High U.N. Official Calls Free Speech a ‘Gift’

October 3, 2012 By 19 Comments

But the gift-givers at the United Nations point to another article (Article 29), which in their view makes the “gift” or “privilege” of free speech conditional:

“(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.                (emphasis added)

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” (emphasis added)

As the initial Islamic response to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) foreign ministers adopted the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam in 1990.

The Cairo Declaration reaffirmed “the civilizing and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilization in which harmony is established between this life and the hereafter and knowledge is combined with faith.”  After reciting a litany of human rights that it pledged to protect, the Cairo Declaration subjected all of its protections to the requirements of Islamic law.  For example, Article 22 (a) states: “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.”

By making Islamic law the sole authority for defining the scope of human rights, the OIC’s Cairo Declaration sanctioned limits on freedom of expression, discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and a prohibition against a Muslim’s conversion from Islam.

Recognizing that the West was certainly not about to replace outright the Universal Declaration with the Cairo Declaration and overtly embrace all of Sharia law, the OIC has worked hard to expand its influence at the United Nations so it could nevertheless incorporate key Sharia concepts into universal human rights norms.

The Islamists managed to ram through the United Nations Human Rights Council and the General Assembly a series of resolutions condemning the “defamation of religions” that put the UN on the side of limiting free speech offensive to Islam. All these UN resolutions are a direct assault on the First Amendment. As constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams so correctly predicted, “What they would do would be to make it illegal to put out a movie or write a book or a poem that somebody could say was defamatory of Islam.”

Contrary to the UN’s warnings against “provocative” speech, freedom of speech means nothing unless it protects provocative speech that challenges conventional wisdom, rigid beliefs, and official government versions of the “truth.” Nothing must be sacrosanct or off limits to criticism. Mobs must not be given vetoes over free speech because they claim to be offended.

The right of free speech is not a “gift” bestowed by the UN through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in any event has been bastardized by the Islamists’ successful campaign to infect it with Sharia values. It is an inalienable right. Our Creator bestows this right upon us, which no government, global forum or jihadist can take away unless we let them take it away.

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About

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and the new book, Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.

  • oldtimer

    Free speech is not a Gift, it's a Right given to all people BY GOD!!!! Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US….

  • davarino

    I dont recognise the UN so they can go F themselves. I will keep my free speech rights thank you, whether the UN decides to offer it as a gift or not. Oh ya, and islam is a gutter cult dreamed up by some douch bag out in the desert.

  • Crushment

    It is called Sharia by stealth. The UN is nothig more than a twilight home for cow-eyed, Third World dictators and their bent over Leftie lackeys.

    Here's a bit of free speech for you: Bomb the UN!

  • amused

    Who in the hell cars what some schmuck in the UN says ? Free speech is not a gift , it was something fought for , blood was shed , and most of the world doesn't have it .

  • Steeloak

    Reminds me of the old Soviet constitution, full of lofty language about rights and ideals, but with enough exceptions to enable the complete police state that it was.

    • Kufar Dawg

      It sounds like the current presidential regime is sympathetic to a Soviet re-interepretation of the US Constitution.

  • tagalog

    To the extent that free speech is a gift at all, it's a gift from God, not the United Nations. Since it's a gift from God, no human has any justifiable claim to be able to interfere with it.

    Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights adds one crumb of additional meaning to the right to free speech; they simply acknowledge its existence, and at least the U.S. Constitution prohibits legislatures from making laws that interfere with freedom of speech, I don't know what the U.N. document does.

  • Ar'nun

    Allow me to use my gift to tell the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations Jan Eliasson to F*** Off! For me, the best part about this is the typical arrogance he expressed with his intellectual idea that freedoms are gifts from benevolent rulers. He most likely can not comprehend what would in reality be a statement worthy of ridicule. Although Leftists like him denounce the concept of bullying, I contend this is evident that bullies serve an invaluable role within society. See if Jan Elliasson was ridiculed mercilessly for espousing such moronic voids of intellect like this, if he feared the harassment of people pointing and laughing at him every time he said something so utterly stupid, maybe he would either choose his words more carefully, or disappear back into society to become as insignificant as he really should be.

  • ezra mordecai

    It's not our speech that offends them, it is our very presence that offends them. The speech is just an excuse to further their hate. They will not be satified until we are dead!

  • LindaRivera

    Muslim Obama sitting in the White Mosque and other Western leaders
    apologized profusely for the movie to the world’s Muslims and
    continually grovelled before Muslims. It was quite irrelevant to Obama
    and other merciless Western ruling elites that the Muslims barbarically
    murdered the U.S. ambassador and other non-Muslim innocents.

