... Dadkhah and religious rights organizations say Nadarkhani is facing possible execution for apostasy and for refusing to renounce his religion, contradicting reports by Iran state media that have indicated Nadarkhani was found guilty of rape, extortion and security-related crimes. Messages seeking comment from Dadkhah were not immediately returned early Monday.
... Nadarkhani is the latest Christian cleric to be imprisoned in Iran for his religious beliefs. According to Elam Ministries, a United Kingdom-based organization that serves Christian churches in Iran, there was a significant increase in the number of Christians arrested solely for practicing their faith between June 2010 and January 2011. A total of 202 arrests occurred during that six-month period, including 33 people who remained in prison as of January, Elam reported.
Nadarkhani, a pastor in the 400-member Church of Iran, has been held in that country's Gilan Province since October 2009, after he protested to local education authorities that his son was forced to read from the Koran at school. His wife, Fatemeh Pasandideh, was also arrested in June 2010 in an apparent attempt to pressure him to renounce his faith. She was released in October 2010, according to Amnesty International.
Oh, I agree, ALL fundamentalists have some wiring short-circuited. But right now, it is the Islamic fundamentalists who are yelling loudest for the most restrictions. Honestly, what they do in their own countries is not really my business, but they are pressing these limitations on free speech onto the entire world! That is pure nonsense! Do they seriously expect the rest of the world to accept such restrictions? My feeling is no, they are just manufacturing an excuse for maintaining and accelerating their holy war.
There was interesting documentary broadcast a few years back - In God's Name, in which 12 of the world's spiritual leaders discussed everything from waking up in the morning to marriage to death and the afterlife. There was a lovely kind of symmetry in their views - and this was everyone from a Shito High Priest to the Hugging Saint to the chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi. I was (and still am) struck by the universality of what one interviewee (a Sunni Muslim Sheikh) said about extremists:
"People of all faiths and homelands are divided into reasonable and unreasonable people. All that I wish and pray to God for is that the reasonable people would outnumber the fools."
Indeed. THAT is exactly the kind of thinking we need, no matter which religion you're talking about. To use Pakistan for example again, a small number of wackjobs are holding an entire country hostage.
There was interesting documentary broadcast a few years back - In God's Name, in which 12 of the world's spiritual leaders discussed everything from waking up in the morning to marriage to death and the afterlife. There was a lovely kind of symmetry in their views - and this was everyone from a Shito High Priest to the Hugging Saint to the chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi. I was (and still am) struck by the universality of what one interviewee (a Sunni Muslim Sheikh) said about extremists:
"People of all faiths and homelands are divided into reasonable and unreasonable people. All that I wish and pray to God for is that the reasonable people would outnumber the fools."
All fundamentalists have this trait in common. Jewish, Mormon, Christian, Islam. IMO it is a mental illness, to wish for death. They have very strict rules, informed by dogma, which must be followed. Any indiscretion from this causes god to give you a black mark. They are very rigid, and cannot deal with any kind of change. They are obsessive-compulsive to the max.
The Ultra Orthodox Jews have been holding Israel hostage for years. That's why the Teabaggers are kind of scary. We have to pay attention to what goes on, so that these people (Sarah Palin being one of them) do not obtain too much power, and start taking our rights away. (Not that I think we are anywhere close to that.)
Oh, I agree, ALL fundamentalists have some wiring short-circuited. But right now, it is the Islamic fundamentalists who are yelling loudest for the most restrictions. Honestly, what they do in their own countries is not really my business, but they are pressing these limitations on free speech onto the entire world! That is pure nonsense! Do they seriously expect the rest of the world to accept such restrictions? My feeling is no, they are just manufacturing an excuse for maintaining and accelerating their holy war.
It seems like Islamic fundamentalists are pushing for a 'final showdown'. They truly expect the rest of the world to convert to Islam, or 'face the consequences'. I mean, in this day and age, can anyone really be serious about internationally outlawing vast areas of free speech? One of the most basic tenets of Western democracies? Forcing such an intractable position on a world that clearly is not going to acquiesce, is just setting the stage for conflict. It allows them to justify continuing their holy war, with no possibility of reasonable compromise.
