United Nations: G-d Bless Censorship

A perennial favorite of the United Nations has come back like a bit of undigested beef. A non-binding resolution* to “Combat the Defamation of Religion” has been passed again. This censorious old chestnut has been passed a number of times previously, according to Fox News (“The Al-Jazeera of the U.S.”). If that were the only reference to it, I would imagine it was simply made up, as most of Fox News reports are. However, Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship, made note of it in an op-ed in the Guardian (London).

Respect for religion has now become acceptable grounds for censorship; even the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has declared that free speech should respect religious sensibilities, while the UN human rights council passed a resolution earlier this year condemning defamation of religion and calling for governments to prohibit it. As the writer Kenan Malik has so astutely pointed out: ‘In the post-Rushdie world, speech has come to be seen not intrinsically as a good but inherently as a problem because it can offend as well as harm …’ Censorship, and self-censorship, Malik observes, have become the norm. What we have seen, over the past two decades, is an insidious new argument for curbing free speech become increasingly acceptable.

To still be surprised by things like this is, I think, no great hallmark of common sense on my part. But most criticism of the U.N. is sensible, difference of opinion stuff, except by guys in cabins who write newsletters. But this very thing, this red herring of “defamation” (of religion, of a religious figure) is one of the most common excuse for bundling off some hapless blog-scribbling bastard to the torturer.

The United Nations should, put simply, be ashamed.

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*There’s a binding resolution somewhere?