Such lectures are hardly an irresistible force, but they have proven to sometimes have effect in the past – for example, they managed to get slavery outlawed in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s, did a lot to overthrow apartheid, etc.

Obviously, if you own slaves, or indentured Bangladeshi labourers as they are these days, and are doing very well out of that, then you are not going to be in favour of anything that threatens your privileges. If your social circles include a lot of other rich people in the same situation, you are quite likely to come up with some kind of plan to act to defend them.

Are you saying that the Global Blasphemy Law (GBL) is a nasty piece of work but the UN is, in any case, a paper tiger which is unable to impose this on sovereign states?

Or are you saying the GBL is a benign piece work and we have simply misread it, over-reacted to its possible implications and we should respect it if the UN imposes it since we are members of the UN Security Council?

Im saying i fail to see how the authors of the article reached their astonishing conclusions as i haven’t seen anything to suggest a vast Saudi conspiracy.

Irrespective of that supposed conspiracy the UN has never sought such actions in the past and even if – for the sake of argument – it did go down this route not only would it need our explicit consent (we have a veto) but it would find it practically impossible to enforce.

Wholly agree with you.

When you hear it speak, whose voice does it speak in?”

I didn’t say capitalised did I? If you look at how things occur then the Western bloc refers to itself as such and then in a similar vein makes blocs of other countries. So there is a Muslim bloc, african bloc etc. The West sees itself as far more civilised and advanced than anything else. So said your friend Berlisconi when he said we are superior to the Muslim world.

Yours is a typical reaction when caught out so you imply there is no such thing as a collective western voice.

Don’t many commentators especially the right refer to the west and the encroachment upon it? Don’t many people feel that Turkey shouldn’t be admitted to the EU because it isn’t one of us? Who is us then?

You are simply trying to avoid the issue namely that the West which constitutes most of Europe, America and Canada as well as Australia ie. majority white Caucasian stick together and lecture others on freedom, human rights etc.

A very difficult balance this. There is no absolute right to offend religious belief and neither an absolute right not to have ones beliefs offended. We need a happy middle ground. A global blasphemy law simply wouldn’t help achieve this.

I do not believe that “offensiveness” should ever be a factor in the debate of what constitutes acceptable speech. You will find that there is always a group of people who are going to be offended by the mere fact that you disagree or clash with their narrow-minded world-view (aka as fundamentalists), who then instruct others to feel angry because their religion/organisation is allegedly under siege. Because most of the flock probably knows nothing about their religion, they are more than happy to enter the “offended” bandwagon.

So, fuck them.

You can only have freedom of speech in societies where individuals accept that their ideals and beliefs are relative, and are perfectly comfortable reading, discussing or merely tolerating other points of view. Which is why this global blasphemy law is an attempt to curb freedom of speech, because it imposes a totalitarian belief.

So what constitutes acceptable speech? Does everything go? No – I still believe that freedom of speech is not the same as the ability to say everything you like. I believe “intent”, the source and the context are important. I certainly think that speech which is meant to demonise minorities is hate speech, and therefore unacceptable. That is intent and context for you, and the BNP (usual suspect) as the source.

I also believe that making “Holocaust denial” a crime is very similar to a blasphemy law, and putting people like David Irving in prison is just wrong. I think Germany and Austria should definitely reconsider.

Are you saying that the Global Blasphemy Law (GBL) is a nasty piece of work but the UN is, in any case, a paper tiger which is unable to impose this on sovereign states?

Or are you saying the GBL is a benign piece work and we have simply misread it, over-reacted to its possible implications and we should respect it if the UN imposes it since we are members of the UN Security Council?

but i’m all up for some saudi bashing. god that country REALLY makes my blood boil…i don’t know how those women can stand it. or anyone really with a shred of human decency. |Absolutely apalling how they treat their low-level migrant workers, and especially given all that lip service about brotherhood in Islam, it makes it particularly psychopathic. but we all know why Saudi gets away with so much – its the “cradle of religion” excuse that provides them their shield.

and mezba in no. 15 – well said!

a global blasphemy law would mean – what? jews and christians can turn around and say in their opinion the quran doesn’t show them enough respect in certain passages. and so it could go on and on! some muslims will say those ismailis are guilty of blasphemy. where will it stop?

and besides it would be impossible to enforce. this is all just a little drama to show ’support for religious faith in this godless era’ type action/ someone at the UN must have made some openly atheistic comments and this is the organisational ‘eating humble pie’. the “UN” is a vast bureaucracy and i dont see why people are suprised when ‘it’ does all manner of funny things. it’s always the ‘who’.

