OIC pushes for international blasphemy law
The ridiculous Organisation of the Islamic Conference is laying out battle plans to defend its religion against cartoonists and critics.
At the meeting in Dakar they drafted a new charter “to protect and defend the true image of Islam” and “to combat the defamation of Islam.”
David Thompson eloquently sums up the absurdity of the situation:
But perhaps we should peel away the rhetoric of victimhood, used so indecently, and look at what’s actually being demanded here: A right not to hear that one is being irrational, dishonest or mortifyingly stupid, regardless of just how irrational, dishonest or mortifyingly stupid one actually is. That’s a license of no small magnitude, and one that a person of good faith would neither grant nor desire. It’s one thing for a Muslim to perform whatever mental contortions are required to add the honorific “peace be upon him” to the name of a vain and murderous Bedouin who claimed to talk with God while beheading hundreds of his victims; but to enshrine that pathological dishonesty in international law would be intellectual vandalism on a jaw-dropping scale.
Eloquent indeed. Censorship takes many forms, but I keep saying the only cure for a bad argument is a better one.
If Islam is rotten to the core then it deserves ridicule. If it isn’t, be prepared to prove it.
I can sense some battle lines being drawn here.