Turkish Forum

Tag: Istanbul Process

  • Istanbul process’ countries ready to help Afghanistan

    Istanbul process’ countries ready to help Afghanistan

    Kazakhstan, Astana, 26 April / Trend, D. Mukhtarov /

    Almaty_1

    The 3rd Ministerial Conference of the ‘Istanbul Process held in Almaty on Friday ended with a declaration in which the parties confirmed their willingness to give full support to Afghanistan in order to involve it in the economic and political life of the region, the Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan reported.

    “The participants of the Conference noted the importance of these measures in the context of the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Forces from Afghanistan. Specific action plans on six confidence measures packages of Istanbul Process were approved,” the report says.

    The forum was attended by more than 50 delegations, headed by the foreign ministers of participating countries, supporting countries and heads of international organizations. The parties fully supported plans for regional cooperation in Afghanistan, confirmed their willingness to purposefully expand and deepen regional cooperation based on the principles of friendship, respect and mutual benefit.

    Several associated events in the context of regional cooperation in Afghanistan took place within the scope of the conference: A Presentation of the Capacities of Almaty as a Regional Hub of Multilateral Diplomacy Held by the Akim of the City Ahmetzhan Yesimov; a workshop of experts of the involved authorities of the participants of the Istanbul process with the presentation of capabilities of Kazakhstan as a transit corridor; an exhibition of goods and products of Kazakhstan for export to Afghanistan.

    According to the Declaration adopted on the results of the forum, the next Conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Istanbul Process on Afghanistan is scheduled to be held in the People’s Republic of China in 2014.

  • America Again Submits to the Istanbul Process

    America Again Submits to the Istanbul Process

    By Nina Shea
    December 3, 2012 12:28 P.M.

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    Round three of the “Istanbul Process” opens today, December 3, and runs through Wednesday, at Canada House, in London, hosted by the U.K. and Canada. The Istanbul Process is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major transnational law initiative, undertaken in partnership with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It was established last year to “implement” measures against speech and expression that negatively “stereotype[s]” Islam and Muslims, with a particular emphasis on enacting them in the West.

    This initiative was started as an inexplicable, gratuitous gift to the Muslim world following the March 2011 adoption of a non-binding U.N. Human Rights Council resolution (16/18) on the same theme. While the Obama administration claims that it doesn’t intend for the process to adopt regulations beyond the American free-speech standard, our partner, the OIC, is only too eager to do just that.

    For over a decade within the U.N., the OIC has relentlessly pushed for a universal law to punish blasphemy, or “defamation,” of Islam. This 56-member-state organization, an essentially religious body, is in fact chartered to “combat defamation of Islam.” It issues fatwas and other directives to punish public expression of apostasy from Islam. Its current action plan calls for “deterrent punishments” in all states for “Islamophobia,” a term that encompasses a broad range of constitutionally protected speech, judging from the OIC website’s black list of Americans and other perpetrators of “Islamophobia.” The OIC’s stated understanding of the Istanbul Process is that it will “help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.”

    Corner readers will remember that the Istanbul Process’s first conference was co-chaired by Clinton and the OIC secretary general in July 2011, in Istanbul, with the foreign ministers of the Muslim countries in attendance. The second was held over three days of closed-door meetings last December, at the offices of the U.S. Department of State in Washington. That meeting drew enough controversy within free-speech circles to raise questions about whether the process would continue. But thanks to a leak last week by OIC head Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, we now know the event will go ahead, even if its agenda is still being treated like it’s “classified.”

    Judging from the 2011 session I was partially able to observe as a commissioner on the official U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the point of the Istanbul Process is for the governments of the developed West give an accounting to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, and other key Muslim states on measures taken to stop American and other Western citizens from disparaging Islam. This puts our diplomats.in a tight spot: Unlike virtually every other country represented in the conference hall, America does not protect any religion or any other body of ideas from criticism and ridicule. However, when we’re in the dock this time around, the U.S., represented by Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, the administration’s severely marginalized ambassador-at-large for religious freedom, will have some measure of “progress” to report.

