.... at the recent opening of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 22nd session, two very different speeches demonstrated that the putative consensus around R 16/18 is a charade, and that the global battle over free speech has not ended in perpetual peace, but is merely suspended by an uneasy truce.
.... The American and the OIC interpretations of R 16/18 are evidently irreconcilable. Caught between these positions one finds the Europeans. On one hand, EU member states have consistently rejected the concept of “defamation of religion,” but on the other, the EU and all its member states have adopted laws against racial and religious hatred, which are often enforced.
To the extent that the OIC position on R 16/18 becomes the accepted one under human-rights law, there is therefore a risk that it could affect the interpretation of hate-speech laws in liberal democracies other than the U.S. [National Review Online] Read more
