Human beings have human rights, religions and ideas don’t.

The British newspaper the Observer reports that Pakistan has informed the British High Commissioner in Pakistan, Robert Brinkley, that giving knighthood to Salman Rushdie, author the Satanic Verses, was against the spirit of UN resolution 1624 passed by the Security Council in September 2005.
This piece of news sheds additional light on the strategy of Pakistan and other members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) which since 1999 have been working hard to make the fight against defamation of religion part of international law.
According to the Observer resolution 1624 calls on member states to ”enhance dialogue and broaden understanding” as a means to preventing ”the indiscriminate targeting of religions and cultures”.
In fact, this is just a small and insignificant part of the resolution, and it has very little to do with its spirit. It’s focusing on how to combat terror, ”condemning in the strongest terms all acts of terrorism”, ”condemning also in the strongest terms the incitement of terrorist acts and repudiating attemts at the justification and glorification of terrorist acts,” and so it goes on and on until the passage quoted by the Observer shows up in one of the last paragraphs.
It’s clear that the Pakistani minister of religious affairs’ justifying suicide terror in order to protect the prophet of Islam is incitement to violence, and, hopefully, the British has made it clear to the Pakistani government that their apprehensive conduct in this matter is undermining the spirit of resolution 1624.
Unfortunately, the IOC has a very strange understanding of human rights. Since 1999 it has worked systematically within international institutions to undermine the legacy of the Enligthenment and the concept of individual rights, that makes it clear that individuals, not ideas, have human rights. The IOC has insisted on including phrases and paragraphs in UN documents to prevent any criticism of Islam at home and abroad.

The following is from a recent analysis by the International Humanist and Ethical Union about ”How the Islamic states dominate the UN Human Rights Council”:

”Every year from 1999 to 2005 the Organization of the Islamic Conference, representing the 57 Islamic states, presented a resolution to the UN Commission on Human Rights [0], called “Combating Defamation of Religions”. While the text of the resolution referred to all religions the preamble made it clear that the sponsors’ concerns related primarily to one religion: Islam. The resolution was adopted every year by typically a two thirds majority. By 2005, the Commission for Human Rights [0] had become widely discredited. In the words of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan “.. the selectivity and politicizing of its activities [were] in danger of bringing the entire UN system into disrepute”. The Commission was abolished by vote of the UN General Assembly in 2006 and replaced by a shiny new Human Rights Council which met for the first time in March 2006. Hopes were soon dashed however that the newly elected 47 member states of the Council – each pledged to uphold international human rights law - would behave any differently from the 53 members of the old Commission. Of the first four resolutions passed by the Council, three were resolutions condemning Israel. Whatever breaches of human rights law Israel may have committed, it beggars belief that these were the only violations of human rights on the planet worthy of condemnation by the Council. By way of contrast, the Council adopted a resolution which inter-alia congratulated the Sudan for its efforts to bring peace to Darfur.”

The IHEU also comments on the infamous resolution of March 30 “Combating Defamation of Religion” that was inspired by the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Jyllands-Posten. Among other things the resolution urges states to provide legal and constitutional protection against defamation of religion, i.e. the UN Human Rights Council calls on states to silence any criticism of religion.

“First, the resolution fails to define “defamation”. It is a catch-all term intended to silence any criticism of religious practice or of laws based on religion - however pernicious. Secondly, it attempts to limit certain rights, including the right to freedom of expression, guaranteed under international human rights law. Thirdly, it fails to distinguish between religions and their followers. To criticize any aspect of Islam, for example, is seen as an attack on Muslims. “

“And how are we to define defamation? Are we no longer to be permitted to condemn misogyny, homophobia, or calls to kill - if they are made in the name of religion? Are we obliged to respect religious practices that we find offensive? Is lack of respect for such practices to be considered a crime? Are ideas, are religions now to be accorded human rights? Surely, when religion invades the public domain it becomes an ideology like any other, and must be open to criticism as such. To deny the claims of religion is neither defamation nor blasphemy.”

This past week European media filled its pages with reports, comments, and analysis about the European Union summit that ended early Saturday morning with 27 member states agreeing on a revised and diminished version of the earlier rejected EU-constitution.

