Montreal, September 6, 2011 – Point de Bascule wishes to publicize a letter signed by a dozen intellectuals who are defending freedom of expression by opposing a project of censorship that will be discussed during the conference in Montreal.

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Montreal, September 6, 2011 – Point de Bascule wishes to publicize a letter signed by a dozen intellectuals who are defending freedom of expression by opposing a project of censorship that will be discussed during the conference in Montreal.

The statement in opposition to the conference’s censorship campaign is available on the Muslim Canadian Congress website in its original English version. The French translation is available on Point de Bascule.

The letter’s signatories are particularly worried by the fact that a Declaration that will be discussed during the conference endorses a so-called right for religions not to be “denigrated” by media and academe.

If this principle were to be adopted and turned into law, it would open the door to a wide range of blasphemy-type criminal and other legal proceedings. This is because it would suffice to claim that a criticism of religion is “denigrating”, to justify legal action. In effect, this Declaration immunizes religion from criticism.

These measures embrace the line promoted for many years by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC represents 56 Muslim majority countries and it pressures non-Muslim countries at the United Nations and in other international forums to prosecute their own citizens for blasphemy if they criticize Islam. In this regard, article 22a of the OIC Declaration on Human Rights in Islam reads as follows: “Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah.” 

The Montreal interfaith conference will take place on September 7, 2011. It is organized with the active cooperation of McGill University and the Université de Montréal. The Dalai Lama will open the conference. Tariq Ramadan and many other personalities have confirmed that they will attend.

While a Declaration endorsing censorship has readied, the conference’s organizer Arvind Sharma told Karen Seidman of the Ottawa Citizen that “Ramadan has a right to be heard and that true debates aren’t just between moderates but must include all viewpoints.”

Point de Bascule continues to stand for the principle of vigorous, open discussion but we object to the fact that universities largely financed by public funds give credibility to a man who has publicly endorsed Hassan al-Banna, Youssef Qaradawi and other theoreticians of radical Islam in the past.

In a meeting that took place in Dallas on July 27, 2011, Tariq Ramadan declared to his partisans: “We are not here to become moderate Muslims”. He added: “It should be us, with our understanding of Islam, our principles, colonizing positively the United States of America.” The transcript of the Dallas speech’s most important excerpts is available on the Point de Bascule website.

Muslim Presence [a.k.a. Présence Musulmane], an organization led by Tariq Ramadan, and the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) are identified on the conference’s website as “friends” of the event. On its website, MAC states that it regards the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology as “the best representation of Islam” and that it “strives” to implement it in Canada.

The statement in opposition to the conference’s censorship campaign is available on the Muslim Canadian Congress website in its original English version. The French translation is available on Point de Bascule.

Source : Marc Lebuis
Information: https://pointdebasculecanada.ca/contact.html

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