Christians are the 21th Century lepers.

Christians are the 21th Century lepers. HT: Archbishopcranmer.

Speaking at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia last week, the next Republican nominee (if they have any sense) for President of the United States spoke of the increasing intolerance being expressed toward Christians by the erstwhile liberal democratic states, simply for believers’ adherence to centuries-old moral orthodoxy and theological wisdom in an age of relativism and aggressive assertions of equality and human rights.

Yes, he was courting the ‘Evangelical vote’ (aka ‘Religious Right’), but quite why an appeal to that constituency should be deemed cynical when a presidential candidate must impress across a broad church (quite literally) is perplexing. The fact that much of the media, however, deemed his speech to be a depthless flash of detested pretence rather goes to prove Bush’s point: Christians are the new lepers.

He didn’t quite point it like that, but the inference is clear:

How strange, in our own time, to hear Christianity spoken of as some sort of backward and oppressive force. Outside these seven thousand acres of shared conviction, it’s a depressing fact that when some people think of Christianity and of Judeo-Christian values, they think of something static, narrow, and outdated. We can take this as unfair criticism, as it typically is, or we can take it as further challenge to show in our lives the most dynamic, inclusive, and joyful message that ever came into the world.

His zeal is for religious freedom, which, under President Obama, has been made a little lower than Gomorrah: “What should be easy calls, in favor of religious freedom, have instead become an aggressive stance against it.”

It strikes me that most of the criticism directed at believers in our day is drawn from hostile caricature. That’s just the easy way of avoiding honest discussion. It is a posture that only deepens distrust, instead of inviting understanding.

The truth, of course, is that the censorious liberals and intolerant democrats don’t want an honest discussion.

By deepening distrust of Christians, they stifle debate in order to suppress truth. Leviticus introduced us to the scapegoat; the Athenians gave us ostracism; Matthew and Luke tell us about lepers. Now, of course, we send people to Coventry.

Every age and culture has its heretics, untouchables and outcasts. Christians aren’t quite criminals, but if ‘hate speech’ continues to suck in Scripture, it won’t be too long before the priestly persona non grata is thrown into prison by the enlightened establishment simply for refusing to join two men in holy matrimony.

And yet that conscience has become warped, dangerous and damaging. Christianity has become a perverted practice and phobic offence.

Christians who were called to a revolutionary mission of love have become the haters, bigots and social deviants. Our words are deemed destructive; our beliefs archaic; our opinions obsolete.

We cling to free speech but know that our mere thoughts are scorned by the illiberal anti-democrats who demand unqualified subjection to what we are told is the new mainstream of reason and factual authority. To criticise is social suicide. To utter a word in defence of the Faith is shrill and shallow.

To tweet truth is to invite Stephen Fry’s horde of devotees to screech ‘homophobe’ and heckle until an apology is extracted – with threats, if necessary.

There can be no opposition, no resistance and no petition for appeal. Every jarring dissonance must be muzzled before it is uttered. Those who demur are stamped upon and snuffed out. The land must be purged of ugly scars and cleansed of infectious scabs. Christians were once scapegoats and sacrificial lambs, and then we became heretics and outcasts. Now we are the lepers of omniscient secular enlightenment. Blessed are those who conform. Read the full story here.


Hmmm.....Luke 6:22 - Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you [from their company], and shall reproach [you], and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.

Three Saudi imams banned for life over Muslim Brotherhood links.

Three Saudi imams banned for life over Muslim Brotherhood links.(Taz).

Three well-known imams in the Southern Province have been banned for life from delivering sermons in mosques and religious camps or leading Friday prayers after they were found to be connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Gazette reported.

The decision was taken by concerned government circles.

According to the circles, the three imams also maintained direct contact with the Muslim Brotherhood in a number of Arab countries, Al Arabiya reported.

An informed source told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that the three imams are well-known in their regions.

The source said the ban was imposed on them following their excessiveness in the dawa (call) platforms and on different social media tools.

He said 76 other imams, Muslim scholars, preachers and academics were being closely watched for their alleged connection with the Muslim Brotherhood.Hmmmm......""the Revolution devours its children" - Jacques Mallet du Pan.

EU Challenges the UN and OIC on Press Freedom.

EU Challenges the UN and OIC on Press Freedom.HT: Legal-project.org.By Nathaniel Sugarman American Thinker June 18, 2013.