    For example, the U.S.’s top intelligence official and its top commander in Afghanistan were again deployed to suppress blasphemy against Islam in Florida and, this time around, they succeeded. Last year, the efforts of our top authorities to stop Florida micro-church pastor Terry Jones from desecrating a Koran ended in failure. But this year, their resort to the “good offices” of Tampa socialite Jill Kelley proved an effective strategy. Her persuasive emails resulted in Florida talk-show host Bubba the Love Sponge’s standing down from deep frying a Koran, something he had threatened to do on-air. The OIC’s Ihsanoglu would likely rule Bubba was about to “abuse” freedom of expression by not being able (incontrovertibly, I should note) to pass a “responsible use” test.

    That leads to our next plea: The administration has also adopted the OIC’s own standard of condemning the “abuse of free expression.” Or at least that is what it appeared to do on the website of the pivotal U.S. embassy to Egypt on September 11 this year. Our embassy declared on its homepage: “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

    But perhaps, the best evidence of America’s “implementation” in response to the Istanbul Process is the Justice Department’s dispatching the FBI a couple months ago to investigate Mark Basseley Youssef (a.k.a. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, or Sam Bacile), the California Coptic filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims,” the YouTube trailer that blasphemed the Muslim prophet. As Ambassador Cook can point out, this investigation has resulted in a creative criminal conviction of Youssef, and his being sentenced by a federal court to a year in prison. All the better for the U.S.’s reputation as implementers is that it will be lost on the conferees that Youssef has been imprisoned on a probation offense, à la Al Capone — though, unlike Capone, his underlying offense, without which he would not have been investigated, was making a crude, insulting video, which is hardly equivalent in American law to gangland massacres or racketeering. It, in fact, is not a crime at all. Thus, most important, the OIC’s take-away will be that in defense of Islam the U.S. government can and will regulate speech.

    Nevertheless, none of this is likely to impress the Istanbul Process gathering. On its opening day last December, Saudi Arabia — headquarters to and godfather of the OIC — beheaded a Sudanese woman for “sorcery.” Last week, Egypt sentenced to death Youssef, Terry Jones, and six other Americans implicated in the blasphemous YouTube trailer. For the Istanbul Process that’s “best practices” for “implementation.” Thus, again, America will be judged to have fallen short, indignation will rise, and the Istanbul Process will need to ramp up its pressure.

    — Nina Shea is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and co-author with Paul Marshall of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide.

  • The ‘Istanbul Process’: A Success for Muslim Diplomacy

    The ‘Istanbul Process’: A Success for Muslim Diplomacy

    The ‘Istanbul Process’: A Success for Muslim Diplomacy

    By David Pryce-Jones

    The ease with which Muslim diplomats outdo their Western opposite numbers is impressive. An outstanding example is the brilliance with which Iranian spokesmen vary the steady progress of the Iranian nuclear program with offers to negotiate. Apparently incapable of learning from their mistakes, Western representatives fall every time for this really rather simple deception. Muslim spokesmen are equally brilliant at exploiting international forums like the United Nations and its committees, or the Arab League, to misrepresent reality and lay a smokescreen of blame over the West. The European Union often gives the impression that it is an executive arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

    The so-called “Istanbul process” is the latest development in these sinister apologetics.

    This seems to be the brainchild of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — of all 57 member states. Some of these countries have long tried to maintain that any criticism of their despotism, tribalism, oppression of women, anti-Semitism, and war-mongering has no relation to morals or humanism but merely signifies Western bias against Islam. In short, they hope that a ban on free speech in the West will enable them to carry on with the exercise of historic power. They have scored many a diplomatic success, for instance getting the American government to substitute the ridiculous phrase “man-made disaster” for an act of Islamist terror. Although its proceedings are hardly reported in the press, the “Istanbul process” is evidently the latest attempt to censure truth-telling as un-Islamic and so prohibit it. Westerners should have nothing to do with this. Yet with that mysterious surrender that seems to come naturally to him, President Obama has consented to American participation in the “Istanbul process.” That too is a success for Muslim diplomacy.

