Re: The OIC vs. Freedom of Expression

Jacob Mchangama is right to sound the alarm about the U.N.'s shift of focus away from attempting to make "defamation of religions" a human-rights violation and toward banning hate speech. But hate-speech bans are not new. Religious-hate-speech laws have long been used as proxies for Islamic blasphemy rules in the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), and increasingly in Europe, Canada, and Australia as well. The U.S. does not have hate-speech laws. However, Mchangama rightly suggests that, with the death of the "defamation of religions" resolutions, we will be seeing a big international push to criminalize religious hate speech, including here in the U.S. As we gird for battle, here are some points to consider.