Martyrdom of Hector Aleem: Why Blasphemy Laws Must Go

A son of Hector Aleem sent an update message through Facebook. I am transmitting his message to you so that you can more fully comprehend why lovers of life and liberty must never accept Islamic blasphemy laws in any time or place, in any form, to any degree no matter how they are disguised. I have added bold font emphasis to the message, it is otherwise unedited.

It is obvious to me that Hector Aleem has almost certainly joined the blessed martyrs waiting under the heavenly altar for divine justice. Murder: its what Islam is; what Muslims do. Simon does not want to confront that reality. I sympathize with him, but I have no hope of a good ending.

Ignore the cloaking prose of the legislation on Pakistan's books. Look through it to Shari'ah and witness the execrable reality of Islam, which causes reasonable men to curse it.

Chapter O8.0: Apostasy from Islam (Ridda)

(O: Leaving Islam is the ugliest form of unbelief (kufr) and the worst. It may come about through sarcasm, as when someone is told, ``Trim your nails, it is sunna,'' and he replies, ``I would not do it even if it were,'' as opposed to when some circumstance exists which exonerates him of having committed apostasy, such as when his tongue runs away with him, or when he is quoting someone, or says it out of fear.)

O8.1

When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed.

O8.2

In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representive) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed.

O8.3

If he is a freeman, no one besides the caliph or his representative may kill him. If someone else kills him, the killer is disciplined (def: o17) (O: for arrogating the caliph's prerogative and encroaching upon his rights, as this is one of his duties).

O8.4

There is no indemnity for killing an apostate (O: or any expiation, since it is killing someone who deserves to die).

http://www.crusadersarmory.co.cc/RelianceO8-2.html

There is no doubt about the penalty prescribed for apostasy. Nor is there any doubt concerning its definition. The list of acts and attitudes is long, I cite here those most relevant.

O8.7: Acts that Entail Leaving Islam

-4- to revile Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace);

-5- to deny the existence of Allah, His beginingless eternality, His endless eternality, or to deny any of His attributes which the consensus of Muslims ascribes to Him (dis: v1);

-6- to be sarcastic about Allah's name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat;

-7- to deny any verse of the Koran or anything which by scholarly consensus (def: b7) belongs to it, or to add a verse that does belong to it;

-15- to hold that any of Allah's messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent;

(n: `Ala' al-din' Abidin adds the following:

-16- to revile the religion of Islam;

-19- to be sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law;

-20- or to deny that Allah intended the Prophet's message (Allah bless him and give him peace) to be the religion followed by the entire world (dis: w4.3-4) (al-Hadiyya al-`Ala'iyya (y4), 423-24). )

http://www.crusadersarmory.co.cc/RelianceO8-7.html

That Islamic law applies to Muslims, how does it affect me? Take another long hard look at item 20 above. What part of that do you not comprehend: Islamic law has global applicability. Another paragraph lists the limits on conquered Christians. Yet another paragraph identifies acts which abrogate a Christian's treaty of protection, subjecting him to immediate execution. Five items are listed, one is relevant.

O11.10

The agreement is also violated (A: with respect to the offender alone) if the state has stipulated that any of the following things break it, and one of the subjects does so anyway, though if the state has not stipulated that these break the agreement, then they do not; namely, if one of the subject people:

-5- or mentions something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), or Islam.

http://www.crusadersarmory.co.cc/RelianceO11-10.html

The OIC has pushed through resolutions condemning "defamation of Islam" every year since '05. Now they are campaigning to make those resolutions legally binding on U.N. member states. The Ad Hoc Cmte. meets again at the end of November. Very few people are aware of this threat to our lives & liberties. Only a few organizations such as Art. 19 & IHEU are publicizing it. Almost nobody is paying attention.

• Ad Hoc Committee On Compelmentary standards (126.1K pdf) Compiled from a series of blog posts about a proposed protocol to ICERD which will criminalize all criticism of Islam. The cmte meets from Oct. 19-30 '09 to write the protocol.
• Ad Hoc Cmte On Complementary Stds 125KB pdf compiled from several blog posts.
• Ad Hoc Cmte Draft Document 120KB pdf containing Google's Translation of the French language draft plus links to references and blog posts.

The linkage between Islamic genocide and Islamic scripture is direct and immediate. I have pointed that out in numerous blog posts. In Australia, Great Britain, Denmark and Finland I could be fined and imprisoned for that revelation. Thank God and the Founding Fathers, America has the First Amendment. But not for long. Soon, we shall be led dumb, like lambs to the slaughter.

I want you to do something about it. I want you to sign the International Qur'an Petition, send its url to everyone in your email address book and exhort them to sign and forward it.

