Canada’s Maclean’s magazine (involved in another controversial human rights case that I wrote about here and here) has published an extensive article detailing the “remarkably successful” campaign to make “defamation of religions” a violation of international law. (H/t: Volokh Conspiracy)

Led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a Saudi-funded international body made up of 56 Islamic states from around the globe, the push seeks to empower all governments to punish citizens who “defame” any religion — particularly Islam. What’s more:

Critics say it is an attempt to globalize laws against blasphemy that exist in some Muslim countries — and that the movement has already succeeded in suppressing open discussion in international forums of issues such as female genital mutilation, honour killings and gay rights.

The article also describes the tactics used to “create” this new international norm, which center around Islamic nations bringing resolutions condemning the “defamation of religions” before the UN Human Rights Council. These resolutions have been passed by landslide votes every single year for nearly 10 years.

It all sounds very well-meaning, of course. But as Maclean’s notes, the UN already has established laws protecting individuals from religious discrimination. This is a much broader effort.

This new definition of “defamation of religion” is radically different from what “defamation” has traditionally meant. While defamation laws used to protect individuals who were “materially harmed” by false statements, “defamation of religion” is

…rather about protecting a religion, or some interpretation of it, or the feelings of the followers. While a traditional defence in a defamation lawsuit is that the accused was merely telling the truth, religions by definition present competing claims on the truth, and one person’s religious truth is easily another’s apostasy. “Truth” is no defence in such cases. The subjective perception of insult is what matters…

As the article goes on to note, laws against “defamation of religions” seek to protect from “damages” not individuals who hold certain beliefs or ideas, but the ideas themselves. There could hardly be a notion more starkly antithetical to the foundations of freedom of speech and liberal democratic societies.

Maclean’s quotes Ambeyi Ligabo of Kenya, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression since 2002:

“…Furthermore, as regional human rights courts have already recognized, the right to freedom of expression is applicable not only to comfortable, inoffensive or politically correct opinions, but also to ideas that ‘offend, shock and disturb.’ The constant confrontation of ideas, even controversial ones, is a stepping stone to vibrant democratic societies.” Ligabo added that limits on hate speech were put into international agreements in order to prevent war propaganda and incitement of national, racial or religious hatred. They were “not designed to protect belief systems from external or internal criticism.”

The campaign to make “defamation of religion” accepted international law is no shadowy conspiracy or ad-hoc effort. It is a stated goal of the OIC, which published a 52-page communique at its latest conference in Dakar (March 2008) in which they affirmed their organized campaign:

They also called for a binding international covenant to protect religions from defamation. The organization “stressed the need to prevent the abuse of freedom of expression and the press for insulting Islam and other divine religions, calling upon member states to take all appropriate measures to consider all acts, whatever they may be, which defame Islam, as heinous acts that require punishment.”

[See pages 28-30 of the communique for more.]

The implications are grim:

[According to Angela Wu, international law director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty] The UN resolutions “operate as international anti-blasphemy laws and provide international cover for domestic anti-blasphemy laws, which in practice empower ruling majorities against weak minorities and dissenters,” her brief states.

The basic problem, as Somin and Volokh note, is that

Given the broad scope of religious ethics, almost any political or ideological statement might be seen as offensive to the values of one religious group or another. To some theologically conservative Muslims and Christians, advocacy of gay equality is just as offensive to their religious sensibilities as a negative portrayal of the Prophet Mohammed was to those who sought to suppress the Danish cartoons. And claims that Muslim nations mistreat homosexuals might be viewed as no less “defamatory” of traditional Islam than the Mohammed cartoons.

Considering that the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly cited international law as a basis for its decisions, this is of special concern to American citizens.

For example: Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Roper v. Simmons (2005), in which a 5-4 majority found the U.S. juvenile death penalty to be unconstitutional, stated that “the Court has referred to the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive for its interpretation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments.’”

We should hope that the Supreme Court does not refer to “international authorities” as “instructive” for its interpretation of the First Amendment in future cases.