Could It Happen Here?
I want to discuss something that is a very real threat to the fabric of our nation. I know that we are concerned about the terrorists in the Middle East and their threats against the West and America in particular. However, we must realize that there are two sides to Islamic jihad. On one side there are the terrorists. It is true that they bring a lot of fear to our hearts and it does grab our attention. It is a lot like a magician. A magician uses misdirection to get you looking one way and while you are looking at his left hand you are not watching his right hand and he can do whatever he wants with it. I want to draw our attention away from the left hand of terrorism and onto the right hand that is doing things behind closed doors.
Most of us in America have not heard about what we will look at in this article even though it has been going on for at least three years. If it succeeds it will do away with our freedom of speech.
Before I get started I want you to know that I don’t get caught up in all of these conspiracy theories that are always going around. I do my best to stay as far as I can from this kind of thing. However, when I am faced with facts from reliable and credible sources I feel that we must at least listen to them.
What we will be looking at today is something that is going on in the United Nations. It is a resolution that has been passes and, if it is implemented in the United States, it will rob us of our First Amendment rights. There are great efforts by some to get this to happen.
Many of you will say that this can never happen here in the United States. Let me remind you that I lived most of my life in the United Kingdom. There were things that people said would happen and I was one of the skeptics. I said that these things would never happen in the UK. For example they said Shariah law courts would be opening in Britain and I, like many others, said that can’t happen. I was wrong, it did happen.
There are things that are going on that pose a great threat to our rights and our way of life and our attention is being misdirected to keep us from seeing them. I want to draw our attention to one of those things today.
You must listen to this broadcast and be informed about what Islamic nations are pushing through the United Nations. The OIC, which is the Organization of the Islamic Conference, votes as a 57 member block in the UN and they have a growing influence in UN resolutions. They desire to make it a crime if anyone blasphemes or speaks critically about Islam. Two dangerous resolutions have been passed to bring about their goal:
Today we will look at UN Resolution 16/18. It was originally called the Defamation of Religion Resolution. It said that if anyone defamed another’s religion it would be considered a criminal offense. Think about this! If you view someone else’s religion as wrong or hurtful, and speak out against it, you would be guilty of a crime.
UN Resolution 16/18
Resolution 16/18 has been passed in the UN on multiple occasions over the last ten years. Each time it passes adds to precedence, and after sufficient time, international pressure is brought to bare, forcing nations to submit to “international law.”
We had Deborah Weiss on today’s broadcast. Deborah is an attorney, she has written a number of articles for Front Page Magazine, she writes for the Washington Times. She lives in Washington DC. She is the foremost expert on Resolution 16/18. I had the opportunity to interview here when I was at some meetings in Washington DC. You can read some of her articles on this subject by clicking here. Most of what follows come from this interview with her.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is composed of 56 member states plus the Palestinian Authority. They tend to vote together as a block in the UN. They are the largest voting block in the UN and most people have never heard of it. This means that the OIC has a major impact on the decisions made by the UN.
One of their goals is to have international blasphemy laws. Knowing that can’t do this over night they keep introducing UN resolutions and working with the European Union Parliament to accomplish their goal gradually and incrementally. They word their resolutions in a watered down form to get them passed.
The first resolution they got passed was called “Defamation of Religions” and the idea behind it was that a religion, in this case Islam, would be protected from criticism. This is in opposition to American defamation laws which are designed to protect people. This is the usual western idea of defamation. Even though it uses the word “religion” all of the OIC countries interpret it to apply to Islam only.
This “Defamation of Religion” resolution has grown into Resolution 16/19, which is much more comprehensive. Although the first resolution sounded very nice, countries like America started to realize that it would have a major effect on the freedom of speech. It would make it illegal to talk about the persecuted Christians in Muslim countries. You wouldn’t be able to talk about Islamic terrorism. Both of these would be considered the defamation of Islam.
In other words, if Islam is burning churches, killing Christians, and so forth, and someone simply says that it is going on, it would be defamation of Islam. Just pointing out the truth would be a crime. It would be legal to say these things were happening, but if you were to connect it in any way to Islam you would be breaking the law.
