Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Defamation of Religion Resolution or Criminalizing Christianity?

The United Nations General Assembly will once again take up the matter of "protecting religion" sometime this month with another vote on the Defamation of Religion Resolution. This resolution is being put forth by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The measure calls on all countries to ensure their legal systems provide protection against “acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions,”

What is being talked about as a tolerance plan is actually quite the opposite. Although the OIC says the campaign is aimed at protecting all faiths, once again only Islam is cited by name.
The resolution contains language forbidding anyone from speaking negatively about Islam. The punishment ranges from prison time to death. This is an open door for those that wish to persecute Christians or any religion that does not follow the Islamic faith.

U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based organization that monitors the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, acknowledged that the resolution is “aimed at the Western world to intimidate anyone from criticizing radical Islam....”

UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer called the resolution and the growing opposition to it “just the latest shot in an intensifying campaign of U.N. resolutions that dangerously seek to import Islamic anti-blasphemy prohibitions into the discourse of international human rights law.”In Islamic countries, he said, “Muslim moderates, bloggers, women seeking basic freedoms – all of these will be the first to suffer from the worsening climate of state repression in the name of state-supported Islamic orthodoxy.”The move was also “aimed at the Western world, to intimidate anyone from criticizing radical Islam and those who commit violence in its name,” Neuer said.



Mark 13:9 But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them