That UN thing.
So the UN passed a resolution that conflates "defamation of religion" with human rights abuses. This was a specific bid by Islamic countries to curtail Islamophobia (which is abhorrent, I mean I see the demonization of Muslims when I turn on the news, when I sit through movie previews, although I like to TRY to avoid things that are underhandedly racist) but it also seeks to legislate against things like the Danish cartoon fiasco by using really vague language like:
Urges States to take serious steps to address the contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in this context to take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols.
It goes on for a bit about the Palestinians too. Snippets and commentary here. My heart goes out to the poor Palestinians, but they don't need a UN resolution against defamation of religon. It's not the defamation that's killing them, it's explosives and guns. I understand the paranoia, it's more than a little skeevy, and more than a little biased. I mean, there's no mention of Tibet at all in this thing, and you'd think that a defamation of religion resolution would be all over that.
What's more troubling is that there's never going to be any resolution that protects secular people like me because, well, majority rule. Nobody seems to be criticizing this resolution because of its egregious bias toward religious people, instead they're criticizing it because it's vaguely anti-Western, anti-Semitic, hypocritical, an affront to free speech, and everything besides the main crux of the issue that it preferences religious people as needing protection from defamation, while non-religious people get no such protection against defamation of atheism, secular humanism, or any other such thing.
I hope this isn't a general trend for the world.
Urges States to take serious steps to address the contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in this context to take firm action against negative stereotyping of religions and defamation of religious personalities, holy books, scriptures and symbols.
It goes on for a bit about the Palestinians too. Snippets and commentary here. My heart goes out to the poor Palestinians, but they don't need a UN resolution against defamation of religon. It's not the defamation that's killing them, it's explosives and guns. I understand the paranoia, it's more than a little skeevy, and more than a little biased. I mean, there's no mention of Tibet at all in this thing, and you'd think that a defamation of religion resolution would be all over that.
What's more troubling is that there's never going to be any resolution that protects secular people like me because, well, majority rule. Nobody seems to be criticizing this resolution because of its egregious bias toward religious people, instead they're criticizing it because it's vaguely anti-Western, anti-Semitic, hypocritical, an affront to free speech, and everything besides the main crux of the issue that it preferences religious people as needing protection from defamation, while non-religious people get no such protection against defamation of atheism, secular humanism, or any other such thing.
I hope this isn't a general trend for the world.