International Qur'an Petition

This is what will happen to us eventually if you don't take action now.

Simon Yaqoob Aleem June 17 at 12:30pm

It is to inform you all that Hector Aleem has been disappeared suddenly from Jail. We can’t find him anywhere. When our lawyer sent legal papers in jail to get them signed by Hector Aleem then the Jail authorities told that Hector Aleem is NOT in jail and some agencies took him somewhere. We are trying for three days to confirm that where is daddy but no one is able to tell us anything. Our lawyer has searched him in each and every Police Station of Rawalpindi/Islamabad but we couldn’t find him anywhere. Three days have passed now and we still don’t have any clue about daddy. We don’t know if he is being tortured somewhere or being kidnapped. Even Jail authorities can’t tell where he is now. They just say, “Some agencies took him”. But they don’t tell us that where he is and who took him? Please pray for him and tell your friends and family to pray for daddy. If you got your blogs then please publish it in your blogs, and if your friends got any kind of blog then please tell them to publish this news. This is not fair that daddy is not even safe inside the jail, and we don’t know where he is now.

Please keep on donating for Hector Aleem’s lawyer, his legal expenses and his food and clothes. You can donate through Pay Pal or you can donate through any other way.

If you want to donate through pay pal then here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/hectoraleem

And if you want to donate through any other way then please contact Mohammad Shouman who is a group admin.

And also keep writing to Canadian Embassy in Islamabad for the Asylum of Hector Aleem and his family, you can write by yourself or you can print the petition, get it signed by your friends and family and send it to Canadian Embassy in Islamabad Pakistan.

Here is the link to the Petition: http://hectoraleem.blogspot.com/2010/06/write-to-canadian-embassy-in-islamabad.html

Please keep praying for Hector Aleem, This is a very tense situation for us.

Ad Hoc Committee: New Resolutions

Two new draft resolutions have been submitted by Nigeria and the United States

. The Nigerian draft (Microsoft Word document) outlines four points, the first of which advocates a final outcome consisting of protocols to ICERD. Other points call for the creation of a draft resolution on cyber crime and scheduling the committee's third session for November 30--December 10 of 2010.

The American draft, though highly abstract and vague, hints at shifting the focus from "defamation" & "negative stereotyping" of Islam to acts of intimidation and assault, including those performed or sponsored by governments.

Noting with deep concern continued evidence of intolerance and discrimination against individuals on the basis of race, religion and belief, including government - endorsed discrimination, violence, exclusion and bias.

The draft urges states to put a high priority on ratifying ICERD & ICCPR. It calls on states to strengthen and enhance actions against discrimination and hate crimes. Then, as I anticipated, it slides down the slippery slope of ambiguity toward the swamp of deceit.

Welcomes the role the Ad Hoc. Committee. has played in helping to identify specific proposals for concrete steps to combat racial and religious discrimination, intolerance, and hated.

"Racial and religious discrimination" and "intolerance" do not have common meanings crossing the civilizational divide between Western Civilization and Eastern Barbarism. Used by the West, they should refer to the persecution of indigenous Christian minoritys in Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan. Used by Muslims, they conflate the terms with criticism & mockery of Islam.

In its final paragraph, the American draft drowns in the swamp of deceit.

Decides to request the Ad Hoc Committee, as an immediate positive step forward, and without prejudice to its mandate, to focus on determining which of those proposals enjoy the consensus necessary for their successful implementation with a view to their adoption by the Human Rights Council at its 16^th session.

Our State Department has endorsed the committee's mission: disarming the defenders in the war of ideas by criminalizing criticism & questioning of Islam.

Related posts:

• Letter from OIC to Ad Hoc Committee
• Ad Hoc Committee Leaves Work Unfinished
• Ad Hoc Cmte: Non-Paper
• Ad Hoc Committee: African Submission
• Ad Hoc Committee: Iranian Submission
• AdHoc Cmte: Pakistani Submission
• Ad Hoc Cmte USA Submission
• Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards

Letter from OIC to Ad Hoc Committee.

Religion Clause, the blog of Professor Howard M. Friedman, published an article revealing the existence of a letter from the OIC to the Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Elaboration of Complementary Standards. The letter was issued coincident with the introduction of the current draft of the Defamation of Religions resolution in the Third Committee. It is an attempt to reinforce the supposed necessity of protecting Islam from criticism.

The blog post also reported the existence of a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom publication: The Dangerous Idea of Protecting Religions from "Defamation": A Threat to Universal Human Rights Standards.


There is a clear contrast between the OIC's letter and the USCIRF's report. Reading both of them will help you to understand the necessity of defeating the Defamation resolution in the General Assembly.

