ORIGINAL POST: After the disaster of trying to blame an obscure YouTube video for the attack on the CIA operation in Benghazi and Obama’s prophecy at the UN that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” Hillary Clinton’s State Department appears to be taking another run at the First Amendment free speech rights of American citizens.
A notice was posted yesterday on the website of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) about a symposium to be held today at the OIC headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on “Defamation Acts Against Islam.” And one top U.S. State Department official will be in attendance:
The headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will host a symposium on “Defamation Acts against Islam: conflict dimensions and perspectives of co-existence between Islam and the West” on Monday 19/11/2012.
The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General. It will be chaired by Ambassador Ahmad Taib , Director General of the Branch of the Saudi Foreign Ministry, Makkah Al-Mukarrammah region. It will also be attended by Sergey Kuznetsov, Consul General of the Russian Federation and Anne Casper, US Consul General in Jeddah.
OIC’s position has all along been entrenched in international legal instruments and we need to build on this tradition. We must emphasize that there is no hierarchy of human rights whereby a single right can trump others. Freedom of opinion and expression is among the fundamental rights.It does not include a licence to hate mongering. Freedom of expression does not mean the right to vilify. Our position must also be rooted in history and culture. Having indicated our seriousness at building consensus, we must seek to be reciprocated in the same spirit. We need to seek multi-stakeholder support for an international discourse seeking an intercultural solution – A solution that acknowledges that denigration of symbols and personalities sacred in Islam must be viewed as a matter of identity. It inflicts the psyche of Muslim all over the world. It is in that context that we seek an end to the systematic pattern and increasing frequency of events that contribute towards stereotyping, stigmatization and alienation of Muslims. Such events constitute an affront to human dignity violating the whole range of human rights of victims.
Hillary Clinton’s complicity with the OIC towards these ends is no surprise either, since she met twice with the OIC last year as part of the “Istanbul Process,” including her vow to use “old fashioned techniques of peer-pressure and shaming” to target “Islamophobia.”
Those meetings played out last December when the State Department backed the OIC-drafted UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. Check out the membership of the UN Human Rights Council.
No word on when Hillary Clinton intends to press the OIC about the pandemic racism and “kafirphobia” of the Muslim world.
UPDATE: Well, that didn’t last long. Earlier this morning before I posted this item the OIC press release noted that US Consul General in Jeddah Anne Casper would be attending the OIC’s meeting:
The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General. It will be chaired by Ambassador Ahmad Taib , Director General of the Branch of the Saudi Foreign Ministry, Makkah Al-Mukarrammah region. It will also be attended by Sergey Kuznetsov, Consul General of the Russian Federation and Anne Casper, US Consul General in Jeddah.
But within the past few hours that mention has been scrubbed. The press release I linked to earlier now reads:
The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General and members of the Jeddah diplomatic community and other invited guests.
Here’s a screenshot of the earlier version noting Casper’s attendance at today’s meeting (click to enlarge):
