Well, I want to thank Westminster
Institute for holding this event and
Katie for inviting me to speak and I
want to thank everybody in the audience
for taking time out of your day to
educate yourselves on this important
topic.
I'm going to speak to you about the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation or
the OIC and its efforts to stifle all
criticism of Islam-related topics. So
first, who is the OIC? The OIC is the
second largest international
organization in the world behind only
the UN. It is the largest Islamic
organization in the world, claiming to
represent 1.5 billion Muslims around the
world. It's comprised of 56 UN member
states plus the Palestinian Authority
and they tend to vote together as a bloc
in the UN. So they're arguably the
largest voting bloc in the UN as a whole
and they're absolutely the largest
voting bloc in the Human Rights Council,
yet most people don't know who they are.
Originally, they were called the
Organisation of Islamic Conference If
you want to Google more information
about them. And in 2011, they changed
their name to the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation. Their mission
however, remains identical to what it was
previously, so I'll let you decide
whether or not they're cooperating and
if so, with whom. The OIC holds itself out
as a moderate organisation, but let's be
clear about the true nature of the OIC.
The OIC is an Islamist, supremacist
organization whose long-term vision is
the worldwide implementation of Sharia
law. Its top priorities are the supremacy
of Islam and what's in the best interest
of the Islamic Ummah. It is within this
framework through the lens of Sharia law
that all ideas set forth by the OIC must
be analyzed. Currently, its immediate goal
is the International criminalization of
all speech which is critical of Islam, is
theocracies, Muslims, Sharia law, and even
Islamic terrorism. Knowing this can't
occur overnight, it introduces the
language in a watered-down form,
targeting UN bodies and EU Parliament in
order to achieve its goals gradually and
incrementally under the guise of
sensitive speech, responsible speech, or
politically-correct speech. What the OIC
really wants to do is to stifle your
freedom of speech. The first resolution
I'm going to discuss with you tonight
is called 'combating defamation of
religions' or 'defamation of religions' for
short. Originally, this resolution was
called defamation of Islam, but when it
failed to get sufficient support, they
changed the name to 'defamation of
religions'. Still in the text of the
resolution, the only religion that's
actually singled out by mention is Islam.
The resolution makes numerous
assumptions and asserts them as fact. For
example, it asserts that Islam is wrongly
associated with human rights violations,
it's wrongly associated with religious
persecution,
it's wrongly associated with terrorism,
and there's been undue backlash against
Muslims ever since 9/11. For those of you
who are unfamiliar with the concept of
defamation of religions, what it does is
it takes an idea or a religion and gives
it protection from criticism as opposed
to what we have in the American legal
system, which is giving defamation
protections to individuals or groups of
individuals. So you have defamation of an
idea or religion versus defamation of
people. Additionally, in the American
legal system in order for a comment to
be defamatory, it has to be a false
statement of fact. Truth is a defense so
if you say something bad about someone,
no matter how terrible it is, if it's
true or mere opinion, it's not defamation.
By stark contrast, the OIC definition of
defamation includes anything that sheds
a negative light on Islam or Muslims,
even if it's true and even if it's mere
opinion. Taking that a step further, it
also includes anything that violates
Islamic blasphemy codes. For example, in
Islam it's prohibited to draw depictions
of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad even if
you show him in a positive light. If you
do, that- that's blasphemy in Islam and
under the OIC s interpretation of this
resolution, it would be defamation as
well, and though the resolution is called
defamation of religions, in the OIC
interpretation and implementation it
applies only to Islam. There is
absolutely no reciprocity for
anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, or anti-Israel hate speech. Indeed,
the OIC supports a mosque, it supports
Iran's nuclear program, and it
rationalizes 9/11. For those of you
unfamiliar with UN resolutions, they do
not- they are not legally binding but
they do carry political significance. So
the more often a resolution is passed,
the more weight is given to the ideas
embodied in that resolution. If it's
passed repeatedly or in numerous bodies,
then it runs the risk of eventually
being deemed customary international law.
