What if America’s First Amendment went global? What if freedom of speech was valued and upheld all around the world?
There would probably be more obscenity and more “free expression” that is just plain disgusting. There’d be more America-haters like the Code Pink and A.N.S.W.E.R. impresarios swaggering about Capitol Hill, dressed like demented Statues of Liberty or throwbacks from Sufi Camp. There’d be thousands, maybe millions, of people with, as my mother used to say, “their noses out of joint,” offended by something that someone, somewhere had said. But truthfully, that would be a small price to pay to know that everyone had freedom of speech (within the usual limitations regarding crying “fire,” etc.) and no government could arrest an individual for expressing an opposing opinion.
The Insidious “Defamation of Religion” Agenda
Far better the wild abandon and potential to insult of free expression than the alternative, the egregious law proposed by the Organization of the Islamic Conference and other bad actors such as China, Cuba, and Russia. For years now the United Nations, a bastion of free speech – if you want freedom to condemn Israel – has passed a draft “defamation of religions” resolution. The resolution expresses concern about the “serious instances of deliberate stereotyping of religions, their adherents and sacred persons in the media and by political parties and groups” and calls on all countries to alter their legal and constitutional systems to prevent “defamation of religions.” The resolution includes a claim that “Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism,” just in case we weren’t sure that the entire purpose of the United Nations, never mind the resolution, is to advance Islam.
It doesn’t matter whether the so-called stereotyping actually refers to accurate, factual information. As with other such decisions, such as to not call enemy combatants what they are, or to call Islamic jihad terrorism “anti-Islamic activity,” reality does not matter. What matters is if someone’s feelings are hurt, or a religion is “defamed” by being associated with terrorism.
As L. Bennett Graham from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty explained to the Council on Foreign Relations, “The problem with this resolution is it turns the traditional understanding of human rights on its head.” Graham says that “traditional defamation laws protect individuals from false truth claims, not ideas, which cannot easily be proved true or untrue in court.” Defamation is a concept that refers to individuals, not religions. Taking the defamation of religion “to the higher level of human rights is dangerous because we are no longer talking about the protection of individuals, we’re talking about the protection of concepts,” Graham argues. The Becket Fund, along with several other human rights organizations, was successful in reducing support for the resolution by 23 countries in 2008. But ongoing vigilance is needed against the intimidation of anyone criticizing radical Islam and violence associated with it.
Graham said that the “Defamation of Religions” resolution created the idea that “there is a right not to be offended.” But in the inventory of human rights, this particular “right” is not found. And besides, when the person whose feelings are hurt by someone citing suras in the Koran that deal with killing infidels is actually killing infidels, the delicacy of their sensibilities might be called into question.
An international First Amendment, similar to that which the people of America have enjoyed and taken for granted for so many years, would bring new freedom to many. It would also help restore the freedoms that have been lost through obsequious submission to political correctness in Europe and, increasingly, in the United States. Repression of free speech in Europe and elsewhere in the West has resulted in harassment, financial costs, and threatened criminal charges against those who have dared to speak the truth. While most Americans feel themselves insulated against such worries, they may find themselves in the crosshairs of those seeking to stifle all opposition at any time in the future.
The Truth – Offensive or Not
On February 27, 2009 the Center for Security Policy and the International Free Press Society held a press conference to discuss recent attacks on free speech around the world. Speaking to a packed room at the National Press Club, the speakers called for an international First Amendment and for the banning of all hate speech laws. The press conference featured Geert Wilders, the Dutch Parliamentarian whose documentary about radical Islam’s war against Western civilization, Fitna, has caused uproar across the globe.
Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney |
Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney opened the event saying, “We are in the midst of a titanic struggle” between Islamic Shariah, a theo-political program, and “everything we hold dear.”
“The insinuation of Shariah legal codes and practices into Free World societies includes the effort to impose Shariah blasphemy, slander, and libel lies in the West,” Gaffney stated. According to Shariah, he said, “it is impermissible to engage in speech or writings that “defame” Islam or otherwise offend its followers.” If one didn’t know better, one might think the United Nations was under Shariah already.
Gaffney said that Americans must oppose all efforts to impose these restrictions in the West. “Every concession that is made in the face of such threats is an abridgement of our freedom,” he said. “We bear the responsibility for having allowed our freedoms to become as curtailed as they have because of our failure to confront such threats more effectively in the past,” he challenged. Geert Wilders is in the front lines of this battle, Gaffney said.
The next speaker, author Diana West, is Vice President of the International Free Press Society. West said, “The ideal speech protections . . . lie in the American First Amendment.” She called the First Amendment a “lodestar for efforts to repeal hate speech and blasphemy laws in Europe.” She warned, though, that even though America does not yet have the repressive “hate speech” laws of Europe, “Americans have increasingly submitted to personal and institutional codes of self-censorship.” These codes have come about through the desire for political correctness. But more recently, they are being experienced “under the influence of specifically Islamic speech codes.”
