www.ssoar.info Which gets protection - belief or believer? The organisation of Islamic cooperation and the campaign against the 'Defamation of Religions' Baumgart-Ochse, Claudia Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Arbeitspapier / working paper Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung (HSFK) Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Baumgart-Ochse, C. (2015). Which gets protection - belief or believer? The organisation of Islamic cooperation and the campaign against the 'Defamation of Religions'. (PRIF Reports, 136). Frankfurt am Main: Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-458502 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Deposit-Lizenz (Keine This document is made available under Deposit Licence (No Weiterverbreitung - keine Bearbeitung) zur Verfügung gestellt. Redistribution - no modifications). 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The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Campaign against the ‚Defamation of Religions‘ Claudia Baumgart-Ochse the Translation: Margaret Clarke © Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) 2015 Correspondence to: PRIF Baseler Straße 27–31 60329 Frankfurt am Main Germany Telephone: +49 69 959104-0 Fax: +49 69 558481 E-mail: [email protected] Internet: www.prif.org ISBN: 978-3-942532-92-1 Euro 10,00 € Summary In the mid-1990s, a number of different actors were seeking to defuse the increasing tensions between the Western and Muslim worlds. The new Iranian president, Mohammed Khatami, a moderate reformer, began a process of rapprochement with the West; the protagonists of the Oslo peace process were working towards a solution to the key conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; and the United Nations, responding to Samuel P. Huntington’s warnings of an impending ‘clash of civilizations’, launched an initiative based instead on the ‘dialogue of civilizations’. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) took advantage of this situation in order to promote one of its most cherished aims – the protection of Islam and Muslims from defamation, blasphemy, and discrimination – as a new human-rights norm within the Western-dominated, largely secular UN system. With fifty-seven Muslim or Muslim-influenced member-states, the OIC (renamed Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 2011) is the second-largest intergovernmental body after the UN and claims to be the voice of the Muslim world. In 1999, Pakistan, acting on behalf of the OIC, for the first time brought before the Commission on Human Rights a resolution calling for a ban on the ‘defamation of Islam’. After negotiations with Western states, this was adopted for the first time – without a vote – under the title ‘Defamation of Religions’. The resolution condemns the negative, stereotypical depiction of religions, notably Islam, and calls on states to outlaw the ‘defamation of religions’. It was adopted by various UN bodies (Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Council, General Assembly) every year until 2011. This report looks at the OIC’s UN initiative in terms of an attempt to get a new norm established internationally using oppositional means. By opting for this strategy, the OIC set itself clearly apart from the sort of protests, boycotts, and threats of violence that had occurred at the end of the 1980s, in the wake of the publication of the novel The Satanic Verses by Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie. Whereas these protests can be seen as a form of international dissidence, in the sense of a radical resistance to the Western- dominated order, the path the OIC chose was one of opposition played out according to the rules of international institutions. Normatively, the OIC justified its initiative by reference to its role as one of the interpreters of Islamic tradition as it relates to human rights. In 1990, it had adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, a document advocating a notion of human rights bound to, and limited by, sharia – Islamic law. Having initially prospered, the OIC initiative found itself under increasing criticism from Western countries in the wake of the terror-attacks of 11 September 2001. Chief amongst the criticisms was the claim that the concept of the ‘defamation of religions’ was in direct contradiction to the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Human rights, it was claimed, afforded protection to individual believers, as repositories of human dignity; but shared ideas and beliefs, as exemplified in religions, were not exempted from defamation, satirical attack, or vilification. The OIC was also accused of using the UN initiative on defamation merely as a way of exporting the sometimes draconian blasphemy- laws of their member-countries to the international level. The OIC, for its part, argued that following the New York attacks, the situation of Muslims – particularly Muslim minorities in Western societies – had suffered a massive decline because the ‘war on terror’ meant that they were now virtually under blanket suspicion. It was therefore necessary, they said, to use the resolution to provide these minorities with effective protection from discrimination, hatred, and defamation. But the OIC’s arguments did not cut any ice: after 2002, support for the resolution declined with each passing year. Against the background of the gradual demise of the ‘defamation of religions’ resolution in the UN, the Danish cartoon crisis of 2005/2006 provided the OIC with a welcome opportunity to raise the matter from a different angle. Working in concert with the Egyptian government, the OIC played the key part, as an international body, in raising the status of the cartoon crisis from that of an internal Danish dispute to that of a worldwide political crisis. Although it cannot be accused of having deliberately endorsed the violent demonstrations and the arson-attacks on the Danish embassies in Syria and Lebanon, nonetheless, with its dogged campaign against the cartoons, the OIC facilitated the shift from UN-based attempts at opposition to a new phase of radical dissidence. After this, the protest against what was perceived to be the demeaning and defamation of Islam and its followers in the name of free speech and freedom of the press was to reignite itself repeatedly with further events and publications – from Pope Benedict’s supposedly anti- Islamic speech in Regensburg to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. In the meantime, attempts were being made at the international level to find a cooperative way to resolve the defamation versus free expression conflict. After phases of dissidence (Rushdie affair), opposition (OIC’s UN initiative), and renewed dissidence (cartoon crisis and subsequent events), the OIC, EU, and USA agreed to the introduction of a new, jointly drafted resolution that dropped the idea of the ‘defamation of religions’ and operated within the parameters of established human-rights legislation. Adopted by consensus for the first time in 2011, the new resolution – Resolution 16/18 – has brought with it the hope that some sort of compromise will be possible, at least at the diplomatic level, and that this compromise may result in relevant changes in national practice and legislation. But the consensus is still very fragile: at the various implementation-meetings relating to the resolution (what has become known as the Istanbul Process), the old dividing-lines between the OIC member-states and the West have once again opened up. Whether it will be possible to make any headway in finding an international solution that both satisfies the OIC and is capable of assuaging the international hostility to what is perceived as the defamation of Islam is as yet unclear. As one of the major players in the Istanbul Process, the European Union should use every available opportunity to fight the latest attempts to reintroduce an anti-defamation agenda into the debate ‘through the back door’. Attention should in future be directed more towards getting the action-plan in Resolution 16/18 implemented and moving beyond the polarized theoretical debate. II Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. The OIC and International Human Rights 5 2.1 The Voice of the Ummah? The OIC between