@ wraith808: Very interesting reading. Thanks for the post.
@Renegade: For something potentially even
more chilling in effect:
Secretary of State Clinton says State Department will coordinate with OIC on legal ways to implement UN's resolution criminalizing "defamation of religion" (that'll include on and off the Internet)
Spoiler
Secretary of State Clinton says State Department will coordinate with OIC on legal ways to implement UN's resolution criminalizing "defamation of religion"
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....
Posted by Robert on August 3, 2011 2:16 PM | 111
Coming soon to a State near you?
If that doesn't make sense to you, it probably will if you take the perspective that it would be the introduction of an important piece of Islamic Shariah law, which makes it an offence punishable variously up to and including by death, to criticise Islam or make offensive statements/actions about Islamic beliefs. That includes those Danish (or any other) cartoons depicting Mohammed (pbuh).
It's no joking matter! 
Fair's fair, I say. If it can be illegal to deny the Holocaust of the Jews, then it should be illegal to defame Islamism. Oh, but wait...wasn't it the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who...
Interestingly, the new law might find favour with not only Muslims, but also Christians, as it would also outlaw further exhibition of things like the so-called "art" of the
Piss Christ (photo of a crucifix in a bucket of the artist's urine) and the eponymous
Madonna in a condom statuette (covered in mock semen). Such exhibition of the
Madonna has apparently (I gather) already been banned on at least one Internet site (in Austria).
But any exhibition of either artefact in any manner should be punishable by death anyway, as, from a purely artistic perspective, they are both egregiously poor pieces of a type of art which should be discouraged on principle - oh yes, and they are unnecessarily offensive too.
It irked me that they had been freely displayed in Government-funded museums/galleries.