It Is Already Being Implemented
Resolution 16/18 is already being implemented in some European countries. As an example a woman damed Elizabeth Wolf, an American who lives in Austria, and she is a chapter leader for Act for America. She was delivering a speech and said something that was accurate to the history of Islam. She said the Prophet Muhammad had sex with children. He married one of his wives when she was six years old and consummated the marriage when she was nine. This lady referred to this as pedophile. She was prosecuted for hate speech and blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad because of this.
We had better wake up! This is coming to a place near you!
This resolution has a very broad meaning to the word “defamation.” It would include saying anything negative about anything having to do with Islam. You can’t speak against Shariah law, Islamic terrorism, or the killing of those who disagree with Islam.
In 2011 our State Department asked them to write a new resolution that protected from defamation, but that also protected the freedom of speech. The new resolution was to combat intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.
Ambiguous Language and Double Speak
Resolution 16/18 drops the language stating defamation of religion because the west understood what this meant. As a result of the change in language the West, and the US totally supported the resolution.
As it turned out the OIC had very unique interpretation of some of the language. They had worded thing in such a way that the resolution could still be used to protect Islam from defamation.
There are numerous problems with the language of but for the sake of time I will only mention one very important concept. The text of the resolution says that it condemns the imminent incitement to violence. America agreed to that language because we already have laws against incitement to violence.
The OIC has a completely different definition for incitement to violence. They want a consequence test and we have a content based test. For example, if I tell an audience that I want them to go kill someone, and the do, They will be guilty of murder, and I will be guilty of inciting violence because the content of my language incited them to commit that violence.
The OIC would say, for example, that the Danish cartoons were an incitement to violence. If someone draws a cartoon or says something that Muslims don’t like, and Muslims get together to riot and do violence, they would say that the person who drew the cartoon or who said something they didn’t like was an incitement to violence.
Let me give one other example. The resolution asks for national security to stop religious profiling for purposes of law enforcement, for questioning and interrogation for investigations. Then in the body of the resolution it defines religious profiling as the “… use of religion as a criterion for purposes of investigation, such as questioning and interrogation.”
To Muslims, a cross is offensive. If a Christian puts up a cross and as a result a Muslim does something violent, the Christian would be guilty of inciting to violence. If a Christian says the Jesus is the Son of God a Muslim would consider it blasphemy, and it would be considered incitement to violence also.
No one wants to lock people up just because they are Muslims and use that is the sole criterion. This resolution asks law enforcement not to use it as even on factor in a list of other factors to consider.
In July 2011, Hillary Clinton attended a high-level diplomatic on islomophobia which was held in Istanbul, Turkey. She announced to the world that America would host the first Istanbul Conference in America. This conference was held in December 2011. It was an international conference with approximately thirty countries and international organizations in attendance. It was primarily a closed-door meeting held over three days.
The whole purpose of this meeting was to come up with ways to implemented Resolution 16/18. This is something that is very unusual. Normally UN resolutions remain in the realm of the theoretical and are not implemented on a world-wide scale through international conferences. In the conference they discussed the various actions and procedures that could be used by the various countries incorporate the principles of this resolution into their own domestic policies.
UN resolutions are not legally binding. They only show the support for the resolution by those who voted for them. If they pass it only shows that the majority of the UN member states support the issue. The more times a resolution passes, or the more UN bodies that pass it, the more political weight the resolution carries, but it is not law.
It Is Already Affecting America
At Fortress of Faith we often talk about how any mention of Islam has been purged from the documents and training material used to train people to deal with terrorism. This is a direct result of this conference.
There are counter terrorism trainers who were well rated with the government who are no longer being used because they mentioned Islam in conjunction with terrorism. How can you deal with a problem if you don’t know its source.
Now they are teaching to deal with the actions of the terrorists and de-link it from the underlying ideology that motivates it. This is not only a faulty idea, it is a dangerous idea because it is very hard to come up with a strategy to counter or attack terrorism in its early stages if you stay in the dark about the motivation behind it.
Deborah Weiss is a 9/11 surviver and I asked here how she felt about what is going in in light of her experience. She said that she is not very emotional about it, but it has motivated her to dedicate her life to getting the truth out before it is too late to correct the situation. She said that what is stake here is freedom, itself, and the American way of life.