Author Diana West, Vice President of the International Free Press Society |
“We obviously don’t need a campaign to install a First Amendment here,” said West, “but there is a crucial need in this country to reestablish, or, perhaps better – reassert – the full range of political expression and debate that it guarantees.”
West was followed by Lars Hedegaard, President of the International Free Press Society. Hedegaard said that hate speech and blasphemy laws are common in many European countries. As with most knee-jerk reactions stemming from the desire to be politically correct, these laws lack clarity as to precisely what they aim to criminalize.
“We live at a time when free speech is under the heaviest attack we have experienced since the Nazis tried to impose their absolutist rule two generations ago, said Hedegaard. “At a time when we should be exchanging views and information about the real threats to our civilization and whole way of life, Western countries and international organizations are busy trying to shut down free discourse.”
“We need to repeal all hate speech and blasphemy laws that are now being adduced to take away our liberty,” Hedegaard concluded. He then introduced prime example of the attacks on free speech, Geert Wilders, MP. Wilders had recently been arrested and deported from England where he had traveled to speak and show his film Fitna at the invitation of members of the House of Lords. The British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, who barred Wilders from England, is the same person responsible for the Orwellian “anti-Islamic activity” phrase that is now used to describe Islamic jihad terrorism. She has allowed radical Islamist sympathizers from Hezbollah and other jihad organizations free access to the United Kingdom.
Lars Hedegaard, President of the International Free Press Society |
Geert Wilders began to a standing ovation. “It’s always a pleasure to cross a border without being sent back on the first plane,” he said wryly, telling the audience what he had told the United States Senate when he spoke to them on February 26, 2009. At a screening of Fitna Wilders told the Senate that “the European liberal establishment” is “blinded by their cultural relativism.” Possibly addressing a few Senators who had more in common with the European liberal establishment than with himself, he continued, “Their disdain of the West is so much greater than the appreciation of our many liberties … the left once stood for women rights, gay rights, equality, democracy. Now, they favor immigration policies that will end all this. Many have even lost their decency. Elite politicians in Europe have no problem to participate in or finance demonstrations where Muslims shout ‘Death to Jews.’ Seventy years after Auschwitz they know of no shame.”
At his press club screening of Fitna Wilders said, “What we once considered our birthright, we now have to battle for. . . . Will we leave our children the values of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem, or the values of Mecca, Gaza, and Tehran?”
The Fitna displayed the values of Mecca, Gaza, and Tehran in image after sobering image. Including quotations from the Koran dealing with treatment of infidels, the killing of Jews, Christians, and others who do not embrace Islam, and the actual footage evidence of the global jihad in which radical Islamists are engaged today, nothing was contrived. Nothing was taken out of “context” in the film, as the context is global jihad. Often condemned as “offensive,” the only offensive aspect of the film is the offense against humanity being committed by the jihadists. And yet even free speech advocates have distanced themselves from Fitna and from Wilders.
Enforcing freedom, or repression?
A statement from the International Free Press Society condemns this as hypocrisy, saying that “Opinion leaders in West, while claiming to support free speech in the abstract, invariably argue against it in cases where speaking freely may “offend” Muslims, in effect acting as enforcers of Islamic, rather than Western, law.”
“ In recent years,” the statement continues, “we have seen Western societies mobilize not only courts of opinion, but also courts of law to protect Islam from criticism and debate . . . The European Union has advanced a kind of newspeak that would in effect make it illegal to link any totalitarianism or terrorism with Islam. The United States Government has issued similar guidelines prohibiting such linkage in official communications. Meanwhile, the United Nations, including the UN Human Rights Council, has become the engine driving the effort to enforce a worldwide ban on criticism of Islam.”
Because of IRD’s focus, the political and social witness of the churches, I asked Wilders if churches in the Netherlands had supported him. “You expect them to be the first on the line in the anti-jihad movement,” said Wilders ruefully. (Not if you’re familiar with most American churches!) But Wilders receives support at the grassroots level from church members, while church leaders in the Netherlands were “the first to say nasty things about Fitna.” Media elites try to silence him. CNN called him “the Al Qaeda of the Netherlands.” But Wilders retorted that defending our culture and values is something of which to be proud. And he expressed some hope because the public in Europe is “fed-up with the cowardly political elitist government.”
Netherlands Member of Parliament Geert Wilders |
Wilders concluded by offering suggestions to address radical Islam. Mosques in Europe have been funded by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, the Emirates, and Bahrain. Those funders choose imams that preach jihad as is documented in Mr. Wilders’ film. Government leaders concerned about terrorism need to closely monitor the mosques in their communities and stop the spreaders of hatred and terrorism. And all of us should be concerned about the virulence of hate speech laws, supporting the call for an International First Amendment that guarantees us permission to speak freely.
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