I do not apply these ideologies to ALL Muslims, in fact it seems clear there are relatively few Muslims who hew to these fundamentalist doctrines. But where ARE all those moderates? On the sidelines? Take Pakistan for example: it has an educated, sophisticated society. Where are all of THOSE Muslims while the wackjobs are running the asylum?
All fundamentalists have this trait in common. Jewish, Mormon, Christian, Islam. IMO it is a mental illness, to wish for death. They have very strict rules, informed by dogma, which must be followed. Any indiscretion from this causes god to give you a black mark. They are very rigid, and cannot deal with any kind of change. They are obsessive-compulsive to the max.
The Ultra Orthodox Jews have been holding Israel hostage for years. That's why the Teabaggers are kind of scary. We have to pay attention to what goes on, so that these people (Sarah Palin being one of them) do not obtain too much power, and start taking our rights away. (Not that I think we are anywhere close to that.)
It seems like Islamic fundamentalists are pushing for a 'final showdown'. They truly expect the rest of the world to convert to Islam, or 'face the consequences'. I mean, in this day and age, can anyone really be serious about internationally outlawing vast areas of free speech? One of the most basic tenets of Western democracies? Forcing such an intractable position on a world that clearly is not going to acquiesce, is just setting the stage for conflict. It allows them to justify continuing their holy war, with no possibility of reasonable compromise.
I do not apply these ideologies to ALL Muslims, in fact it seems clear there are relatively few Muslims who hew to these fundamentalist doctrines. But where ARE all those moderates? On the sidelines? Take Pakistan for example: it has an educated, sophisticated society. Where are all of THOSE Muslims while the wackjobs are running the asylum?
It only takes a few The Spanish Inquisition, was a few highly placed individuals, the rest of the crowd went along for the entertainment value.
It seems like Islamic fundamentalists are pushing for a 'final showdown'. They truly expect the rest of the world to convert to Islam, or 'face the consequences'. I mean, in this day and age, can anyone really be serious about internationally outlawing vast areas of free speech? One of the most basic tenets of Western democracies? Forcing such an intractable position on a world that clearly is not going to acquiesce, is just setting the stage for conflict. It allows them to justify continuing their holy war, with no possibility of reasonable compromise.
I do not apply these ideologies to ALL Muslims, in fact it seems clear there are relatively few Muslims who hew to these fundamentalist doctrines. But where ARE all those moderates? On the sidelines? Take Pakistan for example: it has an educated, sophisticated society. Where are all of THOSE Muslims while the wackjobs are running the asylum?
GENEVA - Four years after cartoons of the prophet Muhammad set off violent protests across the Muslim world, Islamic nations are mounting a campaign for an international treaty to protect religious symbols and beliefs from mockery — essentially a ban on blasphemy that would put them on a collision course with free speech laws in the West.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Algeria and Pakistan have taken the lead in lobbying to eventually bring the proposal to a vote in the U.N. General Assembly.
If ratified in countries that enshrine freedom of expression as a fundamental right, such a treaty would require them to limit free speech if it risks seriously offending religious believers. The process, though, will take years and no showdown is imminent.
The proposal faces stiff resistance from Western countries, including the United States, which in the past has brushed aside other U.N. treaties, such as one on the protection of migrant workers.
Experts say the bid stands some chance of eventual success if Muslim countries persist. And whatever the outcome, the campaign risks reigniting tensions between Muslims and the West that President Barack Obama has pledged to heal, reviving fears of a "clash of civilizations."
Four years ago, a Danish newspaper published cartoons lampooning the prophet Muhammad, prompting angry mobs to attack Western embassies in Muslim countries, including Lebanon, Iran and Indonesia. In a countermovement, several European newspapers reprinted the images.
The countries that form the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference are now lobbying a little-known Geneva-based U.N. committee to agree that a treaty protecting religions is necessary.
A U.N. resolution seeks to criminalize opinions that differ with the Islamic faith.
By Christopher Hitchens
The Muslim religion makes unusually large claims for itself. All religions do this, of course, in that they claim to know and to be able to interpret the wishes of a supreme being. But Islam affirms itself as the last and final revelation of God's word, the consummation of all the mere glimpses of the truth vouchsafed to all the foregoing faiths, available by way of the unimprovable, immaculate text of "the recitation," or Quran.