“a woman was gang-raped as punishment by seven men who found her alone in a car with a man who was not her relative”

this sort of thing never fails to make my blood boil. ‘gang-rape’ as punishment for ‘being alone with a man in a car’ indeed! Oh you’re a bad girl and guess what we get to f**ck you isnt that great. its only for your good and not ours! sick sick sick. did the men get away with it? what was their sentence? saudi arabia is one hell of a horrible horrible land. but what can we expect given the historical precedent of gang-rape so nicely documented in our religious texts! and criticized by .0001 % of the population, brushed aside by everyone else. Outrageous!

Perhaps all this global blasphemy conspiracy is a good topic for questions at this freedom of speech and muslims event

I am sure there are: such calls have not been banned.

I really do think you might do well to apply a bit if introspection to the idea in your head of the West as some kind of collective single entity, something with a capacity for hypocrisy, consistency, something with an opinion, viewpoint or persona.

Are your thoughts and feelings about that capitalised West political, emotional, or religious in nature?

When you hear it speak, whose voice does it speak in?

Err no you are confusing the fact that there are calls to ban anti-semitic publications in the Middle East – something that should be banned in my view. However then the Middle East is asking why can’t anti-Muslim material be banned in the West and that is a fair point.

The Holocaust Conference in Iran why didn’t that constitute free speech? It is a double standard – not that I agree with that conference. But the point is that the west is deciding what is and isn’t acceptable and bans certain speech in Europe.

It’s about a serious proposal to change the legal status of discourse.

No. It isn’t.

That has to be one of the worst articles i’ve read in a long time, and im quite frankly amazed that people have been linking to it without question; in particular how exactly they got from

‘That meeting resulted in a final statement counseling promotion of “respect for religions, their places of worship, and their symbols … therefore preventing the derision of what people consider sacred.”‘

to

‘The lofty-sounding principle is, in fact, a cleverly coded way of granting religious leaders the right to criminalize speech and activities that they deem to insult religion. Instead of promoting harmony, however, this effort will exacerbate divisions and intensify religious repression.’

eludes me and apparently the authors, or perhaps they just forgot to elucidate on that matter. Even Brockmann’s opinions are worthless (if you think otherwise tell me honestly if you’d ever heard of any of his predecessors); his office has no real power.

The position and reputation the UN has in the west – in the UK and US in particular – fascinates me. It astonishingly juxtaposes vastly different emotions and feelings: fear, power, a desire for control – a horror at being controlled. On the one hand the UN is regularly dismissed as being pointless a meaningless collection of autocrats who don’t achieve anything and whose diatribes should be ignored. On the other hand neither the US nor the UK in particular has any desire to give up its place on the security council (which is hopelessly modelled on the past) let alone leave the UN.

If its that dangerous or pointless why don’t we leave it? There is no justification in our continual presence on the security council yet WE get upset over the most minor statements made within the UN.

The UN has never interfered on criminal matters except in the most serious situations (genocide etc), and even then the security council has hardly been a beyond reproach – even the US has refused to sign up to the icct.

There is no chance of the security council approving this and the entire story is paranoid bullshit.

Apart from anything else even if WE did impose this on the rest of the world via the security council (oh the hilarity of blaming the Saudis – what exactly are they going to do bribe us?) the laws of every sovereign territory are just that – sovereign. The de facto nature of which is decided by who has monopoly of violence in a given area. Its proving difficult enough for the UN to do anything about Omar al-Bashir, god knows (irony) what they’d supposedly do about ‘blasphemy’.

Even the Germans have had difficulty in the far smaller EU with respect to the EAW and Toben – and the Germans are actually banging on the gates of our judicial system.

Those that are worried about how international law could infringe upon us should focus on actual matters not supposed ones; those that are specifically worried about the UN ‘ruling over’ us should take the time to explain exactly how we’d shoot ourselves in the foot.