The fate of the treaty is still unknown – in Denmark and the UK influential media outlets have already called for a referendum – but given the space allocated to coverage of the summit one is led to believe that history was being written.

I am not so sure, however. I think most of the European media last week missed a crucial and groundbreaking story that future historians may take as their point of departure, when in 50 years they will be writing the history of Europe in the first half of the 21st century. The event took place last Thursday at Westminster in London. The Iranian born rights campaigner and socialist Maryam Namazie announced the formation of the British branch of the Council of Ex-Muslims, and she and her supporters made it clear that this is going to be a Europe-wide movement.

Quite a few events turn out to be of historical significance only in hindsight. They don’t get attention at the time of their unfolding. December 5, 1965 a hundred people or so attended the first public demonstration in Moscow against the Soviet government’s human rights violations. Standing in silence on Pushkin square they expressed their protest. How many papers ran that story on the front page the next morning? Not many, though some now would argue this was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire. The same goes for the Soviet media’s publication of the Human Rights Charter included in the Helsinki Accords Final Act in 1975. It was used by dissidents, first in Russia, later in Czechoslovakia and other countries behind the Iron Curtain to establish a human rights movement calling on the communist governments to honor their obligations. In that sense it planted the seeds of what transpired 10-15 years later.

The launching of the British branch of the Council of Ex-Muslims builds on the success of similar branches already operating in Germany, Holland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They already have hundreds, if not thousands of members.

The Ex-Muslims challenge the Islamists and the Western European governments which tend to lend too much credence to imams supported by money from the Middle East. They commit a big mistake by ignoring secular people with Muslim backgrounds.

I think there are similarities between this new movement and the human rights movement under Communism. Their critique of a totalitarian ideology – Communism and Islamism – comes from the inside, they have first hand experience of the assault on freedom and equality that is being committed in the name of the ideology, and their criticism cannot easily be denounced as bigotry, xenophobia, Islamophobia, or other name calling that often is being used to intimidate critical voices.

The human rights movements in the Communist bloc put pressure on their own governments, calling on them to adhere to their own constitutions and live up to their international commitments. The councils of Ex-Muslims urge authorities in the European countries to treat them as citizens with individual rights and insist that they have the right to exercise their right to freedom of religion, including the right to leave religion, a trivial right to us in the West, but in the Muslim world that is by no means the case. If the Ex-Muslims succeed they will make a huge contribution to the process of integration in Europe and serve as role models for people in the Muslim world.

Mina Ahadi, a courageous woman living in Cologne, Germany, founded the Council of Ex-Muslims in February this year. In voicing their defiance of Islamists in Europe members of the council put individual photos and their names on a website under the label, ”We have renounced religion.”

Renouncing Islam is punished by death in a number of countries including Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Yemen, Afganistan, Pakistan and Sudan. In other parts of the world apostates are being shunned by family and friends. Thus, this act is a choice that brings about serious consequences, and since the announcement of the Council in February, Mina Ahadi has been living under police protection. Though this may have intimidated potential followers of the movement, its ranks in Germany alone have surged from 40 to 400, a very encouraging development.

Death threats are nothing new to Mina Ahadi. A year or so after the Iranian revolution in 1979 the secret police showed up at her house in Tabriz. Fortunately, she was out, but her husband and five guests were taken into custody and executed by the Islamic government a short time after. Ahadi, 24-years old at the time, went into hiding and years later she fled to the West.

She settled in Cologne, Germany, where she has been following the appeasement of the authorities towards political Muslim organizations with growing bewilderment and unease.

”I know Islam and for me it means death and pain,” she said to Der Spiegel in February.

”I haven’t been a Muslim for 30 years. I am also critical of Islam in Germany and of the way the German government deals with the issue of Islam.”

What does Mina Ahadi mean by that?

”When we are speaking about people coming from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkey, they are all being labeled Muslims. In doing so we put 3.5 million in the same category, though the only thing most of them have in common is the fact that they are human beings. We need a new way of thinking,” she said in a recent interview with Jyllands-Posten.

