The UN criminalizes 'religiously offensive' free speech

March 26, 6:42 PMIndependent ExaminerBrian Trent

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The UN wants to make it illegal to criticize this.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has just declared war on free speech, and at the same time is emboldening religious fundamentalists, by criminalizing religious criticism.

The Council's resolution "decries a 'campaign of defamation of religions' in which 'the media' and 'extremist organizations' are 'perpetuating stereotypes about certain religions and sacred persons,'" says the Center For Inquiry in a rebuttal.

By this logic, the murders and arsons commited by Muslim fundamentalists in retaliation for the Danish cartoons in 2006 is justifiable. In one fell swoop, the UN has effectively shut down religious dialogue while surrendering progressive ground to radicals who would happily put to death "blasphemers" or "infidels", freethinkers and secularists, and... well... anyone who disagrees with them.

Says CFI President Ronald A. Lindsay:

“The concept of ‘defamation of religions’ is both absurd and dangerous. Legally speaking, it’s gibberish, and any ban on so-called ‘defamation’ would effectively prevent any critique of religious beliefs or practices.”

The precedent here is not merely dangerous; it's psychotic. Religious freedom is not an absolute, and religious fundamentalism has nearly two thousand years of being the most hostile enemy to an enlightened society. The bitter irony is that the UN's resolution was passed under the banner of "tolerance."

As I've written before, global society is trying to outgrow its medieval adolescence and has come to accept progressive values of which freedom belongs, of which plurality is kin, of which an informed republic is possible. Information and knowledge, and the power both put in our hands, is the resource of a new enlightenment. Honest dialogue is only possible if the fanatics are removed from the room.

It's the difference between this:

and this:

What the United Nations has done is not remove the fanatics from the room; it has, instead, allowed them to impose their ideology on the rest of us. And for starting us back down that road, they should be ashamed.

And that’s just it. In progressive civilization you have the freedom to believe what you will… just not always the freedom to practice those beliefs. If you believe in the End Times or Ragnarok, you’re free to believe that; you’re not free to push for war based on Biblical or Koranic upsells. You can believe in Adam and Eve or that the world is stacked on the backs of infinite turtles, but you are not free to impose this view on science classrooms. You are free to believe that women should cover themselves with a burqa, but you are not free to force a woman to do so.

The United Nations has no right to forbid anyone from criticizing the State, the Church, the Mosque, or anything else. So to them, I say consider this column an eager violation of the new rule.