By Turan Kayaoglu, Today’s Zaman, Dec 30, 2011
On Monday, Dec. 19, 2011, the UN General Assembly passed a path-breaking resolution supporting religious tolerance. The resolution, passed by the joint efforts of the US and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), points to the increasing collaboration between the two. The resolution has been in the making for some time and is part of an effort by Muslim states to get Western states to combat growing Islamophobia in the post-9/11 world.
The newly passed UN resolution condemns the stereotyping, profiling and stigmatization of people based on their religion and urges countries to take action to address and combat religious intolerance, hate speech and discrimination. Supporters of the resolution framed their demands in terms of internationally accepted human rights principles, citing the crucial roles freedom of opinion and speech play in “strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance.” The resolution asks states to use means such as education, interfaith dialogue and the training of government officials to prevent religious discrimination and to advance religious tolerance. The resolution further asks states to criminalize religious hate speech when such speech constitutes “incitement to imminent violence” against people based on their religion.
Unlike domestic laws, which have an enforcement mechanism, UN resolutions are designed to produce what political scientists call a “norm” -- a statement of the collective opinion of the international community -- with the intent to influence state practices in the long run. While conditions on the ground may not change quickly, some signs (like the FBI’s new guidelines for fighting terrorism) indicate that the resolution will in fact make a difference in certain countries.
In addition to the content of the resolution, the process by which it was passed was remarkable. The resolution is a result of a growing collaboration between the US and the OIC. The seeds of this collaboration can be traced to President Obama’s İstanbul and Cairo speeches. While some of the promises from these speeches fall short -- most glaringly, peace between Israel and the Palestinians -- the Obama administration has taken major institutional steps towards building healthier relations with Muslims.
The Obama administration initiated the process by approaching the OIC. The president signaled this move in İstanbul when he called the US a great Muslim country with about 7 million American Muslims. Soon after, the administration appointed a special envoy -- Rashad Hussain -- to the OIC. The Obama administration also recruited Dalai Mogahed as the White House’s “Muslim adviser” and removed what Islamic civil rights organizations such as the Council of American-Islamic Relations had called Islamophobic FBI trainers and Islamophobic material from law enforcement agencies. Recently issued FBI guidelines shifted focus from religious to behavioral profiling of individuals in the fight against terrorism.
This collaboration also points to how the US and the OIC have managed to bridge their seemingly opposite positions regarding religion and free speech. While free speech is a core value to Americans, embodied in the US Constitution, restrictions on political and religious speech are common in the Muslim context. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved of the end result of the negotiations: “The resolution calls states to protect freedom of religion; to counter offensive expression through education, interfaith dialogue and public debate; and to prohibit discrimination, profiling and hate crimes, but not to criminalize speech unless there is an incitement to imminent violence.”
The Obama administration showed strong leadership. It reached out to the OIC and resisted the pressures of small but loud Islamophobic circles in American society that lobbied hard to stop US support of the resolution (as discussed in an article this week in Today’s Zaman by Mehmet Kalyoncu).
The OIC also deserves kudos. It adjusted its own views and approach to ensure the resolution’s success. As a major step, it dropped its controversial demand for the so-called “Combating Defamation of Religions” resolution. To the chagrin of its proponents, this demand for combating defamation of religions polarized relations between Muslim nations on the one hand and the US and the EU on the other. The US and the EU vehemently objected to it because of the resolution’s ambiguity and their fear that combating defamation of religions could easily slip into blasphemy laws.
Regarding religious tolerance, this time the OIC worked closely with the US to produce an agreed-upon text. After the UN Human Rights Council’s passage of the resolution in April 2011, Clinton attended high-level meetings with Muslim leaders at a conference in İstanbul in June 2011. These meetings initiated what is known as the İstanbul Process -- a series of discussions to develop steps for the resolution’s implementation. In her İstanbul speech, Secretary Clinton rejected what she saw as “a false divide that puts religious sensitivities against freedom of expression.”
Follow-up meetings took place in Washington, D.C., from Dec. 12-14, 2011. This high-level meeting included representatives from the US, the OIC and the human rights community. These cooperative efforts ensured the passage of the resolution several days later. Make no mistake. One sparrow will not bring spring. Some problems between the US and Muslim nations are deep and complex. What is important is that in this instance, they each exhibited the willingness to work together. Let’s hope this foreshadows more such collaboration in the future.
*Turan Kayaoğlu is an associate professor of international relations at the University of Washington Tacoma.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.gif)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)