”Muslim organizations in Germany behave as if they represent all 3.5 million and the government and politicians accept it, but they represent 20,000 at most. The politicians are very naive and display a false tolerance. We want to stand up to political Islam and to Western governments that bow in and pursue a policy of cultural relativism. We have to finish this cozy diplomacy.”

The demands of the manifesto published on the website of the British Council of Ex-Muslims:

Taking the lead from the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, we demand:

1. Universal rights and equal citizenship for all. We are opposed to cultural relativism and the tolerance of inhuman beliefs, discrimination and abuse in the name of respecting religion or culture.

2. Freedom to criticise religion. Prohibition of restrictions on unconditional freedom of criticism and expression using so-called religious ’sanctities’.
3. Freedom of religion and atheism.
4. Separation of religion from the state and legal and educational system.
5. Prohibition of religious customs, rules, ceremonies or activities that are incompatible with or infringe people’s rights and freedoms.
6. Abolition of all restrictive and repressive cultural and religious customs which hinder and contradict woman’s independence, free will and equality. Prohibition of segregation of sexes.
7. Prohibition of interference by any authority, family members or relatives, or official authorities in the private lives of women and men and their personal, emotional and sexual relationships and sexuality.
8. Protection of children from manipulation and abuse by religion and religious institutions.
9. Prohibition of any kind of financial, material or moral support by the state or state institutions to religion and religious activities and institutions.
10. Prohibition of all forms of religious intimidation and threats.

In 1995 Ibn Warraq published the international bestseller %%AMAZON=0879759844 Why I Am Not a Muslim%%. The book has been translated into several languages and was written in response to the Rushdie affair, Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa in February 1989 on Salman Rushdie and the ensuing riots, assassinations and debate. Yesterday I asked Ibn Warraq to share his thoughts with Pajamas Media on the knighting of Salman Rushdie. Here is his comment:

SIR SALMAN RUSHDIE

“I was delighted when I heard of Salman Rushdie’s knighthood, but quite clearly thousands of Muslims around the world, who took to the streets burning effigies of the writer, were not. Various fanatical groups such as the Organization to Commemorate Martyrs of the Muslim World offered rewards for Rushdie’s assassination.

“Could and should the British government have foreseen the reactions? There was immediate speculation as to the motives for bestowing this honour on a writer hated in the Islamic world as an apostate and blasphemer. Rushdie has acquired enough literary awards and prizes–the Booker of Bookers prize, the Whitbread novel award (twice), the James Tait Black memorial prize–to justify the knighthood on purely literary merits, and yet one wonders if there was not after all an extra-literary reason for the decision. One could see the knighthood as a magnificent gesture signaling Britain’s determination to abide by its values and traditions–the tradition of free speech, the tradition of reverence for its artists. The riots and reactions in Pakistan and Iran certainly underline the enormous gap in the worldviews of the West and the Rest. We should, in the West, celebrate the knighthood as a grand defiant statement, and drink to Sir Salman.”

The conservative Danish government was heavily criticized for its immigration reform back in 2002. The cause for criticism: After having married Danish citizens foreigners were not allowed to enter Denmark until the age of 24. This was done to prevent immigrant parents from forcing their daughters to marry someone from their home country at an early age and without getting any education, a tradition that made integration very difficult. Critics said this violated fundamental rights of immigrants.

According to sociologist Mehmet Necef from the University of Southern Denmark, himself an immigrant the positive results are obvious: A growing a number of immigrant women are taking control of their own lives, and thereby breaking with oppressive family traditions.

Official statistics say that 25 out of 100 immigrants and descendants are now marrying Danes. In 2001 the figure was 16 out of 100, and for women the trend is even stronger. Every third immigrant woman now marries a Dane. In 2001 62.7% of immigrants from non-Western countries married someone from outside Denmark. Last year the figure was just 37.8%.

Says Mehmet Necef to the newspaper Politiken:

”The law has created a world of opportunities for women. It’s now legitimate to postpone marriage, it’s legitimate to get outside home and therefore the family as lost control over these young women.”
He adds: ”The most interesting thing about the figures is the growing number of marriages between immigrant women and Danes. You can’t help but being optimistic. Love is the best way to integrate [immigrants].”

