On March 24, the U.N. Human Rights Council one again adopted a resolution intended to combat “negative stereotypes” and “intolerance” of persons based on religion or belief. For the first time since 1999, a resolution of this recurrent type did not include a reference to “defamation of religion,” the concept by which the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has sought imposition of a global blasphemy law to protect Islam from criticism. The development has been heralded as a victory for the West and for human-rights organizations that have long campaigned against this attack on free speech.
The issue of defamation of religion has been divisive at the U.N., pitting the OIC and its supporters against Western states. The OIC’s insistence on criminalizing defamation is a manifestation of the ongoing challenge to the idea of universal human rights by a number of non-Western states, including Muslim ones. These states view the idea of universal human rights as a form of soft imperialism, threatening their traditional cultural and religious values. In 1990, the OIC states adopted their own “Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam,” which seeks to reconcile Islam with human rights — to an extent: All the rights in the Cairo Declaration are subject to the often illiberal rules of sharia law. Thus, Article 22 states that “everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.” In a 1995 debate at the U.N., the OIC clarified what subjecting free speech to sharia entails, arguing that “the right to freedom of thought, opinion and expression could in no case justify blasphemy.” Moreover, the OIC definition of blasphemy is extremely far-reaching, as witness the widespread use of blasphemy laws in countries such as Egypt, where blogger Kareem Amer spent four years in prison for insulting Islam (and Pres. Hosni Mubarak), and Pakistan, where hundreds have been prosecuted for blasphemy, with religious minorities being disproportionately targeted. Even relatively modern Indonesia has seen a number of blasphemy cases.
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