Ad Hoc Committee Leaves Work Unfinished

UN Watch published, in their blog, links to two apparently recent proposals for the protocol to be added to ICERD by the Ad Hoc Cmte. for the Elaboration of Complementary Standards. [The pdf files contained scanned images, not text, so OCR was required. The format will not be an exact match and there may be errors I failed to spot. ] [Emphasis added.]

Provisions of these proposals are in dispute. It appears that the committee has been bogged down in procedural matters & disputes so that our freedom of expression may be safe for a few months at least, until their next session.

Proposals by Pakistan on behalf of OIC

1. State Parties States shall prohibit any propaganda, practice, or organisation aimed at justifying or encouraging any form of racial, ethnic, national and religious hatred or discrimination targeting people of particular groups, such as religious groups, refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, stateless individuals, migrants and migrant workers, communities based on descent, such as people of African descent, indigenous people, minorities and people under foreign occupation.

2. State Parties shall immediately undertake to adopt positive measures designed to eliminate all incitement to racial, ethnic, national and religious hatred or discrimination in and, to this end, shall commit themselves, inter alia:

1. to declare an offence punishable by law all dissemination of ideas aimed at racial, ethnic, national and religious discrimination or hatred, as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any particular group of persons;
2. to declare illegal and prohibit organizations, and also organized and all other propaganda activities, which encourage and incite racial hatred or discrimination, and shall declare participation in such organizations or activities as an offence punishable by law;
3. not to permit national or local public authorities incite racial, ethnic, national and religious hatred or discriininationg,
4. not to permit political parties incite racial, ethnic, national and religious hatred or discrimination. .
5. to strengthen their legislations or adopt necessary legal provisions to prohibit and suppress racist and xenophobic platforms and to discourage the integration of political parties who promote such platforms in govermnent alliances in order to legitimising the implementation of these platforms.

3. States Parties shall, in accordance with the human rights standards, declare illegal and to prohibit all organizations based on ideas or theories of superiority of one race or group of persons of one colour or ethnic origin, or which attempt to justify or promote national, racial and religious hatred and discrimination in any form.

4. States Parties shall promulgate, where they do not exist, a specific legislation prohibiting any propaganda for war and any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.

To decode the substance of the highlighted expressions, we must keep one linguistic abuse constantly in mind:

4. Emphasizes the urgent need to address the scourges of anti-Semitism, Christianophobia, and Islamophobia as contemporary forms of racism as well as racial and violent movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas directed at African, Arab, Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other communities;

That boilerplate from the Durban II Preliminary Document conflates criticism of Islam with racism. Consequently, references to racism in subsequent documents must be read more broadly.

What constitutes incitement to religious hatred? In effect, any negative expression regarding Islam. This fact becomes clear when we examine the documents behind previous resolutions: Fitna & the Danish Cartoons. The Secretary General made the matter abundantly clear.

Reuters quotes U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon about Fitna:

“There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence,” Ban said in a statement. “The right of free expression is not at stake here.”

According to the Secretary General, a documentary juxtaposing verses from the Qur'an and the ravings of Imams with riots in the Arab street constitutes hate speech and incitement. Geert Wilders proved that the Qur'an inculcates hatred and preaching it incites violence. That is truth, not hate speech! The obvious intention and effect is to make all criticism of Islam a criminal offense.

ICCPR

Article 20

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

If Article 20 of ICCPR was enforced, the Qur'an would have to be outlawed as propaganda for war and advocacy of religious hatred inciting violence.

It is likely that the OIC's proposal will be included, along with boilerplate from previous resolutions, in the anticipated Defamation of Religions resolution. The Nigerian proposal differs: it omits provisions 3 & 4.

Compare the OIC's proposal to Article 4 of the Ad Hoc Cmte Draft Document. See also my analysis of the Pakistan/OIC submission made last spring.

Ad Hoc Cmte: Iranian Submission

Outline for the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards Consultations

An additional mechanism, the Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards was created by the Human Rights Council in 2006 to fill gaps in CERD, and to provide new normative standards aimed at combating all forms of contemporary aspects of racism.

The committee's mission is to write new international legislation to criminalize criticism of Islam. They solicited suggestions from the member nations to get the process started.

The Iranian submission begins on page 12 of the pdf. and ends on page 17. Although capturing the attitude & meaning of the document through excerpts is not satisfactory, I will not reproduce the entire five page submission here. You can click through to the pdf file and enter 12 in the page window to go directly to the full text of the submission.