Politiken adds that it’s especially Iranians and people from the former Yugoslavia that marry Danes, while citizens of Turkish and Pakistani background are less inclined to choose a Dane for marriage. Iraqis and Lebanese are somewhere in the middle.

Europe’s demographic capitulation is recognized by a growing number of authors. Europe is heading for collapse, it is being said, because we are having too few babies.

But what about those who are having too many babies?

I first stumbled upon this issue in the mid-nineties when I was covering the First Chechen War. A Russian friend and social scientist called my attention to demographics. It turned out that the Chechens had the highest birth rate among the peoples of the Russian Federation.

”If you have seven children, it’s easier to send one or two of them to fight a war. If you have just one kid you will do whatever you can to prevent your only child from joining the army,” my friend explained.

He also made the point that around this time Rwanda had the highest birth rate in Africa, and it may have served as a catalyst for the genocide in 1994. And according to the eminent historian Richard Pipes, overpopulation was an important factor in the explosion of violence following the downfall of the old regime in Russia in 1917. In the beginning of the 20th century Russia had the fastest growing population in Europe.

The German demographer Gunnar Heinsohn has studied demographic trends across countries and history. The results of his research were published in a book back in 2003, Sons and World Domination: Terror in the Rise and Fall of Nations (pdf). The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk characterized it as the most groundbreaking work in social science since Karl Marx published Das Kapital in 1867. The Danish internet-magazine Sappho has interviewed Heinsohn, and it makes for interesting reading, especially in the context of what is going on in Gaza and in the West Bank, and on a more general level in the Middle East and the Third World.

According to Heinsohn, 80% of world history is about nations with a surplus of sons creating trouble. This may take different forms – higher crime rates, coups d’etat, riots and civil wars, genocide, conquest of new territory.

All this is the result of people having a lot of children. Heinsohn characterizes this phenomena as ”youth bulge”, i.e., when a population is made up of 30% or more males between the ages of 15 and 29. On the other hand Heinsohn defines ”demographic capitulation” as a situation when there are 100 males aged 40-44 for every 80 boys aged 0-4. In Germany the numbers are 100/50, an example of demographic capitulation, and in the Gaza strip it’s exactly the opposite, 100/464, a ”demographic armament”.

Usually, we focus on population growth in India and China, but according to Heinsohn they can’t compete with the Muslim world. Here are some figures:

Over the course of five generations (1900-2000) the population in the Muslim world has grown from 150 million to 1.2 billion (800% growth), China has grown from 400 million to 1.2 billion (300%), and India has increased its population from 250 million to 1 billion (400%). But there are profound differences within the Muslim world, and this is bad news for the prospect of US operations in foreign lands. Apart from Gaza, demographic armament is taking place in Afghanistan (100/403), Iraq (100/351), and Somalia (100/364), but a number of Muslim countries have fallen under the demographic replacement limit. Among them are Iran, Turkey, Algeria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and the Emirates. In fact, Iran now has the same fertility rate as Denmark, 1.7 children per couple.

In reference to the youth bulge in Gaza, Heinsohn is asked if the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is realistic:

“No, and the main reason is the big mistake that was made in Oslo in 1991, when the secret negotiations between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin started. The error was that nobody took any notice of the Palestinian population explosion. The Palestinian population has multiplied almost 6 times within the last 50 years. We should have done two things: Israel should have stopped its settlements, and the world community should have said to the Palestinians: Every child in Palestine will be fed by the world community as before, because by accepting that every Palestinian child is a refugee, the world community has a responsibility for the number of children born. But from January 1st 1992 you will have to pay for your newborn children, just as a woman does in Lebanon, in Tunisia and in Algeria. That is what they should have told the Palestinians. Why am I mentioning these three countries? Because in those societies a women has fewer than two children on the average. Had we done that 15 years ago, we would have seen a generation of young Palestinian men with few reasons to commit violence against each other or against the Jews. But we did not, and therefore I do not believe in the peace process, even if Hamas should decide to sign everything. Their young men will tear such agreements to pieces.”

