls the lion's share of global energy resources. The European Union (EU), far from anticipating the problems caused by such a concentration of power and investing in the diversification and autonomy of energy sources since 1973, acted to weaken America internationally in order to substitute for it the U.N., the OIC's docile agent. In the hope of garnering a few crumbs of influence, the EU privileged a massive Muslim immigration into Europe, paid billions to the Mediterranean Union and Palestinian Authority, weakened the European states, undermined their unity, and wrapped itself in the flag of Palestinian justice, as though this would supply some protective system against the global jihad, which it endeavored to focus on Israel.

Religion as the main aspect of the OIC emerges from its language and its targets. It seems that the OIC is restoring in the 21st century the Caliphate, the supreme controlling body for all Muslims. In their Charter (2008), Member States confirm that their union and solidarity are inspired by Islamic values. They affirm their aim to reinforce within the international arena their shared interests and the promotion of Islamic values. They commit themselves to revitalizing the pioneering role of Islam in the world, increasing the prosperity of the member states, and -- in contrast to to the European states -- to ensure the defense of their national sovereignty and territorial integrity. They proclaim their support for Palestine with al-Quds Al Sharif, the Arabized name for Jerusalem, as its capital, and exhort each other to promote human rights, basic freedoms, the state of law (shari'a), and democracy according to their constitutional and legal system -- in other words, compliance with shari'a....

Read it all.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference continues to pretend that it is Western non-Muslims, not Islamic jihadists, who are responsible for the link between Islam and terrorist violence, and are hoping by means of laws against "incitement to religious hatred," which are of course to be interpreted and applied by them, to render us mute and hence defenseless in the face of the advancing jihad. "OIC calls for urgent collective measures against Islamophobia," by Habib Shaikh in the Saudi Gazette, September 27:

JEDDAH - Foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) have called upon the international community to make collective efforts to prevent incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims and to take effective measures to discourage negative stereotyping of people on the basis of religion, faith or race, according to an official source at the OIC on Sunday.

This call was made in the declaration by the Annual Coordination Meeting of Foreign Ministers of OIC Member States on Countering Islamophobia held at the United Nations head quarters, New York on Friday.

The foreign ministers called for a global awareness on the dangerous implications of the rise of Islamophobia on world peace and security and urged the leaders of the international community to demonstrate their collective political will to address the issue with all urgency.

"We emphasize the need to develop, at the UN, including the HRC, a legally binding institutional instrument to promote respect for all religions and cultural values and prevent intolerance, discrimination and the instigation of hatred against any group or followers of any religion."

They also called upon the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to set up an observatory at her office aimed at monitoring and documenting acts that lead to incitement to religious hatred, hostility and violence.

In the declaration, they extended support for all initiatives aimed at promotion of moderation, tolerance and encouraging dialogue for shunning violence and extremism, and invited the international community both in terms of policy and practice to stand against all xenophobic campaigns of fear-mongering and discriminatory measures that endanger peaceful coexistence among cultures, civilizations and nations and create a negative environment conducive to violence and violation of human rights of individuals and communities.

"We also call upon the international community to make concrete measure with a view to fostering an environment of respect for all religions," they said.

They stressed that while considering the importance of dialogue among civilizations and expansion of relations and cooperation between the Islamic World and other cultures and civilizations, "we reiterate our commitment to continue efforts in engaging with the West in projecting the true tenets of Islam, and countering common challenges."

However, they expressed "profound regret and deep concern" at the increasing acts of Islamophobia, growing trend of intolerance and hatred toward Muslims, and mounting number of acts of violence against Muslims in some Western societies....

This is part of the Organization of the Islamic Conference's ongoing campaign to pressure Western states to criminalize criticism of Islam as "hate speech," thus rendering them mute and defenseless in the face of the advancing jihad. "Islamic states push UN to condemn Koran burning," by Robert Evans for Reuters, September 22:

GENEVA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Islamic states sought on Wednesday to have the United Nations human rights council condemn a U.S. pastor's suspended plan to burn Korans, saying it was part of a pattern of global anti-Muslim violence.

