Free Republic

JEDDAH: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Thursday expressed alarm over the anti-Islam rhetoric coming out as the US presidential elections race heats up as well as over the recent results of parliamentary elections in some European countries. “The rise in Islamophobia in Western politics is a great concern for the OIC,” said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the OIC. The radical right-wing parties have won significant political weight in the parliaments in Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and France as well as the European Parliament; in addition, such groups as the English Defense League in Britain and...

JEDDAH, 8 Safar/Jan 3 (IINA)-Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said that the European Union offered to host the third meeting of the ‘Istanbul Process’, which deliberates, in a series of meetings, on developing mechanisms to implement UNHRC Resolution 16/18 on combating intolerance, discrimination and incitement to violence based on religion ore belief. The Secretary General of Islamic Cooperation in his office in Jeddah on Tuesday 30 January 2012 pointed out that the EU’s offer to host the meeting represents a qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia, which spread in many European countries,...

The Obama administration is drawing fire for yielding what critics see as a huge propaganda victory to Islamist regimes seeking to curb American speech deemed "offensive" to Muslims. The State Department hosted a three-day, closed-door meeting last week with representatives of the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on measures to fight religious "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization." In her closing remarks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton portrayed the conference as a sign that Washington and the OIC are working together to protect religious freedom around the world. "We have to get past the idea that we can suppress...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used an international conference on religious freedom Wednesday as a platform to suggest that Islamic governments which suppress Christianity are secretly afraid Islam will lose out in a public debate. “Every one of us who is a religious person knows there are some who may not support or approve of our religion, but is our religion so weak that statements of disapproval cause us to lose our faith?” she asked the attendees, who included national representatives from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. “Especially when one person’s speech seems to challenge another person’s religion’s belief, or...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday ended the “Istanbul Process,” a three-day, closed-door international conference hosted by the State Department on measures to combat religious “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.” The conference was intended to “implement” last March’s UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, on the same subject. Notwithstanding Clinton’s final speech defending freedoms of religion and speech, the gathering was folly. Resolution 16/18 was adopted in the place of one that endorsed the dangerous idea that “defamation of religion” should be punished criminally worldwide. That call for a universal blasphemy law had been pushed relentlessly for 12 years...

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomes Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to Washington this week, it is critical that Americans pay attention to what these two leaders intend to do. From 12 to 14 December 2011, working teams from the Department of State (DoS) and the OIC are going to discuss implementation mechanisms that could impose limits on freedom of speech and expression. The OIC's purpose, as stated explicitly in its April 2011 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia, is to criminalize "incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds." Incitement is to be...

Yesterday marked the opening of the international conference announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a high-level meeting on Islamophobia that she co-chaired, held last July in Istanbul and hosted by the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). At the time, Secretary Clinton described this week’s conference as a move to implement U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18 on “combating [religious] intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization.” This State Department conference, entitled “The Istanbul Process,” is proving to be a very bad idea. It remains to be seen whether speech limitations to protect religion generally and Islam specifically will be...

The State Department on Monday launched three days of closed-door talks with representatives of international organizations and several dozen countries with the stated aim of promoting religious freedom and tolerance while ensuring that freedom of expression is not harmed in the process. U.S. Ambassador at Large for international religious freedom Suzan Johnson Cook, said on Monday, "We must denounce offensive speech whenever we encounter it – but our commitment to universal principles makes clear that faith must never be a crime and religion must never be used as an excuse to stifle freedom of expression.” The Obama administration’s initiative, building...

Starting on December 12th in Washington, DC, a meeting is being held that jeopardizes freedom of speech as we currently understand it in the United States. The Obama Administration has invited the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation ("OIC," formerly, The Organization of the Islamic Conference) to a meeting of "experts" to discuss the implementation of a UN resolution ostensibly targeting "religious intolerance." Now, even if by combating "religious intolerance" the resolution were just targeting actual violations of freedom of religion (READ: violating rights, not hurting feelings), it still should raise a few eyebrows that the OIC is behind the resolution...

The Obama administration says a meeting in Washington next week seeks to make progress in combating religious intolerance, but critics say the U.S. is pandering to an ideological agenda aimed at restricting speech critical of Islam. According to the State Department the aim is to find ways to combat religious hate without compromising freedom of expression. Detractors are skeptical that this can be done, and they suspect that free speech will end up the loser. Among those criticizing the event are GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the Traditional Values Coalition, and scholars at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom....