Right now we are the only country on earth that still has true freedom of speech. All of the European countries have European hate speech laws which serve as proxies for the blasphemy laws. The laws may be called hate speech laws or they may be called denigration of religion laws or something else, but they all proved punishment for insulting Islam. The punishments are not as severe as they are in the OIC (Muslim) countries, and in many cases the punishments are civil penalties like fines instead of imprisonment, but the laws are there. Canada is supposedly a free country and has a constitution that says it affords it citizens free speech, but if anyone says anything against Islam and a Muslim files a complaint, they will be fined.
Hate Speech Laws Are Dangerous
This resolution is just one of the many ways the rights of American citizens are being destroyed. We need to wake up before it is too late. The minute anyone tries to pass a hate speech law your ears should perk up. We cannot allow these kinds of laws to be passed. The text of the law will not say that you can’t say anything specifically against Islam. It will be worded in such a way as to hide what they are really doing.
The debate won’t be about Islam, it will be about saying mean things to or about gay people. It will be hidden in very touchy-feely language about how we shouldn’t say mean things to people. As soon as the law passes you will no longer be able to criticize Islamic terrorism, you won’t be able to that is occurring the Middle East and you won’t be able to criticize Islam’s treatment of women.
Hilary Clinton invited this group over here and started the process. There has been another meeting in London where they did more of the same. They not only have these high-level meetings they have a lot of lower level meetings to try to get this resolution into the law of every nation.
In November of last year the held a meeting in Saudi Arabia on how to stop the defamation of Islam. They didn’t even try to hid the fact that it was geared toward Islam by calling it the defamation of religion.
It is getting very dangerous. There was a National Security Memo that used to say that militant Islam was the greatest threat to American in the 21st century. It has now been deleted. It is dangerous to deny that there is any ideological link to what is happening.
There are two very important principles to winning any war. First you must know yourself, and secondly you must know your enemy. You must be able to call your enemy by name, know his goals and intentions, and understand what motivates him. I am afraid that this country has forgotten both of these principles.
Can anyone say Benghazi? In light of what we have learned thus far it is easy to see why Obama had such a hard time admitting that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. We can see that Obama and his administration have bought into this resolution.
Defamation of Religion
In America the only legal protection from defamation is given to people. When protection from defamation is is given to ideas it means that ideas can not be criticized. It means there can only be one opinion expressed.
Our legal system defines defamation as a false statement of fact. Truth is a defense. If you say something bad about someone, no matter how terrible it is, true or a matter of opinion, it is not defamation.
Under the principle of defamation of religion, anything negative said about Islam, even if it is true, is considered defamation. This makes it illegal to disagree with the “party line” set up by the legal system. There can be no freedom of religion under this system.
The OIC is trying to make defamation of a religion a human rights issue. If you pay attention you will see that everywhere that religion gets protection from criticism there are major human rights violations. The fact is that free speech is a human right, not its restriction. Defamation of religion, at its core, is a freedom of speech and a thought controlling measure.
Should We Still Be Concerned?
Now that Hilary Clinton is no longer Secretary of State, do we have anything to worry about? I doubt seriously that supporting all of this was only Hilary’s doing. Regardless of who the players are, it is Obama’s administration. This administration’s policies have not been reversed.
There is a recent offshoot of Resolution 16/18. It is basically the same except for some important changes. In this new resolution it is expressly stated that you cannot associate a religion with terrorist activity. The EU representative that voted for the resolution was critical of this new provision. He said that the EU would support those parts of the resolution that protected minority religious groups, but would not support any aspect that infringes upon the freedom of speech.
Unfortunately our UN Ambassador did not take a principled stand on free speech. She did not point out that America is the only country on earth that has true freedom of speech. She was completely silent on the issue.
It is important that you don’t listen to this and then do nothing. We need to educate or families, our friends, our pastors, etc. if we want to keep our freedoms.
It is sad that many pastors are getting involved with the interfaith movement. This movement is whitewashing what is going on. It is also creeping into our schools. Since the media is not telling us the truth, we must educate all those around us.
Obama’s Promise
Obama promised to fundamentally change this nation. This is a promise that he worked hard to keep. In order to keep this promise he had to take away some of our freedoms.