The European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg passed two resolutions Thursday, each detailing a set of recommendations to protect the rights of journalists to speak and print freely. 21

"The EU, as a community of values, should aspire to lead in ensuring the free word, whether blogged or spoken, and information, whether researched or photographed, are protected. Journalists and a free, pluralist media, are essential for democracies and checks on power. Freedom of speech and freedom after speech are at the core of open and free societies," said Marietje Schaake (ALDE, NL), rapporteur for press and media freedom in the world. The EP is the directly elected parliament of the European Union.

The first resolution (2011/2081(INI)), focusing on press freedom, "(r)ecognizes that governments have the primary responsibility for guaranteeing and protecting freedom of the press and media."

The resolution also "points out that governments also have the primary responsibility for hampering freedom of the press and media and, in the worst cases, are increasingly resorting to legal pressures in order to restrict that freedom, e.g. through the abuse of anti-terrorism or anti-extremism legislation and laws on national security, treason or subversion." 

The EP endorses a "balance" between the concerns of national security and press freedom. The resolution goes further to deplore the fact that "journalists are frequently wounded or murdered or are being subjected to serious abuses throughout the world, often with impunity," and stresses the "importance of combating impunity."

The second resolution (2013/2082(INI)), centering on religious freedom, endorses the firm opposition of "any attempt to criminalise freedom of speech in relation to religious issues, such as blasphemy laws." 

The EP predictably condemns "all forms of violence and discrimination," but goes further to emphasize that "particular attention should be paid to the situation of those who change their religion or belief, as in practice they are subject in a number of countries to social pressure, intimidation or outright violence."

Both moves by the EP stand in contrast to the more restrictive policies endorsed by the United Nations (UN) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). 

The OIC has endorsed "blasphemy laws" -- the same type of law denounced by the EP in today's resolution. Although now blasphemy laws are often euphemistically referred to as laws protecting the "defamation of religion," the concept remains the same -- laws that punish non-incitement speech about religion. The UN has worked with the OIC to help codify this type of speech restriction as international law.

In recent years a number of religious and nationalistic extremists, seeking to insulate themselves from criticism, have sued journalists who report on their malfeasances for defamation. This tactic is often called "lawfare."

In 2012, with the help of the Legal Project, Hassan Daioleslam defended a defamation lawsuit from plaintiffs Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). The plaintiffs were not able to demonstrate defamation, and their case was dismissed on summary judgment. Further, the Court ordered NIAC and Parsi to pay the defense sanctions. Earlier this year the Spanish government charged Imran Firasat with "hate crimes" for a YouTube video he produced called "The Innocent Prophet." Firasat has since been acquitted, but still faces possible deportation to Pakistan. Controversial journalists, bloggers, and other activists who seek to publish non-defamatory expositional material would likely favor the liberal standards of speech endorsed by the EP over the more restrictive policies of the UN and the OIC.
Some have already opined that the European Parliament, although ideologically praiseworthy, lacks the will to implement these resolutions as law, which now only exist as recommendations. Whether or not resolutions 2081 and 2082 are eventually codified in any way, the EP's actions remain significant in the face of UN and OIC pressure to promote a more restrictive international speech code.
Nathaniel Sugarman is a Law Clerk at The Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum. This article was commissioned by The Legal Project.

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Fatal Attraction: US Flirts with International Speech Codes.

Fatal Attraction: US Flirts with International Speech Codes.(LegalProject). By Nathaniel Sugarman. American Thinker. December 9, 2012.

