Islam

In Britain we are seeing worrying signs of a new Islamic assertiveness, with condemnation by self-appointed Islamic leaders of every perceived insult to Islam, demands for special treatment for Muslims in schools, hospitals and the workplace, and the acceptance of sharia law for the settlement of family disputes.

But this phenomenon is not confined to Britain, or even Europe. It is part of an international campaign, orchestrated by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), demanding the worldwide acceptance and adoption of Islamic norms and values.

For the past 30 years, the OIC, which represents all 57 Islamic States at the UN, and which many observers see as the rebirth of the global caliphate, has been pushing for global recognition of the special status for Islam.

First step

The first step by the OIC was the adoption in 1990 of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, a document that the OIC claims is “complementary” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but that actually turns that declaration on its head, replacing individual rights by “rights” based exclusively on sharia law.

When I presented a paper at the UN Human Rights Council in 2007, highlighting the incompatibility between the Cairo Declaration and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I was stopped on a point of order by the Pakistani delegate, who said that “any discussion of sharia law in this forum is insulting to our faith”.

This extraordinary objection was actually upheld by the president. If threats to the universality of human rights cannot be addressed in the world’s supreme human-rights body, where can they be discussed?

The OIC has since announced plans for an Islamic Charter of Human Rights based on the Cairo Declaration, and a new international Islamic Human Rights body for which the OIC is seeking, and will probably obtain, UN recognition.

Freedom of expression

In parallel with the promotion of the Cairo Declaration, the OIC has, since 1999, introduced resolutions in the Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly “Combating Defamation of Religion”. Freedom of expression and the very idea that criticism of Islam should be permissible are anathema to the Islamic states, and combating defamation of religion has been their weapon of choice in their fight against that freedom.

For the Western liberal democracies, and for every child of the Enlightenment, the right to freedom of expression underpins all our other human rights. Without freedom of expression, how are we to expose and challenge tyranny, corruption and intolerance in all its forms?

The resolutions combating defamation of religion have been adopted by large majorities in the UN every year since 2002, because the Islamic states have had the support of the so-called nonaligned movement, including Russia, China and India – all of whom are supporting the Islamic states for political and economic reasons even while they themselves are fighting Islamic extremism in their own countries.

Now, the OIC is pushing for new international law that would be binding on all states, to make defamation of religion – or blasphemy – a criminal offence worldwide. For the Islamic states there is no distinction between religion and state, and sharia law is deemed to be God’s law, so any criticism of sharia law is itself considered blasphemy, punishable by death. This means, to take just one example, that not only is homosexuality punishable by death under sharia law, but so too would be any call for the law on homosexuality to be liberalised.

Five “milestones”

The agenda being followed by the Islamic States at the UN was set many years ago by the founding fathers of modern political Islam. Writers and activists such as Maulana Mauwdudi in Pakistan, Sayed Qutb in Egypt and Hasan al Bana, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, all called for a new political awakening among Muslims, to work for an Islamic world. Al Bana set out a plan for Islamic conquest country by country: a plan of five “milestones”, where Phase 1 was to sensitise the population to Islam, the religion of peace, and to establish Islamic values alongside those of the indigenous population.

The media's favourite:
Tariq Ramadan

This agenda is being followed assiduously by the media’s favourite “moderate Muslim”, the grandson of Al Bana, Tariq Ramadan, who has never deviated from this agenda. His apparent impatience with the extremists and jihadists is actually on the grounds of timing, not substance. The West is not yet ready for total submission to Islam, and to promote these ideas at this stage will only generate opposition. (You bet it will, Mr Ramadan). He prefers the softly-softly approach, described by some observers as “stealth jihad”.

However unreasonable the demands of the Islamists might seem, and however alien to our way of life and values, they are winning the war.

“Islamophobia” label

Another strategy of the Islamists has been their labelling of any criticism of Islam or Islamic extremism as “Islamophobia”, and equating Islamophobia with racism. In this they have been strongly supported by the last UN special investigator on contemporary forms of racism, Doudou Diene, a Muslim from Senegal, who, during his term of office, succeeded in ignoring every manifestation of the endemic anti-Semitism in the Islamic world and focusing exclusively on Islamophobia, which he described as “the worst form of racism”.