Were that to happen, countries that
never signed on to the resolution would
be pressured to adhere to it. This
resolution was first introduced into
what was called the Commission on Human
Rights in 1999.
Subsequently, it was introduced into the
General Assembly in 2005. If you remember,
the Human Rights Commission was deemed
to be a sham at some point and totally
folded in 2005. And in 2006, a new body
popped back up called the Human Rights
Council or HRC, and it was introduced
there as well in fact this resolution
passed every single year in all three of
those bodies subsequent to its initial
introduction
in 2008 was the first year that this
resolution was in jeopardy of not
getting passed but the OIC had launched
a very aggressive Islamophobia campaign
to ensure that it would it held to
Islamophobia summits one going back as
far as 2006 and one in 2008 where it
established the existence of
Islamophobia and asserted that they
would have a zero tolerance for it they
said they were going to defend
themselves against all free expression
that they deemed to be Islamophobic
including hostile glances and they were
going to target cartoonists film
producers reporters and governments they
also unveiled their first oh I see
Observatory report this consisted of 58
pages of real claimed or imagined
incidences of Islamophobia that report
is now produced annually and they also
have a monthly bulletin on Islamophobia
as well and by the way this report had a
lot of incidents when I got a copy of
him approximately half of the things
listed in there were not bad things that
non-muslims were doing to Muslims it was
bad things that Muslims were doing
tonight Muslims so how can this be if
you understand that the OIC definition
of Islamophobia includes accurate
reports the veracity of which are not in
dispute so long as it sheds a negative
light on Islam then it makes sense and
by the way the mainstream media often
takes the statistics provided either by
the OIC
or care or other Islamophobia tracking
organizations and repeats the statistics
without checking into the nature of the
claims and the numbers alone can be
quite alarming I'm going to give you a
few examples of that I found I think
these were in the 2008 February monthly
bulletin
to show you the types of things that
they are labeling Islamophobic in 2008
in the country of Qatar the first
Christian Church was erected Muslims
were protesting on the street and Arabic
papers were writing articles saying that
Christians ought not have the right to
build a house of worship and a Muslim
majority country one of those articles
was translated into English and
republished that republishing was
Islamophobic it's Islamophobic that
wikipedia refused to remove depictions
of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad from the
English language website and it's
Islamophobic that the EU asked Iran to
drop the death penalty for the crime of
apostasy as a result o the OE the OIC
repeatedly asserts that Islamophobia is
one of the greatest threats to world
peace and global security rather than
concluding that perhaps Islamophobia is
the result of the actions taken by a
radical Islamic movement around the
globe as a result of the Oasis
victimhood campaign because that's
exactly what this was the resolution
passed yet again in 2008 although this
time with a plurality shortly thereafter
the Human Rights Council passed a rule
that said nobody can come before this
body and quote judge or evaluate a
religion unquote the International
humanist ethical union presented for
consideration violence against women in
some of the Muslim majority countries
the issues they wanted to have addressed
were stonings against women female
genital mutilation forced marriages of
little girls as young as age 9 and honor
killings they were told that these
practices are permissible under Sharia
law and therefore they can't discuss it
because to do so would be to judge or
evaluate a religion therefore it appears
that human rights violations which are
permissible under Sharia law can no
longer be discussed in the Human Rights
Council the body purportedly designed to
address human rights
at a certain point the US State
Department realized that this resolution
had potentially dire consequences for
freedom of speech so in 2011 Hillary
Clinton asked the OIC to draft an
alternative resolution that would both
retain freedom of expression and still
address the Oasis concerns about alleged
Islamophobia
the result was resolution 16/18 to
combat intolerance based on religion or
belief this resolution was introduced
and passed into the Human Rights Council
in March of 2011 it was the first time
in 12 years that the OIC did not
introduce the defamation of religions
resolution both the State Department and
numerous Christian organizations fully
supported this new resolution because
they believed it was a paradigm shift
moving from protecting a religion to
protecting religious people minorities
specifically from discrimination and
violence so what's wrong with that well
let's see if that's really what was
happening this is the resolution you
have in front of you