The pdf is a scanned document, requiring the use of ocr to cull excerpts. Unfortunately, the printer which created the document needs a head cleaning, and the plate on which it was scanned is dusty, so that ocr was extremely difficult. I have therefore run the spelling checker on the excerpts, they may deviate slightly from the original, but care has been taken to avoid changing the meaning of the text. [Emphasis added.]

The Iranian submission is not novel, it rehashes malicious malarkey from previous resolutions. The following documents were referenced in the text.

• General Assembly resolution 62/154 on combating defamation of religions
• General Assembly resolution 55/23 on Dialogue Among Civilizations
• security Council resolution 1624(2005)
• UDHR
• ICCPR
• International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights
• DDPA
• Special Rapport on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance (AIHRC/6/6)

They are off to a fast start in their Introduction, asserting that Islamophobia is a growing trend, becoming pervasive and often officially condoned.

The growing trend of defamation of religions is arising from the following factors: the conflation of race, culture and religion, concept of clash of civilizations and religions, all these provides fertile soil for the defamation of religions.
And also on the fight against terrorism, based on defense of national identity and security, it is reduced to religious
dimension.

Note the clause which I emphasized. Who is it that conflates race with religion? If you can't answer that question, re-read the initial post in this series :
Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards, paying close attention to the quote from the report of the African Regional Conference in preparation for the Durban Review.

Unfortunately, insults and intolerance against Islam are being provided intellectual justification by Western scholars
and political lobbies who espouse anti-Islamic agendas, hence lending support to ideological violence against
Muslims. Sophisticated slogans are used to provoke systematic insults against Islam. This phenomenon reflects
the Islarnophobia which afflicts segments of western society.

This paragraph inverts cause and effect. We developed anti-Islamic agendas precisely because of Islam's anti-Christian & anti-western doctrines, agendas & actions. Our accurate descriptions of Islamic doctrines & practices are labled insults and intolerance. Accurate and well documented descriptions of Islamic sanctification & mandate of genocidal conquest and terrorism are labled "insults" and "intolerance".
The last paragraph of the introduction is severely overloaded by implicit reference to the documents listed and linked above.

Lack of action to prevent the reprinting of blasphemous caricatures, and indifference in airing the inflammatory documentary against the holy Quran will be perceived as manifestation of insincerity towards the principles and objectives of various efforts within the United Nations system aiming at promoting understanding and respect among cultures and civilizations. [Links added.]

It should now be clear to you that the Iranian agenda includes criminalizing criticism of Islam, specifically the Danish Cartoons and Geert Wilders' Fitna.

The cartoons depict Muhammad as a terrorist, which, by his own admission, he was. He never threw a bomb, because explosives were invented after he died. he used the primitive weaponry available in the seventh century to terrorize his victims with ruthless slaughter. If you do not comprehend this fact, open your Qur'an to 33:26, 59:2 & 59:13 and read them carefully.

Fitna demonstrates the obvious connection between Islamic doctrine enshrined in the Qur'an. This fact is documented in another blog post. It is extremely unlikely that anyone else will reveal to you the source of Islam's intense determination to criminalize criticism of itself. I will: It comes from Islamic law, codified in Reliance of the Traveller. Book O, which treats of "Justice", includes an outline of the conditions imposed upon dhimmis, who were "people of the book" subjugated by Muslims under a "treaty of protection". Chapter 11.10 lists five acts which violate the treaty of protection and subject the dhimmi to immediate execution. Here is the fifth item in that list.

-5- or mentions something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), or Islam.

The perceptive reader will want to know what is impermissible to mention. O8.7 lists 20 items which entail apostasy, and describes the list as nearly endless. Here are a few relevant items from that list.

-1- to prostrate to an idol, whether sarcastically, out of mere contrariness, or in actual conviction, like that of someone who believes the Creator to be something that has originated in time. Like idols in this respect are the sun or moon, and like prostration is bowing to other than Allah, if one intends reverence towards it like the reverence due to Allah;

-2- to intend to commit unbelief, even if in the future. And like this intention is hesitating whether to do so or not: one thereby immediately commits unbelief;

-3- to speak words that imply unbelief such as ``Allah is the third of three,'' or ``I am Allah''-unless one's tongue has run away with one, or one is quoting another, or is one of the friends of Allah Most High (wali, def: w33) in a spiritually intoxicated state of total oblivion (A: friend of Allah or not, someone totally oblivious is as if insane, and is not held legally responsible (dis: k13.1(O:) ) ), for these latter do not entail unbelief;

-4- to revile Allah or His messenger (Allah bless him and give him peace);

-5- to deny the existence of Allah, His beginingless eternality, His endless eternality, or to deny any of His attributes which the consensus of Muslims ascribes to Him (dis: v1);