When President Obama delivered his much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University in June 2009, the free world trembled while the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) gushed with praise and begged for a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The OIC is the largest head of state organization in the world after the United Nations (UN) itself and comprises 56 Muslim countries plus the Palestinians. It claims to be the “collective voice of the Muslim world,” i.e., the ummah, and speaks on its behalf in effect as the seat of the next Islamic Caliphate. In 1990, the...

A looming meeting with Islamic leaders hosted by the State Department has religious scholars and advocacy groups warning that the United States may "play into" the push by some Islamic nations to create new laws to stifle religious criticism and debate. The meeting on religious tolerance, which is scheduled for mid-December, would involve representatives of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation -- a coalition of 56 nations which more or less represents the Muslim world. Critics describe the get-together -- the first in a series -- as a Trojan horse for the long-running OIC push for restrictions on speech. They note...

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been criticized by the Organization for Islamic Cooperation. His remarks regarding the threat of Islamic terrorism were not well received by the OIC who accuse him of stirring controversy. The Organization of Islamic-Cooperation (OIC), which represents 57 member states as the “collective voice of the Muslim World” has criticized remarks made by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. During an interview with CBC News that aired on Sept. 8, Harper stated that “The major threat is still Islamicism.” Although the interview has drawn criticism from other quarters the OIC did not publicly comment until Sept...

It is something to have gone 10 years without an Islamic attack of similarly gigantic proportions to those of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is not enough. That's because the decade we look back on is marked by a specifically Islamic brand of security from jihad. It was a security bought by the Bush and Obama administrations' policies of appeasement based in apology for, and irrational denial of, Islam's war doctrine, its anti-liberty laws and its non-Western customs. As a result of this policy of appeasement -- submission -- we now stand poised on the brink of a golden age....

The White House is giving free-speech opponents a megaphone. An unprecedented collaboration between the Obama administration and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC, formerly called the Organization of the Islamic Conference) to combat “Islamophobia” may soon result in the delegitimization of freedom of expression as a human right. The administration is taking the lead in an international effort to “implement” a U.N. resolution against religious “stereotyping,” specifically as applied to Islam. To be sure, it argues that the effort should not result in free-speech curbs. However, its partners in the collaboration, the 56 member states of the OIC, have no...

Infiltration of the federal government by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood is worse than some have warned recently, says a former FBI special agent in Washington. The agent confirmed that at least three operatives of the Egypt-based Brotherhood – whose credo is "Jihad is our way and death in the cause of Allah is our dream" – have penetrated the Obama administration. The shocking charge was first leveled by Muslim reformer Tarek Fatah during a recent speech in Toronto. "Today in the White House, there are three members of the Muslim Brotherhood that influence Obama's policy," he told the...

As I have mentioned previously, one of major goals of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is to stop “Islamophobia”, which is its preferred term for the criticism of or opposition to Islam by non-Muslims. The word “Islamophobia” is of relatively recent coinage. I never encountered it until after 9-11, and it was subjected to widespread ridicule, at least among non-Muslims and non-leftists, when it first became widely known. However, after the OIC and the UN harped on it for a few years, and the progressive media solemnly repeated the Muslim party line, “Islamophobia” gained general currency as a serious,...

Moving rapidly to criminalize telling the truth about how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to encourage violence and supremacism. Free Speech Death Watch Alert, and an update on this story: "OIC/Islamophobia: OIC Observatory warned since 2009 against the growth of the extreme right in Europe, Washington plans to host a meeting on resolution opposing defamation of religions," from the International Islamic News Agency, August 1 (thanks to all who sent this in): JEDDAH, Ramadan 1/Aug 1 (IINA)-During the next few months, Washington plans to host a coordination meeting to discuss with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation...

Islamophobia is back on the rise in the U.S. despite cautious optimism in 2008 that post-Sept. 11 anti-Muslim sentiments had begun to decline, according to a report released today by the University of California at Berkeley and a national Islamic rights group. The authors of "Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States 2009-10" found that Americans' favorable rating of Islam is only 30 percent -- down 10 percentage points from November 2001, according to a Pew Research Center study. "Same Hate, New Target," which was co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender and...

The International Islamic News Agency (never heard of it before; get used to it a la “Gallup Abu Dhabi”) reported on August 1, which, as the dateline notes, is also Ramadan 1 (or vice versa): JEDDAH, Ramadan 1/Aug 1 (IINA)-During the next few months, Washington plans to host a coordination meeting to discuss with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) how to implement resolution no. 16/18 on combating defamation of religions, and how to prevent stereotypes depicting religions and their followers; as well as disseminating religious tolerance [sic], which has been endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council last March,...