Sunday, January 27, 2008

UN is inconsistent, happily

In late 2007, UN General Assembly passed a resolution against "defamation of religions", particularly Islam. I wrote about it in my Jan. 11 post.
Now, every normal legislative act not only bans some unwanted human actions but specifies punishments for those who are caught doing such actions. Without a prescribed punishment, plus a mechanism to bring it into effect, you have no legislation but empty talk, as in the UN. How should be actually treated those who defame Islam? Fined, banned from taking positions in government, imprisoned, executed? It is enough to think a little over this to see how laughable the UN resolution is. It can work only in the Western gag culture of political correctness and self-censorship... or, better, in the context of Sharia law.
One of the most chilling features of Islamic societies is the zeal with which violaters of presumed God's orders are punished. Jews and Christians believe, for example, that God has given the Ten Commandments. However, I haven't heard of people executed solely for, say, lying or being disrespectful to their parents - not even in the darkest ages of the Judeo-Christian world. In contrast, Muslims take God's orders very seriously. They tend to ascribe capital punishment for each violation of the Koranic rules, unless the book specifies a lighter punishment. They even tend to punish by death "crimes" for which the Koran does specify a lighter punishment. E.g. the "holy book" says that an adulterous woman should be lashed, but in many Muslim societies she is stoned instead.
Naturally, one of the worst crimes in Islamic societies is blasphemy. Here is an ongoing case in Afghanistan: "An Afghan court sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges ruled humiliated Islam, an official said... (Chief judge) Wahab said he did not immediately have the details of the paper that (defendant) Kambaksh circulated, other than that it was against Islam. He said Kaambakhsh discussed the paper with his teacher and classmates at Balkh University, and some students complained to the government" (source: International Herald Tribune).
You should expect the UN to be happy. Here is a country respecting it and taking its resolutions seriously, unlike wicked countries such as USA, Switzerland and so many others. But instead, UN mission in Afghanistan opposes Afghan death sentence (source: BBC). And, while thinking that the 2007 resolution against defamation of Islam may have encouraged Afghan judges to sentence the young man to death, I welcome the current inconsistency. Possibly, if we live long enough (say, 200-300 years), we'll see UN catching up with the Enlightenment and passing resolutions in favour of free speech and separation of religion from state.

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