A resolution submitted by Pakistan for the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) asks the council to speak out against what it dubbed "the recent call by an extremist group to organise a 'Burn a Koran Day'."

The resolution, which diplomats said was likely to be passed as the OIC and its allies have a majority on the 47-nation body, made no reference to condemnation of the plan by President Barack Obama and other U.S. and foreign leaders.

But it said the project, championed by little-known Florida preacher Terry Jones, was among "instances of intolerance, discrimination, profiling and acts of violence against Muslims occurring in many parts of the world."

The move came amid increasing efforts by the OIC -- which has Russia, China and Asian and African states as allies in the council -- to have the U.N. recognise "Islamophobia" as racism and open to challenge under international law....

In speeches in Geneva over the past few days, OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of Turkey has also argued that Jones' plan underscored his grouping's long-standing demands for a U.N.- backed ban on "defamation of religion"....

European diplomats said they were unlikely to vote against the OIC resolution, as their governments had already condemned the Koran burning idea, but feared it would be used to increase pressure for actions on defamation and "Islamophobia."...

No kidding, really?

Backing what looks like the strong horse in this age of Obamaite appeasement. "China seeks mutual support, co-op with Islamic world," from Xinhua, June 18:

BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi met here Friday with Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, pledging to enhance cooperation with the OIC.

Yang said the OIC is playing a more and more important role in international and regional affairs, and China is willing to further enhance exchanges and cooperation with the organization.

"China and the Islamic world shared a long-term friendship," Yang said. China hoped that the two sides would continue to support one another on issues concerning each other's core interests....

Ihsanoglu hailed the traditional friendship and the broad prospects for cooperation between the two sides. He said the OIC attaches great importance to relations with China, and is ready to promote the development of friendly cooperation between China and the Islamic nations....

Eric Giunta's Introduction:

Speech in five parts:

Q & A, in 3 parts:

All videos courtesy of Jaime -- many thanks, my friend!

Here is a terrific piece by Cliff May on Obama's new ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Rashad Hussain. I share's May's concern that instead of standing up to this chief foe of freedom of speech in the world today, Hussain will kowtow. Why wouldn't he?

"Candor must counter Muslim half-truths," by Clifford D. May, March 25 (thanks to Twostellas):

Last month, President Barack Obama announced the appointment of Rashad Hussain as ambassador to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. By video, Obama told attendees at something called the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, that Hussain, 31, was not just "an accomplished lawyer and trusted member of my White House staff," but also a "hafiz" - a Muslim who has memorized the entire Koran.

That reminded me: George Shultz, when he served as secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan, would bring new ambassadors into his office where he kept a globe. "Show me the country you'll be representing," he would say. The diplomat would give the globe a spin, abruptly halting its motion to indicate Botswana, Bhutan, Brunei or whatever country he'd be calling home for the next few years. Shultz would shake his head. "No," he would say. "You'll be representing the United States of America. Try to remember that."

The Organization of the Islamic Conference is a powerful global entity that most Americans have never heard of. It claims a "membership of 57 states spread over four continents," making it the largest intergovernmental organization after the United Nations - where, in recent years, it has arguably become the most powerful player.

The OIC's Web site is revealing. It includes a communique protesting Switzerland's ban of minarets, another on "Israeli Aggressions," a condemnation of the "reprint of the controversial drawing of the Prophet Muhammad by Swedish artist Lars Vilks . . . as reaction to an alleged plot to murder the cartoonist," and much on "Islamophobia."

There is not much on terrorism aside from a statement by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC's current secretary general, instructing that it "would be an unfortunate error in judgment in believing that Islam is linked to terror; that it is intolerant of other religious beliefs, that its values and practices are not democratic; that it favors oppression of freedom of expression and undermining human rights." [...]

One might argue Hussain should be making a forceful case for such democratic values as freedom and human rights - including for women and non-Muslims.

That Hussain has memorized the Koran is impressive. It remains to be seen whether he is equally familiar with the U.S. Constitution. He'll be representing the United States of America. He should try to remember that.

