It has been some time since the Geek last bestowed the highly coveted "What A Maroon! Award." This has not been due to a dearth of candidates. Quite the contrary, the past several months have been awash to the scuppers with moronic policies and the severely intellectually challenged folks behind them. Simply, there have been entirely too many possibilities to single out just one each and every week.
Fortunately, a person has emerged from the fog of merely inept, incompetent, brain dead wonks and pols inside the Beltway. Finally there has been an act of such unmitigated idiocy that the Award must be bestowed.
The envelop, please. Riiippp. Raise the slip of paper inside. Read the distinguished name of the winner.
"And, the winner is.....(drum roll.) Lick lips in anticipations. "The winner is Hillary Clinton!" Applause.
That's right, bucko. The recipient is our most distinguished Secretary of State. Ms Clinton gets the Award not for her efforts to push back on the eviscerated foreign aid budget. Nor for her opposition to the cuts to the Foreign Service appropriation. No. Those were not moronic.
Well, what then? Is this belated recognition for Hilary's hard work to bring about the Libyan policy morass? No, although a strong case can be made for her receiving at least an honorable mention in this area.
SecState Clinton deserves the "What A Maroon!" Award for her recent collaboration with the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC,) the Turkish proponent of political Islam and historian manque, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, in the area of preventing religious defamation. In an announcement datelined Jeddah, Ms Clinton and Dr Ihsanoglu declared the US would host a series of meetings to focus on the implementation of a UN Human Rights Council resolution 16/18.
This measure passed by the discredited Human Rights Council last March is intended to combat in an "urgent" fashion the growth of something called "Islamophobia." While carefully avoiding the use of either the word "Islam" or "Muslim," the intent of the resolution to single out the faith of the Prophet for special protection is clear. The fifty plus Muslim majority states of the OIC have long pushed for the criminalization of any written, spoken, or graphic consideration of any aspect of Islam in any manner other than the adulatory. After many failures, the OIC and its supporters such as Russia and China succeeded in getting 16/18 passed by a minority of the HRC members.
It is always essential to keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of the OIC membership is well known for limiting free expression and inquiry. The same is true of states which have sided with the OIC in its efforts to stifle open expression and the equally free inquiry which accompanies expression. Some OIC states, such as Pakistan, whose delegation introduced 16/18 as well as its numerous predecessors, has blasphemy laws of the most draconian sort enshrined in law.
It is equally necessary to recall that OIC states such as Egypt are (in)famous for the easy availability of antisemitic billingsgate such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Throughout the Muslim states, Judaism is defamed in the worst imaginable ways and in all media. Christianity is no better treated. Nor is Hinduism. Or Buddhism. Or minority groups within Islam such as the Alawites of Syria. All religions other than the most mainstream versions of Islam are fair targets for "defamation." Even the two largest subgroups of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia are willing, even eager, to "defame" the other.
Of course this "defamation" is not seen as such by the Muslims. To a good Muslim, the other faiths are either bastions of the infidel or expressions of apostasy. Thus, it is impossible by definition to "defame" them. Having not submitted to the unique Muslim view of the deity, adherents to all other faiths are fair game for whatever vitriol any Muslim cares to spill forth.
Logically, as the only "true" faith, only Islam merits protection as only Islam can be "defamed" by the vile slanders of the infidels and apostates. It is not extreme to assert that even the most objective, fact based, well documented assessment of Islam is automatically "defamatory" if it comes from the tongue or pen of an infidel or apostate. Considered from a Muslim perspective, the HRC resolution and all national policies or actions which arise from its application can serve to protect only Islam as only Islam resides in the realm of true faith.
As a dedicated adherent of political Islam, the OIC Secretary General is willing to do whatever is necessary to advance and protect the interests and position of Islam. Thus, it is not surprising that he seized upon the Norwegian tragedy to argue that now more than ever the states of the West must move quickly and effectively to turn the theory of resolution 16/18 into legal practice. The unfortunate reaction of so many in the Western and American elites to the berserker act of Brevik gave added power to Ishanoglu's argument.
The elites in the post-Brevik days continued and amplified their assertion that any criticism of Islam or any linkage of Muslims with terror serves the end of alleged "rightwing extremists" with the results such as those in Norway. This exercise in absurdity and political correctness automatically plays into the censorious hands of the OIC. Somehow, even the most objective and well-documented negative interpretations of Islam or the relation between the tenets of the faith and violent political actions are seen by the left leaning elites as being responsible for the action of Brevik. Without any documentation, the same people argue that a myriad of potential Breviks are lurking all through Western and American societies waiting to be triggered into violence by some less than hosanna laden treatment of Islam or Muslims.
Showing her elite credentials and leftward bent, Ms Clinton signed onto the OIC's gag-the-infidels gambit. No matter what her intentions are and no matter what the outcome may be, the secretary's agreement to a series of meetings oriented to putting 16/18 into practice gives the Muslim "speechophobic" move a legitimacy it does not deserve. Her action provides an imprimatur to a resolution which strikes at the heart of the most basic and critical right resident in Western societies.
Free inquiry and expression is a protean right. It is also a right from which many others emerge. It is so basic to Western liberties and Western economic, social, political, and cultural development that it is simply impossible to separate free speech from the West as it exists today. The utter absence of any real free inquiry and expression in the countries of the OIC goes far to explain why these states are comparatively backwards in all respects.
The irrelevance of rights, including that of free expression and inquiry, in Muslim majority states is not surprising. Islam, unlike other major faiths, has no inherent concept of rights. Islam is all about duty. Believers have duties to the deity and to other believers, but, as good slaves, they have no inherent rights. In sharp contrast, other faiths, particularly those preeminent in the West, not only acknowledge the existence of rights, rights which are inherent to the human condition, but exalt those rights by stating clearly and repeatedly that the exercise of rights requires the concomitant acceptance of duties.
To the faithful Muslim, the Western emphasis on rights constitutes a world through the looking glass. It is not comprehensible to the good and faithful Muslim with his focus on knowing his duties and executing them with willing joy. The Muslim has a duty to protect his religion against the words of the infidels and apostates. His duty goes so far as to seek to prevent the infidel and apostate from sullying the faith by even an honest and objective narrative treatment. The Muslim has a duty to exalt his faith above all others, which means he is allowed to attack the "false" beliefs. His double standard is not hypocritical but rather is an honest expression of duties and beliefs.
Ms Clinton is not a Muslim as far as is publicly known. She is, however, an American. As a holder of an office of trust and confidence under the Constitution, she has taken an oath of office swearing to protect and defend the Constitution to the best of her ability. She is a lawyer by education. Putting the two aspects of Ms Clinton's life together, it must be concluded that she understands the OIC backed resolution is repugnant to the Bill of Rights.
She became a "maroon" of the highest order when she did not meet the demand that the US support 16/18 with any reaction other than gales of derisive laughter.
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