Earlier this week, the Qatar-based international Union of Muslim Scholars– headed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood– called upon the United Nations to make “contempt of religions” illegal.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Union said that there should be “protection for ‘prophets’” and urged the UN to issue a “law criminalizing contempt of religions and the prophets and all the holy sites.”
The Muslim scholars also urged the West to “protect Muslim communities following the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.”
This is very strange. Jews, Christians, Hindus, and atheists have not been attacking Muslims.
On the contrary, Muslims have been rioting, shooting, stabbing, beheading, and blowing up other Muslims and infidels, especially Jews and Christians, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Nevertheless, these Muslim scholars seem to believe that Muslims are being violently persecuted.
When Muslims honor kill a daughter or a wife, they say they did so in “self-defense.” When a female relative allegedly commits any act of disobedience, she has shamed and attacked her family. This means they had to kill her in self-defense. These were the very words used by Palestinian Abu Nidal terrorist Zein Isa, when he and his wife killed their 16-year-old daughter, Palestina Isa, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Some experts (Dr. David Ghanim) and memoirists (Nonie Darwish, M.H. Anwar and Aruna Papp) suggest that the normative physical, sexual, and psychological child abuse which, with exceptions, describes Arab and Muslim or tribal child-rearing styles, may also account for such behaviors.
Westerners who take free speech and the right to criticize religion for granted have not been able to understand the fury that accurate criticism of Muslim practices (persecution of infidels, persecution of the “wrong” kind of Muslim, persecution of women, etc.) can arouse. Westerners have found it even more difficult to comprehend that the “Islamic street” will riot and murder in response to cartoons. Cartoons?
In a recent, private conversation with my friend and colleague, Israeli Arabist, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, he said this:
Arabs and Muslims know that their civilization has failed. They are unconsciously filled with shame about it. They know that our critique of their culture is true and they cannot bear being exposed by infidels (or by Muslim dissidents or apostates) whom they envy, fear, and despise. If the criticism was not true—they would laugh it off. But if it is true, they are exposed in all their shame for the entire world to see.
If Dr. Kedar is right (and I think he is), such dishonoring is a “killing” offense and treated as such.
It is no surprise that the Union of Islamic scholars, and before them, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), have, since 1999, been trying to impose Pakistani, Saudi, and Iranian style “blasphemy” laws on the infidel world and using the UN to do so. The UN is a world body, much like the Muslim Ummah (“nation” or “people”) is supposed to be. Unfortunately, the UN is largely symbolic, has little supra-power over individual member states, has failed its mission as a peace negotiator, is corrupt and hypocritical, and has been effective in one thing only: It has legalized anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
For years, resolutions to condemn “blasphemy” passed in the United Nations. The OIC wanted to impose criminal penalties for “blasphemy.” Finally, in 2011, the measure failed.
According to Nina Shea, these resolutions were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s “infamous 1989 fatwa, directing ‘all zealous Muslims to execute quickly the British author Salman Rushdie and others involved with his book The Satanic Verses.’” In 2005-2006, in the era of the Danish cartoons, Pakistan re-introduced the anti-blasphemy resolution in language calculated “to appeal to Western liberals.” By 2007, support for such measures “declined.” In Shea’s view, “this sudden shift came about because, in 2006, the Bush administration took the lead in defending free speech, energetically pressing Council members to oppose the resolution. The EU also became engaged, emphasizing the need to “protect individuals.’”
President Obama has, Clinton-style, “felt the pain” of each and every “offended” Muslim and has taken great pains to defend what he believes is a “peaceful” Islam. He views Muslim violence as either non-existent or as justifiably “provoked” by mocking infidels. His administration claimed that the carefully planned assassination of our Ambassador and Marines in Benghazi had been “provoked” by an anti-Islam video.
Unbelievably, Obama’s administration sent no one of standing to stand with France and with the right to free speech after the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo and in the kosher supermarket.
In the past, President Obama has made some pro-free speech statements. According to Counter Jihad, in 2012, Obama was quoted as saying “The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech.”
Did he mean it, does he still mean it?
The White House has welcomed members of the Muslim Brotherhood for a long time. Now, their ostensible spiritual leader has spoken out. One wonders where Obama currently stands on Al-Qaradawi’s call for a worldwide blasphemy law.