Read it all.

The American people still have a right to know who is responsible for the coverup. The White House propagated false statements regarding who actually made the defense of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian. Did White House officials know these statements were false when they made them?

"Obama Envoy Admits 'Ill Conceived' Remarks Defending Terror Suspect," from FOXNews.com, February 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Rashad Hussain, named by Obama as an envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, said Friday his comments at the time were "ill conceived or not well formulated."

President Obama's new Muslim envoy Rashad Hussain admitted Friday to once defending a man who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a terrorist group -- an admission that contradicts earlier claims from the White House that the quotes had been mistakenly attributed to Hussain.

Hussain, named by Obama as an envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference, said Friday his comments at the time were "ill conceived or not well formulated."

In 2004, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs quoted Hussain saying at a seminar on Muslim issues that Sami al-Arian was the victim of "politically motivated persecutions" after al-Arian, a university professor, was charged in 2003 with heading U.S. operations of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Al-Arian pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiracy to aid the group -- designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist group since 1997 -- and was sentenced to more than four years in prison.

The Web version of the 2004 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs was later edited to delete all of Hussain's comments. Editor Delinda Hanley told Fox News last week she believed the change was made in February 2009.

Hanley didn't recall who requested the edit, but Hussain said Friday that he had contacted the publication to "raise concerns" about comments that he said were "without context, leaving a misimpression."

"Eventually, on their own accord, they modified the article," said Hussain, who was a Yale Law student and an editor of the Yale Law Journal at the time of the panel discussion.

The White House initially responded to the controversy by saying this week that the remarks about al-Arian were made by his daughter, Laila al-Arian. But on Friday, Hussain affirmed that the comments were his....

In "Pandering To The Islamic Conference" in Forbes, February 18 (thanks to Twostellas), Claudia Rosett identifies more of what's wrong with the Rashad Hussain appointment:

Controversy is swirling around President Barack Obama's choice of a young American Muslim lawyer, Rashad Hussain, to serve as his special envoy to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Behind this fracas looms the even larger question of whether the U.S. should be sending the OIC any special envoy at all.

[...] Founded at an Islamic summit in Morocco in 1969, the OIC describes itself on its Web site as "the collective voice of the Muslim world"--though in reality many of its members are rulers of states in which the people themselves have no free voice, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya and Iran. The OIC began with 30 members and today boasts 57 member "states." (Though that's inaccurate, because one of those 57 members listed by the OIC is Palestine, which is not a state.) But the OIC, dedicated to spreading its own vision of a new world order, enjoys a propaganda coup every time someone carelessly refers to its 57 "member states," instead of its 56 states plus the Palestinian Authority.

The OIC is headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It is dedicated in its documents to spreading Islamic law, or sharia. Its Web site says it has "the singular honor to galvanize the Ummah into a unified body"--and it defines the Ummah as all Muslims of the world.

This campaign has been reflected at the United Nations, where the OIC's 56 members plus the Palestinian observer form one of the biggest and most influential lobbying blocs in the UN's 192-member General Assembly. The OIC itself holds an observer seat as well, which gives it a prime spot for getting involved in UN debates and resolutions.

This amounts to a bonanza for the OIC, which on the financial front hitches a ride effectively subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. While the U.S. alone pays 22% of the UN's $2.3 billion annual core budget and gets one vote on how the money is used, all the 57 OIC members put together pay less than 5% and get 56 votes. On top of that the U.S. contributes many billions more for such UN ventures as peacekeeping, food aid, refugee relief and so forth. The OIC doesn't come close.

But the OIC does have its passions. The OIC has been a big backer of a campaign at the UN for "anti-blasphemy" rules that would effectively gag free speech and muffle any real debate about the nature and direction of Islam. The OIC is also one of the big reasons the UN has not been able to come up with a viable definition of terrorism. The point of disagreement is that the OIC, while condemning terrorism, has a record of then qualifying that by redefining terrorism to exclude "the exercise of legitimate right of peoples to resist foreign occupation."...

