CNSNews.com - "UN Urged to Stop 'Defamation of Islam' Campaign" by Patrick Goodenough

"Another submission to the U.N. has come from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which took issue with the OIC's attempts to equate acts of defamation of Islam with acts of racism against Muslims.

"There is a stark distinction between race, which is immutable, and religion, which, though often exercised and expressed communally, requires and cannot exist without choice guided by individual conscience," the Washington-based public interest law firm said.

"Treating racial and religious discrimination as the same thing could lead to the conflation of racist hate speech and the suppression of peaceful, but controversial, discussions of truth claims about and within religions."

Both the Becket Fund and ECLJ argued that, instead of the defamation of religion route favored by the OIC, the U.N. should look to article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as the appropriate framework.

The article prohibits "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence."

The Becket Fund pointed out that this focuses on protecting religious people from discrimination, rather than trying to protect religious ideas against defamation – which is what the OIC is trying to do.

The Becket submission argued that defamation of religions, as opposed to the defamation of people, requires the state to determine which ideas are acceptable."

Read more here.