From the ever-busy department of addressing solving nonexistent problems comes the news that the new United Nations Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, the Spanish diplomat Miguel Ángel Moratinos Cuyaubé, is hard at work on his new duties, striving mightily to devise ways to ensure that no one thinks ill of the religion of Islam or is unkind to those who believe in it. Certainly there is no justification under any circumstances to do violence to innocent people, but there are plenty of laws already on the books that cover such instances. Moratinos, in his determination to stamp out “Islamophobia,” is going for bigger game. All people who love free societies should find this worrisome.
UN News reported happily on Wednesday that “the recent appointment of a UN Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia reflects international commitment to address discrimination and hostility against Muslims.” Well, discrimination is one thing and hostility is quite another. Equality of opportunity for all people is a hallmark of free societies, but since when have those free societies legislated against hostility? In the UN’s perfect world, are the rude supermarket checker and the surly waiter liable to be prosecuted?
Apparently so. Moratinos says: “Everybody understood that something had to be done in order to eradicate and eliminate this sense of intolerance and lack of acceptance of these people.” So we all have to be tolerant and accepting; very well. And on the face of it, it seems to make sense. The UN story adds that “in the face of rising Islamophobia, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in March 2024 that condemned anti-Muslim violence.” Anti-Muslim violence is certainly to be condemned. Yet Moratinos goes much farther.
In a recent interview, Moratinos explained that “combating Islamophobia” meant “combating discrimination, hostility and violence against Muslim people that want to live in peace and dignity.” All right. Again, “hostility” is questionable, but “discrimination” and “violence” are certainly worth combating. And Moratinos added that Muslims “have a faith, they have a religion, they have a mission, and so they have to be respected like any other human being.” No argument there. But then Moratinos says: “I think the UN is the best platform to really fight against any kind of discrimination or negative attitude towards them.” Negative attitude? We’re going to criminalize negative attitudes now?
Apparently so. And Moratinos thinks the way to do that is through an educational campaign touting the glories of Islam: “We have several that have to start immediately. Islam is not well understood in the western world, so we have to use education. We have to establish certain programmes to explain what Islam is, what the Quran is. People are referring to the Quran and to Islam, but they have not read the Quran at all, so they don't know.”
So Moratinos starts out by talking about the alleged need to “prohibit by law incitement to violence against persons on the grounds of their religion or belief,” and ends up by talking about fighting against “any kind of discrimination or negative attitude” toward Muslims.
Yet in fact, incitement to violence is already illegal. But in wanting to “fight against any kind of discrimination or negative attitude towards” Muslims, Moratinos assumes that such negative attitudes could only arise among people who haven't actually read the Qur’an, and that once these people are educated, those negative attitudes will disappear. Moratinos doesn't seem ever to have considered the possibility that someone might know the Qur’an and Islam quite well, and still dislike it.
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It's clear that if Moratinos and his henchmen ever do take notice of such people, it will only be to silence them under the spurious claim that what they say constitutes incitement to violence. Actually, only calls for violence constitute incitement to violence, but Moratinos is clearly intent on working toward the criminalization of criticism of Islam in the West. With Denmark, Sweden, and Britain having adopted what are effectively Sharia blasphemy laws by prosecuting people who burned the Qur’an, this criminalization is coming more quickly than most people realize.
Moratinos notes this trend, saying: “Some countries like Sweden and Denmark have made certain reforms in their legal systems, so they can be made through dialogue, through understanding, through respect. And I think this legal empowerment to defend and to combat Islamophobia is needed.”
The freedom of speech, however, must include the freedom to express “negative attitudes” toward any belief system of any kind. Otherwise, the adherents of that belief system would be established as a protected class, beyond criticism, and that’s how tyrannies are born. People might dislike Islam because of jihad terrorism; criminalizing such distaste would likely make it significantly more difficult to combat that terrorism. Miguel Ángel Moratinos’ zealousness to eradicate “Islamophobia” could end up destroying the very basis of what makes free societies free. The cure would then end up being much, much worse than the disease.
