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Gulf media is reporting on the “International Conference for the Defence of occupied Jerusalem” opening in Qatar today. According to a Gulf News report: February 22, 2012 Manama: Qatar’s Emir Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani will open the International Conference for the Defence of occupied Jerusalem, to be held in Doha next week. The conference will include speeches by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Arab League Secretary-General Nabeel Arabi, Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekme Al Deen Ihsanoglu, and United Nations Coordinator for the peace process in the Middle East Robert Serry. Some 350 figures...

Was Rush Limbaugh right when he discussed Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, criticizing the Secretary of State for her Deputy Chief of Staff’s familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the close relationship between Huma’s mother and Egypt’s new first lady? Think Progress refers to Limbaugh’s claims as ‘baseless’. First, here is Rush’s commentary on the subject on June 26th (via Think Progress): The first sign that Rush’s claim is not baseless is that Think Progress says it is. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, Saleha and her now-deceased husband, Syed Z. Abedin, co-founded the Institute of...

Almost exactly three years ago, President Obama addressed "Muslims around the world" from Egypt's al-Azhar U in Cairo. He said he "consider[ed] it part of [his] responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." As Geert Wilders writes in his must-read book Marked for Death: "I remember thinking, But what if these so-called `negative stereotypes of Islam' are the truth?-- will you denouce people for telling the truth? And if violent Islam is really just a `negative stereotype,' then why have I had to live like a virtual prisoner for more...

If Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood candidate for president Mohammed Mursi (above) wins, Egypt's capital moves from Cairo to Jerusalem. So stated a leading Islamic leader, Safwat Hagazy, during a recent campaign rally as Mursi and MB head honcho Mohammed Badei looked on. Outrageous? Fantastic? Not in Muslimworld. As crack Islamic law expert Stephen Coughlin pointed out to me today, the 2008 charter of the Organization of the Islamic conference similarly calls for OIC's "permanent headquarters" to be moved to Jerusalem after the city's "liberation." Article 21 of the OIC Charter: The Headquarters of the General Secretariat shall be in the city...

The participant list and agenda for the “International Conference on Jerusalem”, taking place today and tomorrow in Qatar, reveals that the participants represents an unprecedented coalition arrayed against Israel that includes representatives of the: * Global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas (including the head of a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood group) * Palestinian Authority * United Nations * Arab League * OIC as well as EU-country politicians, U.S. and European academics, Arab and Turkish diplomats, Iranian Holocaust deniers, a cult of Jewish rabbis who also have supported holocaust denial and called for the destruction of Israel, representatives of far-left political groups, and at least...

“The relentless decline of Capitalism has begun. The time has come to fight against poverty. Time to obliterate the injustices. Time for the correct system.” So declares a video promoting the global “Caliphate Conference 2012” next month in Austria, suggesting the “correct system” is an international Islamic-based one replacing capitalism, which the video blames for catastrophe, civil war, and never-ending poverty. Organized by the fundamentalist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, the conference will take place on March 10th south of Vienna. ... a similar conference scheduled for March 4th in Belgium was cancelled after local opposition. The Blaze reported on the...

The explicit aim of the Istanbul Process -- currently backed by the Obama administration -- is to make it an international crime to criticize Islam. A Muslim fundamentalist group is organizing a conference focused on turning Austria and other European countries into Islamic states. The "Caliphate Conference 2012" will be held on March 10 in the Austrian town of Vösendorf, situated just south of Vienna. The main theme of the event will be "The Caliphate: The State Model of the Future." The conference is being organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir [Party of Liberation], a pan-Islamic extremist group that seeks to establish...

Paul Marshall speaks at the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 3, 2012 Washington D.C., Feb 4, 2012 / 07:05 am (CNA).- Paul Marshall, a religious liberty expert, says that attempts to “export” Islamic anti-blasphemy laws to the West could pose a threat to freedom of speech in the U.S.Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, said that many governments deliberately manipulate alleged instances of blasphemy by provoking popular outrage, enabling them to advance “particular policy goals.”Marshall made his remarks Feb. 3 at Hillsdale College’s Allan...

The world's largest Muslim body criticised on Tuesday a bill passed by the French Senate making denial of the Armenian genocide a crime, according to an official statement. The bill, approved Monday by 127 votes to 86, makes it an offence punishable by jail in France to deny that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide. "We reject this law and consider it to be inconsistent with historical facts," said the statement from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation adding that it reflects a "double standard in the treatment of major historical issues." The OIC further...

No, I am not talking about the impending economic doom that some are predicting will impact both continents. I am talking about the complicit support given to Muslim countries in the UN who have been on a rampage to make it an international crime to criticize Islam in any way, shape or form. In December 2011, the United States hosted what is known as the “Istanbul Process Conference” in Washington, DC. This Conference is explicitly committed to a global ban on any verbal or written criticism of any aspect of Islamic Sharia—even if it is an honest assessment. After all,...

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....