Freedom From Religion, Forever (Pray Like Hell For It!)

More evidence that we should have gone into Saudi Arabia & cleared out that rat's nest of religio-fascism on 12 September 2001, rather than wait a month to attack Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Saudi King Abdullah, who initiated this week's special session, is quietly enlisting the leaders' support for a global law to punish blasphemy – a campaign championed by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference that puts the rights of religions ahead of individual liberties.

If the campaign succeeds, states that presume to speak in the name of religion will be able to crush religious freedom not only in their own country, but abroad.

The UN session is designed to endorse a meeting of religious leaders in Spain last summer that was the brainchild of King Abdullah and organized by the Muslim World League. That meeting resulted in a final statement counseling promotion of "respect for religions, their places of worship, and their symbols ... therefore preventing the derision of what people consider sacred."

The lofty-sounding principle is, in fact, a cleverly coded way of granting religious leaders the right to criminalize speech and activities that they deem to insult religion. Instead of promoting harmony, however, this effort will exacerbate divisions and intensify religious repression.

Oh, no, no attack against those who actually attacked us. That last part is the Bush Admin.'s standard operating procedure for political activity. Wonder where they got those ideas?

[The Saudi Government] also violates the rights of the large communities of Muslims who adhere to Islamic traditions other than the one deemed orthodox by Saudi clerics. In the past two years, dozens of Shiites have been detained for up to 30 days for holding small religious gatherings at home. One Ismaili, Hadi Al-Mutaif, is serving a life sentence after being condemned for apostasy in 1994 for a remark he made as a teenager that was deemed blasphemous. The alleged crime of apostasy, in fact, can be punished by death.

The government's policies are enforced by the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, a roving religious police force, armed with whips, that regularly oversteps its authority and is unchecked by the judiciary.

Women seeking to exercise basic freedoms of speech, movement, association, and equality before the law have experienced particularly severe abuse.

In a particularly egregious recent case, a woman was gang-raped as punishment by seven men who found her alone in a car with a man who was not her relative. She escaped the sentence of 200 lashes and six months in prison only because of a pardon by King Abdullah, yet he also said he believed the sentence was appropriate.

Holding a session on advancing interfaith dialogue abroad is a pale substitute for hosting it in the kingdom, where the message of respect for freedom of religion and belief is most needed.

Against the background of Saudi repression and the kingdom's role in exporting extremism, including through school textbooks preaching hatred of "unbelievers," the UN and every world leader attending the special session should be demanding an end to severe violations of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia.

Dialogue is no substitute for compliance with universal human rights standards.

Sure it is. Talk, talk, talk, until the original problem is forgotten. "Human rights," indeed. What next, a living wage & health insurance for all? Muslim-Marxists!! But we shouldn't be so quick to condemn, should we? Also from the Monitor, a slightly different view. A view informed by who pays the viewer's salary. (Note: Just Another Blog [From L. A.] receives no salary from anyone, just a gummint stipend. And if you think we're scared to bite the hand that "feeds" us, just point a paw in our direction, gov't. jerks!!)

Some (from many faiths) would prefer to close rather than open minds, to deny rather than accept what we are learning about God's miraculous design of our universe, and to reject rather than acknowledge how those of different religious heritages could receive God's mercy. The process that King Abdullah has launched effectively rebuts their distorted vision.

Please explain to us, the rational, why you would worship an evil being that established a world in which you have to beg him (the "creator" thereof) for mercy. Any fair court would call this a conflict of interest & put gawd, jehovah or allah the fuck out of business. Immediately.