Heinsohn points out that it is the USA and the EU, and particularly the Scandinavian countries, that pay for the enormous Palestinian child production. We must cease this support, so that the Palestinians pay for the children they bring into the world after a certain point in time.

- Why can’t the Palestinians just work like everybody else and earn their own keep?

“Palestine is a special case. They never had any chance of developing because they have always been on international support.”

- From your book one gets the impression that youth bulges create poverty, whereas we in the West have regarded youth bulges as a result of poverty?

“If a youth bulge changes a state into a failed state, then one will see a breakdown of the market and of production, and this will lead to poverty. If we look at current examples of countries with increasing violence — Pakistan and Bangladesh — we can see that both have managed a steady increase in the average income per capita — and even a significant growth. Thus we have created the primary conditions for making the young men both well fed and well educated, which leads to them becoming unruly. If these young men successfully destroy the country’s infrastructure, it will result in poverty. I have followed this process closely in the West African state of The Ivory Coast. Here they have had a system of seven children for every woman, at the same time as the average income has increased. When the killings started, the average income fell.”

Here is what Heinsohn has to say about the future of Europe:

- How do you see the political situation in Europe in twenty years? No welfare state, no democracy?

“Concerning the European continent apart from Scandinavia, Ireland and England, I believe that even the pessimistic population prognoses will turn out to be too optimistic. They assume that the young people will stay in Europe and bring up their own children, but that will not happen. A study from 2005 showed that 52% of the Germans between 18 and 32 wanted to leave. They might not mean it but they are entertaining the thought. The really qualified are leaving. The only ones truly loyal towards France and Germany are those who are living off the welfare system. Because there is no other place in the world that offers to pay for them. America, Canada and Australia count on receiving our best qualified youths, and they will get many of them. That will put an end to innovation and put a damper on economic growth in Europe. In Germany we are already forfeiting billions upon billions in revenue because we lack qualified people to take on the jobs. We have two million jobs that we cannot fill – and a welfare-dependent population of six million, and the two do not meet. The welfare group grows each year because of new babies, but the vacant job slots are not filled.”

“It is a case of two nations that are closed off to each other. The welfare state cannot continue. We cannot hope to cover the demographic holes through immigration from China either, since the Chinese do not want to emigrate into a welfare system where they will have to pay for an ageing population’s pensions in addition to a welfare population of millions.”

“We have to say that there is only one category of people who can count on help from the government, and that is the mentally or physically handicapped. Nobody else should expect help. This sounds cold and cynical but our welfare states were founded in the 19th century when families had 10 children. When their father fell to his death from a scaffold, somebody had to look after the family. This is not the situation we are facing today.”

“If you go to Australia, you will not be paid to have children. You may get a slight tax relief. On the other hand a citizen of Australia can keep 80 out of every 100 dollars he earns.”

- How could it go so wrong in Europe that had this grandiose vision of peace, cooperation and progress and unlimited trust in its own abilities?

“It started to go wrong around 1980. But the great turn in Germany came as late as 1990. That was when we opened the gates for a mass immigration of roughly speaking unqualified people. Between 1990 and 2002 Germany allowed an immigration of 13 million. At almost the same time it started to go wrong in France. We can only avert this burden on the welfare state through legislation. We have to pass a bill to the effect that new children born after a certain date will have to be paid for by their parents. It will be a revolution. But it is not even being discussed here in Europe.”

I spent this past Saturday debating free speech at Oscarsborg in Norway. Oscarsborg is a military fortress based on an small island in the Oslo Fiord across from the beautiful town of Drøbak. The fortress played a crucial role when Germany invaded Norway in 1940. The German forces were lead by the cruiser Blücher heading towards Oslo. It was, however, attacked from Oscarsborg by the small Norwegian army and sank. This delayed the occupation, and the Royal family, the government and the parliament were evacuated in time before the Germans took over control of the capital and the rest of the country.

