Havel is Wrong--McCain was Right

NYTimes.com:

OPINIONMAY 11, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor: A Table for Tyrants
By VACLAV HAVEL
The absence of competition in the election for the United Nations Human Rights Council suggests that states that care about human rights simply don’t care enough.

In his NYTimes article, Vaclav Havel correctly identifies the problem in the Human Rights Council. The fox is guarding the hen house. The major rights abusers are taking seats in the Council in order to prevent criticism being directed at them and to make sure the only nation criticized is Israel. The recent Durban II conference demonstrated how that works.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference has colluded with its leftist alliance members Cuba, Russia, China, Venezuela and many African states to this end.

The West is attacking Islam for its withholding of rights from women, gays and non-Muslims. Islam, in the form of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, is fighting back in the U.N. The OIC is a unique organization. It is made up of 57 U.N. member states that identify themselves as Islamic. No other religion has such an organization on the international political level. This is another expression of Islam’s lack of separation of religion and politics.

The OIC is pushing the idea that its framing of human rights in Islamic law is superior to the human rights outlined in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

CAIRO DECLARATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM
Organization of the Islamic Conference, 1990
Preamble: Believing that fundamental rights and universal freedoms in Islam are an integral part of the Islamic religion and that no one as a matter of principle has the right to suspend them or ignore them as much as they are binding divine commandments, which are contained in the Revealed Books of God and were sent through the last of His Prophets to complete the preceding divine messages thereby making their observance an act of worship and their neglect or violation an abominable sin, and accordingly every person is individually responsible—and the Ummah collectively responsible—for theirsafeguard.”
Opening line: “Reaffirming the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation…and the role that this Ummah should play to guide a humanity confused by competing trends and ideologies…”[emphasis added]

The Cairo Declaration denies the rights found in the UDHR and essentially states that everyone has the right to be a Muslim and get the rights guaranteed in the Koran. Maybe this is why the Pope does not consider Islam just another religion.

Jane Kramer reported the Pope saying, in her New Yorker piece of 4/19/07:
…

it (Islam) is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of pluralistic society. Islam has defined its own catalogue of human rights, which differs from the Western catalogue.

But Mr. Havel was wrong to conclude that the problem lies with the states that care about human rights. The problem lies in the standards for membership in the UN. There are two possible solutions. Either start enforcing those standards by kicking out members who do not comply or form a League of Democracies as John McCain suggested.

It might be a good idea to form the League anyway, since the OIC has the votes to block any membership issue. The League could function as a counterbalance to the OIC.

Originally posted on 7/28/09