In FrontPage this morning is the second of my two articles today about the Rashad Hussain coverup:

Someone is covering up for Rashad Hussain. But who?

And what did Barack Obama know, and when did he know it?

Rashad Hussain is the Obama administration's newly appointed special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the thuggish international organization that is engaged in a full-scale campaign to intimidate Western governments into adopting hate speech codes that will effectively quash criticism of Islam - including jihad violence perpetrated in its name. Rashad Hussain is an apposite choice for this position, since several years ago he defended a notorious U.S.-based leader of a jihad terrorist group.

But someone doesn't want you to know that, and made a clumsy attempt to cover it up.

In 2004, Rashad Hussain, then a Yale law student, declared that the investigation and prosecution of University of South Florida professor Sami al-Arian, who ultimately pled guilty to charges involving his activities as a leader of the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was a "politically motivated persecution" designed "to squash dissent."

Journalist Patrick Goodenough of Cybercast News Service reports that Hussain's remarks in support of Al-Arian were published in the jihad-enabling Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in November 2004. But now all that has gone down the memory hole. The Washington Report's archived version of this November 2004 article lacks two paragraphs that were included in the original version: the ones quoting Rashad Hussain. Otherwise the article is unchanged.

The Washington Report editors, caught red-handed, decided to brazen it out, and blame their accusers - a tried-and-true tactic that is also frequently employed by jihadists in the West. They insist that there was no cover-up, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a venomous Islamophobe: according to Goodenough, "WRMEA news editor and executive director Delinda Hanley denied there was a 'cover-up,' and implied that anti-Muslim discrimination was behind the fact this was now being raised."

Sure. It's just "anti-Muslim discrimination" to be concerned about Rashad Hussain's support for Al-Arian, a vicious suicide-bombing supporter who chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," and clearly meant it. When two Islamic Jihad suicide bombers killed eighteen people in Israel in 1995, Al-Arian called them "two mujahidin martyred for the sake of God."

But there was no cover-up! It was all a mistake, you see: according to the Washington Report now, Sami Al-Arian's daughter, Laila Al-Arian, actually said the words that were attributed to Rashad Hussain.

But this explanation doesn't make sense, since the article was altered just to remove the quotes, not to change the name of the person quoted. Also, the author of the original story, Shereen Kandil, contradicts the Washington Report's explanation, telling Goodenough:

"When I worked as a reporter at WRMEA, I understood how important it was to quote the right person, and accurately. I have never mixed my sources and wouldn't have quoted Rashad Hussain if it came from Laila al-Arian. If the editors from WRMEA felt they wanted to remove Rashad Hussain from the article, my assumption is that they did it for reasons other than what you're saying. They never once contacted me about an 'error' they claim I made.'"

Was the Washington Report covering for Rashad Hussain at its own discretion, or at the behest of someone else? Did Barack Obama himself know about this cover-up? Did someone in the White House or the State Department find out about Hussain's defense of Al-Arian, and act to cover for the bright young special envoy before this defense was discovered and he became known as a terror apologist?

Or is the Obama Administration wholly uninvolved - and unaware of the fact that the President has chosen as an envoy to the world's leading organization of Islamic states a man who has openly declared his support for an admitted leader of a jihad terror group? Alternatively, is Hussain's disdain for the war on terror and support for Al-Arian precisely what Obama thought might make him appealing to the OIC? In 2007 Hussain declared that federal law should prohibit "the targeting of non-citizens solely on the basis of their racial, religious, or ethnic backgrounds." In other words, airport security officials should keep on pretending that eighty-year-old Iowa grandmothers present just as much of a terror risk as do young Muslim males. It's an outrage to common sense and a waste of resources, but it pleases Barack Obama, Rashad Hussain, and the Islamic countries to which the Administration is so desperately and fruitlessly reaching out.

Whoever is covering up for Rashad Hussain should come clean. And in the process, Obama should reevaluate the wisdom of sending a man like Hussain, with the views that he holds, to an organization such as the OIC - as should question whether he should really be sending an envoy to the OIC in the first place.

But Obama is in far too deep for that.