the resolution drops the language
defamation of religions it is not in
that new resolution
it's instead it focuses on intolerance
discrimination and violence based on
religion or belief but a lot of the
language is still open to interpretation
and therefore problematic and
unfortunately I didn't have a copy
beforehand to show you where it is I'm
going to focus only on three clauses but
hopefully you'll be able to find them so
first I don't think this is the first
one so you might have to scroll down a
little bit but it discourages religious
profiling that should be in the first
line of it it discourages religious
profiling for purposes of law
enforcement how does the resolution
define religious profiling it says it is
quote the invidious use of religion as a
criterion for purposes of investigation
interrogation searches and questioning
unquote so notice it's not prohibiting
the use of religion as the sole
criterion in other words nobody's saying
oh you're Muslim let's lock you up and
that's what this resolution is
prohibiting this resolution is saying
that you can't use religion as one
factor on a list of other elements to
consider second now please pay attention
to my language it condemns it should say
in there condemns the advocacy of
religious hatred that amounts to
incitement to discrimination hostility
and violence unquote and urges states to
take effective action against it so
advocacy of religious hatred that
amounts to incitement to hostility
what's that it sounds very similar to
outlying or very close to outlying
hatred which you might have noticed is
an emotion and also this resolution
attempts to internationalize the norms
of free speech so does the former one
both resolutions want to
internationalize the the norms of free
speech so in America we have the First
Amendment that governs our speech rules
other sovereign countries have their own
rules regarding speech both of these
resolutions aspire to usurp those
sovereign rules and replace them with
one single rule across the board
additionally with that same phrase the
advocacy of religious hatred well what's
going to constitute the advocacy of
religious hatred there is ample reason
to believe that anything critical of
anything related to Islam which is in
other words defamation of religions
because that's what they're calling
defamation of religions anything
critical of Islam that using their
interpretation any criticism of anything
to do with Islam would be deemed the
advocacy of religious hatred that
amounts to the condemned incitement
the third clause I want to draw to your
attention and this is the one that gets
the most attention is it calls for the
criminalization of the incitement to
imminent violence so what's wrong with
that
America has laws today that prohibit the
incitement of imminent violence as it
turns out the OIC has a totally
different definition of the word
incitement than we do here in America we
have what's called a content-based test
and the OIC wants to use what's called a
consequence based test for example if I
tell all of you to get together tomorrow
at two o'clock and go kill Joe and then
you go and do that you will be
responsible for murder and I will be
responsible for my comments because the
content of my language encouraged or
incited the violence that's a
content-based test that's what we have
in America but the OIC wants a
consequence based test the example that
they most frequently use is that of the
Danish cartoons if you recall in 2006
there was a series of depictions of the
Muslim Prophet Mohammed subsequently
riots ensued all across the Middle East
and all across Europe the Danish
embassies were trashed people were
killed and mayhem ensued
the OIC would say that those riots were
the consequence of the cartoons but I
think you'll agree with me when I say
that while they were subsequent there
was absolutely nothing consequent about
them there are numerous problems with
the consequence test using that
interpretation as you can see first
it's a retroactive definition your
comment cartoon or film is totally legal
until someone later on chooses to
respond to it violently and then
retroactively Lee it was criminal for
you to make that comment second it
shifts personal responsibility from the
violent actor to the person who happens
to make a film cartoon or comment that
someone might find offensive if you have
the judeo-christian values of personal
responsibility where does the
responsibility lie is it with the person
who commits the violence or is it with
the person who happens to make a comment
that someone might find offensive
compare that to how Christians
respondent when they were presented with
artwork of a cross and urine or in the
Brooklyn Museum when they had a painting
of the Virgin Mary that had cow dung
thrown on it they didn't kill people and
riot and cause property damage they
wrote letters to the editor op-eds and
they contacted mayor Giuliani asking him
not to support the Brooklyn Museum with
taxpayer dollars but most importantly
you need to understand that by using the
consequence test definition of
incitement that's the whole issue here
