Arab News runs this AP story on ideas coming out of the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit in Dakar to seek legal redress for Islamophobia. Bad idea, one not fully thought through, and likely to be counterproductive in the long run.

The basic problem is that what is blasphemous to the member of one religion is not to a member of another (or no) religion. As there are no legal definitions of what constitutes a religion, anyone can claim that anything is offensive, blasphemous, beyond the pale. One commentator says that while ‘serious academic research’ should be beyond the reach of any new laws, those things that are ‘sheerly offensive’ ought to be banned. He notes that already there are laws that punish Holocaust denial in several European states. Those are bad laws, too. One might argue that in the immediate post-WWII era those laws had a place. Now, some 60 years later, they do not. New laws that further encroach on freedom of expression have no place either. Instead, people have to grow thicker skins in understanding that their most cherished beliefs cannot be immune from attack or ridicule. The only legitimate counter is to speak back.

Muslims Plan Legal Steps to Counter Islamophobia
Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press

DAKAR, Senegal, 16 March 2008 — The Muslim world has created a battle plan to defend its religion from bigoted cartoonists and politicians.

Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world’s Muslim nations are considering legal action against those who slight their religion or its sacred personalities. This was a key issue during a two-day summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that ended on Friday in the Senegalese capital.

The plan represents an attempt to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons caricaturing Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Though the type of legal action the OIC could take is not fully spelled out, the threat pits the Muslim world against the principles of freedom of speech enshrined in the constitutions of numerous Western governments.

“I don’t think freedom of expression should mean freedom to blaspheme,” said Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, chairman of the 57-member OIC. “There can be no freedom without limits.”
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