Over the past few months there has been a lot of discussion in this space about the intensified campaign against “Islamophobia”, which is being orchestrated by the Organization for Islamic Cooperation and promoted through various trans-national bodies by Islamic groups and their allies among left-wing NGOs. The International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) is spearheading the pushback against the term “Islamophobia”, which is now being used in legal action against politically-chosen targets without ever being properly defined.
Below is a press release issued today by ICLA highlighting the dangers of the OIC’s Islamophobia campaign, and summarizing the counter-initiatives against it:
The dangers of the OIC “Islamophobia” campaign
ICLA notes with great concern the ongoing OIC campaign, using the pretext of “Islamophobia”, to control the media and to stifle freedom of expression, as seen recently at the OIC conference The First International Conference on Islamophobia: Law & Media, Geneva, September 2013.
While technically not a secret, the discreet “Istanbul Process”, strongly supported by the OIC, has worrisome risks and implications, as discussed by Deborah Weiss in FrontPage Magazine, October 22nd, where she concludes with the following warning:
[T]he OIC requests that the media censor their reports about Islamic terrorism, Islamic persecution of religious minorities and human rights violations committed in the name of Islam, as an interim step toward the criminalization of such speech. All of this will only serve to increase, not decrease “Islamophobia.”
Quite surprisingly, the Istanbul Process is accepted and even endorsed by the US State Department, as outline by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her speech to OIC, September 15th 2011. Former CIA officer Clare M. Lopez has analyzed the implications of this in the article Islamic World Tells Clinton: Defamation of Islam Must be Prevented — in America.
This campaign against “Islamophobia” is part of the OIC’s ten-year plan to put an end to criticism of Islam and any activity that may show Islam in a bad light. Already in 2008, the OIC plan was analyzed in detail at Gates of Vienna, The OIC’s Crusade Against Islamophobia.
A key tactic for that project is to create an impression that “Islamophobia” is rampant and out of control, and that government intervention is urgently needed. Reports on the phenomenon are published by several Islamic organisations, including the controversial American Islamic group CAIR.
The OIC is pushing its concern over “Islamophobia” heavily. Apart from the efforts mentioned earlier to set up a “Media Advisory Board” for media guidelines (read “media control”), a similar set of Guidelines for Educators has been published through OSCE, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, seeking to battle “Islamophobia” through the education system.
Now, all of this is based on a concept that until recently was not even defined. A definition finally emerged, provided by Turkey at the OSCE conference Combating intolerance and discrimination against Muslims, Tirana, Albania, May 21-22 2013. Note that an OIC representative was directly involved in this definition. Since OIC has a vested interest in propagating the “Islamophobia is dangerous” meme, this does not represent sound practice.
OSCE is a consensus-based organisation, so it would accept such a definition by default unless countered by others. Here is a NGO paper doing just that, protesting that the definition is fatally flawed, for a variety of independent reasons: What Does “Islamophobia” Mean?
This is an abbreviated version of this more extensive analysis published previously by the International Civil Liberties Alliance, The Problematic Definition of “Islamophobia”.
The International Civil Liberties Alliance has concluded that the OIC-driven campaign against “Islamophobia” has little to do with its traditional role of working for human rights and individual liberty. Quite the contrary: the campaign appears to be a diversion from such fundamental and inalienable rights, seeking instead to set an agenda that confuses and obstructs such work, in order to weaken and undermine basic liberties that are central to the mission of OSCE and guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The International Civil Liberties Alliance therefore calls upon Western governments and NGOs to do a critical analysis of any initiatives related to “Islamophobia”, to reject any and all measures using the pretext of “Islamophobia” to gain control of the press, social media and other forms of expression. and in particular to protest any initiatives intended to grant special protections or privileges to groups based on their faith.
For more on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, see the OIC Archives.
The press is already bought and paid for. This push by the ICLA must be a needle in the eye for lazy bureaucrats who are not used to pushback. Thank heavens for tireless workers like ICLA, Elisabeth Sabbaditsch-Wolff, and the team she managed to convene in Warsaw. Truth be told, she deserves a medal. It was her unflagging push to get people there that made the crucial difference.
OSCE isn’t flying under the radar doing its damage anymore. It will have to pull out the knives in full daylight.
Islam wants us all to be in denial of terror motivated by Islam and its core vakues as stated in koran and hadith.
Mosquitos kill more people than any other insect, I kill them on sight if I can. But I do not have a ‘Mosquitophobia’, my violence against mosquitos is justified by a real and present danger.
About 3 miles away from where I sit, is a grouping of people sworn by their constitution to kill me, is my fear of them ‘irrational’?
When the OIC shows some honesty and starts condemning the reality of koran inspired violence, then maybe we should listen, and examine. But first let them scrub out their own nest, what about their own phobias; americaphobia, infidelophobia, cartoonophobia, and israelophobia to name but a few.
What are they going to do about the incitements in the koran to “kill the Jews, Kill the Christians wherever you find them”, statements like these must first be publically mitigated before there can be any vindication of the use of the word ‘phobia’ to describe a very real fear that a disarmed public has of Islam.
Been to a shopping mall lately?
Freedom of speech is the keystone, the one freedom upon which all our other rights depend. Once it is gone, we will be serfs.
We must never put “feelings” before facts. Truth must always be an absolute defense to charges of libel, slander, racism, “hate speech” or “defamation of religion.”
Also, we must clarify our definition of “incitement to violence.” Only those who urge others on to violence are guilty of incitement. Those who merely speak truth are never guilty of incitement, even if those who oppose that truth falsely believe they have the right to use violence to suppress such speech. The freedom of speech means nothing if it can be curtailed because you “should have expected that someone might react violently against your words.” The state’s duty is to punish the violent for their attempt to silence the speakers, not to silence the speakers because their thuggish opposition might react violently!
Actually I consider property rights, including that to your own body, to be yet more fundamental, but that’s a long philosophical discussion 🙂
They are connected: we have a right to defend our property against those who would take it; we have a right to speak even if what we say offends others. Let their mothers comfort them when the meanies say hurtful things.
It is not the place of the state to run interference for the thin-skinned or for those who want to build their own power base.
Let me rephrase that as a property right:
Noone has the right to take control of your property on the pretext of your saying something “wrong”, “offensive” or the like.
Then, using speech or other forms of expression to commit fraud or other forms of crime is a different matter.
It’s the first thing on the 1600s BOR and the American BOR for a very good reason.
If you can rant a while without being arrested or ruined the problems in a society fix themselves.