A religious leader spoke at a conference, delivering a plain vanilla address that no one would have noticed in decades past. In some ways it is still hard to believe that this might be controversial today:

Another cause highly esteemed by all of you is the defence of religious liberty, which is a fundamental, irrepressible, inalienable and inviolable right rooted in the dignity of every human being and acknowledged by various international documents, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The exercise of this freedom also includes the right to change religion, which should be guaranteed not only legally, but also in daily practice. In fact, religious liberty corresponds to the human person’s innate openness to God, who is the fullness of truth and the supreme good.

An appreciation for religious freedom is a fundamental expression of respect for human reason and its capacity to know the truth. Openness to transcendence is an indispensable guarantee of human dignity since within every human heart there are needs and desires which find their fulfilment in God alone. For this reason, God can never be excluded from the horizon of man and world history! That is why all authentically religious traditions must be allowed to manifest their own identity publicly, free from any pressure to hide or disguise it.

Moreover, due respect for religion helps to counter the charge that society has forgotten God: an accusation shamelessly exploited by some terrorist networks in an attempt to justify their threats against global security. Terrorism is a serious problem whose perpetrators often claim to act in God’s name and harbour an inexcusable contempt for human life.

This is how the little speech was reported in the British press:

Pope in ‘freedom’ blast at Islam — The Pope has again risked provoking the wrath of the Islamic world, by criticising its treatment of Christians. Benedict XVI attacked Muslim nations where Christians are either persecuted or given the status of second-class citizens under the Shariah Islamic law. He also defended the rights of Muslims to convert to Christianity, an act which warrants the death penalty in many Islamic countries. His comments came almost exactly a year after he provoked a wave of anger among Muslims by quoting a Byzantine emperor who linked Islam to violence…A poll earlier this year of more than 1,000 young adult British Muslims found that 36% believe those who convert to another faith should be punished by death.

There seem to be misstatements of fact in the story above, based upon the transcript of the Pope’s comments. Nonetheless, there is more than a bit of truth in the piece, despite the excited, exaggerated and overwrought way the Daily Mail chose to report the speech. There certainly is a fundamental disagreement between Article 18 (on freedom of religion) of the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam of 1990. As has been noted:

In 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was “a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition”, which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law.

The Iranian representative to the UN summed up pretty well one of the core disagreements of today’s struggle. Too bad the Daily Mail did not provide some context along with its shouting.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 12:37 pm and is filed under EU, General, Law, MSM, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.