the definition of incitement by using
that definition it has the effect of
enforcing the concept of combating
defamation of Islam the very concept
that this entire resolution was
purportedly designed to defeat so in
other words this resolution was supposed
to replace that other resolution but by
the interpretations that the OIC is
using they are still clearly retaining
their goal to combat defamation of Islam
so they've dropped the language of
defamation of religions but they have
retained the same goal they had before
it's also important to note that
according to the OIC anybody who feigns
Islam is an islamaphobe so in America we
tend to think of Islamophobia or
intolerance very similar to racism
sexism or some kind of bigotry but in
the OIC definition it's a much it means
much more than that because it would be
anybody who violates Islamic blasphemy
codes so if you say something that's
true
you're still in Islamophobe if it's if
you're saying something negative
about Islam so in combating this
resolution says it's to combat
intolerance based on religion or belief
and in combating intolerance or
Islamophobia pursuant to this resolution
you are not just protecting Muslims or
people you are protecting the ideology
of Islam as well in 2011 in July Hillary
Clinton attended a high-level diplomatic
meeting in Istanbul Turkey on
Islamophobia there she announced to the
world that the State Department would
host a meeting to move to implementation
resolution 16/18 in order to make it a
reality despite the fact that there's
absolutely nothing in the resolution
that mandates this and it's contrary to
the norm of leaving UN resolutions in
the realm of the theoretical the
implementation process became known as
the Istanbul process excuse me you know
by making this announcement the u.s.
legitimized the Oasis positions and
signaled to the free world that
partnering with the OIC is not only
acceptable but perhaps even desirable
the EU had previously kept the OIC at
arm's length but following America's
lead it held the second Istanbul
conference this past December the third
one is scheduled supposed to be
scheduled in June in Geneva so I'm talk
to you briefly about what transpired at
the State Department is some bold
conference this conference was held in
December of 2011 over a three-day period
it consisted primarily of closed-door
meetings and approximately 30 countries
and international organizations attended
including the OIC and the EU the OIC
made it very clear that its goal for the
conference was to push for speech
restrictive measures on anything related
to Islam and one Hilary
said regarding the passage of the
resolution that the passion shows quote
we have begun to overcome the false
divide that pits religious sensitivities
versus freedom of expression unquote but
if the State Department really did have
any concern about retaining free speech
at the time of the drafting and the
passage of the resolution and I believe
it did then somehow by the time the
conference came about the entire focus
moved to protecting religious minorities
more specifically it focused on
protecting Muslims in America and
Muslims in the West rather than focusing
on the truly persecuted religious
minorities in the OIC countries what
about the Coptic Christians in Egypt
what about the Ahmadiyya Muslims in
Pakistan what about the Baha'is in Iran
what about the Jews in Saudi Arabia
if there are any that was not the focus
the focus was on protecting Muslims in
the West where they're obviously fairly
free and equal and while Hillary Clinton
chose not to push for the enactment of
speech restrictive laws such as European
hate speech style laws at least for this
round and she extolled the virtues of
free speech she also quickly followed it
up by saying that the u.s. quote
advocates for other measures to achieve
the same results unquote
those other measures include interfaith
dialogue and quote the good old
fashioned techniques of peer pressure
and shaming unquote Joni Clinton seems
to have a fundamental misunderstanding
of the principles underlying the First
Amendment the First Amendment was
designed to encourage robust political
debate and to flesh out minority
viewpoints it wasn't intended for some
people to use their free speech rights
to tell other people to shut up because
that's a more effective means
then passing speech restrictive laws I
assume that most of you in this audience
support the notion of free speech but
even if you don't
is it the proper role of the State
Department to use peer pressure and
shaming to stifle the speech of
Americans with whom it disagrees I think
not
Secretary Clinton says that she wants to
bridge the divide that separates
different faiths and different cultures
the problem is the the bridge of
Tolerance flows in only one direction
toward the Islamization of the West and
the ever-shrinking of free expression I
want to talk to you a little bit about
the process of losing freedom in an
incremental fashion many people believe
that restrictions on freedom of speech
will never occur in America because that
we have the First Amendment and
