The State Department Moves the Istanbul Process Forward

Last year the United Nations, at the behest of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and with the support of the U.S. government, finally succeeded in passing Resolution 16/18, which would require the Western democracies to enact legislation preventing the “defamation of religions”.

The summit meeting on July 15, 2011 between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Istanbul launched what became known “Istanbul Process”. Mrs. Clinton committed the United States to a partnership with the Islamic world for the purpose of implementing the legislative results required by 16/18.

In a historic speech, Mrs. Clinton outlined her approach to reining in “Islamophobia” within the United States and other Western nations:

In the United States, I will admit, there are people who still feel vulnerable or marginalized as a result of their religious beliefs. And we have seen how the incendiary actions of just a very few people, a handful in a country of nearly 300 million, can create wide ripples of intolerance. We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

“Peer pressure and shaming”, however, are just the beginning. They are part of a softening-up process that will culminate in legal measures — which, in the USA, will mean abrogating part of the First Amendment — restricting what people may say or publish about Islam. This is the ultimate goal; the OIC will accept nothing less.

Writing at Pajamas Media today, Patrick Poole has exposed the official collaboration of the State Department at an OIC confab on “Defamation Acts against Islam”. The participation of a high-level American diplomat was openly announced — until Mr. Poole’s article appeared, and then the OIC quickly airbrushed the U.S. Consul General in Jeddah out of the picture.

Here’s what the OIC website originally said:

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.

And here’s what the second paragraph says now:

The Session will be attended by Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the OIC Secretary General and members of the Jeddah diplomatic community and other invited guests.

In his initial post, Patrick Poole noted:

The OIC has made no secret of its intentions to use the UN and international law to criminalize what they consider to be “defamation of Islam.” For example, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu gave a speech last Friday on “An OIC Approach for Combating Discrimination and Intolerance against Muslims,” in which he gave a road map of how they plan to do it:

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.

Coinciding with that “brainstorming” session during the OIC’s annual meeting of foreign ministers, the OIC released its Fifth Annual Report on Islamophobia, which is primarily directed at acts of free speech committed in the United States.

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.

Read the rest at Pajamas Media, where you can also see a screenshot of the earlier version of the OIC’s announcement.

Hat tip: Paul Green.