    Muslim Obama and Western leaders are extremely DELIGHTED to use the
    movie as an excuse to DESTROY our freedom of speech and implement
    Islamic sharia blasphemy laws.

    Barack Hussein Obama told the UN General Assembly: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
    One blogger stated: I consider that statement a death threat to me and all anti-Islam
    bloggers, authors, and activists by the President of the United States…

    When DECEIVER, Emperor Barack Hussein Obama declared: “The future
    must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” he meant
    the future must not belong to those who tell the TRUTH about Islam.

  • Glennd1

    I don't recognize the authority of the U.N. to make any statements about what rights I possess or don't. You see, we declared them ours and enshrined them in legitimate law and governed ourselves accordingly for 220+ years now. It may be that the rest of humanity got those rights (among many others) by the introduction of the Universal Human Rights Declaration, and I suggest the U.N. focus it's energies on the incredible oppression that much of the world live under versus lecturing the U.S. on free speech. We taught the world about free speech and are in no need of lectures from the U.N.

  • Tanner

    Free speech is not a gift. It's a right. The Universal Human Rights Declaration will not work because the UN is now controlled by people who do not in any way represent human rights. The UN invites Islamic dictators and other kinds of tyrants into it's membership. If that number starts to increase, the whole UN will be a platform for evil. Either the UN has to be abolished, or the UN has to be strong and get rid of all of the dictators out of it's membership. But frankly, I think it's a bit too late for the UN to change. The UN is pretty much jacked. They never made any resolution or sanction against North Korea or China for persecuting Christians and others in their countries. They never spoke out against the Cambodian Genocide while it was happening. They never spoke out against anti-Semitism in Europe. They never condemned the Viet Cong for using children as child soldiers. They never spoke out against the oppression of moderate Muslims (such as genital cutting, hanging gays, and "honor killing") in the Middle East. The only thing the UN has done in resent years is becoming a platform for anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism. They seem to condemn what is good but not condemn what is bad.

  • Ghostwriter

    I also want to use my "gift" of free speech to call the Deputy Secretary General a complete idiot. How dare he or those like the OIC lecture Americans about free speech. We've been doing that a long time and we like our First Amendment a lot. I wish that he and those like him would stop trying to tinker with our Constitution.

  • jose

    Muslims do not believe in freedom of speech. The demacrats have aligned themselves with socialists and muslims. What do you think they want to do with Americans? Think, then vote.

  • https://www.facebook.com/mike.villano.71 Mike Villano

    The "gift" these UN parasites enjoy is the selling out of Americans by parasitic American officials and intellectuals.
    Ban Ki Moon, Kofi Annan and the rest of these parasites can go to hell along with the sell out Americans who insist aiding and abetting mass murder, jihad and oppression through diplomatic French kissing and kitty licking.
    These malignant parasite Americans at the State Dept deliver weapons platforms and cash to pay for them in lieu of platforms that they prefer to call "Humanitarian Aid."
    They are truly low life academic bimbos too proud and addicted to other people's money to ever 2nd guess the capitulation and formulas for selling out the US they learned in diplomacy school.
    These American Quislings handed North Africa over to Al Qaeda and now they are trying to figure out how to deal with that highly very predictable mess they made.
    Real Americans would toss the UN parasites out on their ear and stop pretending this immoral hive of scum and villainy is the apex of legitimacy and morality in the world. That confusion more than anyone we owe to the false prophets in our media.

  • Woody W Woodward

    Is this group of self-righteous fools trying to convince everyone that prior to 10 December 1948, the date the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no body had unalienable rights recognized (not adopted or given) by my country’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution in the 1770′s?

    Man nor government gave me my rights, and no man, or government, or association of governments can take them from me.
    [W3]

  • ThomasPaine

    Go straight to hell, Jan. Shocking fact number 1: You did not give me anything, G-d did. Shocking fact number 2: Forcing me to prove it will be unpleasant, profoundly unpleasant.

  • NewHampshire

    Why is it therefor that so many 'republicans' and 'conservatives' allow their children to attend UNESCO controlled schools? And that's not just IB schools (www.ibo.org) I hope FPM will help us expose this program.
    http://www.mvsd-ib.org/ib/2012/10/13/why-your-chi…

  • Ya_think

    Please visit this site and sign the petition to get out of the UN. We need to tell Obama and the rest of the government to get out of the UN now before we lose even more of our freedoms to the One World Government that the UN is trying to impose on us.
    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/complet…