Sami al-Arian is the former Florida professor who turned out to be a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and who waged an immensely successful propaganda campaign charging that his prosecution was a manifestation of "Islamophobia" -- until he pled guilty, that is. And Rashad Hussain was part of that campaign, although someone has tried to cover up that fact. "Obama's New OIC Envoy Defended Activist Who Aided Terrorist Group," by Patrick Goodenough for CNS News, February 15:

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama's newly appointed envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference was quoted in 2004 as saying an American who aided a Palestinian terrorist group was the victim of "politically motivated persecutions" who was being used "to squash dissent."

Rashad Hussain was quoted as telling a Muslim students' event in Chicago that if U.S. Muslims did not speak out against the injustices taking place in America, then everyone's rights would be in jeopardy.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) cited Hussain as making the remarks in connection with Sami al-Arian, a university professor and activist sentenced in 2006 to more than four years in prison (including time already spent in custody) after he had pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

The U.S. government designated the PIJ as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and in 2003, then Attorney-General John Ashcroft described it as "one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world."

Palestinian Islamic Jihad has killed more than 100 Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks. Its victims include American citizens Alisa Flatow, a 20-year-old New Jersey college student killed in a 1995 suicide bombing in Gaza, and 16-year-old Shoshana Ben-Ishai, shot dead in a bus in Jerusalem in 2001.

In sentencing al-Arian, Judge James Moody of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida described him as a "leader of the PIJ" and a "master manipulator."

Al-Arian remains under home detention in Virginia pending contempt of court charges relating to his refusal to testify in an unrelated case involving an Islamic think tank. Sympathizers view him as a victim of post-9/11 law enforcement zeal and anti-Muslim prejudice. (The WRMEA article described him as "an innocent man targeted for free-speech activities, whose rights were stripped thanks in part to the PATRIOT Act.")

Among those sympathizers, evidently, was Rashad Hussain, who at the time of the cited remarks was a Yale Law School student and an editor, from 2003-2005, of the Yale Law Journal. He went on to serve as a Department of Justice trial attorney and in January 2009 was appointed White House deputy associate counsel.

On Saturday, Obama named the Texas-born, 31-year-old Indian-American as his envoy to the OIC, the 57-member bloc of Islamic states. The appointment is in line with the president's goal, expressed in his speech in Cairo last June, to reach out to the Islamic world.

Obama made the announcement in a video address at a U.S.-Islamic World Forum meeting in Qatar, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Hussain attended over the weekend.

"Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo," Obama told the gathering in the video message. "And as a hafiz of the Koran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work." (A hafiz is someone who has memorized the Islamic text.)

And someone is whitewashing the record:

Article edited

Around three years after the WRMEA article quoting Hussain first appeared, it was edited to remove all references to him.

A copy of the original 2004 article, retrieved via the Nexis news database, includes the following sentences:

Al-Arian's situation is one of many "politically motivated persecutions," claimed Rashad Hussain, a Yale law student. Such persecution, he stated, must be fought through hope, faith, and the Muslim vote (...) Along with many others, said Yale's Hussain, Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been "used politically to squash dissent." The Muslim community must speak out against the injustices taking place in America, he emphasized. Otherwise, everyone's rights will be in jeopardy.

But in the version of the same story currently available on the WRMEA Web site those sentences - and only those sentences - have disappeared. An Internet archive search indicates that the edits were made sometime after October 2007.

Contacted by email on Sunday, the writer of the original article expressed surprise but said she no longer worked at WRMEA and could not explain the edit. Queries sent to WRMEA editors brought no response. They were asked whether either Hussain, or anyone else, had asked for the archived story to be altered...

Read it all.

Of course, Obama has already shown that the OIC's war against free speech doesn't particularly bother him. "Obama Names Envoy to Islamic Group," from Reuters, February 13:

DOHA, Feb 13 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday he was naming a special envoy to a top Islamic body to further Washington's cooperation with the Muslim world.

Obama told a U.S.-Islamic World Forum in the Qatari capital Doha in a recorded video message that he was naming White House official Rashad Hussain as special envoy to the 56-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

"As an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of my White House staff, Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in Cairo," Obama said....