    Commentators are generally writing off the Arab Spring but it has released a lot of dissent. As Patriarch Bishara al-Rai, head of the Maronite church in Lebanon, told Reuters, “We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing.” Hussein Abdul-Hussein, a senior Kuwaiti journalist, wrote in his newspaper that the total number of Palestinians killed by Israelis since 1987 is around 9,000 while Assad has killed an equal number of his own in a year. Tariq al-Homayad, editor of Asharq al-Awsat, the Saudi newspaper published in London, goes further, saying that if Israelis kill Arabs then “we must all move as one to put an end to it,” but if the killer is an Arab “this is something we can accept.” He concludes, “This is a saddening and shameful state of affairs.” When the veteran PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi recently demanded that the international community brand Israel an apartheid state, the Palestinian Ramzi Abu Hadid answered her. How come, he asks, that she, a Christian, never mentions the Muslim persecution of Christians, the dream of many Muslims to emigrate into Israel, the gender apartheid of Saudi Arabia where women have no rights, and much more expressed with blistering passion.

    Free spirits like these are depicting reality, while the “Istanbul process” is designed to distort and obscure it. More than that, they are defending values and beliefs which craven and foolish Western statesmen and their diplomatic representatives are abandoning.

    via The ‘Istanbul Process’: A Success for Muslim Diplomacy – By David Pryce-Jones – David Calling – National Review Online.

  • International Judge Muhammad Day vs. The Istanbul Process

    International Judge Muhammad Day vs. The Istanbul Process

    2/2/2012

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    February 1st, 2012

    MEDIA CONTACT:  352-371-2487 or 352-871-2680 or [email protected]

    International Judge Muhammad Day vs. The Istanbul Process

    “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” ~ George Washington

    The Istanbul Process Begins 2011

    Hilary Clinton, US Secretary of State: “I want to applaud the Organization of Islamic Conference and the European Union for helping pass Resolution 16/18 at the Human Rights Council…. together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps to fight intolerance wherever it occurs. Under this resolution, the international community is taking a strong stand for freedom of expression and worship, and against discrimination and violence based upon religion or belief.

    “…The resolution calls upon states to protect freedom of religion, to counter offensive expression through education, interfaith dialogue, and public debate, and to prohibit discrimination, profiling, and hate crimes, but not to criminalize speech unless there is an incitement to imminent violence.

    “…we have seen how the incendiary actions of just a very few people, a handful in a country of nearly 300 million, can create wide ripples of intolerance. We also understand that, for 235 years, freedom of expression has been a universal right at the core of our democracy. So we are focused on promoting interfaith education and collaboration, enforcing antidiscrimination laws, protecting the rights of all people to worship as they choose, and to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor. ” ~ Hilary Clinton, July 15 2011, Istanbul, Turkey

    Burning the Koran was an act of warning, of exposing the long entrenched intolerance of Islam. We did not create intolerance. We do not hate Muslims. We are also not intolerant of Islam. Muslims have freedom to worship and must keep it, unless their worship involves drowning daughters in canals, detonating suicide bombs among crowds of innocents, or supporting those that ‘worship’ in this way. This is not tolerated by any Western law, yet the West has begun to shelter such crimes as they are sheltered in many Islamic countries.

    It is the radical, violent and oppressive aspect of the ‘worship’ of Islam that needs to be exposed. We need more ‘interfaith education’ about Islam and Muhammad, not less. Expose the ‘polarizing debate’ of the Koran! Expose the lack of respect Muhammad had for those he murdered and raped, for those that just had a different view from his own.

    The Istanbul Process shifted to Washington DC in December 2011 where the Obama Administration met behind closed doors with the OIC. Why is the OIC telling the American government what to do? And why can we not know what they said?

    Hilary Clinton said in a public speech, “…it’s one thing if people are just disagreeing. That is fair game. That’s free speech. But if it results in sectarian clashes, if it results in the destruction or the defacement or the vandalization of religious sites, if it even results in imprisonment or death, then government must hold those who are responsible accountable.

