Believer in miracles
November 7th, 2008, 01:43 PM
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,448104,00.html
Critics are blasting the United Nations for hosting a meeting to talk about religious and cultural tolerance sponsored by Saudi Arabia, a country in which the U.S. government has said religious freedom is non-existent.
Following up on an interfaith meeting they held in Madrid in July, the Saudis asked the United Nations to hold a meeting on the "Culture of Peace," but some think it’s a move to lend support to the defamation of religions resolution that the world body will vote on this fall.
The U.N. General Assembly will host the Culture of Peace meeting initiated by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in New York on Nov. 12-13.
The Assembly President, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic priest, invited all member nations and observers, including the Vatican, to attend the meeting which it called a "useful prepatory step" towards an interfaith and intercultural meeting it will hold in 2010.
"This is not a meeting on religious dialogue only it is about dialogue among cultures," Yeves said. "I don’t' know who has called it interfaith because its official name is Culture for Peace.
The practice of religions other than Islam, and Wahhabi Islam in particular, in Saudi Arabia is forbidden, so religious leaders of other faiths could not go to Saudi Arabia, she said.
Commission chairwoman Gaer thinks it's more than a public relations move for the Saudi government, it’s a cooperative effort between Muslim nations to reinforce the defamation of religion resolution they're sponsoring before the General Assembly this fall.
It “stresses the need to effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular.”
Gaer said the Saudi-sponsored inter-faith meeting in Madrid, like the U.N. resolution, was part of an attempt to legitimize sharia law by making attendees sign a declaration that said the participants would encourage "respecting heavenly religions, preserving their high status, condemning any insult to their symbols."
"This was a Madrid declaration calling for or affirming the idea of the global blasphemy law in slightly moderated language," she said. "This would give them the freedom to declare anything from cartoons to incitement to a whole range of things to be defamation."
"The problem is that this particular conference will legitimize the Saudis as somehow the leaders [of the anti-religious defamation movement] when they are the promoters of a particularly intolerant form of their own religions practice," Gaer said. "It will promote this idea of defamation which puts severe restrictions on freedom of expression and turns the whole concept of human rights on its head."
Critics are blasting the United Nations for hosting a meeting to talk about religious and cultural tolerance sponsored by Saudi Arabia, a country in which the U.S. government has said religious freedom is non-existent.
Following up on an interfaith meeting they held in Madrid in July, the Saudis asked the United Nations to hold a meeting on the "Culture of Peace," but some think it’s a move to lend support to the defamation of religions resolution that the world body will vote on this fall.
The U.N. General Assembly will host the Culture of Peace meeting initiated by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in New York on Nov. 12-13.
The Assembly President, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic priest, invited all member nations and observers, including the Vatican, to attend the meeting which it called a "useful prepatory step" towards an interfaith and intercultural meeting it will hold in 2010.
"This is not a meeting on religious dialogue only it is about dialogue among cultures," Yeves said. "I don’t' know who has called it interfaith because its official name is Culture for Peace.
The practice of religions other than Islam, and Wahhabi Islam in particular, in Saudi Arabia is forbidden, so religious leaders of other faiths could not go to Saudi Arabia, she said.
Commission chairwoman Gaer thinks it's more than a public relations move for the Saudi government, it’s a cooperative effort between Muslim nations to reinforce the defamation of religion resolution they're sponsoring before the General Assembly this fall.
It “stresses the need to effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular.”
Gaer said the Saudi-sponsored inter-faith meeting in Madrid, like the U.N. resolution, was part of an attempt to legitimize sharia law by making attendees sign a declaration that said the participants would encourage "respecting heavenly religions, preserving their high status, condemning any insult to their symbols."
"This was a Madrid declaration calling for or affirming the idea of the global blasphemy law in slightly moderated language," she said. "This would give them the freedom to declare anything from cartoons to incitement to a whole range of things to be defamation."
"The problem is that this particular conference will legitimize the Saudis as somehow the leaders [of the anti-religious defamation movement] when they are the promoters of a particularly intolerant form of their own religions practice," Gaer said. "It will promote this idea of defamation which puts severe restrictions on freedom of expression and turns the whole concept of human rights on its head."