generalspeaking

Blaspheme and Perish

Surely it is inevitable that the resolve of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to steadily chip away at the underpinnings of free liberal democracies, to bring Western values to its knees will prevail through sheer inertia. The kind of inertia that makes the voices of reason weaker and fainter in time as the onslaught of Islamic fury simply overtakes the courage of truth and justice, finally resulting in submission.

The West simply fails to understand the needs of extreme Islam, to exercise complete control over Muslims in every facet of the lives of the faithful, and to exorcise those among them unwilling to surrender any vestige of human independence to the greater good of acclaiming the will of Allah, and they subservient to it as interpreted by the mullahs, the ayatollahs and all the sundry clerics representing God's steely grip on humankind.

Search out the apostates, the dissenters, the dissemblers, the lax worshippers and isolate them, expose them to the full contempt of the faithful of Islam, make of them social outcasts and finally submit them to the laws of Sharia which, in one Islamic country after another, including those upon whom the West confers the modest appellation of "moderate" pronounces the penalty of death as just dessert.

All part and parcel of the ten-year plan of the Islamic Conference whose 57 member-states are agreed that it is past time for a renaissance of the glory of Islam, an Islam renascent as the world's imperial theological and temporal power before whom all others must grovel; at the very least observe the taxes levied upon them should they have the ill fortune to live within the confines of a Muslim state.

Modern-day Islam simply does not appear to wish to recall that it was the genius of Islam during its days of glory to represent as a collectivity of forward-looking leaders who celebrated the arts and sciences, nurturing and perfecting their versions of the humanities through the brilliance of creativity.

That long-ago Islam was permissive of the presence of other religions in their midst, it encouraged a high level of interaction, revelling in an atmosphere of lively and inventive collaborative resourcefulness, of mercantile trade, goods production, agriculture, architecture, philosophical exchanges, while never quite losing sight of its primacy over subordinate peoples.

This current Islam is perplexed at its loss of prestige in the world of today, its waywardness, backwardness, lack of industriousness, of creativity that has hampered its progress. It is funded primarily by the accident of geographically-located mineral and energy resources, not through the industriousness of cerebral function. Resentful of the scientific, material, philosophical and political advances of Western nations, it encourages a mindset of furious jihad.

Which translated in the minds of aggrieved fanatics into bloodlusting jihad set about for the purpose of instructing the Christians, the Jews and the Hindus and Buddhists, the Baha'i of their inferior position in the world. Demonstrating just how vulnerable these conventional societies - of degraded values who divided politics from religion for the greater good of their populations - were to the determined onslaught of fundamentalist firmness.

Islam has since reeled in apprehension of the reaction of the West, doing its utmost to meet the challenges foisted upon it by fanatic jihadists, claiming to have become the victims of Islamophobia; the aggressors clinging to victimhood. The Islamic states seek other means of validating their claims to Islamic justice. Denying that their closed and tyrannical governments are associated with terrorism and human rights violations, they turn to international diplomacy to achieve their ends.

The United Nation's Human Rights council is informed of the mission of the Organization of the Islamic conference, to produce a "new instrument or convention" on the issue of formally establishing a codicil in support of anti-blasphemy measures. The "Combating Defamation of Religions" feature passed handily in a 85-50 vote in the initial UN committee hearing, to be given the official stamp of UN approval as an internationally-recognized item by the plenary session eventually.

The purpose of the draft measure, claims its sponsors, is to prevent violence against religious worshippers representing any of the world's religions. In other words there will be no patience, no acceptance, no tolerance of dissenting opinions, of any manner of criticism of any of the tenets or customary practices of religion. The sinister potential of this manipulative move is obvious to human rights groups and to countries whose free speech guarantees will be threatened by its passage.

There are countless people in prisons worldwide accused of blasphemy, people whose fates will be determined by a Sharia-led judicial process accustomed to curing the unfortunate disease of unbelievers by death sentences. Blasphemy can be charged to those critical of a theocratic government whose repressions are unbearable. Charged against thinking individuals who cannot understand why women in cloistered societies become disposable items of property.

Ensuring that this matter enters the international record through a final and successful vote will impact deleteriously on freedoms in all societies, while providing international complicity toward, and an implied acceptance of, prison and death sentences for blasphemers and apostates. Forcing countries who uphold the rights of individuals to speak and act freely, to embrace or to reject religions, or ideologies, or to criticize them at will; to accept the thesis that group rights trump those of individuals.

"Canada rejects the basic premise that religions have rights; human rights belong to human beings" explained a spokesperson for Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. "The focus (here) should not be on protecting religions, but rather on protecting the rights of the adherents of religions, including of people belonging to religious minorities, or people who may choose to change their religion, or not to practise religion at all."

Whereas what Muslim countries strive to achieve is an overarching legalization of their "right" to be immune from any type of criticism relating to their religion. And since Islam is not only a religion, but a political and n all-encompassing social movement that constrains and contains the lives and lifestyles, values and aspirations of its adherents, its needs are far removed from those of Western-value nations.

It is in the West that people are able to exercise free choice, free expression, while in Muslim countries the existential plight and lack of legal protections of minority groups, and those of other religious remain imperilled by a religious dictate that refuses to grant equality and protection to "others". With the passage of this resolution, the already dim futures of these groups will become ever more difficult within Muslim countries.

For there will be no instrument left to the West through which they will be able to bring pressure on Muslim countries to observe the human rights of minorities and other religious adherents within their borders, once the resolution becomes enshrined as a universal tenet. And the parliament of Iran, for one, will be encouraged to proceed with its penal code amendment enabling it to impose capital punishment for apostasy.

As is done in other Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia...

Labels: Justice, Religion, Traditions, United Nations

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 26, 2008