His administration always sided with Islamic nations and even terrorist groups like Hamas unless political pressure is put upon him to do otherwise.
This leads me to what is happening in the Middle East. In particular I want to look at what is happening with ISIS.
I am sure you have heard the news of the beheading of another one of our journalists. I want to look at who ISIS is and who is behind them. I want to look at what we can really expect concerning what is happening with them.
There are a lot of unanswered questions. There is a lot of finger pointing and a lot of blame going around.
President Obama showed very little leadership on this issue. The reason is that the Obama doctrine on dealing with terrorism was to treat it as a criminal offense, and not as a war. This is why the shooting at Ft. Hood was considered “work place violence” and not a terrorist attack.
As we saw concerning Resolution 16/18, the Obama administration tried to get the language tweaked so they could implement its principles into American law. It blows my mind that this was going on and almost no one seemed to be aware of it. We need to wake up to these issues.
It helps us to understand why there is such hesitation and mismanagement of the issue of ISIS. Obama did not even have a clear cut strategy for dealing with this problem.
ISIS
ISIS stand for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Some, mostly the President and his administration, call it ISIL. This stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Some say he is calling it Levant, which is one of the old names for that area, because he doesn’t want us to focus on Syria. Levant, by the way, includes Israel. This might also have something to do with the President using this term.
The group calls itself the Islamic State. Who is the group?
They were originally aligned with the Wahabi’s in Saudi Arabia. It is interesting that this week we heard from the king in Saudi Arabia. He warned us that if we don’t deal with ISIS they in Europe in a month and in America in two months.
This is especially interesting when we understand that the majority of ISIS comes from Saudi Arabia and that they are Wahabi’s. I only see two options with this. Either there has been a division between them, or the king is trying to throw us a curve ball.
Here is a question that deserves an answer. Why is it that the Saudis don’t deal with this themselves? Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt claim to be our allies in the region and they all have a military quite capable of defeating ISIS. Why don’t they clean up the mess?
Here is why. The Saudis are famous for manipulating us to fight their wars. We are willing to do this for them to protect their oil. We get a “good price” when we buy their oil so we fight their battles for them.
What is the problem between ISIS and the Saudi king? First we need to look at some history of the Habib faith within Islam. These groups are Sunni Muslims. The Sunni are the largest group in Islam. There are smaller groups, like the Shite and other smaller groups. There are also divisions within each of these groups. It is a little like the different denominations within Christianity. It really boils down to the two major groups, the Shites and the Sunnis.
There is a brand of Sunnis called Wahhabism. This strain of Islam believes that the period of the Prophet’s live when he lived in Medina was the best of times. This time represents the ideal Muslim life to which every Muslim must aspire. This is also referred to as Salafism, the returning to the founding ways. This strain tries to emulate the early ways of Muhammad and the early caliphs of Islam. During that time there was a great expansion of Islam by the sword.
History of Wahabbi
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab was the founder of Wahhabism. He believed that the period of the Prophet Muhammad’s stay in Medina was the ideal of Muslim society (the “best of times”), to which all Muslims should aspire to emulate (this, essentially, is Salafism).
He believed that the Shia and Suffi were not truly Muslim. He said “these were not Muslims; they were impostors masquerading as Muslims.”
He taught that the visiting Prophets or Caliph’s tombs, Celebrating his birthday was idolatry. He said they were imitating Christians. He denounced as bida, forbidden by God.
Abd al-Wahhab demanded conformity, a conformity that was to be demonstrated in physical and tangible ways. He argued that all Muslims must individually pledge their allegiance to a single Muslim leader
Abd al-Wahhab’s doctrine said there is “One Ruler, One Authority, One Mosque”. These three pillars being taken respectively to refer to the Saudi king, the absolute authority of official Wahhabism, and its control of “the word.”
It is this rift, the ISIS denial of these three pillars, on which the whole of Sunni authority presently rests, that makes ISIS, which in all other respects conforms to Wahhabism, a deep threat to Saudi Arabia.
ISIS is a “post-Medina” movement, It looks to the actions of the first two Caliphs, rather than the Prophet Muhammad himself.
There is a great article written about this by the former British intelligence officer, Alastair Crooke. It is posted on the Huffington Post.