    “We have to get past the idea that we can suppress religious minorities, that we can restrict speech, that we are smart enough that we can substitute our judgment for God’s and determine who is or is not blaspheming.” ~ Hilary Clinton, December 14, 2011

    So when the Islamic leaders claim it is blasphemy to say anything nagative about their teachings or prophet, although we are just quoting from the Koran itself, or repeating what those leaders themselves say about the life of Muhammad, and those Imams and Mullahs incite violence among their followers, or individual Muslims react with violence, what is she saying? Is the White House supporting the OIC’s demand for holding people like us responsible? They certainly pressure the media to ‘shame’ and ‘abhor’ what we do, to call it ‘hate crime’ and ‘criminalize speech.’  Are these the ‘concrete steps’ planned to bow to Islamic ‘religious sensitivities.’

    Istanbul Process Continues, 2012

    The OIC is delighted with their puppets in Washington.

    JEDDAH, 8 Safar/Jan 3 (IINA)- “Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said that the European Union offered to host the third meeting of the ‘Istanbul Process’, which deliberates, in a series of meetings, on developing mechanisms to implement UNHRC Resolution 16/18 on combating intolerance, discrimination and incitement to violence based on religion or belief.

    “The Secretary General of Islamic Cooperation in his office in Jeddah on Tuesday 30 January 2012 pointed out that the EU’s offer to host the meeting represents a qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia, which spread in many European countries, targeting the Muslim communities there.

    “Ihsanoglu said that the growing role of the extreme right in politics in several European countries has become stronger than the capacity of the Organization, explaining that the extreme right, who hates Muslims, became leverage in the hands of politicians. He added that the rise of the extreme right through elections has become an issue that cannot be countered, considering the democratic way in which these extremist reach their positions. He pointed out to the referendum held in Switzerland, as an example, which resulted in suspending the construction of minarets there following a vote by the Swiss people.” ~JEDDAH, 8 Safar/Jan 3 (IINA)

    So according to Mr. Ihsanoglu, the Swiss ‘hate Muslims’ because they banned minarets, and all the ‘extreme right’ in Europe do too, it seems. We are considered by some to be on the right, but we and many others on the right do not speak from hate. They are not ‘targeting Muslims.’ They speak against the hate that exists in some Muslims because of the hate that is evident in Islamic teachings and is emphasized by some Imams and Mullahs justifying more hate, violence and oppression. This is NOT ‘islamophobia,’ a popular word invented recently by Islamic leaders to shame dismiss any opposition to Islam. It is truth. In the West we care about truth and justice.
    So the heads of Europe will meet with the US and the OIC in July to continue this ‘process.’ Will any in the West have the guts to block their demands which many see as an explicit aim is to enshrine in international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or Islamic Sharia law. The four dead women in Canada cannot speak now. The countless mutilated from suicide bombs which the media cannot hide cannot speak. We will.

    Terry Jones:

    “International Judge Muhammad Day will be a day that we put Muhammad on trial.  We will examine his life.  Was he a prophet of God as is claimed by the religion of Islam?  Or was he a pedophile?  Was he a deceiver?  Was he a man of peace or was he a man of violence?  Did he leave behind a world religion that betters mankind and promotes the equality of mankind?  Or did he leave behind a religion of violence, a religion of racism and prejudice?  Did he leave behind a religion that does not promote living together in peace and harmony and disrespects others opinions and religions?  Or did he leave behind a religion that believes only Muslims, believers in Allah and the so-called prophet Muhammad deserve the right to live and pursue their goals in life?”

    Link to Video Introduction:  International Judge Muhammad Day 9/11/12

    On Facebook:  International Judge Muhammad Day

    Upcoming events:  April 7, 2012 ~ Dearborn, MI ~ in front of the Islamic Center of America

    September 11, 2012 ~ Gainesville, FL ~ International Judge Muhammad Day

    Thank you,

  • The European Union and the United States Sign a Suicide Pact

    The European Union and the United States Sign a Suicide Pact

    columnistmichaelyoussefNo, I am not talking about the impending economic doom that some are predicting will impact both continents.

    I am talking about the complicit support given to Muslim countries in the UN who have been on a rampage to make it an international crime to criticize Islam in any way, shape or form.

    In December 2011, the United States hosted what is known as the “Istanbul Process Conference” in Washington, DC. This Conference is explicitly committed to a global ban on any verbal or written criticism of any aspect of Islamic Sharia—even if it is an honest assessment. After all, how else will they cram Sharia down the throats of unsuspecting Westerners?