"Since then, my administration has made a sustained effort to listen. We've held thousands of events and town halls ...in the United States and around the world ... And I look forward to continuing the dialogue during my visit to Indonesia next month," Obama said.

Obama told Muslims in his June 4 speech in Cairo that violent extremists had exploited tensions between Muslims and the West and that Islam was not part of the problem.

His speech was welcomed by many Muslims, though some said they wanted him to spell out specific actions to resolve long-running problems like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"And as a hafiz of the Koran, (Hussain) is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I thank him for carrying forward this important work," Obama said in his message to the Doha meeting, using the term for someone who has mastered and memorised the Muslim holy book....

The Saudis clearly realize what the Western world is determined to ignore: that Erdogan has put Turkey on the path to discarding Kemalist secularism and becoming an Islamic state. "Turkey's PM awarded by Arab world for 'services to Islam," from World Bulletin, January 12 (thanks to James):

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is announced the winner of "King Faisal International Prize" which is considered the "Nobel prize" of the Arab world.

The award, which is given every year by Saudi Arabia's King Faisal Foundation, is presented to scientists and people who create positive differences in the world and make contributions to Islam.

This year's winners were announced at a ceremony held in Riyadh.

Erdogan was selected by the foundation for "his services to Islam".

Commenting on Erdogan's success, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said that the foundation decided to award Erdogan as his remarkable contributions and extraordinary successes were highly appreciated.

Pointing to Erdogan's virtuous leadership, Ihsanoglu said the Turkish prime minister contributed to the righteous causes of the Islam world and to the formation of "Alliance of Civilizations" initiative.

About the Alliance of Civilizations, see Bat Ye'or's remarks here.

King Faisal Foundation was established in 1976 by the eight sons of the late King Faisal ibn Abd Al Aziz, a son of Saudi Arabia's founder and the Kingdom's third monarch. Of the many philanthropic activities of the foundation, the "King Faisal International Prize" is the most widely known....

Winners of the "Prize for Service to Islam" are chosen directly by the respective selection committee.

Each of the prize categories consists of a certificate, hand written in Diwani calligraphy, summarizing the laureate's work; a commemorative 24 carat, 200 gram gold medal, uniquely cast for each Prize; and a cash endowment of SR 750,000 (USD 200,000). Co-winners in any category share the monetary grant. The prizes are awarded during a ceremony in Riyadh, under the auspices of the King of Saudi Arabia.

These are the kinds of laws that the Organization of the Islamic Conference is working to bring to the West. "Egypt court upholds 4-year sentence for blogger," from Reuters, December 22:

CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian court confirmed the four-year jail sentence imposed on an Egyptian student blogger for posting writings critical of Islam and the government, the state news agency MENA said.

Blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, then 22, was arrested in 2006 and charged with publishing opinions aimed at disturbing public order, insulting the head of state and defaming Islam. He was expelled from al-Azhar University, Egypt's most prestigious seat of Islamic learning.

Suleiman will spend only one year in jail as he has already spent three years in detention since his arrest....

"Islamophobia," a recent and politically manipulative coinage, is now a crime against humanity. Yet unique among crimes against humanity, it is within the power of its victims to end, or at least to curtail so severely as to make it virtually nonexistent. Here are five ways Muslims can end "Islamophobia":

1. Focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means. In line with this, clarify what is meant by their condemnations of the killing of innocent people by stating unequivocally that American and Israeli civilians are innocent people.
3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis, rather than working toward impose Sharia upon those non-Muslims.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

"Erdoğan: Islamophobia crime against humanity," from Today's Zaman, December 18 (thanks to Maxwell):

Islamophobia is a crime against humanity just like anti-Semitism, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, while calling on the international community for recognition of this crime.

Is "Islamophobia" really like anti-Semitism? Let's see. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a forgery. Jews really don't have a secret plan to control the world. Is concern about Islamic supremacism similarly trumped up? Or does Islam include a political manifestation that teaches world domination?