certainly we will not lose our First
Amendment freedoms tomorrow but if you
look around the globe and throughout
history you'll see that freedom is the
exception it's not the rule and
sometimes the loss of freedom occurs
gradually and incrementally not always
in a violent coup if the public is not
made aware of the threat and cannot name
it by name in order to address it in its
early stages by the time people wake up
it might be too late so this is briefly
how I see the process going first we
have people saying we should have
sensitive speech responsible speech or
politically correct speech and you'll
hear the OAC taught very frequently
about responsible speech and free speech
comes with duties free speech comes with
responsibility this and as a result a
lot of people here have been engaging in
self-censorship that's stage one stage
two is governments and institutions such
as universities issue speech restrictive
guidelines and policies and a lot of
people don't realize that we have that
in our government today and it's getting
worse every year
for example the FBI the State Department
the National Counterterrorism Center
have all issued my mouth
to their national security and
intelligence professionals discouraging
them from using words such as jihad or
Islamic terrorism the national security
strategy memo which is our country's
guiding document for all of our national
security policy has completely deleted
all mention of Islamic terrorism
previously that document said that
militant Islam was the greatest
ideological threat in the 21st century
but now all references to Islamist
ideology are deleted the Department of
Homeland Security Advisory Committee H
sac has also made a concerted effort to
say that national security professionals
should focus on terrorist behavior and
quote D Lincoln from the underlying
ideology that motivates it so in the
last year just so you know all of our
national security training manuals and
programs have been completely rewritten
to avoid any mention of Islamic
terrorism the next step is civil
violations and Canada is a good example
of that
Canada has a constitution that
supposedly affords it free speech
however they also have Human Rights
Commission's in almost every province
that on a regular and frequent basis
issue fines for defaming Islam even if
you don't defame a person and by the way
there's a push to start those in America
as well the final step is the
criminalization of speech and an example
of that is the case of Garrett builders
a light of a lot of you might have
followed the case of Dutch Member of
Parliament Garrett Felder's he has very
strong views on the ideology of Islam he
has said repeatedly that he has nothing
against Muslims he just doesn't like the
ideology of Islam now you may or may not
agree with him but this is the issue
should he be put in jail for ahead
suppressing his views on a
religion or an ideology yet that is
exactly the scenario that he faced when
he was put on criminal trial while a
member of parliament in order for
expressing his opinion
after a long drawn-out trial he was
acquitted and many people thought that
was a victory for free speech but they
were wrong because the process remains
in place and the mere prosecution sends
a chilling effect to everybody else that
they ought not express their views lest
they wind up in a trial and have a
different result it's also interesting
to note that the language in the Dutch
Penal Code under which he was prosecuted
was a very similar language to the
resolution 16/18 language it was
incitement to hatred language letting
you know that the language can be
manipulated so that it's not just about
true incitement and it's not just about
discrimination or violence but about
expressing your views on Islam if
they're negative I'm going to give you a
few examples of how the concept of
combating defamation of Islam is being
played out in everyday life today I want
to be clear I am NOT saying that these
examples are the direct result of the UN
resolutions and I am NOT saying they're
the direct result of the OIC because
there are numerous Islamist
organizations all fighting to protect
Islam from defamation using different
tactics so these are just examples of
how that concept is being played out
first defamation of religions has a
chilling effect on speech and authorship
in all quarters of life from the
workplace to the public sphere you can
no longer criticize Islamic terrorism
Islamic persecution of religious
minorities or human rights violations
committed in the name of Islam without
being slapped with a label Islamophobe
in Europe most countries have lost some
sort of hate speech laws whether they're
called denigration with religions and
citement incite incitement laws hate
speech laws and all of them serve as
proxies from
blasphemy laws by providing deterrent
punishments for saying something
negative about Islam in America books or
events with speakers authors or prayer
leaders who want to address any of these
issues are being cancelled within free
with increasing frequency and even TV
shows and films have been altered