Sounds like a good place to discuss the need to fight appeasement in our time. Deputy minister of foreign affairs Raymond Johansen and bishop Ole Christian Kvarme had to take a lot of verbal punches from the audience for their appeasement during the cartoons crisis back in January and February 2006. At that time the dean of the Oslo chapter of the state church went to Qatar to see the TV-imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi and apologize for the republishing of the Danish cartoons by a Christian newspaper in Norway with a circulation of less than 20,000. The church official later acknowledged that he didn’t know who Qaradawi was, but never the less he called him a moderate Muslim. Well if being moderate implies support for suicide terrorism, the killing of homosexuals and law based inequality between man and woman, then what will it take to be a radical? I can’t wait to hear the answer.

During the debate last Saturday the bishop repeated his criticism of the cartoons and pointed to the difference in perception of cartoons in Scandinavia and the Muslim Middle East. In the Middle East, he said, cartoons are perceived as a propaganda tool, in the West it’s entertainment and a commentary on life and current affairs, and therefore we have to be very careful and think twice when we publish cartoons on issues being sensitive to people in the Middle East.

I am not making this up. A leading figure of the Norwegian state church insist that our media be edited by dictators and clerics. Who said appeasement?

Listening to those words I wandered what the Norwegian cartoonist Finn Graff was thinking. He was in the audience but didn’t join the debate. Graff is a cartoonist with a international name, and he was one of the reasons why Magazinet republished the Mohammed cartoons. January 5 2006 Graff gave an interview to Norwegian radio saying that he would never make a cartoon of Islam’s prophet. “I am afraid of having my throat cut,” he said.

Usually, Graff doesn’t hold back when it comes to religious or other kinds of insult. In the seventies he depicted Israel’s Prime Minister Menachim Begin as commandant of a death-camp. A few years ago Ariel Sharon was given the same role in a cartoon, and Christians have been ridiculed over and over again, but death threats never followed. Just a few law suits back in the seventies. In 2005 Graff made a cartoon showing Christians marching in brown-shirts with the swastika being replaced by the Christian cross. In refusing to make a cartoon of the prophet Graff explicitly pointed to death threats against his Danish colleagues and the killing of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 for having made a documentary critical of the treatment of women in Islam.

“A line has been crossed when people react with threats of violence or cutting one’s throat. Somewhere you have draw a line,” Graff stressed in an interview with Magazinet accompanying the republication of the Mohammed cartoons.

He said that he respects the Islamic ban on images of the prophet, so his decision to refrain from making a Mohammed cartoons is equally based on respect and fear.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it?

The Norwegian deputy minister of foreign affairs Raymond Johansen reiterated through out the debate that his government during the cartoon crisis never sacrificed the principle of free speech:

“All the way we defended the right to free speech.”

Well, here is the text of an e-mail the Norwegian government sent to all its diplomatic missions in the Middle East. It’s an instruction to diplomats what to tell the authorities in the dictatorships in the region:

”I regret that the publication of the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in the Norwegian newspaper Magazinet has caused unrest in Muslim communities. I fully understand that these cartoons may be perceived as an insult to Muslims all over the world. Islam serves as the spiritual roots to a big part of the population of the world. Their faith deserves our respect.

The cartoons in the Christian newspaper Magazinet aren’t constructive for building the necessary bridges between people of different religions and ethnic background. On the contrary they contribute to mistrust and unnecessary conflict.
Let me be clear: The Norwegian government condemns every action and utterance that expresses disdain for people because of their religion or ethnicity.

Norway has always supported the UN’s work against religious intolerance and racism, and find this work very important to prevent mistrust and conflicts. Tolerance, mutual respect and dialogue constitute basic values in Norwegian society as in our foreign policy.

Free speech serves as a girder in Norwegian society. This also implies tolerance for opinions that everybody doesn’t agree with. At the same time our law and international obligations draw lines for hate speech and smear.”

What a defense for free speech! Neville Chamberlain can rest in peace.

I was born in the suburbs of Copenhagen in 1958, and until the age of 18 all my plans for life focused on professional soccer. That changed when I arrived at university and began studying Russian language and literature. I was carried away and didn’t touch a soccer ball for several years.

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