Don't take my word for it. Let's go to Majid Khadduri, an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God's law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world....The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)

Don't believe Khadduri? Very well. How about Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari'ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: "Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book...is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah." Nyazee concludes: "This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation" of non-Muslims.

Don't believe Nyazee, either? How about Iran's Thug-In-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Of course, he is no Islamic scholar, but he is a devout Muslim, and he learned Islam not from greasy Islamophobes but from...Islamic scholars. And he has said: "Have no doubt... Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world."

Don't believe Ahmadinejad? How about a Shafi'i manual of Islamic law endorsed by the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo? It says that the leader of the Muslims "makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax," and cites Koran 9:29 in support of this idea: "Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden-who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book-until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled." ('Umdat al-Salik o9.8)

Is concern about this imperialist imperative really "Islamophobia," akin to the lurid fictions that underlay anti-Semitism? No. Anyone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and legal equality for all people should be concerned about this Islamic imperative, which would deny all three, and more besides.

Erdoğan's remarks came at a meeting with Syrian media held earlier this week, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported. The meeting was apparently held on the occasion of an upcoming official visit by Erdoğan to Damascus, which is scheduled for Tuesday.

"Islam means peace, and it cannot tolerate terrorism. We reject all attempts to link Islam with terrorism," Erdoğan was quoted as saying by SANA. The agency noted that Erdoğan also called on the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Arab League and all concerned parties to present a unified front to help end Islamophobia.

Of course, he is not referring to Muslims who link Islam with terrorism by justifying acts of terrorism with reference to Islamic teachings.

Hypocrisy. That is, it is hypocrisy from a Western point of view. As far as these "scholars" are concerned, Islam is the truth, its truth is self-evident, and therefore the Swiss are obligated to accommodate it in a way that the Saudis are not obligated to accommodate non-Muslim religious observance.

"Saudi scholars slam Swiss minaret ban," by Abdul Rahman Shaheen for Gulf News, December 6 (thanks to James):

Riyadh: Several prominent Saudi Islamic scholars and preachers lambasted the recent Swiss referendum to impose ban on the construction of mosque minarets in the country

Speaking to Gulf News, they said that this is another evidence of the West's antagonism towards Islam and such moves detail the serious initiatives being undertaken for holding dialogue among followers of various religions in different parts of the world.

Shaikh Abdul Mohsen Al Shahri, an eminent scholar in Islamic jurisprudence, said that the Swiss referendum was part of a new hostile campaign unleashed against Islam and Muslims in the West. "This is a clear evidence of the racial and religious segregation still prevails in the West, especially in a country, which boasts of an exemplary model of democratic ideals," he said adding that this serves as a severe blow to the so called secular image of Switzerland.

On his part, Shaikh Murshid Al Motairi, a noted Saudi preacher, underlined the need for launching a massive campaign to withdraw investments of Muslim countries from Swiss banks and halt going to Switzerland for holiday making.

Now you're talkin', al-Motairi!

More hypocrisy from the chief enemy of free speech in the world today, the OIC:

Meanwhile, the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Prof. Ekmeliddin Ihsanoglu voiced disappointment and concern over the Swiss public referendum to ban building of minarets in the mosques in Switzerland.

The Secretary General of OIC, which groups 57 Muslim countries, qualified the ban as an unfortunate development that would tarnish the image of Switzerland as a country upholding respect for diversity, freedom of religion and human rights.

He described this as the latest example of growing anti-Islamic incitements in Europe by the extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, racist, scare-mongering ultra-right politicians who reign over common sense, wisdom and universal values.

The Chief of OIC, which represents about 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, expressed his deep regret that at a time when the Muslim world and Muslim societies around the world have been engaged in a struggle to fight extremism, the Western societies are being hostage to extremists who exploit Islam as a scapegoat and a springboard to develop their own political agenda which in turn contributes to polarization and fragmentation in the societies.

He stated that this move also highlighted the need for promoting genuine dialogue at the grass-roots level to alleviate all misunderstandings and misinformation that lead to intolerance and misconceptions.