corporations are changing their products
their package designs and their
production procedures and under pressure
in order to address the so-called
Islamic issue and make sure they don't
defame Islam and in some cases due to
fear of lawsuits whether real or
conjured up employers are giving special
preferences to Muslims basically
exempting them from the laws under which
the rest of us have to live excuse me if
you're interested in that you can google
what's going on in minnesota with EEOC
claims and care the FBI Department of
Justice Department of Homeland Security
and the National Counterterrorism Center
have all rewritten their training
material as I indicated earlier
basically deleting all mention of
Islamic terrorism so for example the
consultants who worked for some of these
agencies for scores of years with very
high ratings who are there for the
purpose of teaching intelligence
professionals about terrorism can no
longer talk about Islamic terrorism
because they're Islamophobes and they
have been not invited back in other
words our government using your taxpayer
dollars is working hard to protect Islam
from defamation at the expense of
protecting you and finally just to show
you how far the government's position
has shifted over the years years ago we
there were a UN resolution that had
language in it that with speech
restrictive clauses and we signed what's
called a reservation a reservation means
that we're opting out of that clause
so we're saying we're we're signing on
to this whole UN resolution except for
that clause yet now
we have the State Department
spearheading the effort to implement
language that's very similar to the
language that the u.s. previously
disavowed and in fact just this past
November the State Department sent
another representative to a seminar in
Saudi Arabia oh they didn't even bother
they're calling the defamation of
religions on defamation of Islam and we
sent a representative finally we have
the Benghazi Fiasco as you all know by
now the attacks in Benghazi were
terrorist attacks committed by an
al-qaeda affiliate they were not the
spontaneous uprising the way the
administration originally claimed so
there are numerous issues with this one
is what were they covering up what was
the government covering up
why were they covering it up but also
why why was a condemning and obscure
low-budget anti-islam video the means of
the cover-up I believe it was to let the
world know that America too is
protecting Islam from defamation in
order to appease the Muslim world if you
recall in his Cairo speech in 2009
President Obama said quote it is my job
as president of the United States to
fight negative stereotypes of Islam
wherever they might be negative
stereotypes of Islam not Muslims
wherever they might be and that's
exactly what this administration is
doing the founding fathers drafted the
First Amendment in part to protect
offensive speech the way to counter bad
ideas is with good ideas instead of
working with the OIC to restrict freedom
of speech America should be leading the
charge to establish freedom of speech
worldwide equivalent to that of the
United States constitutions First
Amendment we should be condemning the
persecution of religious minorities and
the human rights violation
committed by the OIC countries including
those of Saudi Arabia and Iran too
though even though right now what we're
doing is capitulating to them above all
we have to understand the free speech
constitutes the human right its
restriction in the form of combating
defamation of religions does not it is a
totally concocted idea that stands in
direct opposition to real human rights
only people should be afforded human
rights ideas policies and religions but
not get protection of criticism and I
mention this because the OIC
is trying to assert defamation of
religions as a human right and they want
it to be recognized as an international
human right additionally it's important
to note that the constitutional concept
of religious freedom bears no
resemblance whatever to the OIC concept
of combating defamation of religions the
constitutional concept of religious
freedom is an individual right it is the
right of an individual to freely
practice his faith it is not the right
of a religion to be free from criticism
because that's another thing that OIC
does is they try to conflate it with
religious freedom resolutions like the
ones I've discussed with you today harm
free speech rights they harm religious
freedom rights they harm Human Rights
they harm national security and
terrorism prevention efforts yet the OIC
uses cries of Islamophobia as a tactic
to gain sympathy and support for its
anti freedom measures in conclusion I
want to say that we cannot allow the OIC
to take the shield of religious freedom
and use it as a sort of state censorship
America is the last bastion of freedom
and the hope of all men living under
tyranny and oppression we should be
holding ourselves up as a role model for
freedom equality and human rights
instead of exalting the Islamist enemies
of freedom that constitute the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation
