Combating Defamation of Religions

Don Feder, writing at "GrasstopsUSA.com" discusses the roots, causes and consequences of a recent United Nations measure (passed four days before the start of the Mumbai Massacres) which would make it an international crime to criticize a religion -- any religion. Any guesses as to which religion is pushing for passage of this measure?

Feder notes, in part:

Enactment of the Orwellian measure has been high on the agenda of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which maintains that “Islam is frequently associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”

Imagine the infidel dogs implying that there’s a connection between Islam and: honor killings, floggings for minor infractions of Sharia law, flying planes into buildings, bombings, rocket attacks and the murder of rabbis and their wives. Infamous!

My friend Robert Spencer – author of “Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs” and editor of the website Jihad Watch – warns that the U.N. enactment is “a veiled attempt to restrict speech that Islamic authorities find offensive or inconvenient, including honest discussion of the motives and goals of jihad terrorists and how they make use of Islamic texts to gain recruits and justify their actions.”

The measure will not be deployed against the imams who regularly call for the blood of Christians, Jews and Hindus, or the government of Egypt that condones church burnings, or the Saudi Religious Police who smash down doors in search of covert Christian services, or Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Syrian President-for-life Bashar Assad, who told Pope John Paul II that Jews “try to kill the principle of religions,” or the producers of the 2002 Egyptian television multi-series, “Horseman Without A Horse,” a dramatization of the anti-Semitic canard “The Protocols of The Elders of Zion,” or the U.N., whose 2001 Anti-Racism Conference in Durban turned into a hate-Zionism fest.

It will be used to silence the likes of Geert Wilders (the Dutch parliamentarian who produced “Fitna”), Brigitte Gabriel (the Lebanese-American journalist and author of “Because They Hate”), Bob Spencer, Ann Coulter and ex-Muslims who run websites like “Islam Watch.”

The genesis of Feder's comments is the reluctance of The New York Times to describe the authors of the Mumbai Massacre as "Muslims". Instead, they are described as "... “terrorists,” “gunmen,” “militants” and “assailants.” "

Well, they were certainly that. But what were they when they were at home?