This week, the United States meets with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in London to discuss whether speaking about religion can violate international law. The meeting represents round three of the "Istanbul Process," an effort Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched in July 2011 in the eponymous Turkish city. The initiative's goal is to implement non-binding UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, which itself calls for the criminalization of various forms of speech concerning religion. The OIC, an association of 56 Islamic member states and the Palestinian Authority, represents the largest voting bloc in the United Nations.
The renewed Istanbul Process talks come just a month after a UN official urged the United States to combat racism by adopting a "solid legal framework" for regulating internet speech. In a November 5, 2012 address to the General Assembly, UN Special Rapporteur Mutama Ruteere recommended that countries take steps to combat "racial hatred," which include adopting "legislative measures" to address the problem. These measures, according the rapporteur, should be in compliance with "international human rights standards." Special Rapporteurs are UN-appointed officials assigned to research a particular issue and report back to the organization with their findings. In his report, Mr. Ruteere specifically identified the United States as a country that should consider new legislation targeting internet hate speech.
Why should the United States be concerned with the rapporteur's recommendations regarding internet speech regulation? After all, "freedom of expression and opinion," according to the report, should not be impeded by any of the new proposed "measures." And why be concerned about the Istanbul Process? It seems to merely condemn incitement, which the United States does not protect in any case.
An answer requires closer examination of the terms of art used by the respective parties.
Resolution 16/18 calls for criminalization of "incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief," and it "condemns... any advocacy of religious hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence." 
At first glance, this language does not seem restrictive; even in the U.S., incitement is not a protected form of speech. The issue is the respective ways in which the U.S. and the OIC define "incitement." U.S. Courts use a content-based test to determine whether speech is incitement (See: Brandenburg v. Ohio).
Brandenburg, which is still the law, ruled that in order for speech to be unprotected as incitement, the speech must (1) intend to produce imminent lawless action, and must be (2) likely to produce such action. 
In other words, there is both a subjective and objective prong, both concerning the speech itself. By contrast, the OIC endorses a "test of consequences," which punishes speech based not on its content, but based on the result. This is a completely subjective test, and fails to consider the words uttered by the speaker, focusing only on the reaction of others. How would this play out in practice? Violence claimed to be in response to cartoons of Muhammad, could, under the OIC's definition, retroactively define the cartoons as incitement. Surely, this framework is in direct conflict with U.S. law.
The rapporteur's suggestions regarding internet hate speech regulation also conflict with U.S. law upon closer examination. While various European laws limit the nebulous concept of "racist" or "hateful" speech, in the United States, hate speech remains constitutionally protected.

The issue here is that the UN's recommendations do not suggest a required compliance with U.S. constitutional norms, but rather "international human rights standards," a mean of myriad laws that would necessarily afford less protection than would U.S. legal standards. 

For example, Denmark, France and the Netherlands all have statutes prohibiting "hate" speech, that is, speech which in various ways involves the target's race or religious practice. The case could therefore be made that insulting a person based on their race or religion does indeed violate international human rights standards. However, punishing this type of conduct in the United States would violate the First Amendment. Again, as with the Istanbul Process, this creates a direct conflict between U.S. and international law.
The Istanbul Process and the move to regulate internet speech, in addition to creating conflicts between U.S. and international law, also represent a departure from the policies of past U.S. administrations. In both 1980 and 1992, Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush signed, respectively, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but both times with the important reservation that these Conventions shall not in any way impede the protections of the First Amendment.
In perhaps the most famous case directly pitting U.S. law against international law, Medellin v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. law controls. In that 2008 case, the Mexican government attempted to stop the State of Texas from executing Medellin, a Mexican national. Mexico had abolished capital punishment; Texas had, and still has, not done so. The court applied Texas law and the state executed the convicted rapist and murderer. Justice Roberts articulated the rule that not all international law obligations automatically constitute binding federal law enforceable in U.S. courts. In other words, the United States dictates United States law, not international entities.
Some may argue that international law is merely advisory as far as the U.S. is concerned, and that the U.S. will follow U.S. law, as it has done in the past. But the United States is not a jurisprudential island unto itself. In Lawrence v. Texas, Justice Kennedy's majority opinion cited to international law, including decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. Lawrence was a landmark case for civil liberty and personal freedom. The Court ruled that the 14th Amendment Right to Due Process protects overt expression of intimate conduct with another consenting adult, regardless of gender, in the privacy of one's home. Although many consider the result of Lawrence to be a victory for free speech, the decision did rely on international law norms in coming to its ruling. The risk is that if international standards governing speech are codified, either by way of internet hate speech regulation, or agreements not to defame Islam, those norms could eventually trickle into U.S. law.
It cannot be overstated that since the U.S. is truly an outlier in regards to how much speech is protected by law, any international norm will necessarily be less protective of speech than the First Amendment standard. The Legal Project believes that rather than endorsing restrictive international speech codes, the U.S. should be promoting the idea that the right to speak freely is far more important than the right to be free from criticism and offense.
Nathaniel Sugarman is a Law Clerk for the Legal Project at the MEF

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