Mr. Chairman, you asked what is going on here. Politics, of course, is part of the answer. Wherever there are people in groups, there will be politics. But there is also confusion going on here. Confusion about some of the central concepts involved. As someone with academic training in philosophy, I specialize in confusion.

In the disputes about the discussion of religion in the Human Rights Council, and in the discourse on the defamation of religions, the touchstone is respect. Respect for religions and beliefs, as the 2008 General Assembly resolution put it. While the resolution decries lack of respect, there is no lack of confusion about what respect means and what respect demands of us, legally and morally.

From a legal standpoint, what would respect mean? Respect for belief could mean protection of believers from incitement to violence. If so, then the demands of respect are already met by the protections afforded by existing international human rights instruments. Or respect for belief could mean protection of belief itself. In which case, it would be without a legal basis.

The General Assembly expressed alarm at “serious instances of intolerance, discrimination and acts of violence based on religion or belief, intimidation and deep concern about the negative stereotyping of religions and manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in matters of religion or belief” (U.N. Doc. A/Res/62/154, preamble). However, resolutions on defamations of religions are unnecessary to address this concern.

Two central freedoms guaranteed by the International Bill of Rights are freedom of religion and freedom of expression. It balances these freedoms by protecting individual believers against expression that constitutes incitement to religious discrimination, hostility or violence. The ICCPR provides that: “Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference,” and “the right to freedom of expression.” This freedom is not absolute, but is subject to certain restrictions “such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.”

Further, recognizing the dangers of hateful speech, Article 20 of the ICCPR imposes a reasonable restriction on freedom of expression by prohibiting “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Reporting on the defamation of religions, the High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Navi Pillay has commented that the existing human rights instruments represent a broad legal consensus and constitute a good basis for “legal and policy responses to the problem of intolerance more generally, and the incitement of hatred and violence in particle” (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/2/6, para. 80). If resolutions on the defamation of religions are aimed at combating incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, then they are redundant and unnecessary.

If, on the other hand, “defamation of religions” resolutions aim to protect beliefs or ideologies, then they are without basis in international law. Curiously, the UN resolutions make no attempt to define precisely what they seek to combat, instead mentioning everything from violence against believers to “prejudice” and “social disharmony” (U.N. Doc. A/HRC/2/6).

The 2008 General Assembly resolution refers several times to respect for religions, asserting that freedom of expression should be subject to restrictions that are necessary for “respect for religions and beliefs,” and asking the Human Rights Council to promote “universal respect for all religions and cultural values” (U.N. Doc. A/RES/62/154). To implement this resolution would be to undermine the foundational assumption of international human rights standards: Rights belong to individuals, not ideas. Freedom of religion protects the person who believes (or disbelieves), not the contents of the belief.

As the Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression has noted, the legal concept of defamation of persons cannot be extended to belief systems: “the provisions on protection of reputation contained in international human rights law are designed to protect individuals, not abstract values or institutions” (U.N. A/HRC/7/14, para. 40).

From a moral standpoint, what does respect demand? What does it mean to respect a believer? What would it mean to respect a belief? And what, morally speaking, would such respect demand? In the final analysis, it is not religions that deserve our respect. A religion is a collection of metaphysical ideas and moral ideals. Ideas are believed or disbelieved; ideals are pursued or rejected. Admiration, appreciation, perhaps, but respect, no. What deserves respect are persons. Surely, the feelings of persons, individual believers, can be affected when their beliefs are attacked or ridiculed. These feelings are real and important. However, feelings of offense do not generate a right not to be offended. Respect for persons does not require that we never hurt their feelings, but rather that we treat them as possessing dignity equal to our own, and therefore hold them to the same fundamental intellectual, ethical, and legal standards to which we hold ourselves, to see them as autonomous, self-legislating creatures. Therefore, respect for a person is not only consistent with criticism of a person’s beliefs; respect for a person sometimes requires criticism of his or her beliefs. Sometimes in order to respect, we must disagree. Anything less is not respect, but indifference.