-6- to be sarcastic about Allah's name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat;

-7- to deny any verse of the Koran or anything which by scholarly consensus (def: b7) belongs to it, or to add a verse that does belong to it;

-14- to deny the obligatory character of something which by the consensus of Muslims (ijma`, def: B7) is part of Islam, when it is well known as such, like the prayer (salat) or even one rak'a from one of the five obligatory prayers, if there is no excuse (def: u2.4);

-15- to hold that any of Allah's messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent;

(n: `Ala' al-din' Abidin adds the following:

-16- to revile the religion of Islam;

-17- to believe that things in themselves or by their own nature have any causal influence independent of the will of Allah;

-18- to deny the existence of angels or jinn (def: w22), or the heavens;

-19- to be sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law;

-20- or to deny that Allah intended the Prophet's message (Allah bless him and give him peace) to be the religion followed by the entire world (dis: w4.3-4) (al-Hadiyya al-`Ala'iyya (y4), 423-24). )

By now you must be wondering about the penalty. Islamic law has that covered, too.

O8.1

When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostatizes from Islam, he deserves to be killed.

O8.2

In such a case, it is obligatory for the caliph (A: or his representive) to ask him to repent and return to Islam. If he does, it is accepted from him, but if he refuses, he is immediately killed.

Islamic law is clear on its face: any criticism of Allah or his Messenger gets you killed. The Ad Hoc Committee On Complementary Standards is only the latest tool developed in pursuit of that objective.

Under the heading of "Legal Aspects", Iran describes the cartoons & Fitna as "inconsistent with the spirit of the UN Charter" and various resolutions.

The elimination of discrimination and the protection against Intolerance is in part a matter of legal protection.

They jabber on with quotes about universal freedom, equality and dignity, without finding anything relevant to the matter at hand. The next paragraph is mired in excrement.

Crucially, according to- article 20, paragraph.2 of the ICCPR, " any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law" This provision represents a clear limitation to-the night to fee speech which according to article 19 of the ICCPR carries with it special duties and responsibilities.

The cartoons do not advocate hatred, nor do they incite discrimination, hostility or violence. The same is true of Fitna. Few will perceive the irony in Islam's specious assertion: it is their own scripture, tradition & jurisprudence which advocates hatred and incites violence. If Article 20 were to be enforced, the Qur'an, hadith & Shari'ah would be banned as incitement to violence!

The committee on civil and Political Rights in its general comment 11 provided that these required prohibitions are fully compatible with the right to freedom of expression as contained in Article 19, the exercise of which carries with it special duties and responsibilities. This is clear indication that human rights instruments recognize provisions against incitement to religions hatred as being a completely legitimate- safeguard against the abuse of the right to free speech.

Iran is asserting that accurately describing Allah's genocidal Jihad imperatives which are found in Surahs Al-Anfal & At-Taubah and confirmed in Sahih Bukhari's Books of Jihad, Khumus & Expedition and codified in Reliance of the Traveller Book O, Chapter 9, Paragraphs 8 & 9 must be legally prohibited as "incitement to religious hatred". Islamic obedience to those imperatives has resulted in 270*10⁶ premature deaths in the last 1400 years but we must be prevented, by judicial penalties, from mentioning it.

Identifying the enemy and describing his doctrines is characterized as an abuse of free speech. This is nothing less than the aggressor's program for depriving us of the ability to defend ourselves against his aggression.

The last section of the submission is under the heading of Programme of Action.

In sum, the right to freedom of expression should be exercised with the responsibilities and limitations as prescribed by law. The international community should initiate a global dialogue to promote a culture of tolerance and peace based on respect for human rights and cultural diversity and urges states, NGOs, religious bodies and media to support and promote such a dialogue. Developing the human rights language to address emerging issues such as defamation of religions was an important step forward that is of interest not only to Muslims but to all the internatioual community.

Our freedom of expression must not include mention of Islam's aggressive doctrines & practices: conquest, genocide & terrorism. A culture of tolerance and peace means being led, dumb like sheep, to the slaughter.

Islamic Republic of Iran urges the Ad hoc Committee on the elaboration of complementary standards to call upon the States to stop the publication of blasphemous caricatures, Elms and media as well as the campaigns for anti-Islamic regulations to take all possible legal and administrative measures to prevent continuation of these deliberate offensive acts, which impinge greatly on the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion of the followers of Islam.

They want to add wording to ICERD to criminalize every criticism of Islam. How in Hell does anything we write or say impinge on the liberty of Muslims? Why must they be allowed to continue in the arrogant assumption that they have a divine right and mission to kill, enslave, rape, pillage & plunder us?