Kangaroo courts across the globe will be ready to charge free peoplewith obscure violations of other societies’ norms and customs, and sendInterpol to bring them to stand trial in frivolous litigation.
There are strange happenings in the world ofinternational jurisprudence that do not bode well for the future offree speech. In an unprecedented case, a Jordanian court is prosecuting12 Europeans in an extraterritorial attempt to silence the debate onradical Islam.
The prosecutor general in Amman charged the 12 withblasphemy, demeaning Islam and Muslim feelings, and slandering andinsulting the prophet Muhammad in violation of the Jordanian PenalCode. The charges are especially unusual because the alleged violationswere not committed on Jordanian soil.
Among the defendants is the Danish cartoonist whosealleged crime was to draw in 2005 one of the Muhammad illustrationsthat instigators then used to spark Muslim riots around the world. Hisco-defendants include 10 editors of Danish newspapers that publishedthe images. The 12th accused man is Dutch parliamentarian GeertWilders, who supposedly broke Jordanian law by releasing on the Web hisrecent film, “Fitna,” which tries to examine how the Quran inspiresIslamic terrorism.
Jordan’s attempt at criminalizing free speech beyondits own borders wouldn’t be so serious if it were an isolated case.Unfortunately, it is part of a larger campaign to use the law andinternational forums to intimidate critics of militant Islam. Forinstance, in December the United Nations General Assembly passed theResolution on Combating Defamation of Religions; the only religionmentioned by name was Islam. While such resolutions aren’t legallybinding, national governments sometimes cite them as justification forlegislation or other actions.
More worrying, the U.N. Human Rights Council in Junesaid it would refrain from condemning human-rights abuses related to “aparticular religion.” The ban applies to all religions, but it wasprompted by Muslim countries that complained about linking Islamic law,Shariah, to such outrages as female genital mutilation and death bystoning for adulterers. This kind of self-censorship could provedangerous for people suffering abuse, and it follows the council’sMarch decision to have its expert on free speech investigateindividuals and the media for negative comments about Islam.
Given this trend, it’s worth taking a closer look at the Jordanian case.