Now, in the international debate over Islamophobia and freedom of expression, European advocates of free speech are often accused of holding a “double-standard,” a reference to the fact that in many Western European societies, anti-Semitic expression and Holocaust denial are widely condemned and in many cases legally prohibited.

Until such protections are removed, some argue, Europeans will be guilty of hypocrisy when they plead for free expression about Islam and Muslims. One way to address this concern is to agree that European-style hate speech legislation is illegitimate. The American approach to free speech permits all speech-including racist or hate speech-that does not present a risk of harm. This approach represents a principled solution that applies a single standard to anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim speech.

It could also be argued that there is a principled means for European-style restrictions to avoid a double standard. Some of the existing laws are careful to distinguish public expressions of hatred from religiously offensive speech. For example, the United Kingdom’s public order legislation, which incorporates the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006, explicitly states that it should not be interpreted to in any way prohibit or restrict “discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytizing or urging adherents of a different religion or belief
system to cease practicing their religion or belief system.”

By contrast, the discourse of Islamophobia and defamation of religion fails to distinguish between speech that constitutes real risk of harm to individuals, and speech that merely subjects ideas to “discussion, criticism, or expression of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse.” In the hands of certain political elites, the terms have become rhetorical weapons carried into political battle rather than legal instruments that could constructively address any social problems.

Ultimately, these attacks are self-defeating. The project of protecting religion by law is self-undermining.

In her report to the General Assembly in 2007, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief expressed concerned that “criminalizing ’defamation of religions’ can be counterproductive, since it may create an atmosphere of intolerance and fear and may even increase the chances of a backlash.”

Accusations of defamation “might stifle legitimate criticism or even research on practices and laws appearing to be in violation of human rights but that are, or are at least perceived to be, sanctioned by religion” (U.N. Doc. A/62/280).

The Special Rapporteur has also noted worrying trends in which the defamation prohibitions are being applied “in a discriminatory manner” that will “disproportionately punish members of religious minorities, dissenting believers and non-theists or atheists” (U.N. Doc. A/62/280, para. 76). This is bad news for doubters and dissenters. But it is also bad news for religion. By attempting to purify the atmosphere, to protect belief from offensive or noxious speech, the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy remove all diversity of opinion from the air, and
so asphyxiate faith.

All religions make claims to truth, even when they disavow the use of coercion or force to bring others to those truths. Truth claims by their nature necessitate disagreement. Even the claim that no religions essentially disagree is a claim about which some believers disagree. So, the identity of religions depends on the possibility of disagreement.

Geneva is an old city, old enough to have witnessed the execution of Miguel Servetus for what was once a Christian heresy, denying the Trinity of God and infant baptism. On 27 October 1553, on orders from Jean Calvin, Servetus was burned alive near Geneva, some say with the last copy of his book chained to his leg. Calvin explained,

Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are. There is no question here of man’s authority; it is God who speaks, and . . . . we spare not kin, nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory.

Had he been introduced to the terminology used the OIC, Calvin might have said that Servetus defamed Christianity. And yet today, the religious descendents of Servetus, the Unitarian-Universalists, live peacefully in democractic society.

Every religious innovation begins with a prophet or teacher who speaks the truth as his or her conscience dictates it, no matter who may disagree. The advance of religious truth, then, hangs, in the end, on the right to dissent and those precious open spaces of public life in
which doubt, dissent and thus dialogue and discovery can flicker and take light. To combat the so-called defamation of religions, is, then, in the end, to combat religion.

In conclusion: we are witnessing worrying moves to turn “defamation of religions” into an accepted concept in international law. But we also see positive signs from the U.S. and some of the Europeans. We urge NGOs and rights-respecting nations to work together to reaffirm the universality of freedom and equality in this, the sixtieth anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Austin Dacey is CFI main representative at the UN New York and author of: “Why Belief Belongs in Public Life”, (Prometheus, 2008)

This speech was given at the IHEU parallel conference "An analysis and Discussion of Religion and Freedom of Expression at the Human Rights Council" held at the UN Human Rights Council on 17 September 2008.