The OIC of course leapt on his statements with cries of glee and have been quoting him endlessly ever since. So all-pervading has been his malign influence that he is still travelling the world advising governments from Southeast Asia to northern Europe on how best to counter this phenomenon.

Doudou Diene defined Islamophobia as an “irrational fear or hatred of Islam”, so no one among the hundreds of advocates of freedom of expression that I know can be described as Islamophobic, for their fears of Islam – or, more specifically, Islamism – are not irrational but well founded.

Attacking Christianity

Fear of being labelled Islamophobic, however – and of violent reprisals – seems to have infected governments and the media throughout the Western world. We see writers, comedians, politicians, playwrights and filmmakers happy to attack Christianity while steering well clear of Islam. The newly released film 2012 is a good example. We can see the Vatican wiped out as the Earth faces extinction, but not the Kaaba in Mecca – no, siree! Director Roland Emmerich and co-writer Harald Kloser admitted that they didn’t want a fatwa on their heads because of a film.

2012: no Kaaba here

This new, Islamic-inspired intolerance is spreading beyond the Islamic world and is beginning to affect the daily lives of millions. It has created a climate in which even nominally Christian countries feel able to introduce draconian antigay legislation. In Uganda, for example, under draft legislation before parliament, homosexuality is falsely characterised as “a threat to the traditional heterosexual family” and same-sex attraction as “not an innate characteristic” (see our “News Watch” and “World Watch” pages).

The draconian penalties proposed include the threat of seven years’ imprisonment for any parent or teacher who becomes aware that any of their children is gay and who fails to inform the authorities.

Young people executed

To see what is in store should the Islamists succeed, we need look no further than Iran or Somalia today, where, under sharia law, young people are being executed for crimes committed while they were still children, men and women are being stoned to death for adultery, homosexuals are killed and girls as young as eight or nine are being married off to middle-aged men.

And, if any Muslim tells you that the modest proposal for the introduction of sharia law in Britain “is only for the settlement of family disputes”, point out that, once they have let sharia law in the door, they will be guilty of blasphemy for opposing its extension into every walk of life.

We must oppose every attempt by the Islamists to introduce Islamic values into our society. Those values are totally alien to the values of the Enlightenment on which modern Western civilisation has been built. We must challenge every attempt to portray Muslims as victims in our society. Yes, they are victims – but victims of an Islamic culture that segregates young Muslims from mainstream society, that treats girls and young women as the property of their menfolk, and that shows disdain and even contempt for the very values that have enabled them to come to Europe and to prosper.

Halal

We must oppose every concession to Islam that does not apply to our secular citizens. Prayers five times a day while at work? Yes, but only in their own time. Special prayer rooms in offices? Why? Special food in the canteen? No. Halal meat involves unnecessary cruelty to animals and should be banned. Face-covering burqas for women? No. Everyone must be identifiable in public for reasons of public safety and security.

I am certain that, if Western employers, the media and governments were prepared to stand up for our values, far from finding opposition from the Muslim community, they would hear a collective sigh of relief that they have indeed come to a country that is proud of its values and prepared to defend them. After all, didn’t the parents and grandparents of today’s young Islamic extremists actually come here in search of a better life, away from the perpetual poverty and intolerance of those states where Islam holds sway?

Finally, and above all, we must oppose attempts to create a parallel system of justice. We must fight attempts to create sharia courts every step of the way. All of us, whether Christians, humanists or (especially) Muslims, must reject sharia law because, as the Islamic scholar Hassan Mahmud has said, “Muslims are the first victims of Islamic law.” And we, dear readers, will be the next.

Every one of us has a role to play in combating this new and powerful threat to our freedom. The LGBT community above all has much to lose should the Islamists succeed. Your community and Gay & Lesbian Humanist magazine have an important part to play in the struggle.

Roy W Brown is the immediate past president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and IHEU main representative at the UN, Geneva.

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