Last week, it appeared that the US government was going along with the creation of international laws proscribing blasphemy. Today, the matter is cleared up (at least for some) with Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks as she introduced the annual Report on International Religious Freedom. The Washington Post reports:
Clinton speaks against anti-defamation laws
Islamic countries seek to restrict freedom to criticize religions
William WanSecretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized on Monday an attempt by Islamic countries to prohibit defamation of religions, saying such policies would restrict free speech.
“Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies. . . . I strongly disagree,” Clinton said. “The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions.”
While unnamed in Clinton’s speech, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 56 Islamic nations, has been pushing hard for the U.N. Human Rights Council to adopt resolutions that broadly bar the defamation of religion. The effort has raised concerns that such resolutions could be used to justify crackdowns on free speech in Muslim countries.
Clinton made her comments while unveiling the State Department’s annual report on international religious freedom.
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October:27:2009 - 19:06
Since Clinton prefaced these comments with praise of other “important” initiatives (including her husband’s!), it is unclear to me what exactly her criticism means. A careful reading would seem to indicate that her remarks about freedom of religious expression are meant to be applied to the U.S. only, leaving room for the Administration to support, or at least not oppose, more restrictive policies elsewhere:
Hope, not demand, or even insistence. Hope is not a policy; unlike the Carter Administration, under the Obama Doctrine there will be no acid tests of compliance, no Helsinki Accords to protect the weak.
On the other hand, supporting the creation of international laws proscribing blasphemy is a policy. All the Administration need do is stick a little codicil in exempting the U.S. itself to comply with Mrs. Clinton’s stated wishes. Thus the current Adminstration can placidly assert American freedoms at home while (if it chooses) working to sabotage the freedoms Americans value abroad.
Perhaps I’m parsing things too closely – after all, I can remember a time when gifted high school students wrote some of Jeane Kirkpatrick’s speeches – but this is the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from the Obama Administration.