The absolute sanctity with which the West treats discourse and academic purview of the Holocaust era is itself quite racist. The main reason this sorry episode is put on a pedestal above other genocides in Western culture is because the White Germanic people, one of the paramount Christian European civilisations, was the perpetrator. Nobody cares in comparison eg. if the black Hutu and Tutsi massacre amongst themselves in the deepest darkest Africa. Many in the West shudder to think one of their ‘own’ could have been so bad as ‘these’ people.

What bizarre logic. To commemorate the Holocaust is an act of racism?

The Holocaust is not covered up, denied, or brushed under the carpet by anyone in the West, except for Holocaust revisionists, who are ideologically connected to neo-nazi movements, many of whom find a welcoming home in some of the more lunatic parts of the Islamic world. As such, you show a central confusion in your argument.

So which is it? Does ‘the West’ place it on a pedestal? Or does it try to sweep it under the carpet out of embarassment? Make up your mind. Your comments about the ‘discourse and academic purview of the Holocaust; make it sound like you have a revisionist itch you’re dying to scratch yourself.

The reason why the Holocaust is commemorated is so that the lessons of it are never forgotten. Long may it continue to be so recognised.

But if so, what’s wrong with that? Why isn’t that necessary moral humility and self-knowledge? (If you assume that people in ‘the West’ form one group such that Germans are ‘one of their own,’ which I don’t assume, but you apparently buy into the rather crude East-West dichotomy.)

“The American’s who deify the Holocaust ought to take a moment to reflect that during the Bangladeshi War of Liberation in 1971 from Pakistan they provided material support in the form of arms and financing and diplomatic support to the genocidal Pakistani regime responsible for anything from hundreds of thousands to three million Bengali civilians.”

Yes – and if Americans ought to reflect, so ought Pakistanis, no? Presumably ‘the genocidal Pakistani regime’ itself is at least as culpable as those who supported it.

There is also of course the detail that not all Americans were fans of the US government of 1971, to put it mildly, any more than (presumably) all Pakistanis were fans of the Pakistani government of 1971, so it’s not entirely clear why all citizens of a particular country should feel responsible for the actions of their government.

The Blasphemy Law is being called for in the “West” too.

At the Catholic-Muslim Forum in Rome last month, the two sides agreed in a statement about religious minorities that “their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule.”

There are people who are serious about opposing it here as well as internationally as UN-sanctioned international Act dressed up as “interfaith inititive” funded by Saudi Arabia.

‘You can’t have it both ways. Many European countries have Blasphemy laws and indeed restriction to speak on the holocaust aside from officially accepted doctrine’.

A very good point which highlights Western sensibilities in the area of absolute free speech. This is why at 8 I disagree with absolute viewpoints from either side. We need to find a workable middle ground.

The absolute sanctity with which the West treats discourse and academic purview of the Holocaust era is itself quite racist. The main reason this sorry episode is put on a pedestal above other genocides in Western culture is because the White Germanic people, one of the paramount Christian European civilisations, was the perpetrator. Nobody cares in comparison eg. if the black Hutu and Tutsi massacre amongst themselves in the deepest darkest Africa. Many in the West shudder to think one of their ‘own’ could have been so bad as ‘these’ people.

The American’s who deify the Holocaust ought to take a moment to reflect that during the Bangladeshi War of Liberation in 1971 from Pakistan they provided material support in the form of arms and financing and diplomatic support to the genocidal Pakistani regime responsible for anything from hundreds of thousands to three million Bengali civilians. They also supressed media information about what was happening in occupied Bengal ie. the infamous Blood correspondence.

http://www.amazon.com/Protocols-Elders-Zion-Nilus/dp/1599869446

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Maybe you are confusing the concepts ‘banning’ and ‘pointing and laughing’?

I agree but equally one of the complaints I see often made is that in the west free speech is restricted in certain areas. So yes of course your point is right and well made but also please realise that in the Muslim world they see double standards in the approach.

So if you look at the Arab world for example they see and say that the West wants to mock their faith under freedom of speech but wants to curtail their freedom of speech when it comes to issues such as publishing The Protocol of the Elders of Zion. Now I haven’t read this book as I understand it is offensive so I have no wish to read it, but why should one be banned and one allowed?

The West is deciding what is and isn’t allowed under freedom of speech and it isn’t working. So the west needs to put its own house in order at the same time and no longer drag its own feet.