    This effort is spear-headed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [OIC], an organization of 57 Muslim countries. The OIC has long been pressuring the European Union and the United States to sign on to what amounts to a suicidal scheme, not only for Europeans and Americans, but to all freedom-loving people in the world.

    The OIC’s success in their feverish effort to have the UN pass Resolution 16/18 is a modern day marvel. That resolution was adopted at the HRC [Human Rights Commission] in Geneva in March 2011 and it was quietly approved by the 193-member UN General Assembly on December 19th. However, it needs strong Western support to be effectual.

    If this is supported by the West, Americans, with their love for the First Amendment, will have to watch as they lose the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech as Islamic Sharia is slowly but surely enforced in the United States just as it is in England today.

    What the United States did in hosting the Istanbul Process was unprecedented since the founding of the United Nations. Namely, they gave the OIC political legitimacy in its desire to silence any voice, including the voice of good Muslim scholars, from criticizing Islam or its tenets. Now Europe is chomping at the bit to host the next convention.

    Make no mistake about it. What the OIC is aspiring to accomplish both in Europe and in America is to muzzle the few brave politicians and diplomats who are objecting to the Islamic refusal to integrate into both continents. Indeed, they are asking for Muslims and Islam to be given a privileged position.

    As a boy attending government schools in Egypt, we were taught openly and unequivocally, by Muslim teachers, that Islam spreads throughout the world by the sword. However, Islamic expansion could also be fueled in other ways—as indeed we see today.

    Today, it is being spread by intimidation of the UN, European Union, and United States, particularly the intimidation of some weak and hapless diplomats and politicians. In all of this, they are using billions of petrodollars as a carrot for their silence.

    If we do not take action, we won’t even have to wait ten years before the world wakes up to discover that this nightmare is a reality. In this nightmare reality, good people will be dragged before international courts, facing financial and personal ruin for merely speaking the truth about Islam.

    Unless courageous politicians who do “get it” are elected very, very soon, freedom as we know it will be a luxury of the past.

    via The European Union and the United States Sign a Suicide Pact – Michael Youssef – Townhall Conservative.

  • Islam versus Europe: “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”

    Islam versus Europe: “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”

    “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”

    12:02 | Posted by Cheradenine Zakalwe

    JEDDAH, 8 Safar/Jan 3 (IINA)-Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) said that the European Union offered to host the third meeting of the ‘Istanbul Process’, which deliberates, in a series of meetings, on developing mechanisms to implement UNHRC Resolution 16/18 on combating intolerance, discrimination and incitement to violence based on religion ore belief.

    The Secretary General of Islamic Cooperation in his office in Jeddah on Tuesday 30 January 2012 pointed out that the EU’s offer to host the meeting represents a qualitative shift in action against the phenomenon of Islamophobia, which spread in many European countries, targeting the Muslim communities there.

    The phenomenon of Islamophobia is found in the West in general, but is growing in European countries in particular and in a manner different than that in the US, which had contributed to drafting Resolution 16/18. The new European position represents the beginning of the shift from their previous reserve over the years over the attempts by the OIC to counter “defamation of religions” in the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations.

    Officials in the Cultural Affairs Department of the OIC said that the European Union’s offer to host the third meeting (the first was in Istanbul in July and the second in Washington DC in December) is considered a promising new possibility of solving this problem. The ‘Istanbul Process’ will have an added momentum by holding the meeting in Europe, which is more affected by the phenomenon of Islamophobia and hostility towards Islam.

    However, Ihsanoglu said that the growing role of the extreme right in politics in several European countries has become stronger than the capacity of the Organization, explaining that the extreme right, who hates Muslims, became leverage in the hands of politicians. He added that the rise of the extreme right through elections has become an issue that cannot be countered, considering the democratic way in which these extremist reach their positions. He pointed out to the referendum held in Switzerland, as an example, which resulted in suspending the construction of minarets there following a vote by the Swiss people.

    Source

    Labels: Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Istanbul Process, OIC, Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation

    via Islam versus Europe: “The increasing role of the extreme right in Western politics is beyond our abilities to counter them”.