The Egyptian representative to the UN Human Rights Council demanded and received a gag order from the Council's President, Doru Romulus Costea. The Egyptian with the support of other Islamic states, most importantly Iran and Pakistan, demanded that Islamic law, the Sharia, be exempt from any discussion at the Council's meetings. Costea agreed.
The cause of this latest invocation of the sacrosanct nature of a feature of Islam?
Two human rights groups wanted to remark on the incompatibility of sharia with the human rights of women.
This was enough to outrage the Egyptian. And the Pakistani. And the Iranian.
These men of such self-evidently gentle and fragile sensibilities are not bothered by violence directed against women--provided the violence, the stonings, the "honor killings," the domestic beatings, the spousal rape are in keeping with sharia.
The donnybrook which provoked the gag order is well covered on the following sites. Check them out. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C06%5C19%5Cstory_19-6-2008_pg7_6; http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/021461.php or from the folks who started it, http://www.iheu.org/node/3192
You might recall that a Pakistani National Assembly member has called for some sort of international death penalty for the hideous offense of mocking Mohammad. The Pakistani ambassadors have made threatening statements in both Denmark and Norway. The Pakistani government has sent a high level delegation to lean on the European Union. (All of these were covered in recent previous posts.)
Pakistan has now shown its commitment to protecting Islam by actually sentencing a man to death for blasphemy. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/18/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Blasphemy.php. Gotta be careful about dissin' the Prophet in Pak Land.
The Egyptian represents a country which is so given to assuring respect for all religions that the bookstores in Cairo and elsewhere are filled with the most vile anti-Judaism the perverted mind can create. (Again as explicated in a previous post.)
Affairs are so rotten at the old Human Rights Council that the outgoing Human Rights Commissioner, Louise Arbour (a former Canadian judge), warned that the actions of the Council threaten the "right of free expression." http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/18/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Blasphemy.php While the Arbour comment didn't get much traction in the msm it got some overseas. http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINL1856437520080618?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true.
How right the lady is!
She could have gone much further though. She could have reminded the world--and the Islamists--that the term "human" applies to all of us homo sapiens, female as well as male, non-Muslim as well as Muslim. She could have reminded the overly sensitive folks in Egypt, or Iran, or Pakistan, or even at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that there are basic rights that have not only been recognised by various UN covenants but have been accepted generally by the human race--outside of Islamists and other backward looking, fearful sorts.
It is absolutely wrong and completely unjustifiable to kill, genitally mutilate or beat women.
It is absolutely wrong and completely unjustifiable to commit suicide bombings of civilian targets.
Or, to slit the throats of journalists and others with whom you take exception.
Or, to stifle full, free and open inquiry, thought and expression.
If a conflict exists between the words of sharia and the rights of all humans--humans trump sharia each and every time.
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