If there sometimes seems to be something implicitly absolutist or even totalitarian in such a claim, it may result not from a fundamentalist reading of the holy book but from the religion itself. And it is the so-called mainstream Muslims, grouped in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who are now demanding through the agency of the United Nations that Islam not only be allowed to make absolutist claims but that it also be officially shielded from any criticism of itself.
Though it is written tongue-in-cheek in the language of human rights and of opposition to discrimination, the nonbinding U.N. Resolution 62/154, on "Combating defamation of religions," actually seeks to extend protection not to humans but to opinions and to ideas, granting only the latter immunity from being "offended." The preamble is jam-packed with hypocrisies that are hardly even laughable, as in this delicious paragraph, stating that the U.N. General Assembly:
Underlining the importance of increasing contacts at all levels in order to deepen dialogue and reinforce understanding among different cultures, religions, beliefs and civilizations, and welcoming in this regard the Declaration and Programme of Action adopted by the Ministerial Meeting on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, held in Tehran on 3 and 4 September 2007.
Yes, I think we can see where we are going with that. (And I truly wish I had been able to attend that gathering and report more directly on its rich and varied and culturally diverse flavors, but I couldn't get a visa.) The stipulations that follow this turgid preamble are even more tendentious and become more so as the resolution unfolds. For example, Paragraph 5 "expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism," while Paragraph 6 "otes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001."
You see how the trick is pulled? In the same weeks that this resolution comes up for its annual renewal at the United Nations, its chief sponsor-government (Pakistan) makes an agreement with the local Taliban to close girls' schools in the Swat Valley region (a mere 100 miles or so from the capital in Islamabad) and subject the inhabitants to Sharia law. This capitulation comes in direct response to a campaign of horrific violence and intimidation, including public beheadings. Yet the religion of those who carry out this campaign is not to be mentioned, lest it "associate" the faith with human rights violations or terrorism. In Paragraph 6, an obvious attempt is being made to confuse ethnicity with confessional allegiance. Indeed this insinuation (incidentally dismissing the faith-based criminality of 9/11 as merely "tragic") is in fact essential to the entire scheme. If religion and race can be run together, then the condemnations that racism axiomatically attracts can be surreptitiously extended to religion, too. This is clumsy, but it works: The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is testimony to its success.
Just to be clear, a phobia is an irrational and unconquerable fear or dislike. However, some of us can explain with relative calm and lucidity why we think "faith" is the most overrated of the virtues. (Don't be calling us "phobic" unless you want us to start whining that we have been "offended.") And this whole picture would be very much less muddied and confused if the state of Pakistan, say, did not make the absurd and many-times discredited assertion that religion can be the basis of a nationality. It is such crude amalgamations—is a Saudi or Pakistani being "profiled" because of his religion or his ethnicity?—that are responsible for any overlap between religion and race. It might also help if the Muslim hadith did not prescribe the death penalty for anyone trying to abandon Islam—one could then be surer who was a sincere believer and who was not, or (as with the veil or the chador in the case of female adherents) who was a volunteer and who was being coerced by her family.
Rather than attempt to put its own house in order or to confront such other grave questions as the mass murder of Shiite Muslims by Sunni Muslims (and vice versa), or the desecration of Muslim holy sites by Muslim gangsters, or the discrimination against Ahmadi Muslims by other Muslims, the U.N. resolution seeks to extend the whole area of denial from its existing homeland in the Islamic world into the heartland of post-Enlightenment democracy where it is still individuals who have rights, not religions. See where the language of Paragraph 10 of the resolution is taking us. Having briefly offered lip service to the rights of free expression, it goes on to say that "the exercise of these rights carries with it special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to limitations as are provided for by law and are necessary for respect of the rights or reputations of others, protection of national security or of public order, public health or morals and respect for religions and beliefs." The thought buried in this awful, wooden prose is as ugly as the language in which it is expressed: Watch what you say, because our declared intention is to criminalize opinions that differ with the one true faith. Let nobody say that they have not been warned.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif. < Copyright information >
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